My Soapbox – Driven Outside

So, I am going to rant for just a bit, bear with me…

-Mounts Soapbox –

“Ahem… I set a goal to be a better filmmaker, content provider, and maker five months ago. Part of that goal was to reach the 10,000 view threshold to monetize my YouTube account. I did not plan to quit my J-O-B, or be internet famous, I just wanted to use it as a milestone for progress toward the goal and I nailed it on January 4^th! 10,000 views!! I was so stoked that I woke my wife up way too late one night to tell her. My account was under review for 2 weeks and I was finally officially monetized for two days – two WHOLE days – before BAM!! I was demonetized with a huge group of small and smaller content providers. Son of a…

While this was a while in coming, it looks like the process/decision was sped up when a guy with 15+ million subscribers named Logan Paul posted a video of a suicide victim. 1^st, what a fucking privileged asshat. WTF is wrong with people?! He should be forever ashamed, and spend a great deal of his YouTube revenue on suicide prevention and advocacy. What should’ve happened following the public and advertiser outrage was YouTube suspending or deleting his channel, but that dude generates SERIOUS ad revenue, so… What happened instead was that YouTube took him off the top-tier ad group and YouTube punished the SHIT out of the small folks by demonetizing channels with less than 4000 hours of watch-time AND less than1000 subscribers to ‘protect their core values’? Makes zero sense and this guy will continue to post and earn $$$ even at the lower tier.

OK, fine, fuck’em. I was not doing this for some mythical pot of gold. This setback is just going to make me dig deeper. I am 10% to the new threshold and I will keep slogging on. Keep making and doing. Post better and better content. This will make me leaner, stronger, bigger, better, more… A better speaker, better filmmaker, I will get lighting and sound for my videos dialed, have awesome content, and be a better person from it all. Success doesn’t teach half as much as adversity.

To all effected by the YouTube demonetization BS: Don’t quit! Keep slogging on. Keep making and doing. You too will be all the better for it. Send me your channel and I will follow you and help with the watch hour threshold. As I said, I had just hit the monetization before all of this and we will get there again. It will take some hard work but, we can all help each other out.”

– Dismount Soapbox –

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have been on a 5-board bench kick this year. I have built five so far and two more are in the works. I am also putting together at least three 6-board benches in the next 6-8 months, which share similar design and construction. Both items are classified as “Furniture of Necessity” or “Early Rustic” if you go shopping for one or the other. The patterns for them are roughly the same now are they were 2000 years ago and they lend themselves to hand-tool only construction.

I am not a Luddite that eschews a table saw, not in the least. I just don’t have one in France and am not buying one (If someone dropped off a new 10” cabinet saw and a compound sliding miter saw at my door, I guarantee that I could shoe-horn them nicely into the GROP). It has taken me almost 10 months to decide that I need a plug-in circle saw, but only to speed up the breakdown of thick planks and beams – I will be shopping at a pawnshop in the city though. I am just not spending the money to set up a new cabinet shop when we are leaving in a couple of years. Tools here are CRAZY expensive and most of the stuff available to non-professionals is crap. A Ridged-type contractors saw (bottom rung of what I consider acceptable for cabinet work) here with a real fence and a solid top will set you back the equivalent of $1100.00. Same saw at any Home Depot in the USA is about $500.00. A 7.25” Makita circle saw is the equivalent of $230.00 and an 18vt Ryobi drill with two batteries? $195.00!

Anyway, back to benches and chests… While in Paris last month we visited a plethora of museums and I kept finding little nuggets in the paintings, tapestries, and stained glass: top edge profiles, proportions, leg cutouts, etc… I am going to incorporate a couple of the details into my planed remaining work this year and next – just because I can. Below are a few of those details. They were for sure more to see, but not all museums allow pictures in their halls.

Driven Outside

Tag: My Soapbox

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