The Internet

Comment of the Day: “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I wanted to get the previous post about artificial intelligence and the unintended consequences of technology up before this timely Comment of the Day by jdkazoo123 from yesterday regarding social media. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t consider all of the social pathogens he was loosing on civilization when he launched Facebook, or even if he foresaw some of them, he went ahead anyway. After all, there were millions of dollars to be made. The message of this COTD is, in brief, “Now what?”

The alarm as well as the puzzlement are justified. Still, one cannot pretend that the benefits that Zuck and others believed were being conferred on society by social media are insubstantial. I’ve experienced one of them very recently: through Facebook I have been able to let my friends, associates and colleagues know about the tragic sudden death of my wife, and to say that the support they are still providing me has been crucial to my sanity and survival is an understatement. Social media also has greatly reduced the power and influence of journalism, which, since journalists have been abusing those and the public’s trust for decades, is a win for truth, justice, and the American way. Nevertheless, the negative effects of the platforms are substantial, as jd notes. Are these benefits worth the costs? Don’t ask me right now: I’m biased.

Here is jdkazoo123’s Comment of the Day on the post, “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

***

I don’t know if this is a reason to regulate social media, but it is an example of why they are so different and troubling. I think they are a big cause of the polarization that we see here at EA and across the country. I think about my dad and his brother, my uncle. Even though my uncle was 7 years older, they were very close by the time I showed up. I grew up seeing my uncle about 1-2 a year. And as I got older, I noticed my dad and his brother joshed a lot about politics. My uncle was hard core Republican from suburban Pittsburgh, an executive in manufacturing. My dad was a solid Democrat working in military intelligence and the AF reserves. It was fun to see them josh. My uncle would say “Kid, your dad thinks I’m a Republican because I’m rich. What he doesn’t understand is I’m rich because I’m a Republican!”

Continue reading →

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Jennifer Sey, once a competitive gymnast on the U.S. Women’s Olympic team, has launched a new clothing line focused on the threat to women’s sports by the woke-driven incursion of “transitioned” or “transitioning” biological males.

TikTok responded to her ad on that platform by banning he company from advertising with this:

Continue reading →

A Popeye: I Can’t Let This Idiotic AOC Tweet Pass…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

As Popeye so memorably said on more than one occasion, “It’s all I can stands, ‘cuz I can’t stands no more!” (Then he would swallow a can of spinach and beat the crap out of someone or something.)

From a 2021 report: “Democratic Senators in battleground states are raking in donations from out-of-state donors, amassing a hefty cash advantage over potential GOP challengers who haven’t launched Senate bids yet.  Four of the most competitive 2022 Senate races are in states held by Democrats: Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada. Each of the incumbents in those states received more than three-quarters of their campaign cash from out-of-state donors in the first three months of 2021.” 

Classic. A practice is “disgusting and abnormal” when it is aimed against Democratic Party incumbents, but just democracy at work when it benefits incumbents. And how is contributing to a political campiagn in a primary “corrupt”? AOC should stick with the old stand-by, since Jamaal Bowman is the incumbent in question. It’s racist not to support him.

Continue reading →

From the Ethics Alarms “Conservatives Do Fake News Too” File…

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I really hate this stuff, and I’m getting sick of having to post on it.

Today I saw misleading click-bait headlines on various conservative blogs and websites were like this one: Woke California: U-Turn Signs Are Homophobic. There were many social media posts on accounts like “End Wokeness” with the same implication: those crazy LGPTQ fanatics are out of control, and are now even offended by regular traffic signs.

That was certainly my reaction to just reading the headlines. When I investigated—-my sock drawer is furious with me for using up our quality time together—I learned that the traffic signs removed by the LGBTQ community and the town of Silver Lake, California were considered homophobic because….the signs were homophobic.

In the 90s, before gay dating apps like Grindr, gays in Silver Lake (and elsewhere) relied on printed guidebooks to find public areas and gay bars where they could meet other men like them. “No U-Turn” and “No Cruising” signs were put up in parts of Silver Lake where residents had complained about gay men gathering. The signs were a—subtle? Not so subtle?—rebuke and warning.

The gay community in Silver lake has been trying for years to get official action approved to remove what the LA Times calls “signs of its anti-gay past,” and finally succeeded. None of the conservative websites that mocked this episode as hysterical hyper sensitivity mentioned the “No Cruising” signs in their headlines, and it’s obvious why. Seeing “No U-Turn” as an anti-gay message takes a little thought. “No Cruising”? I’ve never seen such a sign in my life. That one’s more obvious…so they buried it .

Deceit is one of the primary tools of fake news journalism.

If conservative blogs, news outlets and website have valid issues and points to make, they should be able to make them honestly by straightforward reporting. It is very disappointing to see a usually fair and reliable conservative commentary site like Legal Insurrection stooping to these tactics.

Ethics Observations On the “Shitposter’s” Scoop

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Last night I saw this story in the New York Post, relayed by conservative provocateur Ace of Spades:

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan revealed Friday that a Facebook user claiming to be a “cousin” of a juror in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial suggested he had advanced knowledge of last week’s guilty verdict. 

“Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention,” Merchan wrote in a letter to Trump attorney Todd Blanche and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. 

“In the comment, the user, ‘Michael Anderson,’ states: ‘My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted … Thank you folks for all your hard work!!! ….’” the judge explained. 

The story also reveals that “Michael Anderson” is a self-admitted “shitposter,” someone who uses social media to spread falsehoods and derail serious discussions on politics and other matters.

Hmmmm.

So the guy, if he is a guy, who revealed this supposed conspiracy to rig the jury verdict against Donald Trump has no credibility at all. He’s a lying asshole and proud of it—you know, like Michael Cohen.

It is only responsible for the judge to reveal this, and for an investigation to take place. This, in turn, will probably give “Michael Anderson” the fifteen minutes of fame he craves, and inspire more assholes to enter the wonderful, profitable, destructive field of “shitposting.”

Meanwhile, I saw MAGA types all over the web last night calling for the trial verdict to be abandoned based on this almost certain trolling effort, thus making themselves look like gullible fools, and confirmation bias victims.

Is this a great country or what?

A Proportionality Test That I Fear About Half the Nation Would Flunk

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

On the Josephson Institute’s Pillars of Character, one of the values comprising the fourth pillar, Fairness, is proportionality. Proportionality is essential to perspective, and understanding te need to maintain a broad perspective is essential to fairness, a core ethical value.

When I first started watching that video meme above, my immediate reaction was, “Oh, please. This is ridiculous. Then I saw the pay-off, and laughed out loud. I would have laughed just as hardily if the two men had been reversed.

Being unable to appreciate good-natured, puckish satire when it is aimed at your favorite politician, party, elected official, organization is a sign of a closed mind and an absence of proportionality and perspective. That video makes both candidates look silly, and that’s just fine.

If you can’t see the humor, I feel sorry for you. And I fear you. You have lost all perspective, and that leads to fanaticism.

Ethics Quiz: The NFL Kicker’s Commencement Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Only in the age of social media, mandatory conformity, and militant political correctness would a conservative Catholic commencement address at a tiny conservative Catholic Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas about 50 miles northwest of Kansas City, turn into a national controversy. Oops, I don’t want to bias the ethics quiz: forget the way I phrased that.

Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs, the place-kickers for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, was invited to give the Commencement speech for the 2024 graduating class, seemingly an odd choice, but then maybe not. Butker had been outspoken the Cathodic Church in recent years, and I strongly suspect that he delivered exactly what the leadership of Benedictine College was seeking at the ceremony last weekend.

To gauge the reactions on social media and elsewhere, however (it sure sounded like his speech was well-received by the students) you would think his address was from the fiery depths of Hell, as if he had supported Hamas terrorism or anti-Semitism or something. He was roundly attacked on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter/”X.” About 125,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org calling for the Chiefs to fire the kicker; typical progressives: if you don’t espouse their views and support their agendas, then you don’t deserve to make a living. The reliably despicable NFL felt it had to oppose the player’s statements, as if anyone thought he was speaking for the league rather than for himself. “Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, said in a written statement. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.” Naturally, the most corrupt and hypocritical league in sports felt it had to pander to the woke, and do so by uttering the magic word, “inclusion,” thereby falsely suggesting that Butker advocated exclusion. Best of all, Kansas City used its official social media account to reveal Butker’s residence, doxxing him. Nice. The city is sorry though. That will do him a lot of good when someone burns his house down.

