The year is swiftly drawing to a close.

As we prepare to exit 2019, let’s have a moment of silence for the UK, who have decided that what they need as a country is a few more years of Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party.

Johnson is, as all reasonable people know, an upper-class twit of the highest order who thinks it’s appropriate to act out scenes from Love Actually on the campaign trail. That, I’m afraid, seems to be what the people want.

While we’re on the topic of the super-wealthy and the ways that they are generally out of touch, let’s pop on over to America, to check in on Silicon Valley.

Take it away, Mashable:

On your left, marvel at the C-suite executives busily chipping away at the support structures of our barely taped-together society. On your right, observe the mess of labor violations, environmental catastrophes, and surveillance-state nightmares born of their

efforts.

Mashable is, of course, talking about all of the tech CEOs that graced the headlines this year, starting with the king of all things unholy, Facebook’s (definitely real, human person) Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg’s wealth remained intact, but his reputation took a bit of a beating.

Most recently, the CEO was grilled by Congress on his platform’s abysmal civil rights record. But that, most certainly, was not all. There was also the $5 billion fine from the FTC, the “clear history” tool that didn’t really clear anything, and that time Zuckerberg implied Facebook could have prevented the Iraq war.

We should also decidedly not overlook the time Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes called for the company’s breakup, or when Zuckerberg’s cryptocurrency project repeatedly ate shit.

He also had dinner with Donald Trump, who probably ordered his steak well done, and that is unforgivable.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos successfully navigated a sexting scandal, and then went on to screw over America.

His company’s efforts to sell facial-recognition technology to the government earned him widespread condemnation from human rights groups.

That, combined with Amazon’s zero-fucks approach toward customer privacy represent substantial moral failings, if nothing else.

Lovely. Need we mention the appalling working conditions in Amazon warehouses?

Tim Cook

Yes, that is a picture of Tim Cook holding a tiny Tim Cook in his hand. You’re welcome.

Apple doesn’t usually make headlines except when it’s doing something awesome, but this year there was a slight problem with a FaceTime bug…

A simple trick gave bad actors (or teenagers) the ability to remotely turn on an iPhone’s microphone and, in some cases, camera. It was bad. It was really, really bad.

Apple dealt with the problem quickly and all was resolved.

He was also lectured by Trump on iPhone design, and was then called ‘Tim Apple’. What a year.

Elon Musk

Where do we even start with Elon Musk? He’s a busy guy and he spent a lot of time in the headlines this year.

The CEO of (among other things) Tesla, was recently forced to face the limits of engineering in the high-profile Cybertruck window-shattering incident. We’ll give him a pass on that, however, and instead call to mind Musk’s fantastic ability to continually dig himself deeper — a skill exemplified by the “pedo guy” defamation trial.

Then there was the ‘RIP Harambe’ rap, which wasn’t a disaster, but just a little concerning.

Well, people, we survived another year and all considered, it probably could have been worse.

A toast to 2020.

[source:mashable]