I never know how much of these guys is an act/character for the channel and how much is really them. I took AvE as hamming it up at first, with the jokes and language, exaggerating the blue collar "traditional" humor, but joking or not, venture into science denial or supporting fascist types, I'm out.
Sometimes I question if it's hypocritical to get mad at AvE for sharing opinions I don't like while also being disappointed at someone like Ian at Forgotten Weapons for not bringing up his opinions to try and stay neutral. But at the same time, not addressing a worldwide wave of discrimination and prejudice still feels like taking a stance. Like, is there an acceptable degree of nuance I am missing? Is there some degree of religious intolerance or racism or gender discrimination that should be seen as tolerable? Most things do have some gray area to the conversation, but I just am not feeling that with all the comfort a lot of people now seem to have with treating fellow humans and our planet like crap.
I'm not expecting everyone to draw a line in the sand or anything. I think conversation has lost a lot of nuance. Even just saying something like "I didn't know enough about this topic to have an opinion" is much better than either changing ahead while being ignorant or just rejecting anything you can't currently understand. Refusing to say anything though feels like "I support the thing that is going to make you mad, I'm just afraid to say it."
AvE, for better or worse, at least made it clear who he was. I can respect that to some degree. He at least has conviction. With Ian, I would guess he is something like a conservative libertarian that would support more old school Republicans, but the thing is we'll never know, so while he may support shitty policy to further his personal interests and career, that is still kinda a shitty position when we're talking people's rights and safety being the price for that. And that's the best case scenario. If he's harder right wing than that, it only gets worse.
Talking guns/wati/history I feel it's much harder to dodge taking some stance, because no matter what, every part of that learning ties in with politics. AvE tearing apart stuff and doing shop things rarely needs to lean into politics, so him leaning into it was all on him. I didn't notice anyone calling on him in comments for his political insights.
I do somewhat recall some things with Brownells and the ARs, but at that point I was getting tired of the behind the scenes infighting.
I just assumed they decided to split with each other professionally before they started to dislike each other personally.
Ian not wanting to bite the hand that feeds is understandable to a degree, but him walking that path only helps him and the toxic parts of the fanbase.
Chaokoh Coconut Milk. It's good stuff and authentically Thai. Started using it since it's really available and was recommended on nearly every Thai cooking website.
A few years back, PETA tried to get them and some other folks in trouble for using monkeys to harvest coconuts. I watched videos from both sides, and that job looked much, much scarier to have humans do it, honestly! For the monkeys, it's their natural behavior. They harvest the coconuts in exchange for food and shelter upgrades from being in the wild.
They looked perfectly cooperative even in the PETA videos, and in the vids from the workers, they said they let the monkeys go after a while and while they are working they treat them as one of the team, basically.
If they aren't abusing the monkeys and it's keeping them also moderately exploited humans safe, that seems like a win-win to me.
On the upside, it's given me a near endless amount of history to learn as an adult when I actually want to learn about it. Just search "literally_any_other_country_than_usa history" and it's all brand spanking new stuff to me!
Just learned the beginnings of the establishment of Portugal the other day.
Yeah, I got no time for anyone who finds any entertainment in anything trump related. My extended family is about 80% Trump lovers, and since I can't get rid of them, I can sure as heck choose to ignore anyone I'm not related to.
I was going to mention Karl at InRange as a good example. As a lefty gun owner, it is so rare to find someone in the gun community willing to speak up if they want to have any kind of standing.
C&arsenal I still kinda like, because they seem to steer more clear of any politics in a way better than Ian does, though I don't think I've ever watched their Q&A videos, kinda out of fear at being disappointed after getting meh on Ian. Their videos, while great, are just so dang long! I can't watch 90+ minutes of details on every iteration of rare guns, so I stick to the ones I'm more familiar with.
I haven't checked his channel in a while, but I thought they did movie stuff occasionally (it is Cinemassacre after all!) and I thought for a minute they might lean more heavily into that since he seemed to have an equal passion for film as he did video games. I'd watch him just being himself nerding out on movies.
