Business & Commercial

Life Imitates “Seinfeld”: For Fake Fat-Free Yogurt, Substitute Fake Gluten-Free Doughnuts

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The Savory Fig, founded by Michelle Siriana, is a self-proclaimed vegan bakery in Patchogue, New York. Siriana makes and sells vegan scones, cinnamon rolls, cookies, and brownies, but also, amazingly enough, yummy gluten-free, vegan doughnuts. Vegan and gluten-freed doughnuts tend not to taste so good, for reasons you can guess if you’re familiar with how the fatty, buttery morsels are usually made; they also tend not to have the pleasant texture of the Krispy Kreme variety. Siriani’s doughnuts, however, are miraculous, fluffy and light with delectable icing.

Cindy Snacks, a vegan food market in Long Island, sold The savory Fig’s pastries and sometimes posted photos of the doughnuts on social media as part of its marketing strategy. In an Instagram post on March 3, the store’s proprietor revealed a scandal: an order they received from The Savory Fig contained the this doughnut …

…with pink and orange, D-shaped sprinkles—D, as in “Dunkin’ Donuts.”  Pink and orange, as in Dunkin Donuts. Concerned that the doughnuts she had been buying and selling as vegan and gluten-free were neither, the alarmed owner texted Siriana, “If these are Dunkin’ Donuts the ingredients could kill somebody as we have so many people with severe dairy allergies that shop here. I’m concerned with the donuts this week and am very nervous to put them out.”

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In Memory of Grace: “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

When I last re-posted this early Ethics Alarms entry from 2010, I called it, “Since Ethics Alarms Appears To Be The Only Source Trying To Publicize This Problem, Here, For The Third Time.” Not much has changed since then, except that my wife is dead. Listerine played a major role in killing her: Grace’s last major relapse—she battled alcoholism her entire adult life—occurred right before the pandemic when she impulsively drank down an entire jumbo bottle of the vile stuff and shortly thereafter took a nearly fatal fall off a curb outside our home. She never fully recovered from the effects of that fall, though other, less catastrophic relapses involving the mouthwash occurred at regular intervals.

As I explained in an earlier introduction, the original post “raised an important and shamefully under-reported topic, one that despite my exhortations then has yet to be adequately examined in the media.” In 2016, when I googled various combinations of “mouthwash,” “Listerine,”‘alcoholism,” and “alcoholic,” the first result was still my post. [UPDATE: The Ethics Alarms post is now about 100 deep, behind such links as “Should I switch to alcohol-free mouthwash?” Note that since 2016, Google’s algorithm buries EA in its searches because it is insufficiently in tune with the Axis.]

“Most people who are not afflicted with the disease of alcoholism have no idea that mouthwash is a popular stand-in for liquor, or that is used to deceive family members who think an addict is no longer using or intoxicated,” I wrote in the 2016 intro. First I was prompted to re-post the essay after I had been shocked to hear a physician friend who treated alcoholics plead complete ignorance of the links between mouthwash and alcoholism. The last time, it was the surprising reaction of my own physician, who is usually up-to-date on all medical research, and had treated alcoholism sufferers at the VA. He had never heard anything about the problem.

I’m re-posting this time because of Grace. The quote from my 2016 intro is still valid:

“Despite my frustration that what I regard as a true exposé that should have sparked an equivalent article in a more widely read forum has remained relatively unknown, I am encouraged by the effect it has had. Most Ethics Alarms posts have their greatest traffic around the time they are posted, but since 2010, the page views of this article have increased steadily…More importantly, it has drawn comments like this one:

‘Am looking after my twin sister who is a chronic alcoholic. She has been three days sober and then she just walked in and I couldn’t work out what the hell happened. She was in a stupor , but there was no alcohol and I am dispensing the Valium for detox period and she smelt like mint!! Found three bottles of it !!! This is my last big push to help her and she pleaded innocent and no idea it had alcohol in it! Hasn’t had a shower for two days but keeps her mouth fresh and sweet !! Thanks for the information. Much appreciated XXX’

“Most of all, I am revolted that what I increasingly have come to believe is an intentional, profit-motivated deception by manufacturers continues, despite their knowledge that their product is killing alcoholics and destroying families. I know proof would be difficult, but there have been successful class action lawsuits with millions in punitive damage settlements for less despicable conduct. Somewhere, there must be an employee or executive who acknowledges that the makers of mouthwash with alcohol know their product is being swallowed rather than swished, and are happy to profit from it….People are killing themselves right under our noses, and we are being thrown of by the minty smell of their breath.”