I could quote the sections that has the Angry Left on the warpath—can I say that?—but instead I’m going to publish the whole speech. Then I’ll ask the Ethics Quiz question, and give my answer, abut which I feel strongly. Here is the speech:

Continue reading →

Unethical—But Revealing!—Quote of the Month: Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College, London

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Remember: Trust the scientists! They know best…

“If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate.”

—British vulcanologist and climate scientist William J. McGuire, “Bill” to his friends, cheering on human death in a tweet he quickly removed after colleagues advised him “Uh, Bill? We’re not supposed to say things like this out loud…”

Of course, the professor might have been saying that the economically disastrous measures being proposed and in some cases adopted by foolish governments like the Biden administration won’t affect the climate sufficiently to make a difference, so the whole movement is futile, irresponsible, based on speculation, and, to be blunt, stupid, but of course he wasn’t. No, this scientist, who is among those we are supposed to trust and obey—you know, like the health “experts” who crippled the economy, our society and the educational development of our children based on guesses about the Wuhan virus that were represented as fact?—believes that the only way to avoid a climate catastrophe (and we all want to do that, right?) is to have millions of people die as soon as possible, one way or another. A plague is a good way! Or we could just execute them, like Mao did. Of course, he shouldn’t be one of those sacrificed for the greater good, because his life is too valuable.

Continue reading →

The Student and the Homeless Man: A Cautionary Ethics Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Or, “Why It’s Unethical to Behave in Defiance of Reality.”

Or, “Why the old saw ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is constantly being affirmed.”

Or, “Why progressive wishcraft keeps blowing up in society’s metaphorical face”

Sanai Graden (left), a University of California at Berkeley senior (presumably you know what that means) was hit up by a homeless man as she visited Washington, D.C. He said his name was Alonzo, and told her he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The sympathetic young woman paid for his medication at CVS. She also got him a hotel room for the night. Sanai was a TikToker , and told her followers that she needed to raise money for Alonzo, whom she called “Unc.” Soon she bought Alonzo, aka. “Unc,” a cell phone, and put him up in a hotel for a week.

Awwww. How Christian! How kind! How progressive!

Her video became a Tik Tok sensation, with millions of views. Graden started a GoFundMe account, and it quickly raised more than $400,000. Her legion of followers multiplied: one admirer set up a GoFundMe for her that eventually raised over $26,000.

Isn’t that a nice story?

Then a report from local D.C. TV station Fox 5 revealed that “Unc” was Alonzo Hebron, 64, a long-time criminal who numbered among his convictions one for a violent assault on a homeless woman. In another, he stabbed a man in the neck with a screwdriver. Donors started asking for their money back.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: That Apple IPad Pro Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Filmmakers, musicians, writers and other artists began whining about that ad above for the Apple iPad Pro from almost the second it was released. As Sonny and Cher warble one of their lesser efforts, “All I Ever Need is You,” a hydraulic press crushes musical instruments, cameras, a framed picture, paint cans, record albums and other stuff in a colorful explosion of chaos.

“The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” tweeted actor Hugh Grant. “Who needs human life and everything that makes it worth living? Dive into this digital simulacrum and give us your soul. Sincerely, Apple,” added “Men in Black” screenwriter Ed Solomon. There were lots more metaphorical squeals of indignation and alarm on social media, as
“creative people” accused Apple of gloating over how Big Tech is co-opting the traditional tools of art and on the verge of eliminating the human creativity with artificial intelligence.

So, naturally, as is the norm these days, Apple “assumed the position” and groveled an apology. Pledging that Apple would never run the ad on TV again, Tor Myhren, the company’s vice president of marketing communications, said, “Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world.” The statement continued, “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

Seriously?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Oh, lots of things: Is there anything unethical about that ad? Do its critics have a legitimate point? Should Apple have caved to their complaints? Was that apology sincere?

Continue reading →