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

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.

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The Student and the Homeless Man: A Cautionary Ethics Tale

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.

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Ethics Quiz: That Apple IPad Pro Ad

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?

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RFK Jr. Supporters Are Going To Sue Meta (Facebook, Instagram). Good!

Oopsie! Meta, the monster (in many senses of the word) parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram, blocked the link to a new, 30-minute infomercial supporting the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the rebel independent Presidential candidate whom Democrats wish they could vaporize with their bad thoughts. Meta says it was a “mistake.”

Maybe it was. The embargo didn’t last long: the ad was only unavailable from late afternoon last Friday to the middle of last Saturday. A spokesman for Meta said the link had been incorrectly flagged as spam. For some reason, RFK Jr.’s campaign and supporters don’t trust Meta. Tony Lyons, a founder the super PAC that paid for the ad, says his group plans to sue Meta in federal court for censorship and First Amendment violations.

“When social media companies censor a presidential candidate, the public can’t learn what that candidate actually believes and what policies they would pursue if elected,” Mr. Lyons said. “We are left with the propaganda and lies from the most powerful and most corrupt groups and individuals.”

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Ethics Zugzwang as USC Silences Its Valedictorian

USC has banned this year’s graduating class valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, from Chino Hill, California, from making her speech during the university’s commencement ceremony. The justification: anti-Israel (or pro-Palestine…same thing, really) posts on Instagram, including thise calling for the “complete abolition” of Israel

Asna is a Muslim, not that there’s anything wrong with that. USC officials chose her from nearly 100 student applicants who had GPAs of 3.98 or higher. It seemed like a good idea at the time: certainly in this age of enlightened DEI, the woke school wasn’t going to choose any icky white male. Tabassum majored in biomedical engineering with a minor in resistance to genocide—wait, what??? USC has a “resistance to genocide” major?

The USC Provost explained the decision thusly:

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A TRIPLE Jumbo for Joe!

Ok, we need a new rule, as Bill Maher likes to say.

Politicians who don’t have the integrity, energy, tech savvy or whatever else it takes to run their own social media accounts may not deny that what was posted in their names, with their permission, by their paid agents, are their true sentiments. I regard the practice of proxy tweeters and Instagrammers per se unethical anyway: the message says it’s from, say, “Joe Biden,” but it’s really from 22 year-old Ohio State grad Stanislaus “Blinky” Furbusher, a former circus geek whose uncle is a big Democratic donor, and whose opinion about anything would normally not get the national attention a typical Oakland A’s day game gets. That makes such a ghost-posted message a lie, flat out. Say what you will, and I have, about Donald Trump’s often stupid and obnoxious tweets, at least he’s the one who sends them, and he accepts full responsibility for them too. (And he knows how to send them, which admittedly isn’t much, but I bet Joe Biden hasn’t sent a tweet in his life.)

This is all by way of noting that when asked about the political and religious controversy about Biden proclaiming Easter Sunday “Transgender Day of Visibility” [Item #3] (the ridiculously named and conceived “day” pandering to the tiny minority represented by the “T’ in LGBTQ and dedicated to destroying women’s sports), the President, who doesn’t lie like Donald Trump and has a mind like a steel trap (we are told) denied that he had done it.

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Fixing This Problem Requires Leaping Onto a Slippery Slope: Should We?

Nicholas Kristof has sounded the alarm on the growing problem of artificial intelligence deepfakes on line. I must admit, I was unaware of the extent of the phenomenon, which is atrocious. He writes in part,

[D]eepfake nude videos and photos …humiliate celebrities and unknown children alike. One recent study found that 98 percent of deepfake videos online were pornographic and that 99 percent of those targeted were women or girls…Companies make money by selling advertising and premium subscriptions for websites hosting fake sex videos of famous female actresses, singers, influencers, princesses and politicians. Google directs traffic to these graphic videos, and victims have little recourse.

Sometimes the victims are underage girls….While there have always been doctored images, artificial intelligence makes the process much easier. With just a single good image of a person’s face, it is now possible in just half an hour to make a 60-second sex video of that person. Those videos can then be posted on general pornographic websites for anyone to see, or on specialized sites for deepfakes.

