Make Hate Un-American

31st August 2024

Dear Madam Vice President,

If there is one contribution I would like to make to your campaign and the American zeitgeist it is the slogan “make hate un-American”. Hatred has been on the rise since 2016. Hatred in America has become a fire fueled by ignorance and fanned by poverty burning away at the integrity of this nation.

I’m a Jew, under Trump they were vandalizing our temples and we lived in fear. I had a lawyer who volunteered as an armed guard at a Jewish temple before he died. Some temples even canceled there services if Trump rallies where happening nearby.

Now things have only gotten worse for my people. Angry mobs now hunt Jews in America. Violence against any group should be seen as un-American, but this world of hate is known to be the product of ignorance. Humanity hates because hate is part of our instincts. It was normal in prehistoric times to hate the other tribe, but now we need to move past that.

Now we should be more civilized and embrace the diversity that makes America so wonderful a nation. I like living in a world where I can have Mexican food for breakfast, Greek for lunch, and Italian for dinner.

Let’s make hate un-American. Let’s make hate the idea of the enemies of democracy and let’s remind this nation that we are all here to lead a better life and lead a free world.

God bless America,



Richard Leland Neal

Substack

Never Mailed

I never sent this email because after reading more about Substack I found that it was a large part of their notoriety that they didn’t use page ads. Do I believe it’s the right thing to do? Yes. Do I believe Substack is destined to become another failed platform? Yes. Substack is worth about a half billion dollars where as YouTube is worth a good thirty Billion.

Then again, what do I know? I’m no economist.

29th August 2024

Dear Substack,

I was turned on to your website by a YouTube Creator who has an account with you folks and is doing well. It surprised me to know that you had been around for seven years without me knowing and I like your business ideas.

The idea that you don’t make money unless I make money is a strong incentive to become a Substack Creator. I would say, however, that Substack looks to be a blog hosting platform and not one as user friendly as some but with greater potential for discovery. I can run two blogs on Substack, one free and one paid, which is problematic but not that big of an issue.

The point that I would have to make is that the pay-wall makes Substack less interesting. For one thing, you’re just going to see far more free content than paid content and this will eventually weight down your website with more and more pressure on the paid content to make it all hold water.

I can tell you that I could go to my old blog posts and post them on Substack. I could post once an hour for ten years and still not use all the material I have. Between blog posts, YouTube videos, and short format videos I often post more than twelve times a day.

Adding page ads and tips to your platform would offset this somewhat. Anyone would like to get tipped even if it is just a dollar and page ads would mean that even my free content would make money. 

Best, 

 

Richard Leland Neal

Transylvania - Brasov

Braşov is the capital city of Braşov County in Transylvania. Developed and expanded throughout the centuries, Braşov has traces of settlement since the Neolithic Age (9500BC). During the 12th century, the King of Hungary invited German Saxons to settle and develop the surrounding area. A century later the Teutonic Knights built fortifications to defend the kingdom’s borders, among these was Kronstadt, the Crown City, today known as Braşov.

Located in the foothills of the Carpathians the old city centre reveals Saxon architecture, partial remains of the old curtain wall, bastions and towers, and restored city gates. At the centre of the old city in a large open square is the old Town Hall, Casa Sfatului, a building that originally began as a watchtower in 1420. Over the succeeding centuries it has been added to, partially destroyed by war and earthquakes, rebuilt, restored, altered and nearly fully demolished twice in the 20th century. This is one building that has withstood the test of time. Given its many changes, the building is a blend of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The tower’s German clock, installed in 1892, continues to accurately tell time.

Nearby, tucked amongst buildings in a court is the 15th century Saxon-built, Gothic-style Black Church, Biserica Neagră. Towering above the old city’s skyline, this imposing church is the heart of the city. The main entrance is richly decorated with heavy carved doors leading inside where two large chalices (c1504) occupy the floor, more than 200 Ottoman carpets – the second largest collection of Ottoman carpets in Europe, mostly from 15th-16th centuries – hang as decoration and two organs, of which one has 4,000 pipes, are played during weekly concerts.

Southeast of the old city is the ethnically Bulgarian and Romanian neighbourhood called Prund-Şchei, Şcheii Braşovului, a village-like town made up of small houses and narrow streets. Prior to the 17th century, the town’s residents were not permitted to own property inside the old city’s walls and access was only allowed through St Catherine’s gate (one of five gates) where they had to pay a toll in order to sell their produce. The ethnic Bulgarians arrived in the late 14th century, most likely to assist in the reconstruction of the Black Church destroyed by the Tatars, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, a century earlier. They settled in the area and over time adopted the Romanian language and ethnic identity.

In 1583 the First Romanian School located in Prund-Şchei began conducting its first lessons in the Romanian language. Prior to this, education was conducted in Church Slavonic, which used to be the liturgical language of the Romanian Church. As the school was within the Kingdom of Hungary, students from far and wide would come to attend. Their attendance was paid for by the village with the aim that upon return they would then teach and share their education. The school operated for 230 years. Today it is a museum, exhibiting various educational books in both Slavic and Romanian, the first Romanian bible and the first Romanian printing press.

Having worked up an appetite from all my wanderings, I head to the nearest restaurant to try some of the local cuisine. I settled for a Ciorbă de Perişoare for entrée, a clear, slightly sour meatball soup with vegetables chopped up really small and for main I opted for a vegetarian dish of stacked potatoes. This dish in Romanian is called Cartofi Franţuzeşti, meaning French Potatoes, although unsure if it originated in France it consists of layers of sliced potatoes and hard-boiled eggs, topped with sour cream and breadcrumbs, and baked in the oven. There are variations to this dish for the meat lovers by adding ham, sausages, or really tasty salami. Yum!!

PS. Experience our virtual challenges in real life - The Conqueror Adventures



The team at The Conqueror Challenges
https://www.theconqueror.events

When You Could Make Money on YouTube

29th August 2024

Hey John,

In regards to your video “The Internet is Rigged” something of a side issue that should be addressed is the monetization wall that you likely have no problems with on YouTube. When things started anyone could make money on YouTube and many took advantage of this, but things have changed.

YouTube monetization requires higher and higher standards in the modern day with most YouTubers unable to make money but YouTube able to make money off their work. The barrier is too small for someone like you but for many people it proves difficult.

As of me writing this a creator would need to have uploaded at least three videos in the last ninety days and have more than one thousand subscribers as well as having three thousand watch hours in the last year or so many million shorts views to become eligible for monetization.

If you were to start a new YouTube channel I’m sure this wouldn’t be a problem but for small creators who take years to build a following this prevents them from making any money and yet YouTube keeps getting more and more from the little guy online.

Add that fact that time watched from short video content does not apply to the three thousand hour total and that watch hours are under hard scrutiny and you have a formula for years of hard work for nothing. You can’t simply take a computer and have it watch videos all day to reach that total. YouTube will detect this and refuse to credit the account with the hours.

Further, the rules for what does and does not count as legitimate video viewing are ambiguous and complicated. Anything out of the ordinary like a video doing exceptionally well can be seen as fraudulent. There are services that can promote a video and help boost things but that can also be seen as fake views and the creator may just make nothing no matter how much work goes into content.

There are companies who will monetize a channel and the price varies, but the results can be questionable. The only sure fire way is to know a successful creator and have them help you promote your work. Getting that is often hard. You may just be able to change my life with a few clicks of the mouse but why would you?

In summation, there is nothing good about doing hard work and not getting paid and where as this AI training with the use of your work is bad it is also rather upsetting that many creators put in years of work for nothing. YouTube can be seen as the Rome of the video sharing platforms. No platform can challenge YouTube as the kind of video sharing so YouTube can treat creators as poorly as they want.


Pray for change,



Richard Leland Neal


 

Who Won the Olympics?

19th August 2024

Hey Hank,

In regards to your video about an Olympics mystery I guess what you mean is ‘who won the Olympics’ in 2024. It reminded me of a story a gym teacher told me back in middle school. He had won the track meat by pressing his worst entry but the other school had gotten gold and bronze.

It would come to the point that at least in running the winner was determined by the performance of all competitors based on some kind of collective score. You could say that this was average time or the like, but in this case he had mentioned long distance.

The teacher said that he paced the last runner in his group and kept them motivated where as the last runner of other schools had slowed to a trot and was hardly running. Thus every person from our school had come in with a much better time than the collective time of other competitors.

This would be useless in determining a winner of the Olympics as the sports do very wildly but there are a few ideas that come about from this concept. If every country sent the same number of people then it would be a simple idea of assigning every competitor a rank per event and then calculating who had the highest rank over all.

If you want to go by medals won, which is a whole lot simpler, I can tell you the best way. Simply, a gold medal would have a score of three, silver is at two, and bronze a one. I guess you could argue this is too simple, but we are looking for a simple concept.

In this way a country winning more high quality medals could win over a country that won more total medals. Again, this only works if you say that all countries have an equal entry. If a country cent one person to the Olympics and they won three gold medals they would have an average score of nine. That would make it so that any country could win.

Wins vs. entries opens up a whole new can of worms and is much harder to calculate. America being large and diverse is the most likely to win by volume. Chine is bigger but not as diverse and India doesn’t appear to take an interest. I believe the classic match-up is the US vs. Russia but that wasn’t in the cards this time. Then again most countries could send more people if they wanted to but those people would be less likely to win.

As another thought, the Olympics are an idea of good will and our world coming together to set aside our differences and be one body. In the spirit of the Olympics every country that participated won. They did their level best and that’s all that really is important.

The world won. The world came together and sent a message of hope for a brighter future. We got a massive amount of people together and we didn’t resort to violence. The world came together and felt happy. That was the win.

Then again, what do I know?





Richard Leland Neal

NewsFreed

6th September 2021

Hay (YouTuber),

A funny thing happened the other day and you popped into my head. It started with a cat crying. I thought it was one of mine and went to investigate only to find after some real dirty work that I was dealing with a kitten. This reminded me of the videos I made with kittens and that was back when you did the (YouTube Segment).

I have to admit if I had it to do over I would not have done those videos. I ran into too many internet stalkers that way, but one of the things I brought up back then was your (YouTube Program)  friends making a movie.

Yeah, I need to get that idea out of my head so I can move on to better things. Truth be told, I know you wouldn’t start a kicksstarter for it, but some of your friends may. It’s just an idea, and a lot of famous people do it now.

You can’t use the name (YouTube Program) for copyright reasons but let’s say you make a comedy horror film about a defunct YouTube channel named NewsFeed, or NewsFreed, something like that. It’s not important. What is important is that everyone is getting back together for a reunion in the middle of nowhere for no good reason.

It would be fun, and I’m sure there would be public interest in the large number of folks who worked on the show. Anyway, (YouTube Mascot) could be News Fiend and in the end he, the puppet, could be the killer after being left in a box alone for so many years. It would be funny. You’d have a good time, and you may just forward this email to a few folks and see what they think.

Just a thought,


Richard Leland Neal