Here again is “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit.” Maybe this time it will help someone to avoid Grace’s pain and her ultimate fate.

I’m so, so sorry, my darling, that I couldn’t give you the peace you needed to fight this curse.

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How Greedy Parents Pimp Out Their Daughters on the Web

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Those are some of the comments that the New York Times found on Instagram in response to the photo of a pretty nine-year-old girl posing in a bikini. Her parents posted the photo to attract attention, and they are not as rare as you might think. In one of the investigative reporting projects that periodically justifies the Times’ existence, the paper found many juvenile “Instagram influencers” whose accounts are managed by their parents. “Although the site prohibits children under 13, parents can open so-called mom-run accounts for them, and they can live on even when the girls become teenagers,” the story reports. “But what often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children.”

Ethics Alarms has long taken the position that parents posting revealing, embarrassing or provocative photos of their children on the web without a child’s informed consent (and children cannot give informed consent) is per se unethical, and that was before even considering this disgusting phenomenon.

The Times examined thousands of such accounts with parents operating the sale of their daughters’ photos, exclusive chat sessions and even offering their girls’ worn leotards and cheerleading outfits to followers. It’s profitable, for the parents, and the girls don’t understand the implications of what they have been thrust into. Some customers—pedophiles—- spend thousands of dollars nurturing the underage relationships. A demographics firm hired by the Times found 32 million connections to male followers on the 5,000 accounts examined by the paper.

This is all ethics rot, an unforeseen consequence of the World Wide Web colliding with the same unethical instincts that prompt parents to guide their young children into modeling, acting, gymnastics and other sports for their vicarious pleasure and profits. Here is the worst news in the piece:

“The troubling interactions on Instagram come as social media companies increasingly dominate the cultural landscape and the internet is seen as a career path of its own. Nearly one in three preteens lists influencing as a career goal, and 11 percent of those born in Generation Z, between 1997 and 2012, describe themselves as influencers. The so-called creator economy surpasses $250 billion worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs, with U.S. brands spending more than $5 billion a year on influencers.”

What the Times found is not an internet problem but an irresponsible, incompetent, greedy and abusive parent problem that has been around as long as there have been families. Social media only is giving it a new and revolting place to thrive. I was especially annoyed by the response of one of the mother/pimps whose daughter has been promoted on the web from a young age. “But she’s been doing this so long now,” the mother says. “Her numbers are so big. What do we do? Just stop it and walk away?”

Yes, you stupid, stupid woman. Just stop it.

Do read the whole piece. It is long and horrifying. This link lets you avoid the paywall.

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Microsoft Openly Celebrates Its Illegal and Unconstitutional Policies

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Now what?

This really is a res ipsa loquitur classic. Microsoft is literally saying, “We don’t have to obey the law, and besides, this is good discrimination.” Why isn’t the Justice Department bearing down on the company already? You know why.

Here is how the company introduces its great success at paying white men less than women and minorities…

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Why do communities keep electing officials who are ignorant of the law, history, and the U.S. Constitution?

Three days ago, North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown, (Guess which party!) announced on social media that her city would host a Black-owned business fair this coming weekend at the conclusion of Black History Month. The fest would feature local black vendors, community resources, an art corner and an area for children. Food trucks and live entertainment would enliven the proceedings. It would be a fun day of promotion for all participating—black-owned only!—businesses.

Who could have a problem with that?

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“It Wasn’t Our Fault! That Bad Robot Did It!”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Hey, Canada Air! Can you say, “accountability?” How about “responsibility”? Sure you can.

Jake Moffat needed to fly from Vancouver to Toronto to deal with the death of his grandmother. Before he bought the tickets for his flights, he checked to se whether Air Canada had a bereavement policy, and the company’s website AI assistant told him he was in luck (after telling him it was sorry for his loss, of course.) Those little mechanical devils are so lifelike!

The virtual employee explained that if he purchased a regular priced ticket, he would have up to 90 days to claim the bereavement discount. Its exact words were:”If you need to travel immediately or have already traveled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate, kindly do so within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued by completing our Ticket Refund Application form.” So Moffatt booked a one-way ticket to Toronto to attend the funeral, and after the family’s activities a full-price passage back to Vancouver. Somewhere along the line he also spoke to a human being who is an Air Canada representative—at least she claimed to be a human being— confirmed that Air Canada had a bereavement discount. He felt secure, between the facts he had obtained from the helpful bot and the non-bot, that he would eventually pay only $380 for the round trip after he got the substantial refund on the $1600 non-bereavement tickets he had purchased.

