Posts Tagged → Google
Why I do not have a podcast, and won’t
Couple years ago, a longtime older friend, financially successful and politically active, asked me why I do not have a podcast.
“I see all these podcasts online, and I think, Wow, Josh would be great at that You should do it.”
And to me, even though I am not going to be a podcaster or have a podcast, what a great and appreciated compliment that is, for several reasons.
The most important being that discerning thinkers — people who more carefully consider the information they consume — are increasingly tied into podcasts. Both Left and Right, and a lot of Americans in the middle, are hungry for information that breaks from the worn out, politically partisan, and openly fraudulent mainstream legacy media outlets like the New York Times, ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-NPR-BBC, Washington Post, LA Times, etc.
These mainstream legacy media organizations are not fair-minded arbiters of accurate information. Rather, they are highly tuned political activism outlets. And it is no “conspiracy theory” to say this; they proudly flaunt their partisanship every single day. At this point, there is no material, substantive difference between the New York Times and Mother Jones magazine, other than the NYT is living off the fumes of its once great reputation and the closed circuit dopamine high that leftists live in (“I only read information sources that align with my values” said an old friend to me several years ago, deliberately not self-aware about how self-defeating such a non-diverse, mono-syllabic approach to information is to those people, especially, who pretend to consume only the very best and purest of information).
The NYT masquerades as a serious place, whereas Mother Jones has been a gleeful juvenile bomb thrower for decades. Both are far-left America-hating Marxist activism proponents who abuse their masochistic audiences.
And yes, I have the hands-on experience with both of these outfits to speak authoritatively about them. Suffice it to say that we all have a family…
And so, in this general vacuum/absence of accurate news i.e. mainstream media’s deliberate misinformation fake news, podcasts have opened up huge opportunities for people genuinely interested in learning the actual factual truth. And market demand has been met by market supply; podcasts are now such a thing that plenty of Americans run for office or commit public displays of strangeness, just to get enough of a following to launch a podcast.
Today, there are an awful lot of podcasts available. It seems like every would-have-been college professor and wingnut and ex-CIA officer and ex-combat veteran with loads of ink on his arms has started a podcast. A podcast is what serious would-be “influencers” do. The actual “influencers” just seem to post brief TikTok videos of themselves in various stages of undress, or eating messy sandwiches in an expensive car while wearing expensive clothes.
I would say most of the podcasters on the right are pretty careful thinkers, not all, but most. People who kind of defined conservative podcastistan for a long time (long by podcast terms), like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, have largely discredited themselves by abandoning facts and rigorous thinking for nonsense only slightly better packaged than the trash at the New York Times or Mother Jones.
This is the beauty of the podcast world today: Dip your toe in the water and check it out. Jump in for a swim and lap up all the many flavors of individual opinions you like. It is a much richer, more diverse, more interesting, more informative place than all of the monosyllabic legacy media outlets put together.
So given my positive view of podcasts in general, why did I not start a podcast of my own? Several simple reasons: I do not have the time to do it; I am not narcissistic enough; though I am a very strong public speaker, I enjoy writing much more than talking; and I do not know how to do the necessary selfie videos, which feel socially awkward to me.
Too many podcasters really scramble to stay on top of the wave, every day, which can lead to some humorously foolish, or sophomorically high schoolean, dis-believable grasping at straws. Publicly. Which I am old enough and old school enough to feel self-conscious about. So, no thanks. This blog is a satisfying enough outlet for me. And I am not in the information “business” or in this for money, i.e. note the absence of advertising on this website.
I write because I feel compelled to write. It is an undeniable energy that wells up inside me all the time, and it is part of the reason I had at one time aspired to be an academic. If you do a search of “Josh First Harrisburg” outside of Google (which is not an honest broker about accurate information, but rather has made itself highly politicized with inaccurate search results), you will find dozens and dozens of essays and articles I have written over the past 25 years, as well as news reports and interviews on my various land projects and on some of the political races I have run in.
