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Comment by throwboatyface | Hacker News Reader

John Lasseter is a creep who was ousted from Pixar after a long history of sexually harassing employees: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/john-las...

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Equally relevant: the subject of that logo—the devil—is also a very bad person. Makes you wonder, did he draw that devil because he's such a bad person? Was he planning it all along?

I don't see how that's relevant.

It is interesting how the creations we cherish as a society become separate from the creator. Not even a creator's misconduct can reappropriate the art from society.

“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim." ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Oh, this from the posing somdomite" - Wilde's contemporaries.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - The Importance of Being Earnest

I assume you refuse to use gcc, emacs, etc. because of their creator, refuse to use JavaScript anywhere on the web, never take an Uber etc.?

Or is it just the cases where it's convenient to virtue signal?

I also find it ironic that you posted a Steve Jobs quote in a comment recently...

Is this about Stallman? I don't consider him to have done anything wrong, and so yes I sure do use gcc, and do at least prefer as little js as possible though I simply have no control over that, and in fact never use uber, and specifically because of the company, even though it would be convenient.

Of course you can't do any of this 100% because the world is interconnected and interdependent and countless infinite things are indirect.

But so what? You can still care and still try and still exert your own one-persons share of influence, even if it's only avoiding Amazon when you can, instead of just buying everything through them.

That is worth doing and 100% better than not caring and not bothering, and the value isn't invalidated by being impossible to be absolute.

Stallman did eat skin from his feet multiple times while on stage and may have asked people to serve him tea in an uncouth way multiple times. I do actually think about that when I compile from source and yes it bothers me a little but I soldier on.

That bothers you, but Stallman's decades of advocacy for sex with minors and the numerous accusations of harrassment against him don't?

I'm not saying it should, but it seems you're either unaware of, or don't consider relevant, the most actually troublesome aspects of the man.

No you are absolutely right and I was being tongue in cheek. Yeah he is basically toxic waste in terms of association. It’s a shame his personal toxicity will have had a negative effect not just on people vulnerable to predation perhaps even directly but also it will have undermined the popularity of FOSS more broadly and taken oxygen out of the air for things that aren’t Richard Stallmans scandalous behavior.

He did not advocate sex with minors good grief.

The mans worst crime is singing.

Yes because that particular quote is funny to me, the idea that boot up time is equivalent to harming someone to death is low key hilarious.

People in the thread are dropping all kinds of trivia about Pixar and BSD but possibly the biggest news about the subject of the article in the last 5 years is that he was ousted from his role at Pixar for sexual harassment. Feels relevant.

He is an incredibly talented director and storyteller. I can understand why his well documented history of sexual misconduct may not feel relevant. Apparently, the situation was so bad that Disney assigned a "minder" to him to keep him out of trouble.

On the other hand, his great creative talent should not diminish the fact that he was a creep of a boss if you happened to be female.

He's a complex person. If we want to talk about the great things he has done, I think we should also remind ourselves of the bad stuff.

I'm not sure I agree with that last part. He drew the BSD logo. I don't need to audit his failings and indiscretions to note that that's an interesting factoid.

Steve Jobs was a control freak, a narcissist (for at least his early years), colluded to drive software developer wages down, and treated his adopted(?) daughter poorly, yet we don't seem to need to talk about that every time his name comes up.

Bill Gates apparently had some connection to Jeffrey Epstein that made his wife uncomfortable enough to divorce him, yet we didn't need to bring that up when his book review got posted yesterday.

Maybe we can celebrate and enjoy the good things about a person without needing to continually shame them for the bad things.

There's also Andy Rubin. I think the difference is that Jobs and Gates are such huge cultural icons that we already know about their misdeeds- and in Gates' case he has become a new type of supervillain for a new generation- while Lasseter's are less known.

What? Those all get brought up fairly often, and comparing a narcissistic controlling personality to sexual harrassment is not super useful imo. But agreed that we should talk more about bill gates and Epstein, because as you said if his wife left him for it there ought to be something to that story.

If you're going to throw shade like that, at least get it right. He wasn't working at Pixar anymore, he was the head of all of Disney Animation, which included Pixar.

You are half right. He was chief creative officer at both Walt Disney and Pixar Animation at the time he went on leave.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/11/21/d...

That isn't what the article you linked says. It continually starts suggesting that, and then rows back to say it's not what actually happened.

Interesting that you can't spot these things.

He's been credibly accused by many people, it's an open secret in the industry, and he took a 6 month leave of absence and then never came back and started a new studio. Oh and he publicly acknowledged unspecified "missteps".

For someone who's had so many successful movies you'd think they'd defend him to the hilt if he was innocent?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/john-las...

> For someone who's had so many successful movies you'd think they'd defend him to the hilt if he was innocent?

You could make the same argument about Fatty Arbuckle, who was falsely accused of rape and manslaughter in the 1920’s and completely blacklisted from Hollywood despite probably being completely innocent. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other about Lasseter but these things are driven by Hollywood politics more than anything. Just look at how long they kept supporting Roman Polanski.

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