I used to not be able to deal with Chef John's voice inflections, but after enough times, I started to find it soothing. Great, straightforward, no nonsense videos. I haven't tuned into him for a bit, not for any particular reason, but he is a classic.
AvE - got introduced him just before he decided to start talking positively about MAGA and the similar Canadian trucker protests. Plenty of other people out there doing teardown my videos, so I bailed.
Rose Anvil - loved his work boot teardowns, but he gradually started promoting his own collabs and seemed to favor certain brands even if they were doing things he called shoddy in other brands. Then he started doing a lot with Jim Green boots in South Africa and making a lot of comments that felt pro-Rhodesia to me and started giving me the ick for watching.
Forgotten Weapons I still watch if there is something of particular interest to me. I used to watch every one, but as the country got more MAGA invested and gun culture felt like it was becoming more toxic than usual, I wasn't happy with Ian staying neutral. If he's worried about losing viewers and connections with gun manufacturers, I get that, but I also don't have to like it or support it.
Already running ublock on everything I touch. It's so weird when I go on someone else's computer or phone and see ads on YT!
I was running something with sponsor block in the past, whatever app it was that needed that MicroG utility to install/update, but once that stopped working with Chromecast, i quit bothering with that, but I did love it.
Exactly this. I don't disagree with wanting to cut the weakest members of the team to find someone better, but that's for the primaries.
Looking at real numbers, Fetterman is better than Manchin or Sinema. Fetterman breaks with party lines around 25% of the time while Sinema was at 33% and Manchin was almost 40%. That makes him around twice as good as Manchin.
Idealogically, he also seems to stack up more favorably than both Manchin and Sinema, and a few other well know congressfolk that never get brought up in these conversations. Fetterman, like Manchin and Sinema, just seems to draw more attention to himself when he does it.
Do I dislike Fetterman and want him gone and replaced by someone better? Heck yeah! But the record shows he's about 75% better than having Dr Oz as my senator would have been. Ignoring the times he did do what he was sent to do is very misleading to people that don't take the time to look at actual data, which is going to be nearly everyone. Conor Lamb's ideology score doesn't look any better, so what we got is still about the best we had a chance to get.
I finally got around to remembering to try out Nebula, and I get disappointed because most of the time I forget I have it. Like you, a lot of what I watch is already on YT, and my wife has a grandfathered (for now) premium account which we can share, so I already have ad free YT.
I agree on the discovery too. It feels like I have to work to find something that strikes my fancy if it's not from someone I'm already familiar with.
Not sure if creators having easier access would make it better, and I like seeing what channels are real creators and not AI, but I find once I find someone I like on Nebula, I just watch them on YT instead. I'd really like to support them, but I'm struggling to feel the added value a bit.
President Trump wants four times as much domestic nuclear energy production to satisfy the growing electricity demand from new data centers powering artificial intelligence. He issued four executive orders in May last year to boost government funding for nuclear power and overhaul nuclear regulations. In doing so, though, the president may get rid of some guardrails that protect Americans from the downsides of nuclear energy.
I was able to borrow one from a relative so that was a big help. You should be able to rent one too. If you're a Halloween fan, it should be right up there with a fog machine. It was really fun and easy to use, and cleanup was a breeze because it isn't sticky or anything.
The Webcaster gun is amazing and makes low grade props look way better! A bit of a single purpose item, some may say, but I used one all over to throw a killer Halloween party, and my ex built haunted house attractions and used them there.
Very awesome! Some quick reading says the bones are actually their primary diet. They'd often rather have the bones than the meat. Talk about a biological niche.
Besides being a food source themselves, they break down organic material and transport it to other parts of the ocean. Some studies show up to 10% of the nitrogen needed by phytoplankton is supplied by jellyfish. Beside the plankton feeding cool animal pals like whales, they also generate at least 50% of our atmospheric oxygen. Jellies can also survive in oceanic dead zones and stand a chance at bringing life back into those areas.
I never know how much of these guys is an act/character for the channel and how much is really them. I took AvE as hamming it up at first, with the jokes and language, exaggerating the blue collar "traditional" humor, but joking or not, venture into science denial or supporting fascist types, I'm out.