#I've had an iPhone 8 for as long as I can remember

[shima-draws]

After maybe like four years I FINALLY have a new phone

[justslowdown]

Creative development I didn't see coming... I've always been an intensely visual artist and trying to learn instruments feels like my hands are made of wet spaghetti. I was too afraid of embarrassment, even alone, to learn to sing before the past 8 months or so, but I've found my voice and opened up new parts of it

Turns out the painful process of getting out of your head, of discovering how much more there is to experience, can open up new ways of processing and creating

I won't be ready to share any of it for a long time

but it feels right to be doing this, just like the collage-poetry

I keep waking up with song in my head, or finding it when I'm running or in some other flow state, that I've never heard before but isn't new at all--it feels like it's always been there. Not just lyrics, but the rhythm and pitch of it just feel... natural or innate

The subconscious and the deeper current of the river is so much more aware than surface consciousness! Learning to experience, sense, and trust the 90% of my mind and soul that ISN'T conscious thought has been necessary for this, I think

The songwriting comes easily, easier than poetry for me, which is strange because I could never incorporate rhyme in my poems and rhythm was challenging. Now, as long as I don't think about it, the songs are just... there, if I can write them down before they go. Or sing them! That's what makes the rhyme and flow make sense

The first time it happened, I was trail running and a ray of sun hit my eyes through the pine trees. I was struck with an intense sense of singularity, of being there, then, and how deep of an honor it is to experience living. A few lines bubbled up in my head and more came as I kept running

The strangest thing is that I only understand about half of what I'm writing. I'm very certain the other half is going to make sense eventually. I don't mean sense as in logical; it's all easy to follow, but experiential/emotional/spiritual/metaphysical. The discovery ahead is thrilling to me

Especially when I'm in a half-lucid dream and experiencing so much more that I CAN'T bring back in conscious thought, but feels the exact same way!

I still get that "can't bring it back" with the instrumental or electronic parts of the songs, which is intensely frustrating. Some of them are like Aphex Twin, Royksopp, and Sufjan (of course) had a weird baby, some are more like Beach House, or basic indie singer-songwriter stuff, so it's all over the place

Rarely do they stick in my brain, since I can't play any instruments (yet? I'm hating trying to learn from videos, I need human hands to help show me)

so I don't have context to remember the "grammar" of it

Going to try and learn how to do some electronic stuff today. At least I already know how to use Audacity from my freaky, morbid, multimedia sculpture days. Bless programs that still function exactly the same instead of looking like iPhone apps........

Speaking of, I finally moved all of this from my notes app and something about how bare bones basic Notepad is has sparked some organization

[lexosaurus]

Lexx, outta curiosity do you have an archive of all your past banners and icons? I'm curious to see the evolution if so

As a matter of fact, I do save them all!

Here is a history of the icons (no dates tho cuz im not digging that info up):

Technically the first icon I had was just a generic dp screenshot. I can't remember what is was now. I think it was like 6-8 months before I began making my own icons.

This was the first "custom" icon I made. I created this amazing look on an app called Pizap, which was the first photo editing app I'd ever tried. At the time, it was free to use (I don't believe this is the case anymore? I don't have it anymore so idk). As you can see from the incredible quality, I was truly a master from the start.

I could be mixing up 2 and 3's order, but I'm like 99% sure this was icon 2. I made it for Pride Month because I'm asexual, and I used that same app. I put this icon in every June.

This is icon 3, again still using Pizap. This is sort of the "base" icon that I use for everything now. I really should update this now, but part of me almost likes the retro meme aesthetic.

Here's icon 4, which is just icon 3 but with a Disney Princess hat on it that I put in using Photopea my beloved. I made this after the premier of the Disney soundtrack I participated in.

Icon 5, this was the one you made me in ms paint. Literally still obsessed with it thank u 🤌

After that I went back to icon 3 for a while. This one has always just spoken to me in a way that no other icon ever could.

When Apple threw the goddamn chains on Tungle dot gov and banned like 300 fucking tags, I quickly took icon 3 and threw a censored bar over it because Apple decided to ban the tag "Lex". This tag is still banned on my iphone, along with many others.

As of two days ago, this is now my icon, which will stay for as long as this meme is hot. Honestly, I am just honored that people are finally acknowledging one of my favorite movies of all time. The sound design on it was impeccable, and the score was a true masterpiece.

As for my headers, I've only ever had like 2 of them so they're not really an evolution. I plan on actually redoing it soon because there's something about this design (I'm not specifying what) that has always bugged me. So I can do the header evolution after I've sorted that out.

