- 'Sup, ya beautiful bastards?
Welcome back to the Thursday Philip DeFranco Show.
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And let's just jump into it.
And the first thing that we have to talk about today
is this latest version of anti-vax tomfoolery.
So I don't know if you've already seen it,
but there's this video that's gone viral
of an anti-vax nurse in Ohio,
trying to prove to Ohio lawmakers on Tuesday
that COVID-19 vaccines make people magnetic.
And a little spoiler alert.
It did not go well for a little Miss Magneto.
- By the way,
so I just found out something when I was on lunch,
and I wanted to show it to you.
We were talking about Dr. Tenpenny's testimony
about magnetic vaccine crystals.
So this is what I found out.
So I have a key and a bobby pin here.
Explain to me why the key sticks to me.
It sticks to my neck, too.
Got those.
Yeah. So if somebody can explain this, that would be great.
Any questions?
- Actually, yes.
Who dropped you on your head, you dumb asshole?
And so, naturally, this clip spreads across the internet.
People mocking this woman, Joanna Overholt.
And a little more background here.
She was actually speaking at a hearing pushing
for the passage of GOP sponsored House Bill 248,
which addresses civil liberties around vaccines,
and if this is passed, it will bar vaccinations
from being mandatory,
stop businesses from denying unvaccinated people service,
and outlaw obligations to disclose your vaccination status.
Now understand, Overholt was not alone here.
Her testimony followed remarks from conspiracist and doctor
Sherri Tenpenny, who had just touted
this ridiculous theory right before.
- That I'm sure you've seen the pictures
all over the internet, of people who've had these shots
and now they're magnetized.
They can put a key on their forehead, it sticks.
They can put spoons and forks all over them,
and they can stick.
- [Man] Of people who've had their shots
and now they're magnetized.
(laughing)
- [Man] They're magnetized.
(gasping)
- [Man] They're magnetized.
They're magnetized.
(key falling onto floor) (beep) (groaning)
- And also, what you should know about Tenpenny
is that she's been cited by the nonprofit
Center for Countering Digital Hate
as a member of the Disinformation Dozen,
which means that she is one of the 12 people responsible
for 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation shared
on the internet.
And here's the thing.
As many people have pointed out,
including trained professionals, experts in their field,
these two trained medical professionals seem
to be ignoring any other logical explanation
for why something would stick to them,
like sweat or sebum, or, I mean,
if you're more nefarious, glue.
I use this word lightly.
Luckily, it seems that most people are not buying
into this ridiculous conspiracy bullshit, though.
Not everyone.
Many seeming just way more concerned
that these two people are actually in the medical field.
Also, if anything, they might've actually just encouraged
more people to get vaccinated if they do believe it.
Some writing things like, "That's what I'm talking about,
"the idea that I won't keep losing my keys,
"beside the whole saving me from covid.
"That vax is a win-win."
Also, something that I would recommend if you are someone
that thinks the vaccine is turning people magnetic,
or you know someone that thinks this,
or if something's sticking to you,
let's say like on your arm,
put some baby powder on it and then try again.
And in fact, we're already seeing some people
that thought they were turning magnetic trying this,
and actually apologizing for promoting misinformation.
Which, one, I will commend that man,
and really, anyone else that will admit
that they were wrong.
That is a big, big, important thing, and it feels
like fewer people are capable of that every day.
But also, two, I'm thankful for people like Hank Green,
who, other than seemingly going crazy at times,
spends a lotta time debunking bullshit, including this.
Then, in eye-opening,
online creator money news/I picked the wrong job,
like I'm doing well, but, just, wow.
One, we saw Corinna Kopf, David Dobrik, Vlog Squad fame
launching an OnlyFans, last week tweeting out,
"500,000 likes, and I'm making an OnlyFans."
And while the tweet only 428,000 likes,
that is still a ton of potential customers.
Which is why, yesterday, she officially launched it
with a subscription per month costing $25.
And while we don't have exact dollar figures now,
one, there's a ton of engagement on every post,
thousands of likes.
Her page as a whole has over 44,000 likes,
and she is memeing about how much cash she's already made.
Also this morning, claiming she is in the 0.01%
of top OnlyFans earners.
Though, we haven seen a little bit of a scandal
and some anger around this already.
This because, according to a few people, as of last night
she had posted 11 photos, some of which were already
on her Instagram, which then led to a number
of people calling this a scam.
Corinna then responding it's not gonna be
"just Instagram content,
"if I posted everything right out the gate,
"it would just get leaked... just wait..."
And actually, I mean, she was kind of right.
There were people leaking the content.
So much so that it appeared
that she threatened someone with a lawsuit on Twitter.
Now, she later deleted that specific tweet,
but posted today that she has a "long long list of people
"who are leaking content" and adding
that she's "about to make more money off of these people
"than my Only fans itself."
Yeah, regarding Corinna and OnlyFans,
and really any woman in OnlyFans, get that bag.
If I can make that much dumb money off a bunch
of horny dudes, I'd do it.
I mean, maybe that's why I got a trainer.
You don't know.
Also in the news today, it's not just the ladies
bringing in the money.
We also had another creator in the news, because it appears
that he accidentally leaked how much money he was making
from just one sponsor.
Adin Ross, if you don't know, massive creator,
absolutely massive streamer.
At one point during a stream yesterday, he was on Discord.
He was looking for a conversation, when boom.
It appeared that he accidentally opened up a conversation
with someone by the name of Duelbets.
And as Dexerto reports, Adin told them,
"They offered me a bag," "presumably referring to Roobet
"who he mentions later in the conversation."
Duelbet says they,
"offered you guys nearly $2 million a month."
Ross veers to reply, they "offered 1.4 and didn't want
to cover expenses," and adding
that "Roobet are covering expenses."
They also get referral code money,
and they're "getting more."
And that is an, just absolutely ungodly amount of money.
I don't know if he's saying that he is making that
by himself or it's kinda the house in general, right?
This could include the likes of Ricegum,
FaZe Banks, Mike Majlak.
Over the years I've had bad deals,
I've had good deals.
That is an insane number.
One, I wanna talk about the story
because it's genuinely interesting,
but two, I want to get out there,
do not think that other creators are making this amount
of money on the regular,
'cause that is an insane amount of money.
Also, if I'm wrong, I'm more than happy
for any other company out there to correct me
with their wallets.
Yeah. I mean, back to the story.
Keep in mind, that is just one sponsor.
That's not subscriptions, other sponsorships,
merch, anything else.
And also something to consider.
And granted, it's a little bit of an assumption.
It's not fully clear that when Ross says expenses,
what he's talking about, but it very likely could be
that he's given money to play around with.
So when you see those videos that go viral of, really,
any creator, that's doing the bets,
just keep that in the back of your mind.
Then, actually, on the note of money,
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Then, you know that major internet blackout
that happened Tuesday?
It was a, it happened for about an hour.
You know what I mean, Amazon, Reddit,
the Guardian, The New York Times.
Massive sites went down, and very quickly we learned
that the company responsible for the issues was Fastly.
They're a cloud computing company, right?
And so with that, there were a lot of questions.
How did this happen?
I mean, was there a hack?
But now we know, according to Fastly,
no, that is not what happened.
Apparently what happened is that one
of their customers changed their settings,
and because of a bug that was in their software update
that went out to their customers in mid-May,
it caused 85% of their network to return errors.
Which, one, on its own, is kinda funny, but also insane.
And two, has also resulted in a big conversation of,
isn't it kind of scary that there are only a few companies
that control our access to the biggest things
that we use every day?
And with outages seemingly being more frequent these days,
there is a feeling of vulnerability when it comes
to the internet as a whole.
Then, in more money news, though this one's different,
while initial unemployment claims have fallen now
for the sixth consecutive week,
other data from the labor department indicates
that consumer prices in May rose 5% over year.
And that's the biggest leap since the summer of 2008,
which was, of course, just before the U.S. was hit
by the worst recession since the Great Depression.
However, at the same time, the Federal Reserve
does not seem hugely concerned about these jumps,
saying that it believes that these are based
on temporary factors related to the pandemic,
for example, supply bottlenecks and other shortages brought
on by the reopening of the economy.
And so that's why it's believed by a number of people
that the prices will come down as the year goes on.
But that explanation has not completely shaken off
the fears that this could potentially turn
into something more.
As The New York Times explains, "The stakes are high
"on both Wall Street and Main Street.
"Inflation can erode purchasing power
"if wages do not keep up.
"A short-lived burst would be unlikely
"to cause lasting damage, but an entrenched one
"could force the Fed to cut its support for the economy,
"potentially tanking stocks and risking a fresh recession."
Also, while we're talking about money,
we should definitely talk about fraud
as it relates to the pandemic.
Now over the past year, I've covered stories where we talked
about specific areas where people committed fraud
to get pandemic relief funds, but as it turns out,
the degree of fraud that happened in this country
may have been on a whole different level.
And I say that because Axios published an article
this morning that suggests that criminals may have stolen
as much as half of U.S. unemployment benefits
over the last year, and citing several experts,
they explained that, "Unemployment fraud
"during the pandemic could easily reach $400 billion."
And reportedly, much of that figure has landed
in the hands of not only domestic gangs,
but also of international crime syndicates.
Which is why this has been called, "not just theft,
"but a matter of national security."
And while historically, for these groups,
unemployment insurance was not a lucrative target,
obviously the pandemic changed that.
The United States went from a system of relatively rare
and short claims to one of boosted claims
for an extended period of time.
And when all those massive layoffs happened last year,
states just weren't prepared.
They got an unprecedented volume of unemployment claims,
with Axios adding, "They all knew fraud was inevitable,
"but decided getting the money out to people
"who desperately needed it was more important
"than laboriously making sure all of them were genuine."
Which, of course, unfortunately,
allowed bad actors to game the system.
And while the treasury department declined
to confirm these estimates,
we do know that at the end of last month,
the Office of the Inspector General did release findings,
saying that $39 billion in unemployment money
from the CARES Act had been wasted.
Also, just last week, federal authorities accused a group
of Venezuelans in Florida and Mexico
of stealing $800,000 in stimulus money.
So yeah. Some of the biggest lessons here is
for the politicians out there that do want to push
for recurring stimulus payments,
addressing the fraud needs to be a key issue.
And then let's definitely talk about slander, extortion,
and now Google announcing new steps
to prevent schemes like this.
And so to try to explain here, there are a number
of websites that exist where people can anonymously post
unsubstantiated rumors and hate about others.
And if you then search that person's name,
the posts can appear high on Google's results,
leading more and more people to read those comments.
And while sometimes victims can get moderators
on websites where the messages were posted
to take them down, sometimes they can also be extorted
for thousands of dollars.
But now, you have Google saying that they're planning
on suppressing those types of websites
from its search engine by changing the algorithm,
with Google also notably adopting a policy
called Known Victims.
And there, people can report directly to Google
that they're being extorted,
to have posts about them removed,
and Google plans to automatically suppress links
to those posts, as well as similar content.
Also, and notably, it's not just slander.
This also includes a non-consensual, nude,
or intimate photos, fake pornography,
as well as some financial, medical, and other private info.
And it does appear that this new policy comes partially
in response to a New York Times piece that went out
in April, which details how the slander industry profits
off of its victims.
And as The Times notes here around Google's announcement,
"Google, which fields an estimated 90%
"of global online search, historically resisted
"having human judgment play a role in its search engine,
"although it has bowed to mounting pressure in recent years
"to fight misinformation and abuse appearing
"at the top of its results."
But also with this,
there are concerns on both sides, right?
For the victims of slander or non-consensual photos
and things like that,
will Google actually do a good job here?
And then on the other side of this, you have concerns of,
okay, let's say you did a bad thing, right?
You got exposed for something.
Will this system be abused by people
that wanna knock down those search results?
Even one of Google's vice-presidents said,
"I doubt it will be a perfect solution,
certainly not right off the bat."
But they're also noting,
"I think it really should have a significant
"and positive impact," "we can't police the web,
"but we can be responsible citizens."
Yeah, especially with this one,
I would love to know your thoughts.
You think this is a good thing?
Bad thing? Something in between, or you're holding judgment?
Then, we should definitely talk
about the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline
in the news.
It's been in the news for the past 13 years.
First announced in 2008, it woulda carried oil
from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast.
It was an estimated $8 billion pipeline.
And over the years, we saw a coalition of environmentalists,
indigenous tribes, scientists,
and others lobbying against it.
Very quickly, this project became a huge centerpiece
in the debate over fossil fuels and climate change,
changing public opinion, spurring other efforts
to stop separate pipeline projects in multiple states.
And in recent years, there was a will they, won't they
with the pipeline.
In 2015, then-President Obama announced
that his administration would reject
the construction permit, then Trump gets elected.
He reverses the order two days after his inauguration,
then the project moved forward until 2018,
when a federal judge blocked construction
in the United States, on the grounds that Trump had not done
a proper environmental review
before rescinding Obama's policy.
You see legal battles from this.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court upholds
the lower court's decision to block construction in the U.S.
The company behind this, TC Energy,
said it would reassess the project in the United States,
though they still proceeded in Canada.
Then, first day in Biden's office,
he revoked the permit to the project again.
And all of that brings us to the news today that the company
behind the pipeline has officially ended the project.
And with this, unsurprisingly, the government of Alberta,
Republicans, and oil companies condemned this move.
But you also had many groups who had fought
against this project cheering on the decision,
also using this moment to pressure Biden
to end other pipeline projects,
including the highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline,
as well as the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota,
which attracted hundreds of protestors earlier this week.
Also, while we're talking about Biden
and the administration,
we should definitely talk about today.
They announced that they're purchasing 500 million
Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to donate to the global supply,
with the White House saying in a statement
that it will give 250 million full doses
to lower middle-income countries and the African Union,
also describing the effort as "the largest ever purchase
"and donation of vaccines by a single country,"
and calling "on the world's democracies to do their parts
"in contributing to the global supply
"of safe and effective vaccines."
With 200 million of the doses expected to be delivered
by the end of this year,
with the remaining 300 being distributed
in the first half of 2022.
And then finally, I wanted to talk
about it earlier this week.
Congress actually agreed on something.
Now, we're starting to see that situation develop
kind of how we expected it would.
So this week, the U.S. Senate passed a $250 billion bill
that supports American high-tech investment,
and provides funding to counter political influence
by the Chinese Communist Party.
And more specifically, as reports explain,
it pours more than $50 billion in immediate funding
into U.S. businesses, the manufacturer
of the sorta ultra-small, in-demand computer chips
that power consumer and military devices,
which many companies source from China.
It also includes billions in extra funding for research
and development at the energy department, the Pentagon,
and NASA, including in the areas of artificial intelligence,
quantum computing, robotics, and 5G.
Also, this will authorize $300 million
to counter the political influence
of the Chinese Communist Party.
It commissions a study into the origin of the coronavirus
and prevents federal funds from going
to the Wuhan Institute of Virology while that is underway,
rams up existing sanctions relating to human rights abuses,
cyber attacks, intellectual property theft, and more.
Finally, with at least what we're touching on here,
it calls for a diplomatic boycott
of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
And you know, this is very much a China competition bill.
Even Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer,
saying on the floor, "Around the globe,
"authoritarian governments smell blood in the water.
"They believe that squabbling democracies like ours
"can't come together and invest in national priorities
"the way a top-down, centralized
"and authoritarian government can.
"They are rooting for us to fail so they can grab the mantle
"of global economic leadership and own the innovations."
One of the big updates here is that Beijing has responded.
And no surprise, they're not happy.
Beijing's Foreign Affairs Committee
of China's National People's Congress
issued a strongly-worded message against the bill,
claiming, "The bill is full of Cold War mentality.
"and ideological prejudice,"
and saying, "It slanders China's development path
"and its domestic and foreign policies."
On top of being angry at the United States'
new spending bill, China has been increasingly frustrated
with American and other Western sanctions.
The Chinese Communist Party, hoping that sanctions
would be eased when Biden took office.
That orange fella saying Biden is essentially
in China's pocket.
But funny enough, President Biden has actually doubled down
on some Trump era policies, even going as far
as to expand a ban on U.S. investment in Chinese companies.
And as far as China here,
it looks like they're going to retaliate.
Earlier this year, the country passed targeted sanctions
on certain Western scientists and U.S. officials
for their parts in criticizing China's actions
in Shen Jong and Hong Kong.
And now, China just passed a law this afternoon
that would allow it to expedite retaliatory sanctions
against the U.S. and other countries.
And the puppet that is Carrie Lam
telling local Hong Kong media that Western governments
would get "a taste of their own medicine."
But ultimately, we're gonna have to wait and see.
And with this story, or anything else that stood out
to you today, I'd love to know your thoughts.
Because one, this is always supposed to be a conversation.
And two, this is the end of today's show.
And ultimately with this story,
or honestly anything else that stood out to you today,
I'd love to know your thoughts.
Because one, this is a conversation.
And two, this is the end of today's show.
As always, thank you for being a part of this family.
Watching the video,
likin', subscribin', all the good stuff.
Yeah, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco.
You've just been filled in.
I love yo faces, and I'll see you next time.