Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Live your life

I am on YouTube often. I pay for premium so I can watch videos on my large TV without annoying ads. (Word on the street is the Youtube ads have only gotten ever more annoying and frequent?) Hagerty channel car videos look majestic in large format. Shoutout to Henry Catchpole and team for making banger after banger.

I get confused when the algorithm recommends me videos of people’s daily lives (vlogs, in the modern parlance). Confused not at the over-sharing (though I would never), but at the supposed audience size for such content. Think about it: folks are actively watching someone else live life, rather than living their own life.

The platform Twitch has created many millionaires out of people watching them play video games. Watch another person play video games? I much rather play the games myself. Of course, it’s not lost on me that half the time the audience is there to watch a reasonably hot girl, with her boobs barely contained, merely existing. Pretty privilege is exploited to the maximum in our age of streaming.

No hate for the content creators. How a person legitimately makes money is none of my business. Good for them.

I reckon religion is no longer the opiate of the masses. It’s live streaming. The many hours spent watching someone do stuff are hours lost to either productivity, or destructibility. In that way, I guess it’s fine? I’ll take net neutral over net negative every single time. I dare not imagine what would the legion of lonely males do otherwise without the pacifying addiction of OnlyFans.

Me? I’m going to live life, rather than watch someone live theirs.

Marketing on Youtube

A pain point for us car guys is finding a trustworthy shop. Now obviously the dealership is the prime option. And if they screw up, you can always complain to the manufacturer. But for those of us not made of money, we’d like something a little less costly. After the initial warranty period is over, of course.

I think a good way for auto shops to advertise their quality is to start a Youtube channel. Putting it on video will show potential customers what to expect. Are the mechanics knowledgeable? Are jobs done in a timely manner? Is there excellent attention to detail? Think of it as marketing cost. Pay an intern minimum wage to produce videos. The cinematography doesn’t matter as much as being able to show what the shop is capable of.

For example: after watching a few videos of Tyrrell’s Classic Workshop, I can judge the quality of their work to be the highest. If in another multiverse I was endowed with the monetary ability to buy expensive classic cars, I would readily commission Iain Tyrrell Classic Cars to perform maintenance work.

With my BMW M2 nearing its end of dealership service plans (first three years were free, then I bought two more years), I will be looking for an independent shop to continue the car’s maintenance sometime next year. In lieu of running into a local BMW shop’s Youtube videos on the algorithm, I will have to troll the BMW forums on where the local owners prefer to take their cars to.

Ideally, I would have the space and do the maintenance myself. However, as we know, none of us live in the ideal world.

Gamble to rumble

One of my frequent YouTube channels is Tyrrell's Classic Workshop. The latest video shows the proprietor going over to Paris, France for a car auction. In that very car auction is a Ferrari 250 LM that sold for 28 million euros. An unfathomably large sum - to spend on a single car - for a broke person with meager means like myself.

A tremendous amount of money for a thing that will largely sit in an air-conditioned garage for many years. Until the next supremely rich car guy pays even more for it. Heck, the buyer might not even have to pay taxes if the car is stored in a free port. Vintage Ferrari race cars: the only time a car is an “investment”. Your paint-to-sample Porsche 911, sadly, is not. That money is better thrown into an S&P 500 fund.

The pain from being a broke car guy is that I don’t have the means to sample the variety of cars out there. I can only do so in the virtual world of Gran Turismo (the only way I can “own” and “drive” a Ferrari). A large garage full of automobiles is not in the cards for me, in this life time. I’d have to first afford a garage.

Then there are cars that’s wholly out of my income range. As a former owner of a 2015 Porsche 911 GT3, I currently cannot afford a 2025 Porsche 911 GT3. The starting MSRP has ballooned from $125,000 to $200,000. My incomes has not kept up with that inflation. And that’s before ticking a single option box, and paying extortion money to the selling dealership.

I can see why people gamble their whole money into specific stock options and/or crypto. There are so many nice things out there (it’s not only cars) that if we can just get a huge sum of money very quickly, we’d be able to buy and enjoy them all. They don’t want to wait the many decades in working hard and accumulating wealth slowly. Because a 911 GT3 won’t be brand new on sale for that much longer.

In lieu of getting extremely lucky in a gamble - not that I would in the first place, I hugely temper my expectations.

Don't blame the system

This video popped up on my Youtube feed talking about how credit card companies are criminals for charging such high interest rates. But that’s a bit disingenuous. People aren’t forced to deal with credit card issuers. You absolutely do not need a credit card! Cold hard cash will always be king. There’s also the debit card too, if convenience is what you are after.

I’ve had and still have many credit cards, and never have I paid a penny of interest. (Good move by President Trump in directing the Treasury to stop minting pennies.) Credit cards are a fantastic financial tool, so long as the monthly balance gets paid in full. The issuers can charge the most usurious interest rate, and it wouldn’t affect me one iota. That’s how everyone should be using the cards. Visa and MasterCard more than make enough money on swipe fees.

It’s wrong to call something predatory when both parties came to an agreement. The customer borrows money from the credit card companies, with the promise to pay it back. Interest will be charged if payments are late. It’s not the issuer’s fault if the customer did not read the APR fine print. The issuer is not evil because the customer cannot fully pay the balance in a timely manner. It’s hugely infantilizing to obviate responsibility from fully grown adults.

Again, credit cards are not necessary to living. People did just fine before their invention. Whatever life emergency that people use the cards to cover should instead be covered by an emergency cash fund. Don’t have one? Eat only rice/beans/chicken/lentils (a completely nutritious meal for very cheap) until you’ve saved enough. Sorry, DoorDash is no longer in your vocabulary.

If you’re in credit card debt, it’s time to reevaluate your expectations of what is truly necessary in life. The Amazon habit is too difficult to quit? Better increase your income, then.

I know. Right to privilege jail. Right away.

I guess I'll lie down

I had planned to exercise after work today. But I woke up this morning with a super cranky right shoulder. It’s bad enough that I can’t comfortably turn my head rightward, and wearing a backpack actually hurts. Guess what? That means moving a kettlebell around is not going to fly, nor is doing pull-ups. No workout today. I’m not that enthused about it, honestly.

Alas, I am getting to that age (mid 30s) where ailments like that just happen. I’d go to bed with zero pain anywhere and then wake up with a body part gone awry. It can’t possibly be the mattress, because I paid a pretty penny for a quality one about a year ago. Perhaps during sleep I am dreaming something violent happening to me, and it’s transferred over to real life.

Good thing I bought a couch this year! Indeed, every home needs a properly good couch. Lounging around - especially when parts of your body isn’t feeling to great - is the best thing. Watching YouTube on the big TV in couch mode is the only way to enjoy hours of Korean language programming. Of course, you should definitely pay for YouTube Premium. Because adverts in videos are obnoxious. It’s one those things in life where it’s good to throw money at the problem. The quality-of-life increase with YouTube Premium is worth the monthly expense.

My friends are definitely tired of me saying, “Ads? On YouTube?” every time I watch on their TV or computers. I’m simply not used to seeing ad rolls before and during the video. I’m too lazy to even click the skip button using the TV remote. When I’m on the couch, I am on the couch: totally vegged out, not wanting to move any more than necessary.

Because my right shoulder is hurting.

Dash-cam videos of car crashes are fun

As one does I spent a significant part of this weekend sleuthing on Youtube. What took me down the endless rabbit hole this time were dash-cam videos of bad driving and car accidents. As someone who haven’t driven regularly for over seven months now, the wonton idiocy and incompetence of other drivers is something I do not miss. That said, I shall be back on the road sometime next year so those compilations videos are a stark reminder of the potential dangers.

In my previous cars I ran a GoPro as a dash-cam as a sort of insurance policy against possible accidents, ensuring zero ambiguity as to whose fault it was that caused it (unless it’s me?). Luckily in those four years I never had to use it for that specific purpose; the GoPro primarily served to capture stupid drivers on the road and for me to look at the footage later and have a laugh.

It’s interesting to see the dash-cam movement catching on here in America: there’s even dedicated websites and storefronts to the cause now. We’ve all seen the crazy Russian dash-cam footages on Youtube, and in Asia almost all cars (that I’ve been in and I can see) has them installed and running. In supremely litigious United States it was only a matter of time before it absolutely proliferated here. I think it’s a hugely missed opportunity that automakers don’t fit these cameras as standard in cars.

I think in my forthcoming 911 I will bite the bullet and hard-wire a dash-cam unit in so I don’t have to screw and unscrew a GoPro every single time I get into the car.

Perhaps a bit arrogant on my part to say, but from what I can analyze of the dash-cam videos I watched this weekend, much of the accidents can be easily avoided. It’s incredibly easy for our egos to get inflated sat inside a 3000 plus pound rolling missile, and the key is tame that down. Be on a constant alert for bad drivers, and be ready to react when they encroach onto my space. Many of the collisions I saw were the unwillingness of the aggrieved party to acquiesce to the terrible driving of the other.

If another cars wants to cut me off, jump a line, make an illegal turn, go super slowly on a 65 mile-an-hour highway: I let them. The goal is to not play cop and challenge these drivers, but rather extricate myself and my precious car from the situation as soon as possible. The reward of a victorious ego from righting a wrong that ends up in a mangled car is pyrrhic indeed.

But it does make for entertaining videos on Youtube.

There was a time when appendages like these on a car would excite me to no end.

The pivot to video

I very much enjoy writing. Writing on this blog everyday is never a chore, though as with anything in life there are good days and there are bad days. Sometimes the lines flow one right after another, and sometimes the words just can’t seem to materialize and form together cogently, but still I must solider through. The goal is consistency, a daily habit I shouldn’t skip unless there’s truly compelling reasons to (like being debilitatingly sick).

I don’t ever concern over the amount of views this website is getting, and I wouldn’t care if the number is zero. Not once have I clicked on the analytics tab on the Squarespace console; I write (and take pictures) for myself, and if there’s some of you out there that happens to enjoy the content I put out, that’s simply icing on the cake. This isn’t some hopeful launching pad to a freelance career, but rather a genuine gesture at putting myself out there to the (Internet) world.

Of course it’d be incredibly nice to get paid to write and do photography, but that is not that endgame here.

As an avid viewer of Youtube, I’ve been noticing more and more people doing the “pivot” to video. It’s assumed that no one like to read anymore (if periodical circulation is any indication), and vivid visual media is where the money’s at. The barrier to entry is certainly minimal; anyone can start a vlog channel with their smartphone or laptop. With enough hustle and charisma, money from Google AdSense will start rolling in massively.

And there’s plenty of people chasing those AdSense dollars. Within the automotive genre alone are seemingly hundreds of Youtube channels with a bloke, a car, and a camera putting out videos everyday. Due to sheer volume of output, the production value is not that great; the content can be best described as disposable. You can tell their ultimate goal is monetization because in every video they’d pander the audience to click ‘thumbs up’ and subscribe.

Not everyone is like that obviously. Some truly do it for the art and passion, where view counts don’t matter at all. A particular automotive channel I highly respect is SavageGeese.

Far be it for me to criticize people for thinking only in dollars and cents; it doesn’t interest me how another person choose to make a living, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my business, or harm society. When the time comes for me to produce video content, the ethos will be the same as my writing and photography: for the enjoyment of creating art, and sharing a piece of myself with the world.