Would someone please give me the TL;DR: of what the hell happened?

Witnesses agreed to freeze the ninjamined stake with a soft fork last week, in order to facilitate a discussion with the new steemit.com owner.

JSon didnt like that. He considered it a malicious act, and borrowed steem from his exchange friends, powered them up and used them to vote in new witnesses, essentially taking over the chain.

He said he's ready to talk. But He'll also be reducing powerdown time to 3 days, and will keep the chain this way for a few weeks.

No one is happy about this move. While it seems like retaliation, it goes against the principles of decentralization.