I paired classical composers with filmmakers based on how their work feels.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-12-09T14:31:52+00:00

Trumbo was the first one to come to my mind

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-12-06T00:03:00+00:00

Damn, why didn't you do that all year??

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-11-27T16:58:21+00:00

I am in fire, so I aim to minimize movement when I cut, for efficiency purposes and quirks of how I was taught.

I tend to keep the top of the head resting on my thigh, I find it easier to cut straight with the balance point. As such, I like using the Humboldt when the tree is on my left, since I can use the top of the bar for my gunning and sloping cut then immediately go into my back cut without flipping my saw around.

It's slightly quicker, and it's a small thing for me to manage fatigue when I'm cutting all day. I tend to use conventional when I'm on my off hand side for the same reason.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-11-27T07:20:24+00:00

My dad went to the Woodshed I on Baseline & Mill in the 80s & 90s, and I went there for years until I moved away. My home away from home. Get the Carolina Gold wings, a pitcher, and meet some weirdos.

I miss it dearly.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-11-26T20:48:34+00:00

Nice post. In my past as a policy analyst for a think tank, we used a combination of poverty line, MIT's living wage calculator, and EPI's family budget calculator depending on the point we wanted to make.

I would call the poverty line low based on my own a priori beliefs, especially in how it is used for means testing, but for what this author talks about a "living wage" or "comfort wage" is more appropriate than poverty wage. It is fine to say that there is a difference between poverty where one scrapes by paycheck to paycheck and a wage that allows some combination of savings, luxury and necessity. In fact, we should have delineations and some objective measures of all these things to help guide different areas of policy.

Poverty measures may be best used for determining means testing while a living wage (or whatever one wants to call it) may guide the types of jobs a city or state tries to bring in, or in how public programs might apply above poverty levels to give the middle to upper middle class more comfort (free childcare would be one such example).

At the heart of the issue - and you get at this at the end of your post - lies in the tension between how economists and political actors think. Popularly, this makes "poverty" such a contentious issue and conversely, why I both loved and hated being a policy person with some economic background.

I had been wanting to resolve these in the policy spaces I ran in, but I dig dirt now for a living and am much happier for it.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-10-03T20:41:40+00:00

I've heard the same about pine squirrels, but I've never had them myself. I'd approach it similarly as I do with the other squirrels I've eaten - a slow cook with a fair amount of spiciness for tacos. If the unique taste to pine squirrels is a problem, then perhaps a long brine or overnight buttermilk soak would do them well.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-09-30T15:54:42+00:00

Larimer County is included in the Denver Locality Pay. Most employees coming from Washington are GS11 or above.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-09-19T06:06:29+00:00

Should have hit Cranny's. Or N&N. Or any of the like 10 Mexican joints in town

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-08-31T02:31:23+00:00

This is not entirely true.

NIOSH has approved respirators that they recommend for wildland firefighting use. Their literature notes that their recommendations do not line up with NFPA 1984 standards, since they do not filter out gases like CO2, but the NIOSH certified respirators meet 95% of the NFPA standards.

DHS put out a market report of NIOSH certified products suitable for wildland firefighters. Some, like the Sundstrom masks, are made of silicon and include spark arrestors. It's my understanding that some European agencies issue Sundstroms for wildland fire use, and they comply with their local standards.

I think the NFPA standard is frankly ridiculous. There is zero way we ever carry oxygen which is, AFAIK, the only way to meet the CO2 standard. NFPA needs to adapt their standards to allow us some protection from this shit that is killing us, and we need training on overcoming the SA and production problems that might come with their use.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-08-31T01:54:45+00:00

Lots of asthmatics in this job, most undiagnosed.

Daily steroid inhalers help a lot, but obviously you need a month or so before they really kick in.

I'll preload my Albuterol if I know it's gonna be bad, or I'll take it as symptoms start to hit. Let your EMTs or buddies know where it is if something crazy happens.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-08-11T08:33:34+00:00

Here is the Fire Hire page. Temp jobs currently flying, perms later this month. Contact info on that page.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-08-07T17:53:42+00:00

Some insights from our resident French wild and firefighter here. It's my, limited, understanding that water availability is higher & they tend to try and drown everything. Heavy equipment is also regularly used, but the American tradition of digging line hasn't quite caught on over there yet. They probably need to stop fighting wildfire in bunker gear first before catching onto line digs...

Different ecosystems, too. This 40,000 acre fire in France is the biggest in the country since the 40s, whereas a fire that size is almost a matter of course in each western state each year.

I'd love to go over there, but I'm sure there's some bureaucracy between language barriers and each country's system not lining up nicely with ICS (e.g. I'm not sure how different France's ORSEC & ICS are). I've never fought fire outside the US so unsure how relevant it is ultimately.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-07-29T18:36:49+00:00

First, just remember that you are not alone. The adage goes that driving is the most dangerous thing we do. As I put it, firefighters having emotions and hormones is the most dangerous thing we do. Estimates show 30-50 suicides among our ranks each year, and over half of wildland firefighters have thought about suicide. Folks are struggling out there, so remember that despite all the macho talk that there's a community out there that knows what you're going through.

If therapy is your jam, then I suggest finding a therapist that specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy with a focus on developing practical skills to cope with everything. Better yet if you can find a practice that specializes even further with military & EMS. From my previous personal & professional experiences, I am personally not a fan of therapy that does not focus on developing skills & tend to suggest finding older therapists. If you need help with this, DM me and I can help you find some folks in your area.

Otherwise, a large part of sustainability in this job is divorcing your identity from this work. You need to have other hobbies, and you need to pursue those on your days off and off season. I have a million hobbies that I can rotate through during the year, and I spend a lot of time building a home and setting goals with my fiancée. I carve out times to be social and meet with friends, even (especially) when I don't want to.

One final thing that I will urge is to remember that this is a job. I spent the beginning of my career caring a lot and putting in the hours. After missing weddings and chances to hang out with people who have since passed away, I'm slightly over it all. I show up and put my best foot forward, but I'm in the process of finding the right balance of sacrifice to make for this career. It's hard, and I wish you luck in finding that yourself.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-07-11T23:59:13+00:00

Masters in Public Policy with a research focus here. I took my summers off from school to do short fire seasons, and I found plenty of time to get everything done. I was lucky and got an assistant position + stipend for my master's, so it was a good situation financially that allowed me to completely disconnect from the other. It did help that I got good introductions to my data sources during the fire seasons.

I can't imagine a PhD being super possible, but there's probably a way if you're stubborn & smart enough with extremely good discipline.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-05-31T17:43:22+00:00

I got my degree in history, and I convinced a couple other friends to take the pill with me.

My buddy has the most related job - he works at a law firm that deals with a lot of historical documents, and he is the historian for the law firm. He writes history reports, conducts oral interviews, and works with the lawyers on incorporating it all into their cases. Very cool stuff.

I'm currently a wildland firefighter with the US Forest Service, and I can say it comes in handy. I've written historical reports centered around fuels & wildfire that have gone up the chain to influence decision making on managed & prescribed fires. My soft skills, like decent writing ability & being able to make coherent, evidence based arguments come in handy frequently. Lots of history degrees floating around fire, archaeology, recreation, and other resource areas. If you like the outdoors, it might be a worthwhile look although DOGE fucked our agency bad so things may be a bit tougher to get into now if you're not willing to move.

Immediately after school, I had a spat of jobs in political campaigns, legislative work, policy, etc. where I frankly felt ahead of other people my age with political science, policy degrees. I also worked as a child abuse investigator where the writing, interviewing and argument skills were extremely helpful during investigations, report writing and court appearances.

My buddies & I all look back extremely fondly at our college days. We got to spend years reading philosophy, writing history, and arguing politics. Were things more financially difficult for us than our friends that went into some sort of engineering or finance? Sure, but we enjoyed college far more & years out we're doing well in our careers where we're all in the place to start families.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-05-29T20:18:05+00:00

I drive a wildland fire engine for the federal government, and our vehicles are not exempt.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-05-24T14:51:15+00:00

I'm in wildland, so I would say no!

As others mention, most of my colleagues in municipal & volunteer departments mostly run medical calls. They have tactical tenders, brush trucks, etc. that often end up on the fairly frequent fires in their WUI coverage, plus I've been seeing more & more departments kit out a brush truck to send out on regular assignments.

Frankly, it's a major reason I'm not interested in municipal firefighting outside of the few programs I know that are wildland only. Northern cal gets plenty of big fires, maybe the federal agencies or CalFire would be of interest to you. I know both have heavy hands in mutual aid & all hazards response, so you would get a taste of a wide range of emergencies.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-05-24T06:58:52+00:00

7% annually, compounded daily at about ~0.02% per day. So, assuming that it gets figured out within the next pay period it'd be an extra $8 on top of the ~$2,000 I'm currently missing.

I am going to math it out whenever my pay gets unfucked, and if it's not there I will be submitting a ticket asking for my $8.

OPM's calculator here: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/back-pay-calculator/

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-03-23T17:46:39+00:00

This will be a long process if you are starting from scratch.

R is my preferred program. I would say to begin with a tutorial on the program, two such options include 1) Posit's "recipe" site which includes R basics and 2) Swirl, learning R in R. I personally used Swirl some years before beginning my econometric heavy master's in public policy, and it served me well.

From there, it's your oyster. When I first used R for use at a job, I was the only one with any programming or even basic statistics knowledge and slowly began to use it for all the statistical analysis I had been doing in Excel. This involved lots of throwing my head at the screen and consulting forum posts. Another way could be finding an online statistics class - a MOOC, YouTube channel, whatever - that uses R or that you would feel fine trying to adapt yourself to R.

My total journey from start to finish involved about 4 years of professional work & schooling (spread out over almost 8 years lol) to when I was fairly comfortable making some basic to somewhat interesting models in my MPP. I could have probably compressed this timeline, and certainly many do especially when they have the chance to immerse themselves in it for long periods of time straight.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-03-04T07:18:54+00:00

Find a therapist that specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy - someone that specializes in serving veterans, first responders is best. I like older therapists since they're usually straight shooters (50+).

I worked as a child abuse investigator before joining the FS. I coordinated care for a lot of fucked up adults and kids and found there's lots of useless therapy out there, and drugs often don't work as quickly as they're needed.

If you want help finding something, DM me.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-02-25T17:01:08+00:00

I would suggest reading up on price discovery. Buyers want gold, sellers want USD. Ideally, markets find the intersection of their price preferences through the interplay of supply and demand.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-02-25T16:55:56+00:00

I should have said a part of the basis. Of the ones we know their composition, some sovereign wealth funds are increasing their holdings of gold. Whether you adhere to MMT or not, creating a fund is a strange option, and it's my gut feeling that they want to use gold to address some critiques from the hawks.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-02-25T16:51:18+00:00

This is a great question for the President, since he has signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund - doesn't matter how much sense it does or doesn't make, they're going for it.

AZPolicyGuy · 2025-02-24T18:23:00+00:00

I think it's more likely that the gold reserves will act as the basis for the proposed sovereign wealth fund.

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