What emerges from that resulting morass of printer’s ink, I think, is the clear image of a guy who has strong opinions about a lot of subjects, who enjoys public speaking and writing, and who has several feet in several different worlds simultaneously.
And I am most happy limiting that all to writing one or two essays a week in my blog here, which fits in with my busy work schedule. No podcast necessary. No podcast desired.
But I will give credit to the conservative podcastistanians, whose overall grand number, high volume, interesting topics, and really wide intellectual diversity shows us just how important the First Amendment is, even as the legacy media try to hog that all to themselves, and to discredit and take it away from anyone who does not march in lockstep with their leftist narrative.
I recommend that anyone with an ounce of interest in starting a podcast do so. Explore it. Be your best self. And if you fail, that is OK. At least you will have checked it off your list. Take comfort from knowing that I will not be able to do that, because I am just too lazy.
DuckDuckNoGo
Like oh, so many Americans seeking digital refuge from the combined forces of tyrannical government partnered with the Big Tech industrial complex, I too began using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine about three years ago. Before that I had used some other search engine that was not Google, because Google has been overtly evil since 2015.
Evil because Google did not perform as advertised, and in fact it sought to undermine its users.
When a search engine deliberately skews its search results to fit a particular political view or goal, then it is no longer a search engine. It is an information censor, shaper, editor. But it is not a search engine in the sense that we type in some term, hit the ENTER key, and sit back as the most relevant results are presented to us. Nope, that is oh, so 2010, and we are living way beyond that innocent time now.
Enter DuckDuckGo, a high tech response to the outpouring of consumer frustration with Google providing laugh-out-loud fake results like “Hillary Clinton’s awesome fabulous answer to rising crime!” to the search “Hillary Clinton Criminal.” Instead of providing accurate results that would enumerate the many criminal wrongdoings and run-ins and cases of Arkancide associated with Hillary Clinton, Google still to this day provides a list of dodgy and patently false narrative misinformation to actually obfuscate and cover up Hillary Clinton’s long trail of criminal wreckage.
DuckDuckGo presented itself as an alternative to this about-face by what had been the world’s greatest search engine and source of arcana, with the additional promise of hiding user information and providing privacy. It was a great sell, and millions of people flocked to the Duck, happy knowing they were not propping up evil Google and also were getting more accurate information with greater privacy.
I was one of those users, and had DuckDuckGo installed on my smart phone and my laptop. In a small way, it made me feel all renegade and subtle dissenter against Google’s all-knowing, overbearing Big Tech.
About a month ago I noticed search results were suddenly fitting the same kinds of patterns I expect to experience on YouTube, where censors and book burners have been running unabashedly wild for several years. A kind of smooth uniformity and consistency of results that you could one and all fit into a thimble, due to their repetitive and simulacra nature. No more outliers, no weird blogs you’d never heard of before, no more….diversity.
For example, searching a loaded political phrase, term, or name was suddenly giving 100% mainstream media results, that almost all read exactly the same as one another, regardless of the outlet name (MSNBC sounds the same as CNN sounds the same as NPR sounds the same as ABC). This had become both the Google model and more recently the YouTube model, a shameless effort to block your access (my access) to the wide variety of information sources and opinions out there on the Internet, and to instead serve up a particular and purposefully misinformed narrative, related in numbingly same phrases and terms, regardless of the source (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS… they all sound the same).
I kind of wondered aloud to myself when I encountered this the first few times. And then the bird was let out of the cage the other day by DuckDuckGo’s founder and owner, Gabriel Weinberg. Weinberg published a tweet on Twitter, admitting to having changed the once freedom-embracing DuckDuckGo into Google Junior. No more honest search results. Nope. Instead, in the name of “fighting misinformation” DuckDuckGo would join the rest of the Big Tech lackeys and do whatever evil manipulation and spread whatever misinformation their political masters demand of them.
So now, I am like so many millions of other Internet users, former DuckDuckGo users betrayed by Gabriel Weinberg and the sick, dishonest, woke ideology he serves, searching for a fair and unbiased source of Internet search results. Right now I am using Brave’s search function, because Brave is the browser I use. I suppose that when someone offers the owner of Brave enough money he will sell it and we will be looking once again for a fair and unbiased browser.
Bottom line is I have ditched DuckDuckGo, because I will not participate in its evil lies and deception. It is now DuckDuckNoGo.
Fly away, Duck, and do not come back here. You are a dead duck to me, now.
(And while I am on the subject of individuals in Big Tech who make bizarre decisions that promote the spread of disinformation and false narratives, can I ask what the hell is in the water that Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Serge Brin (Google), and a zillion other Big Tech Jewish guys drink? Do they all drink the same poisoned water, together? Why is it that we have no Jewish radicals in Big Tech? Like, why are there no pro-freedom, anti-censorship, pro-democracy, anti Big Government, pro-individual rights Jewish people running these Big Tech companies? Instead, it seems like every. single. one. of these guys thinks exactly the same, and it is a horribly shitty sameness they push. I ask this earnestly, because I am a male version of Pippy Longstocking, and my intentions cannot be ascribed to evil. Raised in the wilds of America with a pack of howling malamutes, with few social distancing norms to guide my thoughts or my mouth, I am asking this question honestly. For a friend. For my wife. For my kids. Hey Serge, Gabe, Mark…what the f*ck is wrong with you?)
UPDATE: Today, March 14, 2022 DuckDuckGo is running ads on WHP580 AM radio. Never heard a search engine run ads before, anywhere, but the immediate and deserved ass-kicking that DuckDuckGo must be taking to inspire the company to purchase these ads is probably magnificent.
Wise words for 2022
One of the positive results of Demedia overreach, lies, dumbing down of “science,” and overt propaganda is the wisening up of Americans. People are catching on to the lies, and they are becoming upset regardless of their political party registration.
Political party used to define many Americans’ identity, and when the political parties once stood for dramatically different ideas and values, that made sense. But today, so many Americans see right through the propaganda emanating from one political party, the current White House, that is aided and abetted by the other political party, and spread by the Demedia. Individuals are hurt by official misinformation and propaganda regardless of what their party registration is, or was. People of all political inclinations want the freedom to choose their health, and to have their health choices be private.
Although YouTube, Google, Fakebook and Snapchat and so many other social media sites have done their best to stomp out debate and dissent about covid, The People are fighting back. If you are interested in seeing what political dissent scratched on a bathroom wall looks like, go to any of the Demedia outlets promoted on YouTube: CNN(LOL), NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, ABC etc and click on one of their covid videos. Look at the comments below, and marvel at how the wisdom of The People greatly outweighs and outshines that of fraudulent “experts” like Dr. Mengele Fauci. It shows how politicized science is not really science at all; it is just politics, and everyday people know it. They are not fooled.
While it’s a sad truth that YouTube recently removed the “Dislike” button count because The People greatly downvote the Demedia state propaganda, another battle wages right beneath the headline surface. The comments submitted by random, average, everyday people from around America and around the world often take down and pop the leftist propaganda with just a few wise words.
Below are some comments I copied from several Demedia propaganda videos about covid. These are wise words to begin our new year 2022 with, and hopefully the sentiment in these everyday commonsense comments spreads far and wide among general populations. Freedom and liberty depend upon this happening.
America just experienced an insurrection, not an election
With all of last week’s midnight ballot dumping, deliberate vote miscounts, and voting software “glitches” relentlessly coming to light, we are faced with the fact that America did not have an election last week. Rather, we experienced a massive nation-wide vote fraud scheme aimed at literally taking over the American government under the guise of having an election.
This is not an election, it is an illegal insurrection against the laws, people, and sitting government of America.
Last Tuesday’s election was not open, it was not fair, it was not legal. The more people dig, the more fraud is found. A fraudulent election is not a legal election, and an election that is not legal does not count.
One of the most incredible things ever in American electoral history happened this year. Both the national media (Big Media) and the Silicone Valley technological and social media firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube (Big Tech) have waged an open war against transparency and information flow. The blatant de-platforming of people, censorship, and blocking of certain information by Big Media and Big Tech is nothing other than partisan electioneering on behalf of one political party and one candidate, the Democrat Party and Joe Biden.
The media is entitled to First Amendment protections when they act as the media. But when the media becomes an active and aggressive participant in the effort to elect one person and to protect one political party, then the media is no longer the media. It has become a political antagonist, a partisan actor, whose actions are regulated just like every other political donor. The undeclared, unregulated in-kind donation value to the Democrat Party and the Biden Campaign of Big Media and Big Tech must be in the billions of dollars. This is hugely illegal and hugely criminal.
Big Media and Big Tech are right now waging what can only be called an all-out war against the flow of information that shows voting fraud and that casts material doubt on their collective claim that Joe Biden won last week’s campaign. In every way possible, Big Tech and Big Media are de-platforming, hiding, shadow-banning, and suppressing people and information that runs contrary to their attempt to coronate Joe Biden as the inevitable winner of last week’s election. Nothing about this effort is honest, or fair, or careful. When a US Postal Service worker files an affidavit about what he has seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, Big Media and Big Tech immediately attack his character and also spread the lie that he recanted his affidavit.
CNN’s Jake Tapper has gone so far as to begin to threaten the livelihood and career of every single person who has served in the Trump Administration, by personally identifying them and broadcasting their home address and other personal information, for the express purpose of having other people attack them physically.
Do you, dear reader, believe that this is the legal function of the media? To serve as an information hub to direct a physical and legal and personal war against American citizens who are otherwise lawfully engaged in their jobs and careers?
Folks, we are witnessing an illegal attempted takeover of the United States government through a fraudulent election by one political party and its allies in media and technology firms. They are trying to physically intimidate everyone who stands in their way. We are right now way far away from any kind of election at this point, and we are now seeing a substantive effort to take over the government and to eliminate all opposition, all people, who disagree with it. This is a war effort, not a debate about policy or even legalities.
When people stop using words, they reach for their swords, and at this point Big Media, Big Tech, and the Democrat Party are aggressively eliminating the opportunity for using words to resolve this conflict. Words they oppose are censored out of the public square. They are trying to crush all resistance to their control of everything in America. This is an insurrection, which is illegal under existing American law.
The existing Insurrection Act allows the sitting, lawfully elected president of the United States, to quell this warfare before it becomes bloody battles in the streets of America. Mister President, I encourage you to invoke the Insurrection Act and bring stability to America, end this illegal mutiny against the sitting government, and bring calm and honesty to the effort to count all LEGAL votes that were cast in last week’s election.
America is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and just because some other people decide they will commit a crime and then crush all dissent and transparency with an iron fist does not make them legitimate. Their behavior makes them mutineers, insurrectionists, traitors.
Save our Republic, Mister President, or say goodbye forever to the free America that existed as of just a few days ago.
Note*: For readers who think I am either totally nuts, or partisan (ha ha that would be funny), or mislead, or confused, or emotional, or any other number of possible causes for this post, you are encouraged to step outside the mainstream media box in which you are probably getting your information. Go to the Epoch Times and see what they have to say about the election fraud and questions we are living with right now.
Speaking of campaign contributions
Is anyone tallying the in-kind political campaign contributions donated by the US media, Google, FakeBook, Twitter, and the rest of Silicon Valley to one particular political party?
The hoopla surrounding the pairing of FakeBook user data with Cambridge Analytica sounds like someone committed a crime. But that is only because conservatives did it, and they actually paid money for it. As opposed to Google and FakeBook, which practically lived full-time at the Obama White House.
For free. As in they donated their private user data to one political party for free. Without disclosure, without attribution.
Google and FakeBook in particular have been working hand-in-glove with just one political party, and especially with the past Obama administration, giving away user data for free, and artificially suppressing users opposed to the Obama revolution.
Recall how typing into the Google search engine variations of “Hillary Clinton crime criminal” would generate ridiculous results, like “Hillary Clinton’s position on crime control” complete with a smiling glamor shot of Hillary Clinton. Nowhere in Google’s search results would be anything about how Hillary Clinton was an actual criminal, or a suspected criminal who had been and was being criminally investigated.
That is worth money.
And how about that September 2016 Barron’s Weekly, with the grinning glamor photo of Hillary Clinton under the headline “Time for President Hillary?”
This kind of free promotional advertising is worth huge bucks.
And the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times were all proud to openly promote Clinton and attack Republicans. Not just in their editorial pages, but in their “news.” Their “news” reporting became wall-to-wall political advertising and attacks.
The US media has been an obvious mouthpiece for this one political party and its candidates, cheering them on and covering up for them. Big bucks, folks, huge contributions.
What’s that you say, what about Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?
Folks, if the US media just did their jobs as reporters – facts instead of activism – there would be no demand for Limbaugh or Fox News or Breitbart. Only because the media is a wholly owned subsidiary of one political party is there a demand for other views to be aired. And that is going to happen somewhere.
God forbid there are literally a handful of news outlets not controlled by the establishment media and their political party!
So what is the value of all this collusion between Google, and FakeBook, and Twitter? All the user data they gleefully provided to the Obama White House and the 2012 Obama campaign? You know, the private user data that the Obama campaign gloated about in public.
Someone needs to get to the bottom of this. I’d just ballpark the in-kind contribution value at about a billion dollars. At least. And none of it was officially disclosed on campaign disclosure documents.
All illegal behavior and political contributions, folks. A lot of fines, and maybe jail time for people. But because the chosen side did it, it’s fine, apparently. Well, not to me, it isn’t, despite the mainstream media’s unwillingness to report it.
Get a special investigator and prosecutor on this right away. Hold these law-breakers accountable. Because we all really care about upholding the law, right?
Google, Facebook, COSTCO – each trying to suppress your free speech
If you think that social media sources like Google and Facebook treat everyone equally, you are wrong.
If you think that COSTCO treats everyone equally, you are wrong.
All three have been documented in recent days to be in an aggressive war against your free speech opportunities, and against your ability to access information that the owners (of Google, Facebook, and COSTCO) do not like.
The owners of all three institutions are liberals.
Liberalism went from a demand for fairness to an overarching totalitarianism in a few short decades. While many people say now and said back then that the socialist and communist roots of liberalism indicated that liberals were never interested in fairness, being open-minded, or tolerant, I grew up surrounded by liberals, and it was not until the last decade that I witnessed what looked to me like a transformation. They went from representing opposing views to crushing opposing views, terminating dissent, as soon as they had the opportunity.
For example, the gentle “peace”-loving pacifists <ahem> were on the war path at Chautauqua Institution, a place long known for providing a platform for different ideas and views. Suddenly authors like Andrew Bostom were shut out of week-long discussions where Islamic terrorists had the stage, as though they could not possibly be balanced by another opposing view. And it then dawned on me and many others that liberalism is just one more tyrannical, evil, cruel, divisive, phony movement designed to create winners and losers by any artificial means necessary.
Like all totalitarian movements, liberalism must be opposed in the name of freedom. Let people make up their own minds.
If you want to see how liberals have been shutting down your free speech opportunities this past week, visit these links:
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/news/wnd-costco-removing-dsouzas-america-shelves/
And simply use BING to search for examples of how Facebook has artificially shut down and hindered conservative Facebook pages, including our own Josh First for PA Senate.
UPDATE: How could we forget to mention that Google removed the Gates of Vienna blog without any notice to the owners, thereby violating the very terms of service that Google themselves had required. The Gates of Vienna blog is a well-known source for history and updates from around the world. But the Left, ah, the Left, they cannot tolerate dissent. So, Google, run by liberals, tried to destroy the blog. But it survived. Use BING to look up the story.




