After Granny was safely sent to her reward, Jake submitted documentation for the refund. Surprise! Air Canada doesn’t have a reimbursement policy for bereavement flights. You either buy the discounted tickets to begin with, or you pay the regular fare. The chatbot invented the discount policy, just like these things make up court cases. A small claims adjudicator in British Columbia then enters the story, because the annoyed and grieving traveler sought the promised discount from the airline.

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Comment of the Day: “Second Most Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Cal)”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Posting today has been a real chore, because I began it with a funeral and a Catholic Mass, both of which always exhaust me, and the old friends I saw there (most of them, anyway) looked so much older than the last time I saw them that I am afraid to look in the mirror.

That makes two reasons I’m grateful for Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Second Most Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Cal).” I’m exhausted, and the ethics issue he raises is a crucial one without an obvious solution.

Here it is:

***

The horrible thing about this conversation is that people like Lee have this nugget of truth, uncleverly hidden inside the fragrant package of their bullshit proposals, and that is that we need a plan going forward for labor. Workplace participation is going down, wages have been stagnant, cost of living is increasing, food back participation and foreclosure rates are rising… “Stock line goes up” be damned, the bottom seems to be falling out.

I don’t know what you realistically do about this. A “$50 minimum wage” seems like the kind of toddler thinking Democrats are good at: Address the problem by treating the most surface level of symptoms, realities of the market be damned.

Because the reality is that automation is already stealing jobs, and increasing the cost of labor just makes automation investment that much more appealing. That spirals into a situation where I think the average person is going to be unemployed.

And I don’t have the answer. This is a topic that keeps me up at night.

Frankly, I think that the decent into a laborless economy is unavoidable, it’s just a matter of time, regardless of whether or not we speed up the process with stupid policy. Right now, “Truck Driver” is the most common job in 29 out of the 50 states. As technology gets cheaper and as labor gets more expensive, eventually, I don’t think it’s impossible that in 20 years, self-driving vehicles will have made that job obsolete. What do you think that does to the market?

I think the fight that’s coming up is going to be whether we purposefully throttle innovation in order to preserve jobs, or we accept that the majority of people aren’t going to labor physically, and we start to conceptualize what that looks like. And again… Thoughts that keep me up: Even if we throttle our technology our adversaries won’t, so I don’t think that choice is viable, and I think the alternative is a deeply taxed, deeply controlled form of socialism. Which is obviously undesirable, but what else does capitalism look like when your average person owns nothing, and has no prospect to move forward with?

Second Most Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Cal)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I was all set to designate Rep. Lee as the Incompetent Elected Official of the Month when I realized that this month, even more than most, President Biden had that honor locked up. So Rep. Lee only gets second place. The long-time California progressive has a substantial dossier at Ethics Alarms, much of it for her habitual race-baiting, but I hadn’t written about her much lately because of the Julie Principle: she’s an idiot, even most Democrats can see she’s an idiot, and thus there is not much to be gained by repeatedly pointing out that she’s an idiot. However, Rep. Lee is running for the Senate to replace the recently departed and slightly less-recently dementia-afflicted California Senator Diane Feinstein, who even at her most reduced mental state was a more trustworthy and responsible public figure than Lee on the best day of her life. Someone like Barbara Lee should be kept out of the Senate with razor wire, but this is California, so you never know.

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Ethics Hero Elon Musk vs. Ethics Villain Disney

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Elon Musk is weird, impulsive, sometimes hypocritical and often infuriating. He is also a national treasure: a true Ethics Hero in the culture wars.

Back in 2021, Disney fired Gina Carano, one of the stars of the Disney+ series “The Mandalorian” because her social media posts were insufficiently supportive of the progressive cant Disney is obsessed with (to its financial and cultural sorrow). The triggering tweet was one in which Carano, a conservative (can’t have that in Hollywood!) compared Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish propaganda to efforts by the political left to demonize people based on their political beliefs. Proving her point, Disney canned her, explaining, falsely, that her “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Carano is now suing Disney and Lucasfilms. Her complaint can be read here. She is suing under California law, which states that
“No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy: (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office. (b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.”

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Normalizing Theft

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Since we began the day with a dead canary in the mine of democracy, here’s another. That video shows a thief rampaging through an Apple Store in Emeryville, north of Oakland (where Woke Kindergarten romps). Nobody tries to stop him. Nobody even appears alarmed by him. He escapes by running right by a police car.

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