This week’s podcast is up:
It is available on Bitchute and Brighteon (though at time of publication, the video was still “processing” on both sites) as well as YouTube:
Archives for category: YouTube
Posted earlier, my notice of the new episode of the podcast. Now it is time to share the video version — is it called merely a vlog or a vlogcast?
With the kicking of Stefan Molyneux off of YouTube, I have to admit, putting anything up on YouTube bothers me. But we shall survive?
twv
Well, not a “study” so much as merely an example:
So basically Facebook blocks all Brighteon videos. I had merely been trying to share a Styx vid on John Bolton.
How should I express my contempt for the people who run Facebook? They block a whole video source. Because it contains work by people excluded from other sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo. Apparently. (I have not read any of the stories about this.)
I have an account there, on Brighteon. I am trying to upload a video right now. I have not had much success on Bitchute — I upload a video and then it never shows up. But Brighteon hasn’t published my video yet. Says it is “under review.” What? We’ll see how this develops. Finding alternatives to Institutional Evil is a problem. (I have written about it before.)
So, I am abandoning Facebook again for the weekend. I’m on Gab: @wirkman.
And here is me, years ago, irked not about Facebook but by John Bolton:
I had a nice long Skype chat with Stephan Kinsella yesterday, and it got me thinking about what my political philosophy means.
It is not my religion.
I don’t get my meaning of life from it — though my sense of life does indeed show through it.
It does not substitute for a personal philosophy, or ethics.
It is not my prophecy for the future, as it may have been for Herbert Spencer and Gustave de Molinari.
This is what I think it is: it is my best advice for reducing conflict, and it is my preferred terms for human interaction.
That latter is pretty important. So, it is signaling. My libertarian ideas send a signal. The signal is TIT for TAT: if you play nice I will; if you play nasty, I may bite.
That conversation with Mr. Kinsella is up on YouTube as well as in podcast (Apple, Google, Spotify, SoundCloud) form:
A Threat to Civilization?
Now up on YouTube, the twelfth episode of my podcast:
It is also available as a podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify, and other podcatchers, as well as at LocoFoco.net:
For years leftists told libertarians that corporate power could be suppressive, oppressive, tyrannical. Libertarians scoffed. Demanded evidence.
So leftists provided that evidence: they developed major social media (with a little help from the alphabet soup of U.S. “intelligence” agencies) and then used their leverage to censor information, inquiry and opinions that run counter to their narrative and party line. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter now routinely censor opinions on the coronavirus they (and the World Health Organization) don’t like. And more.
They proved their point. They became the oppressors they warned us about.
Libertarians lost the argument, and are doubly unhappy about it: they were proven wrong and they are oppressed. But leftists? Their win must be . . . bittersweet. I mean, to win by losing: by becoming the very thing you most hate!
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There seems to exist an institutional ban on certain ideas and areas of inquiry. Dominant paradigms — perhaps guarded by folks with ready access to tax dollars as well as established patterns of prestige — do not allow investigation into competing paradigms.
Of course, there is a lot of competition in ideas. Paradigms shift. But only by so much. Outside a prescribed (or intuited) band of acceptable dissent, the paradigm enforcers brook no denials, no expansions of knowledge, no uncomfortable conjectures.
Here we see one. A man gives a talk at a TEDx event. It is filled with scientific findings, and recounts his “pulling at a thread” (as Walter Bosley likes to put it) that unravels from the stories of our past that are approved by academic historians, paleontologists, geologists, et al. It is a fairly popular talk. But the higher-ups at TED flag it as “unscientific.”
I have watched a lot of goofy TED talks. The idea that this talk is less acceptable than many of the moralistic, inspiring, weird, and downright bizarre talks on the main TED platform is preposterous.
So. What is wrong with this TEDx talk?
It is too easy to see. It explores the idea of past catastrophes and of lost ancient civilizations. This is verboten in the academic world.
It may be that folks at TED are scared. They need the cooperation of academics, and academic schools of thought are maintained with a chillingly cold grip, strangling dissent within their ranks and consigning to complete and utter disregard those who persist in the shunned speculations and scientific work.
Read the “NOTE FROM TED,” above, an image of the YouTube page that addresses the flagging of the video in question. Read it. But better yet, watch the video:
Is this really beyond the pale?
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One of the most important books of the liberal/libertarian canon was extremely popular among intellectuals in the 19th century. But now? Almost no one knows about it. You can read it on Gutenberg, but hey: I interviewed Thomas Christian Williams on the book, and this is not out of left field, for Christian has established a fascinating historical truth about the book and its place in American history.
So, who is our guest this week?
Here is his biography:
If only by default, Thomas Christian Williams is the world’s leading authority on Thomas Jefferson’s anonymous translation of Volney’s Ruin of Empires. He discovered Volney while doing research for his first novel. He published an article on the subject in the January 2016 edition of Skeptic magazine. You can find it online at Skeptic.com. He recently donated a large portion of his personal collection of Jefferson translations to the research facility at Monticello.
Born in Texas, Thomas has lived in France since 1989, excepting brief stints in Andorra, Spain and Gibraltar. Thomas has worked as an accountant, a commodities trader, and as domestic affairs analyst in political section of the US Embassy in Paris. He’s currently a hypnotherapist specialized in Parts Therapy. You can find him on LinkedIn or at his website: EnglishHypnosisParis.com.
Thomas is the author of two historical fiction novels.
English Turn, Napoleon Invades Louisiana is available on Amazon. The book recounts what might have happened if Napoleon Bonaparte had not sold Louisiana to the United States. Volney, Jefferson and even Jefferson’s anonymous translation of Volney’s Ruins play important roles in this book.
Thomas is currently looking for an agent to market his 2nd novel: Kash Kachu (White House), the story of the collapse of the Native American civilization at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.
I was set to post to LocoFoco.us, one of my Facebook pages, a link with a question. But Facebook warned me:
The article was from LewRockwell.com, “Vitamins C and D Finally Adopted as Coronavirus Treatment,” by Joseph Mercola. I have no opinion on the information, misinformation or disinformation in this article. I was going to ask for opinions. But Facebook has an agenda: when you publish too much wrongthink, no matter what the framing, the social media site is going to downgrade your page and hide it from visitors.
Indeed, it has already done so, to the LocoFoco page. I did not post the above article, for fear of an utter take-down, suppression.
No way to run a railroad, Facebook.
For instance, I would love to have seen Facebook’s fact-checkers to provide me INFORMATION or ARGUMENTATION about the article in question. I would not even mind if a ’bot did that.
But the current quasi-censorship method is not acceptable.
So, because of that, I’m going to spread another questionable source:
This man sure doesn’t approve of the medical establishment!
Take that, Facebook, you evil a-holes.