The videos there are graphic and sometimes sadistic, depicting women tied up as they are raped or urinated on, for example. One site offers categories including “rape” (472 items), “crying” (655) and “degradation” (822)….In addition, there are the “nudify” or “undressing” websites and apps …“Undress on a click!” one urges. These overwhelmingly target women and girls; some are not even capable of generating a naked male. A British study of child sexual images produced by artificial intelligence reported that 99.6 percent were of girls, most commonly between 7 and 13 years old.

Yikes. These images don’t qualify as child porn, because the laws against that are based on the actual abuse of the children in the photos. With the deepfakes, no children have been physically harmed. Right now, there are no laws directed at what Kristof is describing. He also links to two websites on the topic started by young women victimized with altered photos and deepfaked videos of them being spread on line: My image My choice, and AI Heeelp!

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An Ethics Alarms 2-Post Mash-Up! “Stop Making Me Defend Donald Trump Especially When He Just Barely Deserves To Be Defended!” Meets “Ethics Quiz: The RBG Awards”

A dissent from a well-respected contributor here spawned this post. The mainstream media is still pushing the Big Lie (discussed in this post)that Donald Trump promised to unleash a “bloodbath” if he lost the upcoming election (MSNBC mentioned it several times this morning). As I was pondering the argument (prompted by this post) that Elon Musk does not deserve the RBG Leadership Award for rescuing Twitter, now “X” from the Left-wing biased and censorious cabal that had captured it, I encountered the sequence below on the platform. Musk’s version of Twitter does not ban the progressives from spreading their “misinformation,” and he allows the crucial opportunity for countering the news media that is on display. This is undeniably a good thing. And I believe the the Notorious R.B.G. would agree.

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It’s Time To Play That Exciting Game Show, “Cute, Silly,or Wrong?”!

Hello everybody! I’m your host, Wink Smarmy, and welcome to “Cute, Silly,or Stupid?,” the popular ethics game show where our panelists try to decide whether an individual or organization is doing or saying something that strikes a positive emotional chord with the public sincerely, or whether they are cynically grandstanding or virtue signaling to achieve popularity, influence, money, or power. Welcome panel! And here’s today’s challenge…

A video posted to Facebook by the Richmond Wildlife Center shows Executive Director Melissa Stanley dressed as a giant mother fox to feed a red fox kit (that means a baby fox, not a kit you use to assemble foxes) rescued by the center earlier this month.

“It’s important to make sure that the orphans that are raised in captivity do not become imprinted upon or habituated to humans,” the post said. “To prevent that, we minimize human sounds, create visual barriers, reduce handling, reduce multiple transfers amongst different facilities, and wear masks for the species.”

Here’s the video:

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Stop Making Me Defend Donald Trump Especially When He Just Barely Deserves To Be Defended!

Ugh. How many times will we have to go through this farce? Trump says something off the cuff using gratuitously inflammatory language, Democrats and the Trump Deranged pretend he meant the words in the worst way imaginable, and the biased and dishonest mainstream media tries to bombard the public with the latest “Trump is dangerous and a threat to democracy!” narrative. Will it happen ten more times? Fifty? A hundred?

The current Axis fake-freakout is typical of the script. Trump was riffing yesterday about how countries like Mexico and China are making money from President Biden’s electric vehicle obsession. “Mexico has taken, over a period of thirty years, 34% of the automobile manufacturing business in our country. Think of it, it went to Mexico,” Trump told the crowd. “China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re gonna build the cars in Mexico and think, they think that they’re gonna sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border.”

“Let me tell you something. To China, if you’re listening, President Xi — and you and I are friends, but he understands the way I deal,” he continued. “Those big, monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now, and you think you’re gonna get that, you’re gonna not hire Americans; and you’re gonna sell the cars to us — no. We’re gonna put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line. And you’re not gonna be able to sell those cars. If I get elected — now if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it. Its gonna be a bloodbath for the country, that’ll be the least of it. But they’re not gonna sell those cars, they’re building massive factories,” Trump said.

So “bloodbath” clearly meant a financial and commercial bloodbath, using the term metaphorically, like the news media does all the time. They even used it last week: Multiple outlets described the change in leadership and subsequent layoffs at the Republican National Committee (RNC) as a “bloodbath.” What? You mean they were actually claiming that the GOP was slaughtering people? Of course not, but never mind: the Democratic Party-bolstering news media has no shame, so they immediately pretended—and wrote—that Trump had threatened a literal blood bath if he lost the election again.

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