There is an ongoing strike? Maybe I missed something.

Thanks for the reference - I wasn't aware of that. And when I searched, I only found this: Are there any observable effects of a "strike"? (Which is a post that is a few years old.)

I remembered that Journeyman Geek is in the moderator council - it is probably reasonable that somebody from the council wrote that post: Stack Exchange is failing its community.

@Martin here's a statement: gist.github.com/superplane39/a586196f55885c649f252a7f634350cf