Society's ChildS


Propaganda

As users leave Patreon due to censorship based on political bias, the rabbit hole goes deeper

Barrett Wilson
The Post Millennial
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:01 UTC
Dave Rubin Jordan Peterson
It turns out that in 2019, the most dangerous regulatory agencies are the big tech and media companies themselves. Their primary target? Ideas.
In a video released on January 1st, 2019, Dr. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin announced that they would both be walking away from Patreon, following the lead of Sam Harris and other high profile creators who have lost faith in the crowdfunding platform.

As we first reported on December 12th, Patreon began to lose the trust of its users when it deplatformed popular YouTuber Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) in a completely arbitrary decision that had nothing to do with its own terms of service.


Comment: See: Jordan Peterson speaks out on Patreon's deplatforming controversy (UPDATE)


Censorship based on political bias

Many in the Patreon community viewed this as an act of censorship based entirely on political bias. The deplatforming had a cascading effect, with creators and users walking away from the platform. Many smaller creators had their income wiped out entirely. The entire debacle made for a bleak Christmas for the anti-censorship corner of the internet.

Comment: Checking out the Twitter thread by Nick Monroe, linked in the piece above, is worth your while if you want to see how the big banks are implicated in ordering the deplatforming of individuals from Patreon. These orders are coming from the very top. It paints a rather grim picture and it seems unlikely a separate platform created by Rubin and Peterson will have much success as a result - if no payment processor will support your project, how can it possibly function? 2019 may just be the year that anyone with the wrong political leanings finds themselves unable to buy or sell. Makes you want to go back and read Revelations.

See also:

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NPC

New law allows for gender-neutral birth certificates in New York City

Owen Daugherty
The Hill
Thu, 03 Jan 2019 12:09 UTC
Birth Certificate
A new law taking effect Tuesday made gender-neutral birth certificates available in New York City.

The law, signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) in October, allows for a third gender category for selection on city-issued birth certificates, according to The Associated Press.

The nonbinary category, known as "X," can be selected by those who choose to identify as nonbinary or by parents who choose the category for newborns.
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Heart - Black

Violent pedophile who posted photos of himself raping toddler finally snared by police


The Daily Mail
Thu, 03 Jan 2019 12:09 UTC
Terry Coneyworth
Terry Coneyworth, of Hull, is facing jail for raping a toddler and taking pictures of the attack
A violent paedophile who took pictures of himself raping a two-year-old girl was caught by police after he openly plotted about abusing another child.

Terry Coneyworth, of Hull, sexually abused the toddler before uploading horrific pictures online and will be sentenced in February 2019 after admitting to a series of disturbing sex attacks.

The 31-year-old has admitted a total of 19 sexual offences charges in what one police officer told the city's crown court was 'the most serious and disturbing case I have dealt with in my 16 years of service'.
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Cow

Celebrity shills Jay-Z and Beyoncé want everyone to go vegan

Edwin Ortiz
Complex
Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:01 UTC
jay-z beyonce
© Getty/Kevin Mazur/Parkwood Entertainment
If you're still on the fence on what New Year's resolution to go with, Beyoncé and JAY-Z may have made your decision a little easier.

In the introduction for Marco Borges' (Beyoncé's trainer) new book, The Greenprint: Plant-Based Diet, Best Body, Better World, the couple challenge their fans to try veganism.

"Having children has changed our lives more than anything else," they wrote, according to People. "We used to think of health as a diet - some worked for us, some didn't. Once we looked at health as the truth, instead of a diet, it became a mission for us to share that truth and lifestyle with as many people as possible."

Comment: Anyone who would take dietary advice from vapid soulless pop stars probably deserves what's coming to them. Veganism is not healthy, it doesn't help the planet and it isn't good for animals. But given the amount of "cool cred" its getting from celebs lately, it seems likely we're going to have even more sick and angry vegans in the coming generations. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse.

See also:

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Robot

The rise of AI could hurt progress made in 'gender pay gap'

Karen Gilchrist
CNBC
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 00:11 UTC
Robot woman
© Blutgruppe | Corbis | Getty Images
Developments in artificial intelligence and automation have been heralded as a major leap forward in human advancement. But they could also adversely affect another important measure of societal progress: The gender pay gap.

That's according to a new report from the World Economic Forum, which indicated that the growth of jobs in emerging industries, such as IT and engineering, is set to disproportionately hurt women and, by consequence, progress made in reducing pay inequality.

The gender pay gap, the difference between average earnings for men and women, has been narrowing over recent years, yet there remains a long way to go until compensation parity is reached - 202 years to be exact. And that estimate could grow even lengthier if progress is not made in bringing more women into the workforce, the WEF found.


Comment: The real issue is they are starting with a wrong premise. See here and here.


That's due to two major factors, Saadia Zahidi, managing director and head of social and economic agendas at the World Economic Forum, told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Firstly, many of the roles typically filled by women, such as administrative and customer service roles, are being "automated away" by new technologies. And, secondly, the types of roles that are growing, like machine learning and big data roles in the IT sector, happen to be ones where "the talent base of women is very small as compared to men."
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Eye 1

You are being misled, YouTube is not a far-right platform

Mark Ledwich
Medium
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 07:41 UTC
magnifying glass
YouTube recently released its year-in-review "Rewind" video, showcasing 2018's notable trends and highlights on the platform. It was a jam-packed montage of YouTube stars, Fortnite references, and talk of Youtube's diversity and inclusiveness. What could go wrong?

