CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@MichaelimOdenwald You might be on to something. Had to look it up - it was not a prize, but a commemorative disk for the announcement to "increase [their] investment in U.S. manufacturing by an additional $100 billion over the next four years". (https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/trump-announces-apple-investing-another-100-billion-in-us-manufacturing/?utm_source=chatgpt.com).

Maybe not so much a bribe as a "try to remember what we did for a while there", with some gold from Utah (un?)helpfully added to the base to give it a nice weight.

Well. If so, then we at least now know it worked – on *us*

@spiegelmama Yes, it might have been that. I'm saying that on the whole, this is a human, and he's done good things too. And sometimes your sense of responsibility is what can make you susceptible to take risks to save what you care for. Think for a second of the million worse ways Apple might have collaborated. Did they? I'll be interested to find out. I'm not prepared to black or white this. I understand the temptation to "make him pay". But if you lose sense of the human, who's losing?

@inthehands It was a really bad look, but there’s a lot more to him. I think anybody who’s been in a situation where you’re constantly pressured to look good, while you’re responsible for the company, will understand. Sometimes you nearly fall on your nose.

@JoBlakely I’m not buying that for one second. He’s an incredibly dedicated person, leading a company that goes to great lengths to keep people safe, whether they know it or not. Still just human.