To raise a giant wave of knowledgeable prehistory enthusiasts who can collectively crest over the Western Sahara, come crashing down and wash away the layers of sediment to find evidence of what H.P. Lovecraft mused as the Nameless City — to find a hint of past greatness and raise from the mists of time some semblance of the thriving subtropical naval metropolis that once sprouted trans-Atlantic and Mediterranean trade networks before being washed away by a catastrophic natural catastrophe and buried by “an impassable barrier of mud”, thus disappearing from sight and fading away into the mists of time.
Check back for further updates as we work to uncover more of the many secrets once thought lost beneath the sands of the Western Sahara. I know where to dig but it’s not my country to dig in. Should I publish that knowledge now, or wait for the ear of a curious and connected Mauritanian or Imashagheni of means to whisper it into?
Some of the tools I use and where to get them
I use PixVerse to illustrate points and concepts in rational analysis and for visual storytelling.
Pundits riding the latest wave of AI panic (of which there have been several since the release of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 1968) are fretting over “deepfakes” and the potential of AI in deceptive practices, for stealing jobs and for making digital crimes easier. But the panic is the only real disruption, as AI simply changes where people are needed and how they add value. AI also makes crimefighting easier for digital detectives. We mustn’t let the panic spill over into suppressing the creative uses of AI now that technology has made it easier than ever for individual artists to make our own videos, to write our own graphic novels and eventually to make our own cinematic movies. For me, deepfakes are no more difficult to spot than the confidence play of a Brooklyn Bridge salesman. It’s part of the savvy that anyone must acquire before moving into the Big City. But now that they’re using… technology… ٩꒰ʘʚʘ๑꒱۶ whoohoohoohoohoohoohoo. Medicine man say “Bad Juju!”. But wait, I thought we were modern now.
I’ve integrated VidIQ into my YouTube channel to coach me along the way to becoming a YouTube expert. VidIQ pops up in YouTube Studio to make helpful suggestions as I’m preparing or polishing a new post. It also sends me periodic emails, each with a link to another installment of the VidIQ video series. In my own good time, this gradually raises my awareness of business structure, promotion and marketing techniques that don’t come to mind instinctively. It will save you time and broaden your growth horizons over time. To me, it has already proven its value in knowledge and expertise. That’s what you need if you’re serious about developing your unique content and would rather focus on that than on how the heck to get it out there, how to get it seen and how to build a trusted brand. That’s where VidIQ comes in.
Here are the features of VidIQ that come into play whenever you post a new video. Their objectives are to maximize the exposure of your content to prospective viewers with aligned interests and to save you time and effort in achieving this exposure.
Clipping is specially applicable to longer videos. It automates the process of selecting key segments of your video to use in promotional clips, and gives you the final say in where to start and end the clip. It then generates and posts these clips as lead generators for the main video you just posted.
Thumbnail Maker helps you craft original thumbnails for your A/B tests, or thumbnails based on the content of your new video to choose between or split test.
Keyword Tools help you build a full complement of keywords to help attract viewers with interests that align with or relate to your new video. It also builds a list for you to choose from of proven keywords and their strength within your subject area.
VidIQ is your usually silent, one-app marketing department, standing ready to politely tap you on the shoulder once in a while with a new idea.
Start building your customer base before you launch a new product or service. AWeber is the email list building tool of choice for the online marketing service I’m using but you can also use it independently. Any way you go, signing up with a list builder is an important step in the marketing side of entrepreneurship in the digital age.
I use Google Workspace to claim and organize my online business assets such as professional email addresses (e.g. David@GoYrOwnWay.com) and internet phone accounts (Google Voice).
My old VPN caused problems. This one solves them. Based in Athens, Greece, I like to think of the Greeks at ZoogVPN as rogue players in the modern world of corporate predation, showing their “frassos” (guts) in raising the middle finger to anyone looking to monitor your online activity. Their man Aristotle laid the foundations of modern computing and, tired AF of tyrants, they also built one of the first formalized democracies, so who better to keep the internet fair and balanced in the modern age?
Referral fees cost you nothing but can accumulate over time into a baseline of support for this channel. Might as well set up any memberships or accounts you think you might need before you get busy on a task or with travel plans and need them in a hurry.
I’ve been a member of the Hilton Honors rewards program for decades now. If you’re a high flyer as I used to be in my software engineering days, and you like to stay at Hilton Hotels, you gotta have this. It’s that simple.
I’ve been a Charles Schwab customer since they absorbed TD AmeriTrade, along with its highly coveted ThinkOrSwim trading platform, which I use literally every weekday to keep an eye on my holdings, which continue to carry me through tough times while offering glimmers of hope for better times in the event of good news about specific holdings or a general market recovery.
