- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
“Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, reports Axios. The donation will be a personal donation directly from Cook rather than a donation from Apple”
I’ll defend Apple as being the least shitty of the big tech giants but I can’t defend this.
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Pathetic thinly veiled bribe
Or it is protection money. “Nice apple you got there, would be a shame if anyone took a bite out of that”….
Why would Tim Cook be assosiated with Apple in trumps mind?
Apple is owned by Tim Apple.
Kind of strange that this line cook is able to afford a small 1 million dollar loan…what? You think trump knows that a loan is different than a donation? You think he knows you’re supposed to pay back loans?
I am very sure Trump does not actually think, at best he works based on instinct, but so does his chaotic band of mouth-breathing, blood-seeking raging insurrectionists.
If any company could insulate itself from Trump’s agenda, it would be Apple with its “fuck you” money.
This is cowardly and craven.
I think they are buying carve outs for the tariffs
Needs to make sure there’s a loophole for Apple production when more China tariffs hit.
Imagine being a woman working for Apple and having a CEO who funds a rapist.
Imagine being an openly gay CEO who funds a party who hates gays
They hate poor gays
No, they hate all gay people. They are just lower on the list right now, but they are definitely there.
First they came for…
And open guys, and gays suffering for our sexuality. None of them visited Roy Cohn as he died of AIDS. Tim Cook may get spared from raids at first, but if it goes as bad as we fear he’s going to have nobody willing to defend him
The guy clears 2 billions in net worth. There are plenty of people who are willing to defend him for a piece of that.
Ah, but what will others do for all of it? Fascists eventually decide to just steal from the undesirables
They don’t hate gays, they hate honesty, and also having social and legal limitations for various divergent traits allows blackmail and defamation.
They don’t hate gays
Yeah, they only cheer on the concept of queer genocide and talk about how queer people groom children to support the idea.
But they don’t hate them. Jesus loves them after all.
It’s absolutely wild how the first time around, everyone left of center was against Trump, even if it was only posturing. This time around, he’s even worse and the same people are literally supporting him.
It’s not the same people. It’s more people. He actually won the popular vote, which hasn’t been done since W Bush. And arguably, that didn’t even happen.
What the fucking, fuck.
This is one of the reasons why I am gradually untying myself from the Apple ecosystem, and all of propriety/big tech; especially US based.
When push comes to shove capitalism will not resist fascism. They will ignore all stated virtue signals and choose profits.
Choosing E2E encrypted FOSS products, that are interoperable with FOSS standards/formats and do not lock you into walled gardens, are the only viable long term solution.
This might actually become the year of Linux on the desktop for me.
Try PopOS if you’re coming from Mac, it’s pretty easy to get used to!
My only-ever-windows SO just got a computer with PopOS on it (default) and it took some getting used to, but he loves it. I was like, “you know this is a Mac OS clone, right? 😏” and he was like 🤯
Suprised? Had you put him on a pedastle in your mind? Did you think him to be more than a sniveling greedy capitalist prick? I’m sorry for this very harsh fall from artificial grace if so. I’d be careful about holding anyone with more than a few hundred million dollars to lose in too high esteem in the future.
Amazon, Meta, Uber, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Coinbase, Toyota, Ford, GM, AT&T, Black & Decker, and Charter Communications are also making donations to Trump’s inauguration fund.
I guess I never really paid attention before but is it normal for companies to donate to an inauguration fund? It sure seems like a government sanctioned protection racket.
Perfectly normal, but not like this.
ABC News reported that Trump’s second-inauguration haul is on track to shatter the previous $107m record, as pledged contributions have already exceeded a $150m fundraising goal. Barack Obama’s inauguration raised $53m in 2009 and $42m in 2013, and Joe Biden’s raised $63m in 2021.
Oh wow, this is really informative. Thanks for the link friend
Only since Citizens United.
you’re thinking of FECA probably. inauguration vs campaign funds are different things, and Citizens United was about campaign funds.
It certainly has a FECAl smell about it.
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What’s funny (or sad) is that 100 years from now this will be looked at the same was as when Ford or IBM supported the Nazis. Their business won’t hurt long term and Tim Apple will be long dead.
IG Farben, Krupp, Thyssen, Boss, Porsche and the mist goes on and on and on. Fuck I suspect that even my own grandfather “had stripes” (slang for collaboration with Nazis without yourself being proclaimed nazi) and he even fought them during the invasion of Norway.
History doesn’t repeat. It rhymes.
Buckle in kiddo it’s gonna be a fun couple of decades if we survive it.
If we survive that long as a species.
He should just be honest and said “this $1m is a mandatory payment to trump so that he exempts Apple from tariffs, no other reason”, of course, then it’s an obvious quid pro quo.
It really is a class war, not a culture war.
Always has been.
Why does such a thing as an inaugural fund exist? Seems like it’s just to facilitate more corruption!
It doesn’t usually. The ‘why’ in the case is because Trump and his team refuse to sign the ethics agreement to get the normal funding from the government.
Thanks, it must be amazing for Americans to have a president who won’t sign a standard ethics agreement.
Up here in Canada, we’re only ever 10 years behind at most.
Germany, too, is poised to follow suit at the upcoming elections in February.
Americans have been convinced to sell themselves out.
Every trump supporter is either a dipshit or someone taking advantage of dipshits.
It’s coercion but somehow legal.
Fuck Tim Apple
They’re being shaken down. Same as Mark Zuckerberg being summoned to a meeting with Trump and the next day paying $1m to the same fund.
I’m betting these meetings went something like, “You don’t want a president as an enemy, do you? Cough up.”
And don’t think of it as a tax on the rich - it’s not going towards the benefit of the American people. It’s extortion.
It’s insane that this is even legal.
I’m certain it’s not - but it doesn’t matter. Trump has proved that he is beyond the law in every way.
Clinton got impeached for lying and it ruined his credibility. Trump lies all the time and gets re-elected, but has no credibility to ruin.
This country makes me sick to my stomach. What a fucking joke.
If you can find a way: get out.
For everyone else, you have my sincere sympathy.
And go where? Where in the world is safe right now? I thought about living in the Philippines with my family, but China is probably waging war soon. Europe? With the way America is headed and the war is going? Let’s assume Ukraine wins: Europe is out of gas and will militarize and right wing governments are rising with German nationalism leading the battle drums, Ukraine gonna be in an economic slump, Russia is gonna be subservient and dependent on China because its economy is gone without a win.
That leaves countries with metropolises that are suffering from westerners gentrifying their neighborhoods with the USD being strong in these places. We are really going to make the poor in other nations pay the price for our government’s doing again, but this time by our own choice? That’s not any better imo. Unless you are leaving with the specific intent on making the place you are going better, stay home please
Do you mean safe or safer than the U.S.? Because you can’t be guaranteed of absolute safety anywhere. If you’re queer or brown, there are a lot of countries where you’ll be safer than the U.S.
Fair point. If you are in immediate danger then yeah, not gonna argue. But if you are able to stay and do something, that should be preferable.
I am brown (Filipino). I won’t be leaving. My sister lives here. My nephew. They can go somewhere safe, but there aren’t many places safe from a hot, land war in this world like the US observably is. Mayyybe Canada, but enjoy that economy.
As a Bi man there is something that particularly stings about a well known, openly gay CEO funding a man who is hateful towards LGBTQ+ people. I never really liked him nor apple but it is an extra fuck you.
Being rich is ultimately the disease as it compels him to appeal to power but I hope the last things hears is “Told you I would kill you last”.
His in-group is not LGBTQIA+, it is other rich people. The same is true for all of them.
The wealthy all seem to understand that class solidarity is more important than any other issue. Why is it taking so long for everyone else to figure that out?
There are no real allies in the oligarch class. Temporal alliances or common goals at best. They will (and do) kill for a penny.
Peter Thiel is also a gay man, and pulling a lot of these strings behind the scenes.
It’s oligarchy. Thiel can fuck who ever he wants (and make them disappear when he’s done…) while maintaining political power by sacrificing queer people to the Hour of Hate.
Hands down, the most effective punishments for these people at the top is to redistribute their wealth so they have to live like everyone else.
That is legitimately a fate worse than death in their eyes, which should put things into perspective for the rest of us.
Sam Altman, too
he is ultra rich, the hateful divide and conquer tactics applied to common people don’t apply to him so he simply does not have any empathy for the matter.
Yeah this is so weird. I guess it’s either comply or die when it comes to this stuff
I’m really not sure what the threat to him is though. Does “die” in this case mean lose out on money? One would think he already has his walk away money.
I meant it more metaphorically. I think it’s more like lose out on some benefits and have to go through tons of bureaucracy if you don’t comply.
Yeah that’s what I was trying to imply: that he’s not supporting a bigot empowering fascist leader to save his actual skin, but to keep his personal business running smoothly.
Whereas queer folk without money are existentialy threatened by this administration and those it emboldens.
Yup. For once we could have had a CEO choose the good side, but this just goes to show how corrupt the oligarchy is
Tim cook will never suffer the consequences of anti-gay legislation or the lack of legal protection for gay people.
Unfortunately, gay people like money too. He cares more about furthering his own personal empire than he does about helping those who have less money than him.
In the eyes of timmy, the struggles of poor gay people are completely irrelevant to the struggles of rich gay people.
West was similarly eager to sell out his fans after they made him wealthy so he could suckle on trump’s teat.
West was similarly eager to sell out his fans after they made him wealthy so he could suckle on trump’s teat.
These CEOs are funding hate, violence and the end of American democracy - they have enough power, money and influence to oppose, yet they don’t. They decided that a few must be sacrificed for the greater
goodprofit.Something happened on the 4th of December. Today is the 4th of January. Just in case anyone’s calendar app is stuck closed. Interesting if true…
Well… they saw that they can show their real face.
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All these Billionaires PAYING Trump MILLIONS of Dollars is PROOF he CANT be Bought!
None of these companies would touch Trump with a 10 foot pole in the situation wasn’t so dire. But he is the next president, and he is known to respond to stuff like this. Bend knee, kiss his ass and carry a huge wad of cash. This is just the cost of doing business, and even if a vocal minority cries out most people still buy iPhones, Teslas and shop at Amazon and Wal-Mart.
It’s almost like capitalism is a terrible idea.
I struggle to call this capitalism. It’s so twisted and corrupt it doesn’t resemble what it started out as.
lol I interpret this as sarcasm, as with many of your other comments around Lemmy. If they are so, I think they’re funny and so far I agree with what you actually value, democracy. However, it took me some time to understand your sarcasm. This might be just me, but I wonder if your comments could be subjected to Poe’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe’s_law). Is it impossible that they could be interpreted as candid?
I got the joke right away, I don’t think there’s any problem with it.
The thing is, no matter how obvious a contradiction is, far-right folks won’t understand any of it, because they’re so dumb. You cannot give them even the most basic, easily digestible facts and explanations, because even that requires a brain, which they don’t have.
So I think, these kind of jokes are perfectly fine for our entertainment, and no amount of facts and information will ever convince the dumbest of the people.
Fair points:
- I see how that joke can be fine in the sense that, if everyone in the group shares values, there is no need to consider how a staunch Trump supporter will respond to the joke. After all, I think there are very few staunch Trump supporters reading this.
- I also see that it can be very hard to convince people to reconsider tightly-held beliefs, or at the very least gain perspective on them. It sounds like you do not believe changing perspectives is even possible, that no dialogue can ever be worthwhile or useful.
I see you appreciate facts and information, the scientific process and the institutions that enable it. We have that in common. That’s why, ironically, I’ll start with anecdotal facts and then move on to more robust and generalizable findings. Do you know about my friend who went from defending “one dollar, one vote” (a couple of years ago) to explaining how the lack of third spaces is associated with inequality (a couple of weeks ago)? I don’t expect you to at all, so do you know Contrapoints’ impact on radicalized people who reach out to her (https://www.vice.com/en/article/contrapoints-interview-2019-natalie-wynn/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nrz4-FZx6k)?
These may sound like cherry-picked examples, but there’s actually evidence of massive shifts in people’s political views: the World Value Survey. Do you know how world values have changed ever since the WVS started?(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIXdRVe92gg)
In the face of the WVS shifts, it may seem like value changes only occur when material conditions allow for it, but there’s evidence within the WVS literature that material conditions are not as important today (in particular, the variance that explains the change in values used to be mostly explained by material conditions, but now it is mostly explained by connectivity). However, we can also look at another set of scientific literature that shows that the way that things are presented can lead to changes in political attitudes. Do you know about the moral reframing literature? I’m sorry for the paywall https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12501 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337861541_Moral_reframing_A_technique_for_effective_and_persuasive_communication_across_political_divides
Thank you for showing me this valuable piece of information. No, I haven’t seen these before.
Until now, I’m 100% confident that it’s impossible to convince someone on the far-right of anything that’s against their views, because I’m from a country that is 15 years ahead of the US on this tragic path into the dark future far away from common sense, thus I have a somewhat clear prediction for the general mental state of the people in the coming decades, which likely cannot be reversed in a century.
Yet, I’m thinking quite often, what I could do as an individual to at least somewhat better the situation in this miserable world. And so far all my ideas are based on withdrawal of content (much like how you take drugs away from a junkie) instead of adding arguments, which is obviously hard to pull off on a large scale.
Not that I could do anything though. Today you need to be rich to achieve something.
Nonetheless, maybe this is the missing piece to the puzzle. I’m considering to pay those extra bucks for that publication, also Welzel’s book; they look promising. So thanks again for sharing.
Tim Cook is hoping to be spared when Trump starts purging gay people.
Hey, he’s a billionaire. Being gay is only illegal if you’re poor like everything else.
No war, but the class war.
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It’s not just LGBTQ+ folks. Anyone not male, straight, white, christian, republican or natural born is in the firing line.
I think the point is that Tim Apple is all of these things (so he need not care) except straight.
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It really goes to show what kind of times we’re living in when Steve Jobbs is the limbo bar to measure good ethics that everyone today is clearing under.
Yeah, as much as I hate Steve Jobs, he would have given Trump the finger on camera back in 2016 had he been alive.
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Scalia was weird as fuck and you could never predict what side of things he would come down on. So sort of like Steve Jobs, I guess. He was far-right, but he also said stuff like the time he said that orgies should be encouraged because they relieve social tension.
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The man’s got a point there. Hard to argue with orgy logic.
I don’t know, I think once you got that many people together, I’d get performance anxiety.
Fuck Tim Apple, but please do not ever utter the phrase “bad gay” again.