But honestly I love making little iterations to my icon. I just think it's really funny. The goal is always to be recognizable to those glancing by, but still different enough that someone who actually looks will be like, "wait a second..." (with the exception of pride month which has ace colors).

[incarnateirony]

This is an older chart I had from a few years ago, but this should actually help understand what's going on right now, and why I'm focusing so much on demo and paying attention to the contents of the ad slots. Since then, demos have come down across the board considerably, as we know nothing is running a 1.0 or even close anymore, top non-events are like 0.06 these days. (also a good way to meter and remember decline)

So we're going to use these numbers as ROUGH GUIDELINES, but then we're gonna sort of. Parallel this. These were across different networks

BUT ON TO THE POINT. And figuring out more reasons you can know The Winchesters is safe as shit, even if everything under it is about to die bloody.

Check the average cost per spot, and

Now, ads are sold in that 18-49 everywhere. Due to ABC Chicanery in the 50s that just got built into the bones of the industry, ABC long ago convinced the world they were the best bc of the 18-49 demo, everyone else onboarded, and it's been the standard outside of CW for 70 years. Resultingly, 18-49 is super high value and everything else is just like. meh. we'll buy the leftovers.

I'll also be pulling data from here.

Identifying the demographics of valuable and potentially valuable customers is useful for targeting campaigns and building audiences for remarketing. For an ecommerce site, you might want to identify user groups with the highest ecommerce conversion rate or revenue. For a content-focused site, you might want to identify user groups with the highest engagement (for example, as measured by session duration or pageviews/screenviews per session).

The Age, Gender, and Interests reports all include engagement and conversion metrics. You can start from any of these reports to build a picture of your high-value customers.

In this example, the Age report shows that 18-24 and 25-34-year-olds together make up the majority of users, but the 25-34 segment contributes the most revenue and has the highest conversion rate.

If you drill in to that age group to see how it breaks down by gender, you see less disparity in the volume of sessions (still 3:1 in favor of male), but a much larger disparity in revenue (58:1). The conversion rate is 2:1 male to female, but the revenue per transaction is 9:1 in favor of male users.

This isn't Supernatural, btw. If you break down SPN's age skew, the male and female demos looked level by the end, and that demo itself has 2 women heads to 1 male head. And now spnwin has higher women demo anyway, and they're showing the highest retention rate while older users drop off. So currently, 18-49 women are just dominating Spnwin, but there's still a strong presence of men. So you get women-skewing ads but still a healthy mix of gender neutral stuff guys can like, like marvel.

You can venture through that link to dig deeper, like which other nonclassical demos (technophiles, nerds, etc) also bring in the best revenue. Yes, we can and will see and figure that out.

You can use the same kinds of analysis to find low-value audiences that you used to find your high-value audiences: rather than look for high revenue and conversion rates, you simply look for the opposite. Once you’ve identified those low-value customers, you can then exclude them from seeing your ads. (*this is largely in digital distribution, like through the app; they can't individually target your TVs.)

So anyway, this is how ads break down. Then we go to this post someone helpfully tortured themselves so I don't have to.

Basics:

TW: iPad, iPhone, Marvel, Disney, Amazon Prime Video young romance films, Jeep car ads, 4 Kohls/Old Navy/Walmart ads, lots of ads with Millennials.

Walker: iPhone, Shingles vaccine (for those over 50), Medicare health plans, Olay wrinkle cream, Ford car ads, 2 Kohls ads, a mental health ad, some ads with Millenials.

Windy: iPad, Disney, Shingles vaccine, flu shot, dry skin cream, probiotic, ads with grandkids, 8 Kohls/Old Navy/Walmart/grocery store ads, no car ads.

Okay so I've helpfully highlighted. Bold is like. Big buku buck buyers. Italic is like, they're decently high end, it's not friggin disney or amazon, but I mean. They're solid big slot buyers. Crossout is "over 50, low monetization, health or other packaging not slotted 18-49" that are residual ad buy on lower value space. Beyond that, you see which has a few millenials and which is trusted with none. ipad and disney you can still pitch at old people and go "HEY CHRISTMAS IS COMING BUY FOR YOUR KIDS, THEY'LL LIKE THIS MOVIE, IT HAS YOUR FAVORITE 90S ACTOR VOICING A DOG, YOU'LL LIKE IT TOO"

But ultimately just look at the aggregate. TW doesn't even have SPACE for garbage ads. Meaning those slots drive up all the more.

Now look at that first chart again.

so ok, we know these numbers are inflated. But let's play a game. What shows are the highest demo here, which are the lowest demo, and how much do they cost.

