Tag: YouTube

Courts Should Reject School Districts’ Suits to Childproof the Internet

 

According to education site The 74, at least eleven school districts around the country have sued the owners of such platforms as Snap, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok seeking financial compensation for the “increased mental health services and training they’ve ‘been forced’ to establish” as a consequence of student use of social media.

Among school systems filing suits are those of Seattle, Mesa (AZ), Bucks County (PA), and San Mateo County (CA), as well as districts in New Jersey, Alabama, Kentucky, and elsewhere. Cash demands aside, the schools say they want to negotiate a settlement with the platforms to change how they operate.

Who Are You Listening To?

 

In another post, someone mentioned that they don’t have time to listen to long-form podcasts. I treat some podcasts like JY treats books on tape; no need to listen in one sitting. Depending on what I’m up to, it’ll take me a couple of days to finish a Joe Rogan podcast. And a Martyr Made podcast series will encompass a drive to Arizona and the return trip.

Much of what I spend my time on allows for an ear bud. Making bread, grinding through Excel pricing spreadsheets, building a website for my brother (killinroad.com; almost ready for prime time), cleaning house, walking to work, the occasional road trip, cleaning out the attic and the basement.

The Best of YouTube

 

I know — I should ditch YouTube because it’s anathema to those fighting to preserve what’s left of free speech. I ditched Facebook for this very reason and experienced an inner peace I’d been lacking since Skynet became self-aware. But I still use YouTube all the time for two main reasons:

  1. Unlike Facebook, a good alternative fails to exist. Rumble just doesn’t cut it yet.
  2. Most of the good guys’ channels are still up and dishing it, despite YouTube’s best efforts to silence them.

I have plenty of channels I subscribe to, almost all of which have nothing to do with politics. I subscribe to several ministries (Todd WhiteDutch SheetsFlashpointmy church), a bunch of movie and film channels, channels with nerd stuff, and a couple of NFL ones. They show up on my feed and I watch them in the quiet hour after the kids are finally in bed, or at three in the morning while trying to get the toddler back into his bed. If you’re looking for a soothing balm to mitigate the news of the latest atrocity against our country, or just want a break to kill the time in a waiting room somewhere, here are my latest favorites. (Note: unless noted, these are not always appropriate for kids.)

Rousseau

[Member Post]

 

I’m one of those keep browser tabs open forever people, believing that I’ll eventually read that article, watch that video, or look up that band or song. The tab for this interview has been open (restoring my previous tabs whenever I restart my laptop) since April, and I finally watched this video today. This interview, […]

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[Member Post]

 

Alan Dershowitz and Joel Pollak discuss Pollak’s new book about the election, YouTube censorship, and the blacklisting of opposing viewpoints in academic circles. As you might expect, Dershowitz does a lot of the talking. Then again, Pollak is his former student, and Pollak does change the Professor’s opinion on at least one thing. A refreshing […]

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[Member Post]

 

If you use a lot of YouTube, and Windows 10, I would suggest you pause automatic updates for a while.  Maybe 3 weeks. The latest Windows “Quality” (what a joke!) Update appears to break YouTube, at least directly on their site.  It doesn’t seem to affect embedded videos such as on Ricochet. Preview Open

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Reality Can Be Funny

 

I spent the weekend away from writing, spending the time with my wife. Politics can be so depressing, and the national news so infuriating, that from time to time I have to go on a news fast to prevent me from losing my perspective on life in general. When I do this, I try to find something humorous to watch.

I was thinking about this as I planned my weekend. I worked some ham radio communications on Saturday and then settled down with a few of my favorite YouTubers. YouTube has done more to convince me that there is a lot right with America than the media let on. Some of the stuff on YouTube shows the real people trying to communicate the truth.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America praise Texas Governor Greg Abbott for a series of conservative legislative victories. They also react as YouTube admits it is suppressing what it deems “borderline” content. And in a double crazy martini, they discuss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (literally) running from Republican competition while reportedly entertaining a future primary challenge to either Sen. Chuck Schumer or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

[Member Post]

 

I know many of us have been waiting impatiently for the Tina Fey impersonation of AOC that might equal the totally fair and unbiased job she used her talent for when inspired by Sarah Palin. (There is now supposed to be an SNL version with a lesser-known I haven’t seen). But, until the well known […]

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Wake up the President? Terrorist Mass Murder at New Zealand Mosques [Updated midday Friday]

 

On Friday afternoon, 15 March 2019, New Zealand time, there was a horrific terrorist attack at least two mosques in New Zealand. They are 20 hours ahead of the U.S. West Coast time. According to the initial reports, an attacker livestreamed the event. The image, at right, was captured by media before the video was taken down. There apparently was a lengthy manifesto. There have been multiple people arrested. It appears this was an attack by white New Zealand and Australian citizens on Muslims.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said: “This can only be described as a terrorist attack.” The linked BBC page has a series of videos. The PM is not inclined to tweet. Indeed, you can see her last communication was in October.

The initial casualties being reported are 40 killed and over 20 wounded at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand:

[Member Post]

 

The number of documentaries one can watch on YouTube for free is staggering, including some of the classic art documentaries the BBC released between 1969 and 1980. The impetus for finding them online was the news that a new Civilisations (yes, the English spelling) series was being released, and as this YouTube comment relates, it’s […]

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Now it’s Time to do an Update on YouTube History and Firearms Channels

 

Awhile ago, I did a post about the YouTube history channels I’d been watching as a respite from the simplistic sensationalist garbage on the TeeVees. Here’s an update, with some new finds.

Even though the Great War ended one hundred years prior to November 11, 2018, The Great War channel is still soldiering on. Dedicated to events, week by week, that happened a century ago during the war, the channel is still a great resource if you are interested in that conflict. Now that the war is “over,” the channel does updates on the aftermath. Boy, there is still a lot of fighting going on.

[Member Post]

 

With my newly minted Coolidge account I shall post!  (Someone tell me if I’m doing this wrong.) So this was more of a “Hot Take” when I started thinking about it last week. Since then several events have caused people smarter and with actual audiences to weigh in on this. Variations on “Do We Need […]

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleased to see a key figure from the Florida high school shooting replaced in the Broward County Sheriff’s Office but are irritated the media has stopped covering Sheriff Scott Israel, who still has his job despite failing to perform his duties before and during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They also reject Democrats’ call to regulate the internet as a public utility in the wake of Facebook, Apple, and YouTube’s ban of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. And they mourn for Venezuelans as dictator Nicolas Maduro survived a botched drone assassination attempt, and they discuss regulations on drones and the potential to use them for terrorism.

Net Neutrality Gave Us Shadow Banning

 

Where are the liberal free speech advocates? Conservative thought is being silenced. Silicon Valley’s powerful programmers are hiding voices with which they politically disagree by using statist-like media restrictions not dissimilar from North Korea. Kim Jong Un approves. Just this week we saw two new examples:

Project Veritas latest investigation demonstrates Twitter’s shadow banning of conservative accounts:

[Member Post]

 

TeacherOfPhilosophy on YouTube will soon feature . . . the Great Texts playlist, where you can learn the basics of about thirty texts from Plato’s Republic to Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism”; the Topics in Philosophy playlist, where you can meet things like the Euthyphro Question, the Problem of Evil, the Verification Criterion, and the Mind-Body Problem; […]

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