Rather than encompass for fans the year in YouTube culture, it is now the most disliked video in the platform's history. It garnered over ten million dislikes in the space of eight days. To put that into perspective, the second most disliked video - Justin Bieber's 2010 song "Baby" - managed to achieve just under that amount in the space of eight years.

Speculation flowed as to why the video was so badly received, including a recent article by Kevin Roose of the New York Times. He argues that the video...
...was trying to please two separate audiences - creators, who want to see the breadth of YouTube's output reflected back at them, and advertisers, who need to be reassured that the platform is a safe place to spend their money.
YouTube has been busy dissociating itself from the controversies that have surrounded some of its most popular creators. There was no mention of Felix Kjellberg (better known as 'PewDiePie'), for example, whose ongoing subscriber battle with T-Series has dominated discussions on the platform for months. YouTube inevitably cut ties with him after a Wall Street Journal hit piece supposedly revealed anti-Semitism in his videos, but YouTube's own users do not seem to be deterred.

Comment: See also:

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Hammer

Cops mistake man's going into diabetic shock as 'resisting arrest' - savagely beat him for not complying

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
police attack
Police mistook a man's diabetic distress for an act of resisting arrest and proceeded to savagely beat him to the point of hospitalization.

When your only tool is a hammer, often times, everything begins to look like a nail. John Priest learned this the hard way when police mistook his medical emergency for resisting arrest as he slipped into a diabetic coma. Instead of providing him with the medical attention he needed, Priest was savagely beaten and severely injured by police.

The incident happened on January 9, 2017 but the dashcam footage was only just released. According to John's father, Daniel Priest, the family has been trying for two years to get the video released because the department tried to keep it a secret.

According to Daniel, the video shows what "amounts to an unwarranted, violent, physical assault perpetrated by 2 Amarillo police officers on my son John Priest, while he was incapacitated and in critical medical danger brought on by a diabetic low blood sugar state."

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Airplane

Experts puzzled by 2018 spike in air fatalities - 6 big passenger plane crashes


RT
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 23:06 UTC
Cuba air crash
© Reuters/Alexandre MeneghiniRemains of the Boeing-737 that crashed in Cuba in May.
While total flights increased by about 1 million, last year saw 556 aviation related deaths compared to only 44 the year before.

Airline safety took a plunge last year, particularly compared to 2017's numbers, according to statistics published by the Aviation Safety Network. While 2018 saw only five more fatal accidents than 2017, the 15 crashes included six large passenger planes which dramatically increased the total number of dead.

Despite how bad the numbers look at first glance, 2018 was actually a relatively safe year for air travel by several metrics. With the ASN estimating 37.8 million flights globally in 2018, the number of crashes is relatively low (around 1 in 2,520,000), particularly if we compare beyond the last five years which have all seen very low numbers. In 2014, for instance, there were 21 crashes resulting in 990 deaths, and the numbers were mostly higher going back through the years.

Comment: FAA reviewing Boeing's safety analyses as part of investigation into deadly Lion Air crash

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Arrow Down

Only about 10% of the US rail systems met safety deadline

Karen Graham
Digital Journal
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 18:18 UTC
As of Dec. 31, only four of the nation's railroads had fully implemented positive train control (PTC) systems to prevent train accidents, according to the U.S. Transportation Department.

Amtrak Rail
© Paul Sullivan/Creative CommonsAmtrak announced it will be upgrading rail lines along the Northeast Corridor.
The railroads not meeting the deadline, including Amtrak, had to meet Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) requirements to receive a two-year deadline extension known as an "alternative schedule."

The four railroads that fully met the deadline are the North County Transit District, Metrolink, Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp., and the Portland & Western Railroad, federal officials said in an update on the USDOT website.

Of the railroads requesting alternative schedules, seven are Class Is, 25 are intercity passenger and commuter railroads, and five are short-line or terminal railroads. Additionally, 12 railroads have received conditional PTC system certification from the FRA.

According to the latest USDOT report, there are now 41,000 route miles in PTC operation, which is 71 percent of the route miles that are subject to the mandate.
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Snowflake

Washington DC becomes second major US city to ban plastic straws

Jacob Fenston
dcist
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 20:42 UTC
straws
© Jacob Fenston / WAMUAlternative straws in use at Founding Farmers in D.C. Hay straws (left) and paper straws (right) are more expensive but less polluting.
Add one more item to those "Out for 2019" lists : plastic straws.

D.C. banned plastic straws in restaurants and other businesses effective Jan. 1, 2019, becoming the second major U.S. city to do so. Seattle made the change six months ago. Plastic straws won't disappear immediately, however. Businesses have until July to make the transition to alternatives, before fines kick in.

Dozens of local businesses have already made the change voluntarily, responding to pressure from customers and environmental groups.

"Many have started using hay straws, which are popular - they hold up well in drinks," says Zachary Rybarczyk, part of the enforcement team with the District Department of Energy and Environment. "We've seen restaurants switch over to paper straws. And we've also seen restaurants using reusable straws - also popular in bars," says Rybarczyk.

Comment: Keep in mind that the claim that Americans use 500 million plastic straws daily is based on a nine-year-old's school project. Yes, you read that right.

Will a straw ban have any real affect? That's very unlikely, although this only furthers the erosion of freedom. Only about 1 percent of plastic pollution comes from the U.S. Of that 1 percent, only a tiny fraction comes from plastic straws. But people like to feel good about themselves, so they convince themselves they are doing something good when what really is happening is that people want the government to be its Nanny State. The Far Left loves to get the government involved in forcing people to do things. It's going to come back to bite them in a big way if they keep it up.

More on the myth of plastic straws being bad for the environment:



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