See even that isn't always equal. The connors space is worth half as much as This Is Us, even with near similar audience. But we're gonna mark that as a breakout exception. Kinda like Winchesters. Winchesters HAS no extra space so competitors and buyers literally had to compete on those slots, inflating that show's value.

But now that I've broken down things like how to drill in and find the right advertisers, or mentioned risking a rare high ad in a low slot, you can see, there's almost calculated risks in that, and they know they'll hit at least a FEW target eyes, but they spend less for the slot.

So since Winchesters is running 0.2+ in +7, and Walker is running about 0.12 in it, we're gonna compare that between the high yield ones (let's just use BBT instead of This Is Us, to be Fair) at the top and the other lower running shows.

For example;; Empire looks weak in demo compared by what it's surrounded with!! what gives! ... well, uh. Look at the audence size. It's less than half what's around it but pulls well above half value. If you doubled that demo on magic audience powers that'd be above a 3.0. So that's actually a very dense collection of exactly the eyes you're looking for. It's highly monetizable. You are targeting EXACTLY the fuckin people you want.

...why the connors is so low I genuinely don't know. There's gotta be some logic there that's whistling over my head specific to that product.

You will see though, none of these actually portray the 0.2> 0.12 drop because that's almost half. The closest drop you see there is BBT to Grey's Anatomy which is STILL a hit show. 286K to 205K difference, between 2.27 to 1.73. That's what, a reduction of less than 25%? Try almost 50%. We'll be GENEROUS and say Walker is running 60% of Winchesters. 172K/spot even if we round up. And that's if we don't further value/devalue these shows based on their digitals, while CW is bundling packages together and Winchesters is pulling 3x Walker in the app. What's 1/3 of 286k--94K? if we round up i think. Cool, so if we give Winchesters that 286K for its Cdigitals, Walker's digitals are worth like. 94k. So then these bundle in averages and you get like. 286K/slot vs 133/slot if we're just. Roughing out this math with these averages.

[stares into the camera in the value gap]

So then we come down to Nexstar talking about what's monetizable. Ok. Well it's not working in the app, it's not working live and it's not working in DVR, it doesn't have international travelability. Can anyone tell me why they would offer these products more than 1M/licensing fee? There are typically four commercial breaks in a half-hour show, each lasting two minutes. This equates to a total of 16 30-second commercials.

So let's say. 16 x these numbers. 16 x TW, 4.576 Million in ads. 16 x Walker, 2.128M in ads. Keep in mind CW ads actually pull lower than these, so let's cut out about 25% from these numbers. Winchesters about 3.43M, Walker about 1.596M/ep. Live and app digitals they earn from.

OK. So. We'll just round. 3.4M vs 1.6M.

Now, Nexstar is talking about capping their licensing fee at 1M, with exdceptions to shows based on their performance and monetization, eg, is it worth it for them to put more in.

If walker is worth 1.6M to Nexstar per episode, and costs about 3M/episode to make especially by next year, can anyone tell me why Nexstar is gonna give them more than 1M? If they even upped it to 1.5 they'd be breaking even, not making money. Who's gonna pay the other 2 million? Is CBS gonna invest it and hope for mass licensing to pay it back? When it has REALLY low travelability outside of the US because nobody else gives a fuck about cowboy cops?

Who the fuck are they gonna sell it to, for how much? about 20 eps at about 2 million cost to CBS is 40 million. Where do you foresee Walker pulling 40million licensing out of this in the international markets? They could get a little in canada, brazil, great britain and AU, but already low volumes. It's a third as likely to draw interest in its top cross-the-border, and one fourth to one fifth in the next four markets. Where does CBS make its money back if it foots the bill.

CBS *might* opt to try to argue for a renancel "for its fans" which means "to be able to wring out every dollar, package and boost a final season, and prepare bulk marketing of final season DVDs and stuff for a final boom". And then pay off the balance. Because Nexstar sure fuckin wont.

Now let's look at Winchesters. It isn't even in a fuckton of markets yet, doesn't have bulks of seasons already available to watch, etc. But it's still locally pulling 3x digitals AND has some international demand as other markets open up and/or buzz about it.

We know in this figure we're saying it's worth about 3.4 M.

We know it is co produced by WB, CBS, and Chaos Machine. While walker only has CBS to fill in the bill Nexstar won't, Chaos Machine can opt to finance *them fuckin selves* if for some reason WB doesn't see fit to internationally market it and use that as a reason to suggest. Let's look at the Winchesters international markets while it's barely even in any:

it's not until markets 6 and 7 we hit 1/3 value, and markets 8-13 that hit that "1/4th to 1/5th" area. Several are around half or above. Average the first 3 after the US and that's 3 50% travelability zones. These are zones that will want it, and pay good money for it.And again, we don't even have many markets actually open. This is just the fuckin general demand.

So we know for a fact TW is worth WB investing in, but the question is, will it even have to?

3.4M vs 1.6M. If Walker gets about 1M from nexstar, they're looking for a ~roughly 33% margin which seems fair. About a third profit.

So let's take a third out of 3.4 2.278, rounding we'll just say 2.3. So nexstar could give Winchesters about 2.3 million and still make the same PERCENTAGE of profit as Walker, which actually constitutes *far more profit*

At its current age, Winchesters costs about 2.5 to produce. So either: minding the raw volume of profit they get, they can chunk in that extra couple thousand. Or, if they're still gonna be cheap asses, that remaining 200K or so can be first opted to WB who could easily find the value in it, then to CBS coproducing, and then ultimately to Chaos Machine, Jensen and their financiers. each source could put in 67K, which is pennies for them, mere pocket change, and nobody fuckin flinches.

(this also fails to divide out any other expenses for nexstar like payments to owners and royalties and shit, so realistically their profit margin is much slimmer, take that down to another third of themselves.

So that 600K profit per ep for walker on 1M licensing fees if someone else made up the other millions, that looks more like 200K still for Nexstar. But that 1.1million of Winchesters divided down to a third is still almost 400K/episode. After paying out those costs and fees and all the shit associated.

So even if Walker was reduced to 1M/ep licensing by Nexstar, Nexstar still barely sees shit back from it. Whereas if they gave Winchesters 2.3M they'd make twice as much out of it still on raw profit than they would giving Walker 1M.

There's just. There's no competition here yall.

Don't even get me started on Windy. That shit was dead on arrival. The only way it survives is to try to employ its lower budget, murder Walker, move it into Walker's place, assume it pulls the boosted numbers from timeslot, and hope it keeps the old audience. This IS a small potential because its CW app views are doing about 2x Walker, which is why it wedged in a FEW solid ads, even if still skewing meh. But it's really not enough to argue to save it.

That meeting Jared had was no doubt "either wrap it up, talk to CBS about financing your final season, or decide if you can import everybody to Windy, you've got a few months to come up with an answer."

by the way, this ENTIRE THING is working on the assumption that The Winchesters' digital value etc and its overpacked high end buyers *aren't* driving up the real estate the same as Last Of Us, which was worth double its competitors for that space. Otherwise enjoy 8.6M profit.

[creativecourse]

14 Day Filmmaker Smartphone Edition Information How To Create Professional Videos Using Your Smartphone In Just 14 Days The 14 Day Filmmaker Smartphone Edition is an online course about making films using a smartphone. This course focuses on how to use a smartphone to shoot and produce professional-quality videos within 14 days. Who is this course for? You want to learn how to start shooting professional-looking content, but you don't know exactly where to get started. You value SPEED! The primary goal of this course is to teach you FASTER than any other resource on planet earth. We will pack 2 years of learning into the next 14 days People who have already started shooting content, but are struggling to get the perfect "cinematic look" What You’ll Learn In This Course? Day 1: How to Unlock Cinematic Smartphone Settings Day 2: Mastering your iPhone or Android Cameras Day 3: Best Smartphone Camera Gear & Accessories (Discounts) Day 4: Beautiful Composition... Explained! Day 5: Cinematic Camera Movements Day 6: Hollywood Lighting Techniques (Made Fast & Easy) Day 7: Recording Clean Audio On Your Smartphone Day 8: Storytelling & Viral Videos Day 9: Cinematic Smartphone Editing Day 10: Mastering Your Editing Apps Day 11: How to Edit on Your Computer Day 12: Youtube Mastery Day 13: Social Media Superstar Day 14: Commercial Content Creator About Author My name is Anthony Gallo and I've had a camera in my hand for as long as I can remember. I started with a cheap $250 camera (that I borrowed from my girlfriend) and since then I've used smartphones, Gopros, professional DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, and even cinema cameras worth upwards of $50,000! I've made over a million dollars through content creation shooting commercials, music videos, real estate videos, travel & tourism videos, scaling monetized youtube channels, and plenty more. And guess what the #1 thing I've learned throughout this entire journey is...? You don't need fancy gear, expensive cameras, or professional degrees to make an impact on the world with your content and change your life by following your creative passions... Once you understand the fundamental laws of filmmaking, the sky is the limit as far as what you can achieve. AND THAT RIGHT THERE is what inspired me to partner with my best friend Paul Xavier, launch ContentCreator.com and create the world's most affordable online course for helping aspiring content creators quickly develop the skills required to shoot professional-looking content no matter what camera gear they have. But I get it, you probably don't really care about who I am and why I created this platform... Right now, all you care about is CAN I ACTUALLY HELP YOU! Well, since launching 14-day filmmaker in 2020, over 71,000 people have enrolled in the program and the feedback is in... People are blown away at how fast they can learn content creation when they follow a proven step-by-step process. I hope you're as excited as I am for you to begin this journey! More courses from the same author: Anthony Gallo

[lastchancevillagegreen]

Tuesday, 8 August 2023:

Harvest (50th Anniversary Edition) Neil Young (Reprise) (released December 2022)

Never one of my favorite Neil Young albums. I remember in music class when we were given assigned days to bring in our favorite album to play for the class, Martha Black brought in Harvest and I found it so stupefyingly boring that I couldn't stand it. I'd love to say I didn't bother owning it until the late 1980's or early 1990's but that's honestly impossible. I had the 8-track in high school and I know by the time I started college I bought his entire back catalog that I didn't already own after discovering Decade. Harvest surely was purchased used at Wuxtry's in Carbondale like half of Young's albums I still own. I know for certain I bought Tonight's The Night brand new in Carbondale, but that's another story for another anniversary pressing.

I've been interested in this anniversary edition since it came out last December as I've been interested in the bonus album included in this set which I will discuss momentarily. There is a lot more going on in this box than in this anniversary Neil Young box which is certainly welcome. This box was twice what that box was, but wait long enough and Neil's deluxe editions drop in price like Trump's chances of not landing in prison.

Above you see the front and the back of this big box set. The box that contains everything is textured just like the original album jacket was. Below you can see the hype sticker in close detail.

The first album in this set is of course Harvest. Released in 1972, it was Neil's fourth studio album (fifth album counting Journey Through The Past) and it contained his only Number One single, Heart of Gold. Below you can see all aspects of this album: the front, the gatefold and the back. Yes, this album is textured as well. Then you will see both sides of the label.

Like the original album back in the day, this came with a poster. You can find the new version of the poster below. This did not come in a textured inner sleeve like it did back in the day, but rather in an anti-static white inner sleeve.

I must admit, I like having a nice pristine copy of this because my copy, bought used, actually has tape all of it. I can't imagine for the life of me ever buying such a lousy copy (and maybe I'm not remembering it correctly) but it feels like it is a beater copy. I'm pleased to have this new pristine copy. And get this, I've already played it twice. Not a horrible album by any means, but still, not my favorite Neil Young album either.

The second album that comes with this set is titled BBC In Concert February 20, 1971 and that was my main attraction here. I have virtually all of these versions on bootlegs or again, maybe I'm recalling incorrectly, maybe Neil has released so many damn live albums with these songs that they all sound exactly like they do on this album; regardless, I like this album considerably and I've actually played it twice as well! Below are the album cover and the back of the album. This album, in keeping with the theme, is also textured like Harvest is. Following those two shots you will find both sides of the label.

This album also comes with a seven inch EP containing three tracks which Neil has titled Harvest Outtakes. It comes sealed in shrink wrap for whatever reasons. The picture sleeve is textured like everything else in this box. You will find photos of the front and back of the sleeve taken at an angle to reduce the iPhone iPose (but increasing the fauna around my back porch), then you will see a shot of the 45 itself, followed by both sides of the label. Like every record in this set, I have played this twice already!

From this point, you have all the things that get tossed into boxes. There is a big hardback book. Below you can see a series of photos of the book (the cover, a couple of random pages, the final page of the book and then the back of the actual book itself).

I love the note indicating there is "more coming." With Neil there is always more coming and long after Neil leaves this mortal coil there will be even more still coming!

I've not read the book, so I cannot explain why he is going on about After The Gold Rush in this book other than he felt obligated because that box didn't include a book.

There are two DVDs included in this set as you can see above. I like the way they handled these additions and I will go into detail about them later in this essay. The final book photo is the back of the book.

The first DVD is something called Harvest Time. I can't explain what it is and the likelihood of me ever watching it any time soon is slim. People on Hoffman and discogs have raved about it. It took me almost 40 years to bother watching Rust Never Sleeps and I adore that album. Don't expect me to be excited for Harvest Time when I have a stack of Zhang Yimou movies I'd rather be watching. But you can at least see the front of the wallet card and the front of the insert in the photo below. (The second photo will be the back of the wallet card and the back of the insert followed by the DVD itself.)

The second DVD is a film of Neil at the BBC, the show from which the aforementioned bonus album hails from. Below are the front of the wallet card and the DVD, followed by the back of the wallet card next to the same DVD.

The final piece in this big box is a numbered art print. These things.