YouTube is social media first, even if it also happens to be a repository of useful content. Social media does not want you to navigate with agency. They want to choose what you see because it lets them keep you on the platform longer, which is the entire goal.

You can do it by using a feed reader and subscribing to the channels rss feeds. Keeps you better isolated from dark patterns as well.

edit: has the added benefit that there are different feeds for All/Videos/Shorts/Live/Specific Playlists, so this is another way to avoid shorts

What's crazy is that their adtech definitely knows how to categorise stuff down to super specific topics, yet they only use that internally.