God I love Austin Powers.

https://youtu.be/zcUs5X9glCc

Took me a minute

As a Dane who's also a big fan of Thorfinn, I am vexed. VEXED, I tell you!

(Also, amused that the viking and the hippie are dating, given my username 😁)

😂

The Dutch. The Danes have enough having to speak Danish, no need to pile on them!

My response to this is always...Putin really needs to die

In the context of power and money, absolutely. Although the fascism is being generated beyond the US too: fossil fuel companies are considered to be the main proponents of disinformation to destroy social cohesion against minorities, for example.

While I’m 100% in favor of diversity and inclusion, I think there was a bit of a fever over it in corporate land over the last several years. I also don’t think it actually amounted to a whole lot. I’m not one of those people who got sick of hearing about it, or complained about it, but I’m also not sorry to see most of it go. It doesn’t mean discrimination is back on the menu. It’s hard to describe how much performative crap was happening. Just doing cartwheels to show how inclusive we are. We literally had sensitivity training that told us to stop using the phrase “long time no see,” because some might construe it as a mocking imitation of a Native American stereotype speech. I mean seriously, you can’t tell me it’s either THAT or FASCISM with nothing between.

The electrical college is truly a shocking way to run a country in the 21st century.

So there is no good or bad companies only whats in their interest at the moment.

That's absolutely not true. Just because a company doesn't "have morals" doesn't mean a company isn't immoral. No different than a psychopath not having morals, but us as society being able to judge them for that. You, as a consumer, have a choice on companies you interact with (somewhat, of course). Companies generally seek profit, so yes, capitalism is at fault it the core. But there are companies like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeStraw

vs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_%28drinkware_company%29

Which one is more ethical?

These companies could have broken ties:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany

That being said there's currently a pretty strong rise globally in support for nationalism / fascism / racism / anti-science / religious domination of government and media / genocide. So even companies that seem more local can immediately change their culture to adopt to a shift in power, belief, etc.

It could be currying favor with Trump. However I also think a lot of companies were only doing this inclusion stuff in the first place behavior it was fashionable or assumed to be a good thing. With that removed, they’re just dropping the pretense.

Capitalism was a failed experiment that should have ended in the 1920s but it served certain people well to keep it going, so they popped it up, rather than letting it die. So now we have this stupid hybrid system where it's capitalism, but only until capitalism fails. Then suddenly it's socialism time, but only for businesses, until they feel like they can cope again.

It's megacorporations that rule law and decide, we are since years back in a hyper capitalist suicid extinction event. Those who do the bidding of any megacorp today are cells of a demonic post human entity and wish upon humanity death. Surely somehow we can wake people back, land on Earth again, travel and eat without carbon dioxide so that the taiga can avoid being set ablaze in a few years and our doom sealed to forever. We have to stop avoiding the speciecide class war culture that decides fantastic and impossible idioms that you must follow, like eat milk and meat to grow or that you must give up your values to a hypnosis machine or several, or maybe if only you give the firm more than the required wake hours so that you can buy a fucking insane metal monstrosity to travel inside that weighs several tonnes, because it is safer apparently to accelerate a several ton air conditioning human payload missile to hundreds of kilometers per hour and then measure how many second that took as the variable that should stimulated your geniala slightly more, than to travel together with strangers coated in god knows what pathogens? We cannot help but form a mass psychosis ever since media trained zealots are allowed to serve children corporate propaganda on a regular basis. No lobbyists that serve nature, or humanity are allowed in the death chambers high command. Only the most vile homicide designers on the planet are psycopathic and dominant enough to work actively on the slaughter of our entire species yet nobody rise from the sofa to stop them as if that was the plan all along; to just lobotomize the cattle so the machine gets it easier with the grinding of swaths of human collectives, cultures being unmade and live on as bonemeal for the ultimate end of their offspring, no say in life or death equal.

And I think a big part of the problem is the psychology of group behaviour compared to individual behaviour. We can be far less moral in groups, by compartmentalising morality onto “someone else” in the group. I’m not sure that any other system can help us address that aspect of group psychology.

While this is true of public companies privately held companies have more flexibility.

If the Kristiansens wanted to they could direct the firm to be more inclusive. In this case it's not "the company" making the choice, it's the Kristiansen family and you can point directly to their need for money.

Omg 😂😂😂 ive been calling it the gold leaf house recently

Is it actually an Irish company, or just one of those Irish companies in the same way Apple is an Irish company?

You’re right: https://diversity.com/post/accenture-dei-rollback-2025

It’s a similar timeline too (~2025). I honestly think it’s very pathetic of them to stoop so low for the “Yankee dollar” (or any other trade relationship).

Damn. You’re right. I actually thought my title implied that connection, but I can see how it works the opposite way too. I’m not sure how to phrase it without editorialising too much / posting opinion as fact. I’m open to suggestions.

Most companies with specific dei reporting in my country started because of political pressure via us investors to begin with.

HR is a scam - if you've an issue go to your union rep instead, that's why we have them. If you live in a country w/o them, get some.

I think they've reached the point of being a huge corporation where they no longer have any morals beyond whatever makes them money. They sell pride sets when acceptance is profitable, and now they're cool with giving JK Rowling money to hurt trans people if it means they'll see a few bucks from it.

LEGO: No guns

STAR WARS: These are blasters

LEGO: OK. Give us the money.

That's what they are doing. I am amazed that no one from outside has yet pointed finger and warned about Heritage Foundation's attempt to influence Europe. They want to see the world burn, literally.

money is fungible

😂

I was about to ask what you meants with wizard lego.. but I assume you mean that they make Harry Potter ones?

The wizard lego is very disappointing, and goes completely against their other inclusive language. As for pricing, I'm not sure since quality is top tier. But I suppose the profits will tell us just how much room they have to lower their prices.

well their patent dropped so you can buy "lego" pieces from china. If you are not a rich collector just go and buy 10k pieces from china for 20 bucks. Your kids won't mind.

Or 3d print them, it works too but it's more expensive

K’nex appear to be owned by “Basic Fun!”, a U.S. company. Unlike LEGO I can’t find any social obligations that they’ve committed to in the past. https://www.basicfun.com/about/