Week of April 14, 2025
Well, hello. It’s been a moment since I last spammed your inbox, and I thought it worthwhile to spend a minute explaining why that is.
First and foremost, as some of you are probably aware, I’m currently unemployed, so a lot of my energy and effort is being spent on applying for jobs and the occasional interview. To give you an idea, by the time you read this, I’ll have submitted around one hundred and fifty applications across at least three different job roles/titles in about eighteen business days, and have participated in… three interviews.
The hiring market is pretty rough right now, and while the unemployment numbers don’t (yet) line up with my experience, I do get the sense that a lot of things are just stagnant. I’ve had the bottom fall out of two potential contracts because clients have chosen to put them off for now to see how things shake out. It’s a numbers game, and, ultimately, keeping up with applying to anything and everything I could potentially qualify for is pretty draining, and makes it hard to focus on anything else.
Fortunately, I have been able to focus on something else from time to time. If you haven’t seen it, I’ve been appearing on a podcast called Normal Men (yes, yes, I know, another white guy podcast) with George Pearkes, Propter Malone and Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer, three lively personalities from Bluesky. We have been running down the week in news, with an occasional focus on the economy, tariffs or law.
Most of my participation feels like asking dumb questions and getting smart answers (along with some post-production work), but it’s been fun to be a part of, and we have some interesting ideas for the future. If you haven’t checked it out, give us a listen, and let us know what you think, you can find it at George’s website or on any of the major platforms.
Third, if you’ve been wondering what’s going on with DOGE IS FOUR LETTERS, well, that’s easy enough to explain, I’ve run out of sources. I’ve worked through all of the conversations that I had, and haven’t had any success soliciting any new stories.
I’m still interested in publishing these stories, so if you’re reading this and interested in talking with me, hit me up.
Finally, I’m working on trying to figure out the best way to restart WORK IS FOUR LETTERS. I’ve got some new interviews in mind, and I need to go back and transcribe a few old interviews, so there’s plenty of content, it’s just a matter of finding the time to do the work — which is, to be frank, not insubstantial. But fear not, it will be back… eventually. Hopefully, by the end of this month.
I recognize that this isn’t much of an update, but I figured that I should say something after a couple of weeks of radio silence on the newsletter front. In lieu of anything substantive, here’s a baby elephant I saw at the Oregon Zoo this week.
As always, stay safe, take care of yourselves, and good luck.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE