The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”.  Today, we look at the LBRY app alternative to YouTube.

They’re Piling On: Vimeo Bans Project Veritas

Vimeo–a competitor of YouTube–just closed the account of Project Veritas. This was just a week after the censorious YouTube management removed the Project Veritas video expose of Google’s politically-motivated search results manipulation. Project Veritas has also recently been hit in various ways by by Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter.

I’ve been closely watching the censorship-free alternative to YouTube and Vimeo, called the LBRY app. There, I noticed that someone has posted a pirated e-book copy of my nonfiction book How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It. That of course bothers me–like all piracy of legitimate intellectual property. However, for the sake of having a platform that is a viable alternative to the censorious YouTube, I’m willing to say: So be it. That is just the way life is, in the 21st Century. If we desire a world with true individual liberty, then we have to watch some distasteful things happen. Piracy happens. Foul language happens. So be it. Rather that vituperate them, I’m willing to ignore it, and press on. Unlike YouTube and Vimeo, LBRY has all sorts of media–not just video. You’ll find files–or links to files–of photo collections, text files, e-books, memes, audio books, music, games, and even its own cryptocurrency.  Let freedom ring. Let freedom reign! I’m hoping that the peer-to-peer LBRY app will prevail over the Tech Left’s biased and now heavily censored platforms.

California’s Independence Day Present: Ammo Background Checks

Californians: Last chance to stock up! California will require background checks on ammo starting July 1. Ponder the the irony of celebrating Independence Day and our freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, just three days later, in Commiefornia…

SurvivalBlog Archive USB Stick Sale Update

Our small remaining supply of waterproof SurvivalBlog Archive USB sticks is currently on close-out sale, at just $19.95 each.  This is just until we exhaust the annual batch. This is your chance to order some extras, for gifts. When I last checked, we had only 130 sticks remaining, and they’ve been selling at a rate of around 20 per day.  Order yours soon–before they are all sold out!

The Returned Wallets Ratio

By way of Whatfinger.com (my favorite daily news aggregation page): Surprise: 17,000 lost wallets show humans are nice people (mostly)

Sam Culper on Civil War 2

A 30-minute video by Sam Culper of the great Forward Observer site: CIVIL WAR 2?? Here’s the truth about America’s future…

Bee Colony Collapse is Worsening

Reader G.P. mentioned this news story: More Bad Buzz For Bees: Record Number Of Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter

Alabama Granny with 10/22 Arrests Car Thief

Thanks to reader C.H. for sending us this gem: Grandmother, 75, Holds Car Theft Suspect At Gunpoint Until Deputies Arrive

We Got Cholesterol All Wrong

A hat tip to DSV for this: New Research Confirms We Got Cholesterol All Wrong. Here is a quote:

“A comprehensive new study on cholesterol, based on results from more than a million patients, could help upend decades of government advice about diet, nutrition, health, prevention, and medication. Just don’t hold your breath.

The study, published in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, centers on statins, a class of drugs used to lower levels of LDL-C, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, in the human body. According to the study, statins are pointless for most people.

“No evidence exists to prove that having high levels of bad cholesterol causes heart disease, leading physicians have claimed” in the study, reports the Daily Mail. The Express likewise says the new study finds “no evidence that high levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol cause heart disease.”

The study also reports that “heart attack patients were shown to have lower than normal cholesterol levels of LDL-C” and that older people with higher levels of bad cholesterol tend to live longer than those with lower levels.”

Syrian “Refugee” Plotted Attack in Pittsburgh

Another from DSV:  Syrian refugee arrested for allegedly planning terror attack on Pittsburgh church.

NRA Suspends ILA’s Chris Cox

This is worth reading: NRA Suspends NRA-ILA Head Chris Cox.

You can send your news tips to JWR. (Either via e-mail of via our Contact form.) Thanks!




36 Comments

  1. Privately owned companies can’t sensor?
    So the individual(s) don’t have a right to create something and control what’s being said or done?
    So the baker is allowed but not others because ……. money, status, viewpoints….
    Privately owned? Seriously?
    How much did you pay for their service? Oh it was free.
    I’m failing to see a breach of contract.

    I even had stuff removed. Oh well I didn’t pay for it. It’s their company.

    Not liking it doesn’t trump the right.

    1. Read 15 USC (Commerce and Trade) Chapter 1. It could be argued that Chapter 2 would also apply.

      Oh, and by the way, was the ‘service’ free? Did the ‘service’ collect personal data and sell it without permission?

      Where are the handcuffs? One could ask the same question regarding bankers that sold mortgage backed securities a little over a decade ago that also violated 15 USC.

        1. Denial of service to specific groups would indeed be illegal. Do you imagine they could get away with denying service to all blacks? Additionally companies like Google and YouTube get specific preferential legislative treatment exempting them from civil actions exactly for the purpose of allowing them to not censor.

          Interesting that you use the bake the cake example. That was actually a setup by antichristian anti-heterosexual groups to force an agenda. It was NOT about baking a simple wedding cake it was about placing homosexual adoring phrases on the cake. They knew this was insulting to a religious person just as it would be insulting to force a Jewish bakery to bake a cake honoring the holocaust.

          1. Wrong
            Race, color, religion etc. is covered but not everything. I’m as pro 2A as it comes but y’all missed it on this.
            That’s why their is no case.

    2. First of all these companies received millions of dollars of startup money from taxpayers. Second they were not required to pay these PUBLIC funds. They continue to do “business” with taxpayer dollar funded organizations left un-named. These companies are very similar to newspapers and therefore there is a implied freedom of speech and freedom of religion when they get public funds. How many millions of dollars have you received to start a business, that you do not have to pay back to the Federal treasury?

      1. They got public funds and lost no control of their company. You know what that makes them?
        Smarter than me that’s what.
        That shouldn’t even exist.
        Implied in business lol it’s meaningless as we are all clearly seeing. There is no such thing as implied in business. It’s either contractual or it’s not. I’ve owned a business.

    3. Right you are, Matt. It’s either a contract or it isn’t. It’s either agreed to by both parties for mutual benefit or it isn’t (unless it’s a government program, but that’s another rant…)

      I’ve been wrestling with this for over a year.

      (https://survivalblog.com/survivalists-odds-n-sods-182/#comments)

      Are these enterprises “platforms,” like newspapers and other informational media with a broader civic responsibility, or are they private companies that can provide services on their terms and Caveat Emptor, take it or leave it y’all?

      A year and lots of lawering and congressing later, the question comes down to this for me: It don’t matter.

      Even if they ever were just terrific ideas cobbled together by enterprising, idealistic kids in their dads’ garages or their college dorm rooms, they have long been co-opted by, well …whomever… for malignant ends.

      We will never be rid of them because they have been created and set in place in service to a larger, more disturbing agenda.

      We will never change them because they don’t rely on the capitalist business model; they’re funded, and given their marching orders, by the same “whomevers,” so they don’t need to service and satisfy customers’ wants and needs. Their “services” are just colorful smoke and sparkly mirrors to bait Pinocchio to Pleasure Island.

      All we can do is make the choice to use them, and let them use us, or say “No, thanks” and move on.

  2. Re. The Returned Wallets Ratio

    So much for the statists’ fake tale that people are so inherently bad that they need government to rule them.

  3. Re: Cholesterol

    The cholesterol CAUSE to heart disease has been weakening for some time. However according to some researchers the LINK is still there and can be explained as follows.

    Abnormally high cholesterol is theorized to sometimes be the body’s response to certain inflammatory issues. The cholesterol is produced to help repair damage to inflamed tissues. Cardiovascular disease could be the result of the high cholesterol being insufficient to repair the damage of inflammation. As a metaphor the cholesterol could be viewed as firemen unable to put out a structure fire caused by something else and then being blamed for destroying the building.

    Some doctors will now look for inflammatory markers in blood tests to see if high cholesterol is associated with that. If it is not associated with inflammation it is not viewed as a problem. Neither a good or bad indication. If it is associated with inflammation then the inflammation needs to be investigated, not the cholesterol. (Although some doctors may still push statins in this case.) The body is sending out the fire brigade because something is wrong.

    The most common cause for inflammation of this sort is tobacco use but other things are being looked at including stress, excess weight, excess alcohol consumption, low grade viral infections, unfortunate genetics, etc. The inflammation research seems to be very incomplete but appears to be ongoing.

    The salt fears are also falling apart. There is research indicating that if one were to actually strictly follow the current salt guidelines they would damage their body and the researchers actually lay out the mechanism. Fortunately almost no one does follow the guidelines, even if they think they are. The body will pretty much self regulate to adequate salt intake.

    1. There are indeed people with a genetic condition that causes extraordinarily high cholesterol levels and suffer extraordinarily high rates of fatal heart attacks at early ages. What the doctors and scientists concluded from this was that the cholesterol was the problem and they made some arbitrary assumptions about how much cholesterol would be harmful to a healthy human. Not surprisingly they were wrong. Now they don’t want to accept that they were wrong and are rationalizing to cover themselves.

    2. Yep, I have low blood pressure and absolutely need to eat salt so I won’t pass out then I stand up. Sugar, corn syrup, white flour, and tobacco are the assassins.

      Carry on

    3. To clarify, cholesterol is NOT produced to help repair damage to inflamed tissues. It exists to produce sex hormones, vitamin D, and bile and is used to build cells. 25% of the body’s cholesterol is in the brain. It does accumulate at damaged spots in the blood vessels caused by inflammation. This is an attempt to repair the damage. Blaming cholesterol for cardiovascular disease is like blaming a bandage for the cut. As stated by others inflammation is caused by many things, excessive sugars (and starches which are changed to sugars in the body) being chief among them.

  4. It baffles me that people continue to use YouTube, Google, and FB. They have long been anti-Truth and anti-Liberty. Even most of my favorite Liberty podcasts and websites use them. We will get what we deserve and pander to, all for the sake of convenience.
    I’m not familiar with LBRY. I currently use Brighteon.

  5. Book piracy is another form of bootlegging, that might be the 2nd oldest profession. Be thankful you are given credit as the author as today it is very easy to take a document and with “find and replace” change enough words, cut and paste and put the thief’s name on it.

  6. re:
    National Rifle Association

    In name only.

    Their stated focus seems to be ‘telling folks about the job’ instead of ‘doing the job’ of freedom.

    Their primary focus seems to be ‘getting donations so the staff has a comfy life and time of it’. From their prospective, that ‘life time’ membership looks quite different!

  7. So y’all are trying to tell me if I create a website that is pro pineapple on pizza and I ban everyone who isn’t then you think you have the right to criminally charge me and force me to allow what I don’t want on my domain!?!
    Naw this ain’t kommunism it don’t work that way. It ain’t against the law.
    You can cry, sue and all that but at the end of the day I’m gonna put what I want to on MY site.
    No different than this site right here. If he wants to ban me then he has that right. It’s his. He pays for it.
    That is America not snowflake hurt feelingsville.
    If everyone was using a pro 2A platform like full30 then you wouldn’t even know what YouTube was doing. This is as silly as them wanting to put up gun control postings on this website. Support the correct people and businesses. Quit FB, quit supporting knee takers, quit buying clothes that support the other side and start acting with backbone.
    BTW I don’t care how you like your pizza.

    1. Couldn’t agree with you more.
      I am unsurprised by YouTube, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, Vimeo, and Facebook.
      However, I’m very discouraged by “Liberty” minded people that bitch and moan about them AND continue to use them!
      If we lose all our Liberty, it will ONLY be because we handed it over.

    2. Matt I am in agreement with you.

      A company should have the right to do as it pleases. What really irks me is that all us conservatives complain but no one has come up with a solution of our own. If people were serious about a conservative youtube then we would have done it. Instead we want to force youtube to promote what it hates. If I started my own YouTube I wouldn’t want anyone telling me what I could and could not promote because I sure wouldn’t be promoting homosexuality or abortion!

      1. If LBRY gets big enough, then there will certainly be a conservative/libertarian “fork” of the app. (It was designed to encourage forks.) At that point the djinn will be out of the bottle, and unstoppable. They can’t stop the signal!

    3. Absolutely! I support businesses that support me and things that matter to me. I would love to see a webpage that keeps an up-to-date listing of company owners/controlling interests and the other causes THEY endorse – or maybe if I did I would never need to go shopping because most of them were working against freedom.

      1. You’re not kidding! I closed my Amazon account in January. I also have been trying to not shop at Walmart. It is incredibly difficult for folks on a tight budget. The more I look for solutions the more I see how little I can buy on our budget. Add in the desire to not buy Chinese products and I’m lost. It is terribly frustrating. Im learning to do a bit at a time, realizing I don’t have to be perfect in my purchases. A little at a time….

  8. We Got Cholesterol All Wrong
    Who, exactly is ‘we’? Eggs and butter are good for you. Everybody already knows this. In fact, lower cholesterol may be a contributing factor in Alzheimer and Alzheimer like dementia. Statins are a killer.

  9. LBRY won’t let me publish without ‘credits’ whatever that is. Do I have to pay somebody to put ‘free’ material up? Do they want content? It’s confusing, and annoying. I don’t understand it.

    1. The LBC “credits” are a no cash value “training/incentive” cryptocurrency that LBRY itself issues. You can “earn” about 100 of them simply by just visiting a few LBRY pages. This in-house crypto is designed to get people active in regularly using LBRY.

      Try it!

      I say: Let YouTube waste away, from mass defections to alternative peer-to-peer platforms, like LBRY. We can only break the leftist-Big Tech-corporatist GoogleTube paradigm if we take a little time to build alternative platforms. Continuing to feed the YouTube Beast is incrementally destructive to our liberty. I suggest that we call this: Death By Fun Cat Video Viewing.

      OBTW, I’ve found that LBRY ceases to be slightly “confusing and annoying” very quickly. It is actually quite fun.

  10. I give JWR credit for his reaction to being stolen from on the LBRY app. That’s a man walking the talk. Someone is out there taking food out of his child’s mouth, and he’s willing to let it go in the interest of the greater good of Liberty. That said, piracy is theft. Buy the book folks. I don’t work for free, and I don’t imagine you do either.

  11. Regards NRA: To me Wayne LaPierre has always come across and even looked like some shady two bit lawyer that would sue his own mother if it benefitted him. But I will admit that the NRA has kept the anti gunners at bay by helping to elect pro gun candidates at various levels. With all their problems I think gun owners would be worse off without them. But I guess the thing that bugs me on a small level is that “dissent is not allowed” from members who contribute their opinion in the MAIL CALL section of the monthly NRA magazine. You will never read a comment critical of any aspect of the NRA. All comments are pro NRA or they won’t be published. I feel that if they are taking my money then I should be able to express a negative comment and other NRA members should get to read it. Yet I will continue to pay my dues because if the NRA went away the anti-gunners might get an upper hand in politics and only God knows what might happen then.

    1. I’m a Lifetime NRA member, but they waste untold millions of dollars – our dollars – on junkets, fois gras appetizer parties, etc. I bought my membership on one condition that I clearly expressed: That the NRA was on a no-call, no contact list with me and if they ever called me again I was going to declare war on them. It was worth the $500 to not have my sleep interrupted 3-5 times a week.
      Does the NRA do some good work? Sure, but not what they could if their effort was to achieve something besides fundraising. Like many large organizations – American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, Red Cross… – they only return a very small percentage of their gross revenues to the people they are supposed to be helping and the rest goes to executive salaries, “office expenses” and telemarketers.

  12. Matt Bracken believes ‘D’ tube is the best replacement for YooToobe. He has been actively looking at alternatives for sometime. However, the content is stored in a central location on a server somewhere. It appears to be user friendly and familiar, so it may be more easily adopted. I have yet had time to properly look into it. Too busy canning and such. LBRY does support Linux, but I’ll have to fire up a different machine to start getting into LBRY. From the outside, LBRY does seem to be the most secure option, but there will be a steeper learning curve, but not all that bad, and worth the extra effort for myself.

  13. Re: We Got Cholesterol All Wrong

    As someone who has experienced 8 heart attacks, 2 at an early age, I was highly motivated to research and discover for myself why I was have early heart attacks. There is too much background information and years of research, just too much to share here. I was at my peak health, age 37, 9%body fat, a fitness freak, very strong, and could run miles, normal cholesterol numbers etc. The first heart attack was at 40 years of age. I became a model patient, and had perfect numbers. Second attack occured 1 year later. I then concluded that if I continued to do as the good doctors prescribed, that odds are, I would have yet another one, because they did not correctly identify the actual cause of 2 attacks. I sought out 5 top doctors in the field, only those who were outstanding, and one who had done cutting edge research. In about 2-3 years time another ‘cath’ was done. The surgeon became very excited as she saw the arterial sclerosis was in significant remission. It was going away. She said, “whatever you are doing, keep doing it”! I did not tell her that I was not following their advice.

    Given the remarkable results this gold standard test, a test that is the most reliable, I had proof that what I was doing was working. All 5 top doctors consulted had been proven to be incorrect. If I had followed their advice, I may not have seen the very positive results that I had, and I may not be here today….. I won’t bore you-all with details and other opinion, but I can say with some confidence, that medicine is not an exact science, that they do not know as much as they have been trained to believe that they do. A motivated person can indeed think for themselves, and become a subject matter expert. Modern medicine is amazing. Do not hesitate to rush to the emergency room, however, do question, and get additional medical opinion if necessary. And do think for yourself. We can know our body and family history better than our doctor. We have no history of heart attacks going back 3 generations on either side. I’ll leave the experts to guess at what I determined to be the primary factor that cause my heart attacks…. It was not high cholesterol. I am living proof, and have documented the proof.

    High cholesterol was not a factor in my early case. However, it could be in some cases. The current thinking that the extreme lowering of cholesterol using drugs or diet, is the cure-all for all arteriole scleroses, is my eyes, a grave error in thinking. It is a symptom that they are desperate to find a cure-all answer, when there is not. I ‘m glad I turned down medical school. Medicine is not the best place for a free thinker to be these days…

  14. RE: NRA Challenges – This is exactly why I always paid my dues ONE YEAR AT A TIME. I don’t sign up for life to anything but Jesus Christ and my family! Things change…people change. I started to have my doubts about the NRA when I noticed years ago that they rapidly spent my dues on sending me tons of garbage seeking more money. When a Cox-authored article in Am Rifleman shouted, “If Hillary Wins, Your Gun Rights are GONE!”, I was prompted to write a letter to him, stating that this was merely admitting defeat prospectively! Of course, no response…as with all of the other correspondence over the years. The root of the matter is this: it’s not about the guns…it’s about what the guns represent and support. Without COURAGE, the guns mean nothing. If we’re all prepared to hand ’em over if a Hater-of-Liberty is elected, then the Second Amendment really does mean nothing. The NRA should have been making a reasoned argument to the communist wannabes: “you don’t really want to walk this road!” If the picture the NRA paints of Democrat control is true (and I’m sure they would try), and they make all Patriots criminals with the stroke of a pen, isn’t THAT the time to employ the 2A…to, sadly, realize the tacit threat that the 2A has ALWAYS implied to tyrants? The NRA has totally missed this point in favor of raising more money for the machine.
    It grieves me to see the loudest voice in the game rot from within, but humans will be humans. What ya gonna do? (perhaps GOA, JPFO, 2A Foundation, etc. ?)

  15. Sometimes the politicians mention the gun lobby as a whole, seems like the only actual organization mentioned is NRA, life member, donate when I can. Do not like recent events but any group will sometimes have trouble. The dems never seem to mention { GOA, JFPO, 2A foundation }

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