Thanks Common Sense Nation
ET Williams aka The Doctor Of Common Sense
Listen To Todays Show At The Link Below:
The Doctor of Common Sense
Thanks Common Sense Nation
ET Williams aka The Doctor Of Common Sense
Listen To Todays Show At The Link Below:
On Sunday afternoon, when Elmer T. Williams’s wife told him that a mass shooting had taken place at a church in Texas, he leapt into action. First, he skimmed a handful of news stories about the massacre. Then, when he felt sufficiently informed, he went into his home video studio, put on his trademark aviator sunglasses, and hit record.
Roughly an hour later, Mr. Williams, 51, a popular right-wing YouTube personality who calls himself “The Doctor of Common Sense,” had filmed, edited and uploaded a three-minute monologue about the Sutherland Springs church shooting to his YouTube page, which had roughly 90,000 subscribers. Authorities had not yet named a suspect, but that didn’t deter Mr. Williams, who is black, from speculating that the gunman was probably “either a Muslim or black.”
Later, after the shooter was identified as a white man named Devin P. Kelley, Mr. Williams posted a follow-up video. He claimed that Mr. Kelley was most likely a Bernie Sanders supporter associated with antifa — a left-wing anti-fascist group — who may have converted to Islam. Despite having no evidence for those claims, Mr. Williams argued them passionately, saying that photos of Mr. Kelley circulating online suggested that he was a violent liberal.
“Sometimes, you can tell a lot from a person’s picture,” Mr. Williams said.
I came across Mr. Williams’s videos several hours after the massacre, when one of them appeared prominently in YouTube’s search results about the shooting, alongside other videos making unverified claims that had been posted by pages with names like TruthNews Network and The Patriotic Beast.
YouTube has long been a haven for slapdash political punditry, but in recent months, a certain type of hyper-prolific conspiracist has emerged as a dominant force. By reacting quickly and voluminously to breaking news, these rapid-response pundits — the YouTube equivalent of talk radio shock-jocks — have successfully climbed the site’s search results, and exposed legions of viewers to their far-fetched theories.
In a phone interview from his home in Houston, Mr. Williams told me that he had created more than 10,000 YouTube videos over an eight-year period, posting as many as 20 monologues per day, and racking up estimated 200 million views.
His hit productions have included fact-challenged videos like “Barack and Michelle Obama Both Come Out The Closet,” which garnered 1.6 million views, and “Hillary Clinton Is On Crack Cocaine,” which had 665,000. He was admitted to YouTube’s partner program, which allows popular posters to earn money by displaying ads on certain types of videos, and claims to have made as much as $10,000 a month from his channel.
“I like to call myself a reporter who reports the news for the common person,” Mr. Williams said.
Whether motivated by profit or micro-celebrity, the success of sensationalists like Mr. Williams has become a vexing problem for companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which owns YouTube.
These companies sort and prioritize information for their users, and most have built ranking systems that boost news from mainstream outlets over stories from less credible sources. But those algorithms can be gamed in breaking news situations by users who work fast, uploading their videos in the valuable minutes between when news breaks and when the first wave of legitimate articles and videos appears.
“Before reliable sources put up stories, it’s a bit of a free-for-all,” said Karen North, a professor studying social media at the University of Southern California. “People who are in the business of posting sensationalized opinions about the news have learned that the sooner they put up their materials, the more likely their content will be found by an audience.”
The phenomenon is not limited to YouTube. After last month’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, a Facebook safety check page featured a story from a site called “Alt-Right News” that made false statements about the gunman, and Google’s search results displayed a conspiracy theory from 4Chan, the notoriously toxic message board. After last month’s terrorist attack in New York City, a trending topic page on Twitter briefly featured a story from Infowars, a conservative site that is popular among the conspiracy-minded.
Conservatives have argued that YouTube unfairly targets their videos while allowing liberal channels, such as The Young Turks, to post heated political commentary. And some dispute that there is any conscious gaming going on.
“There is absolutely no strategy,” said Paul Joseph Watson, an editor-at-large at Infowars and a popular YouTube personality who has 1.1 million subscribers. On the day of the Texas church shooting, one of Mr. Watson’s tweets appeared as a result in Google searches for the shooter’s name, although it has since disappeared.
Tech companies, already under fire for the ease with which they allowed Russia to interfere in last year’s election, have also vowed to take a harder stance on domestic misinformation. Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, told congressional investigators last week that the company would take steps to keep false stories from being featured on trending topic pages.
“It’s a bad user experience, and we don’t want to be known as a platform for that,” Mr. Edgett said.
YouTube, whose community guidelines prohibit hateful and threatening content, has begun using artificial intelligence to help identify offensive videos. But conspiracy theories don’t announce themselves, and machines can’t yet handle the complicated business of fact-checking.
In Mr. Williams’s case, human intervention seems to have been necessary. On Tuesday, shortly after I asked YouTube some questions about Mr. Williams’s account, all of his videos disappeared, and his profile was replaced by a message saying, “This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy prohibiting hate speech.”
Mr. Williams, who said he had recently left his job as an operations manager at a hazardous materials plant to focus on full-time punditry, has tangled with YouTube’s hate speech policies before. The company shut down one of his previous accounts for similar infractions, which he claimed cost him 250,000 subscribers and a lucrative income stream.
“If YouTube didn’t punish me,” Mr. Williams said, “I could easily be making over $30,000 a month.”
In a statement, YouTube said that Mr. Williams’s account was banned “as soon as it was flagged to us,” because its terms of service prohibit repeat rule-breakers from opening new accounts. It also said that its terms prohibit advertising from appearing on videos featuring “controversial and sensitive events, tragedies, political conflicts, and other sensitive topics.”
Even before this week’s crackdown, Mr. Williams was branching out. He sells cellphone ringtones on his website, and was considering starting his own paid streaming service. Tuesday night, just hours after he was banned by YouTube, Mr. Williams posted a video on Vimeo, another video-hosting platform. He pledged to keep insulting his favorite targets — Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama — and not shy away from controversy, no matter what the policies said.
“I don’t want to be on YouTube anymore,” Mr. Williams said. “It’s too communist.”
Irving, Texas – October 11, 2017 – Today, the Boy Scouts of America Board of Directors unanimously approved to welcome girls into its iconic Cub Scout program and to deliver a Scouting program for older girls that will enable them to advance and earn the highest rank of Eagle Scout. The historic decision comes after years of receiving requests from families and girls, the organization evaluated the results of numerous research efforts, gaining input from current members and leaders, as well as parents and girls who’ve never been involved in Scouting – to understand how to offer families an important additional choice in meeting the character development needs of all their children.
“This decision is true to the BSA’s mission and core values outlined in the Scout Oath and Law. The values of Scouting – trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, brave and reverent, for example – are important for both young men and women,” said Michael Surbaugh, the BSA’s Chief Scout Executive. “We believe it is critical to evolve how our programs meet the needs of families interested in positive and lifelong experiences for their children. We strive to bring what our organization does best – developing character and leadership for young people – to as many families and youth as possible as we help shape the next generation of leaders.”
Families today are busier and more diverse than ever. Most are dual-earners and there are more single-parent households than ever before [1], making convenient programs that serve the whole family more appealing. Additionally, many groups currently underserved by Scouting, including the Hispanic and Asian communities, prefer to participate in activities as a family. Recent surveys [2] of parents not involved with Scouting showed high interest in getting their daughters signed up for programs like Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, with 90 percent expressing interest in a program like Cub Scouts and 87 percent expressing interest in a program like Boy Scouts. Education experts also evaluated the curriculum and content and confirmed relevancy of the program for young women.
“The BSA’s record of producing leaders with high character and integrity is amazing” said Randall Stephenson, BSA’s national board chairman. “I’ve seen nothing that develops leadership skills and discipline like this organization. It is time to make these outstanding leadership development programs available to girls.”
Starting in the 2018 program year, families can choose to sign up their sons and daughters for Cub Scouts. Existing packs may choose to establish a new girl pack, establish a pack that consists of girl dens and boy dens or remain an all-boy pack. Cub Scout dens will be single-gender — all boys or all girls. Using the same curriculum as the Boy Scouts program, the organization will also deliver a program for older girls, which will be announced in 2018 and projected to be available in 2019, that will enable them to earn the Eagle Scout rank. This unique approach allows the organization to maintain the integrity of the single gender model while also meeting the needs of today’s families.
This decision expands the programs that the Boy Scouts of America offers for both boys and girls. Although known for its iconic programs for boys, the BSA has offered co-ed programs since 1971 through Exploring and the Venturing program, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2018. The STEM Scout pilot program is also available for both boys and girls.
PAWHUSKA, Okla. (KTUL) — Pawhuska police say a substitute teacher has been arrested after she allegedly exposed herself to students.
Lacey Sponslor, 34, was subbing a junior high choir class when she allegedly did a cartwheel, according to police. She was reportedly not wearing undergarments and exposed herself to the class.
One of the students recorded the act on a cell phone, according to police. Another student told police Sponslor had been talking about doing drugs and mentioned she was not wearing underwear, according to police documents.
Sponslor reportedly told police she was “just dancing” with the students, according to the documents.
WASHINGTON — A man ended up at the hospital Tuesday after he tried to light himself on fire outside the Trump International Hotel in Northwest D.C.
Hotel employees called the police and D.C. Fire responded to a call of a man trying to set himself on fire around 9:30 p.m.
NBC Washington reports that the man is from California and is protesting the election of Donald Trump.
In a video the man can be heard saying he tried to light himself on fire as an act of protest.
The man was taken to the hospital with burns. He is expected to be OK.
An Amazon.com Inc. employee was injured when he leaped off a building at the company’s Seattle headquarters in what police characterized as a suicide attempt.
The man, who wasn’t identified by authorities, sent an e-mail visible to hundreds of co-workers, including Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, before the incident occurred, according to a person familiar with the matter. The man survived the fall from Amazon’s 12-story Apollo building at about 8:45 a.m. local time Monday and was taken to a Seattle hospital, police said.
The man had recently put in a request to transfer to a different department, but was placed on an employee improvement plan, a step that can lead to termination if performance isn’t improved, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing company personnel matters. More than 20,000 people work in multiple buildings at Amazon’s headquarters.
“Our thoughts are with our colleague as he continues to recover,” Amazon said in a statement. “He’s receiving some of the best care possible and we will be there to support him throughout the recovery process.”
In the e-mail, the man expressed criticism of how the company handled his transfer request, and he hinted that he might harm himself, according to the person.
Suicide was the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2013, with 41,149 people taking their own lives that year, for a rate of 12.6 per 100,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The online retailer has taken steps to soften its image as a difficult employer since a New York Times story last year portrayed the company as a bruising workplace where employees were encouraged to take advantage of one another to get ahead. Amazon disputed the characterization of the company.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff