The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 2.18 The Internet Is Freaking Out About Demi Lovato, Rihanna, Ted Cruz Fail, NASA Perseverance

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

Go to https://ritual.com/pdf to get 10% off your first three months!  ONLY 5 DAYS LEFT @ http://ShopDeFranco.com To Get Your February Drop Hoodies, Joggers, Shirts, Beanies, & More! WATCH MY NEW Belle Delphine Podcast: https://youtu.be/v3MnF8EKdGI -- WATCH Full “A Convo With” Podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/ACW  LISTEN On The Podcast Platform Of Your Choice: http://LinksHole.com WATCH the ACW Clips channel!: https://youtube.com/ACWClips -- 00:00 - Where Ya Going, Ted? 00:19 - Fun Life Expectancy News 00:59 - Rihanna Backlash, Demi Lovato DocuSeries, and Cameo $$$ 03:57 - Facebook Blocks All News and More For Australia 07:35 - Sponsor 08:27 - Texas Updates and Ted Cruz's Cancun Trip 12:49 - NASA Livestream -- ✩ SUPPORT THE SHOW ✩ ✭ BUY our GEAR, Support the Show!: http://ShopDeFranco.com ✭ Lemme Touch Your Hair: http://BeautifulBastard.com ✭ Paid Subscription: http://DeFrancoElite.com  ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩  Life Expectancy Falls: https://www.axios.com/us-life-expectancy-2020-pandemic-ba166c4b-c29d-4064-9085-4ef6c94fc2df.html Rihanna Faces Backlash for Photo With Religious Pendant: https://roguerocket.com/2021/02/18/rihanna-sparks-outrage/ Demi Lovato YouTube Original Docuseries to Air in March: https://roguerocket.com/2021/02/18/demi-lovato-doc/ Cameo Raked in $100 Million in 2020: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/cameo-steven-galanis-celebrity-videos-1234908473/ Facebook Blocks News in Australia Over Proposed Media Compensation Law: https://roguerocket.com/2021/02/18/facebook-news-australia/  Texans Still Face Broken Pipes, Flooding, and More as Million Regain Power: https://roguerocket.com/2021/02/18/texas-pipes-water/ How to Manage Thawing or Burst Pipes: https://www.kxan.com/news/local/what-to-expect-once-your-pipes-start-to-thaw-out-steps-to-take-if-you-have-broken-pipes/ Sen. Ted Cruz Will Fly Home from Cancun After Travelling There Wednesday: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/ted-cruz-cancun-texas-winter-storm.html NASA Rover Perseverance Touches Down on Mars: https://youtu.be/Y2kFxwrZU1g ✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩  North Korean Hackers Accused of Stealing $1.3 Billion: https://roguerocket.com/2021/02/18/north-korean-hackers-accused-of-stealing-1-3-billion/  ——————————     Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg, Maxx Enright Produced by: Amanda Morones Art Director: Brian Borst  Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Cory Ray, Neena Pesqueda, Brian Espinoza Production Team: Zack Taylor ———————————— #DeFranco #Rihanna #DemiLovato Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious. Don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious. Don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious. Hmm, how odd. If only this man had consistently shown us who he is for the past four years. Anyway, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. It is Thursday, February 18th, 2021.

And let's jump into the news of the day. And for today's show, I figured, you know, because the news is inherently negative, even if it's a negative story, I'm gonna try and introduce it as a positive story. Starting with a fantastic and very exciting news, if you're someone that is not a fan of life, the US life expectancy has gone down.

With the New York Times reporting that it is the largest single year drop since World War II, with life expectancy falling by about a year, which brings us back to around 2006 expectancy. And even better news is that the life expectancy for men here is 75.1 years, women it's 80.5 years. So for men, that's great news. That's 5.4 years of not having to hear

blah, blah, blah, equal pay, equal rights. And instead just peace and quiet. I might get canceled for this show. Let's continue. Next up, we have fantastic news for me because I didn't know who I was gonna put in the thumbnail today, but we had Rihanna facing backlash. And this because she recently posted a photo

where she was posing topless while wearing a pendant necklace of Hindu God Ganesha. With the post seeming to cause even more outrage because it came less than a week after a model pose in front of a Hindu temple wearing lingerie from Rihanna's brand. Though there we saw the model apologize saying the shoot was her own, not the company's.

So you did have some outlets saying that the photos were shared and later removed from the brand's main social media accounts. But the main issue for people seeming to be, this is kind of more and more of using a religion as an aesthetic. There's people finding that disrespectful and offensive and a number of people saying that Rihanna and her brand

are kind of repeat offenders of doing this. Where she had previously had that controversy with the Muslim community that we covered. Then in, actually I'm going to abandon the whole framing stories as a positive thing. Cause not even cause I'm gonna offend people. whole framing stories as a positive thing. Because not even because I'm going to offend people. I just think there's like a 3% chance that hell actually exists.

So I'm trying to avoid that. So I guess technically this could be seen as a positive through struggle story. If you didn't see the trailer for the new YouTube Originals documentary, Demi Lovato Dancing with the Devil came out yesterday. The series is four parts. It airs March 23rd. And most importantly, it deals with Demi Lovato's life and her overdose in 2018. Right, what led up to that moment,

what her path afterwards has looked like, and in the trailer, we learn some shocking information about that incident. Things like it resulted in her having three strokes, a heart attack, and doctors telling her family that she had five to 10 minutes to live. But they're also saying in a call to the press that she's still dealing with the effects

of everything explaining. "'I was left with brain damage "'and I still deal with the effects of that today. I don't drive a car because there are blind spots in my vision. I also for a long time had a really hard time reading. I feel like they kind of are still there to remind me of what could happen if I ever get into a dark place again.

You know, with this, it's hard to talk about this like it's just in this bubble. We've seen a number of stories where we kind of look back to the way that celebrities have been viewed, how they've been treated. This in large part, I think, led by that new Britney Spears documentary that we talked about.

So it's been leading to more discussions about mental health, the way that we treat it, both individually and as a society. And looking at Demi in this documentary, it appears that this is gonna be something covered there as well. So I know that I said I was abandoning it because I was kind of going for comical effect earlier,

but I think this is actually a very positive story. It is something that comes from pain and struggle, but the key thing here is that a story is being shared, something that is cautionary and hopefully educational. Also kind of easy transition here regarding celebrities and audiences. We got the interesting business news, the Cameo has been proven to be both a successful business

on its own and a platform for creators to generate revenue. And if you're unfamiliar, Cameo is a site where you can buy personalized shout out videos from actors, musicians, athletes, YouTubers, and more. And reportedly in a new interview with Variety, the co-founder and CEO of the company said that in 2020, the company made a gross revenue of $100 million with 75% of that money going to the pockets of talent.

Which, I mean, those are impressive numbers on their own, but it also highlights significant growth being 4.5 times higher than the year prior. As far as the top seller on the app, it may be surprising to you. It's Brian Baumgartner, the guy who played Kevin on The Office, with reports saying that at the end of last year,

just from this app, he made a million dollars. As far as those right behind him, you have Brett Favre, Snoop Dogg, and Gilbert Gottfried. Then, in really interesting news about the consumption and output of news, we should talk about Australia. And this, in part, because Facebook has taken the unprecedented step today of blocking news access

in Australia in a drastic escalation of a battle over a proposed law in the country. And so under this legislation, which is expected to pass in the next week, tech giants would be required to negotiate compensation with news organizations for the content that appears on their platform. With the argument being here that newspapers

have been steadily declining while big companies like Facebook and Google, which have become major distributors of news, continue to make billions of dollars from digital advertising. You have those who support the law saying these massive companies, right, the Facebook and Googles of the world,

they have a responsibility to help support media companies who links they profit off of by driving traffic to the sites. But you also have Facebook and Google fighting very hard against it, saying that it is unworkable for a number of reasons, and arguing that it would incentivize the news organizations to jack up prices during negotiations.

So now with it being all but certain that Australia will approve the law very soon, Facebook has doubled down. And not only does their current ban block Australians from sharing news from both domestic and international sources on the platform, it also prevents all Australian publishers from being seen on Facebook everywhere else in the world.

With it also going beyond news, according to reports, pages for state health departments were wiped clean just three days before the launch of a nationwide COVID-19 vaccination program. Emergency services were also taken out, including the Bureau of Meteorology, which has been providing essential weather data in the middle of a fire season.

Pages for nonprofits and charities were also taken away, but at the same time, groups dedicated to spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines, 5G, Bill Gates, and the end of the world remained up. And Facebook, for their part, blamed the disappearances on the proposed legislation with a spokesperson telling reporters,

"'As the law does not provide clear guidance "'on the definition of news content, "'we have taken a broad definition "'in order to respect the law as drafted.'" Now with this, they did eventually promise to revive the public service pages, but the move still prompted a ton of backlash. Many politicians in Australia condemning Facebook

for blocking health information in a pandemic and censoring news. Communications Minister Paul Fletcher accused the company of creating what he called a public safety issue. Prime Minister Scott Morrison also taking aim at the platform on the platform. Writing Facebook's actions to unfriend Australia today,

cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointed. These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behavior of big tech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them.

With them adding that the government would not back down and urging Facebook to be more like Google, work constructively with them. Right, because you have Google essentially taking the opposite approach as Facebook. Google who, yes, just a few weeks ago threatened to make their search engine unavailable in the country, started the day by announcing

that they had made a three-year agreement to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for its content in Australia, as well as the United States and the UK. And notably, this is just one of several multimillion dollar deals that Google has recently struck with other Australian publishers.

And the company has said that it will announce more partnerships soon. And while yes, you had many people praising Google for their approach here, you also had some media watchdog groups worried, saying these deals further the ability for large tech companies to make news organizations beholden to them, with others also specifically

expressing concern about Google's deal with Murda, who notably has been lobbying the Australian government to push tech companies to pay news organizations for years now, and who the New York Times described as quite cozy with Australia's conservative government. But still, at the same time, you have people saying this is a net good for journalism and likely a model for other countries.

And personally, I will say I'm torn on this situation because while I do think that there needs to be more money in news, the money in my opinion doesn't need to be going to the massive big organizations, right? The Murdochs of the world. Rather, something needs to be put into place that gets more money to local news because the local news is struggling right now.

And that's troubling because that's where a lot of people who don't watch shows like mine can get their news. It's also where a lot of the stories that end up getting national attention start. But yeah, ultimately that is where we are with the situation right now. We're gonna have to wait and see what the government does, what the organizations do.

And then let's talk about the state that Ted Cruz apparently is too busy to help on the ground, Texas. So starting with good news, bad news, power outages in Texas Thursday morning fell to under 500,000, which is a lot of people, but still way less than the 3 million that we talked about in yesterday's show. According to the state's main grid operator,

the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, AKA ERCOT, those remaining outages are largely weather-related and not connected to problems related to forced outages. While the return of power to millions is significant, Texans are still facing a host of problems. For one, there have been numerous reports of carbon monoxide poisoning as people without power have tried to keep warm in their cars

or through other means. In fact, an adult and a child were found dead Tuesday after running their car inside of their garage, which prompted Houston police to issue a statement saying, "'Cars, grills, and generators should not be used "'in or near a building.'" However, as people struggle for warmth there, this is not an isolated incident.

Last night, for example, six children and four adults were rushed to the hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning after setting up grills inside their home. And in addition to all of that, even for those with power now, water has become a major issue. Yesterday, 7 million Texans were placed on a boil advisory with about 263,000 also without functioning water providers.

A situation that has resulted in videos popping up online where you see people lining up in a park to fill up buckets of water. The Food and Drug Administration and the National Weather Service even citing melting and boiling snow as an emergency option if people cannot find water elsewhere. And for some, all these problems only seem to compound

in the form of burst pipes, right? Pictures and videos circulating all over social media. So as a result, a number of local media outlets have begun to outline steps that people can take once their pipes start to thaw or if they break. I'll link down below to those resources. And alongside the overwhelming amount of problems, there has also been a large aid response.

Yesterday, a FEMA spokesperson said that the agency had sent 60 very large generators to help keep hospitals and other critical infrastructure open. FEMA also saying it sent millions of liters of water and tens of thousands of blankets. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki adding that FEMA is preparing to move diesel into Texas

to keep that backup power going. Reportedly, Governor Greg Abbott and President Joe Biden have also discussed the possibility of extra funding for people's electricity bills as well as for burst pipes. Right, because as we talked about when the first storm hit, electrical demand surged. Many Texans also have plans connected to the wholesale price of electricity.

That in turn means that they're potentially set to be hit with astronomical bills. We also got the news that federal regulators have launched an investigation into this week's massive power outage, which is notable because these two agencies did pretty much the same thing back in 2011 when there was that other snowstorm in Texas.

They offered advice on how to keep such an event from happening again in the future, but here we are. So because of that, key questions in this investigation will include what power plant operators did to protect equipment from the cold, as well as what ERCOT did to make sure that those plants were ready. And that last part is key because ERCOT

is so incredibly important because it controls one of the main power grids in the United States. And of course, with Texas having its own grid, that makes the transfer of energy from these other grids very limited. Right, which means Texas is able to regulate its own grid in-house. It also means that it's largely out of reach

of federal regulations. Regarding that specific angle of the story, we saw people like former governor Rick Perry seeming to say even with this situation, we want to keep federal regulations out of the state. With Perry saying the Texans would be okay without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.

And adding, try not to let whatever the crisis of the day is take your eye off of having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically, and strategically. And then finally with Texas, of course, we'll talk about Ted Cruz. Texas Senator has been facing a ton of backlash after photos emerged and that it was later confirmed

that he flew his family to Cancun. Or with many people essentially going, wait, so the Republican Senator who constantly tries to dunk on Democrats for being out of touch elitist, well millions of his constituents are suffering on the ground he's flying to a vacation destination with his family. I've lost count on the number of ways

this guy should go fuck himself." Yeah, the most recent update to the story is that Cruz has now released a statement saying that, like millions of Texans, our family lost heat and power too. With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends and claiming, wanting to be a good dad, "'I flew down with them last night

and I'm flying back this afternoon.'" Which I will say has been called into question if this has always been the plan. This because the initials are Crew, right? Ted Cruz's real first name is Rafael. It was reported that they briefly appeared on a standby list on Thursday, though disappearing. People also questioning why he would have to chaperone

his daughters if his wife was also going. People saying that doesn't look like a one day suitcase. And ultimately, as far as my opinion, while I do not 100% definitely know what the truth is in this situation, I am incredibly skeptical of Ted Cruz here. Mainly because of all the Ted Cruz actions and words from him over the years. But yeah, take that as you will

and to the people of Texas, please stay safe out there. And that is where I'm going to end today's show because I want to watch this NASA live stream. If you didn't know, the Perseverance Rover is set to land on Mars today. I'm finishing up today's show with just under seven minutes to go before atmospheric entry. And as much as I love you guys, this is very, very exciting.

In fact, if you didn't watch it live, I'll link down below so you can check it out. It's really interesting. The mission primarily is about trying to find signs of ancient life. There's also more to it. Like I said, links down below. I'm gonna go watch history.

Thanks for being a part of this. Of course, if there's anything that stood out to you today, let me know in those comments down below, your opinions, your thoughts. I'd love to see those. Thanks as always for being a part of my daily dives into the news, subscribe and hitting that like button, all the good stuff.

Also, if you missed yesterday's show, you wanna catch up, I think I got suppressed. You can click or tap right there. But with that said, of course, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love yo faces and I'll see you next time. Touchdown confirmed.

Perseverance, safe place on the surface of Mars. Ready to begin seeking the sands of past life.