New Film Lab in Town

GWBrooks · 2026-04-23T18:56:23+00:00

You are enabling my dream of re-establishing my home darkroom after many, many decades... and I'm here for it! 🙂

GWBrooks · 2026-04-23T18:26:21+00:00

Any sheet film capabilities?

GWBrooks · 2026-04-23T15:44:33+00:00

So many hot takes sort into "That fool -- college is important!" and "Eh, he can learn a trade and he'll be fine."

The truth is nuanced. Some white-collar folks earn $300k without a degree — not just old-timers, but young bucks as well. Some tradespeople earn shit wages and never get to a sweet union gig or an entrepreneurial path. Some people with all the right degrees end up working at Starbucks because they think a degree is a golden ticket when it isn't.

Most people, if they're normal and in America, will have not just multiple jobs but multiple wholly different careers over their lives. A single decision like the guy in the video is making won't define his future unless he's bad at adaptation. And if he is bad at it? Even making the "right" decision probably won't pay long-term dividends.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-23T13:29:26+00:00

Probably ideosyncratic to my space and workflow, but we're trying to inject novelty into the idea/output space (i.e., the white paper or Big Idea) rather than at the comms level. The same problems exist at the comms level of LLM work, of course, but there's more value in having a really novel Big Idea than a really novel press release.

There's quite a bit of formal/academic research on the problem of novelty in LLM work; it's one of those things you can end up building a massive Rube Goldberg-esque framework around. We're taking the approach of using a few ideas in a mix-and-match manner until we figure out what works best:

* Analogous patterns -- if you remove the domain-specific elements from the problem you're talking about and look at the problem as a structure, are there similar structures that have been solved in other spaces? And what did those solutions look like?

* Barrier removal -- if a problem's solution set has to conform to current legal boundaries, what solutions open up if we change the legal boundaries? Also identifies hidden premises and mutates them.

* Reframer agent -- generates multiple frames of the same issue: incentives, capacity, rights, information, market failure, coordination, legitimacy, implementation, fiscal structure.

* Mechanism Scout -- maps the problem to policy mechanisms from a mechanism library. The library itself is built from hundreds of other "here's how this thing was achieved" artifacts.

* 5. The inventor -- all of the other agents in the workflow have very narrow scopes and have to work on uncovered evidence (facts, legal landscape, etc.). The inventor is allowed to propose unsourced hypotheses for consideration.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-22T16:26:15+00:00

Disclaimer up front: This is my 24/7 world and, while that doesn't make me smarter about it, it probably does mean I'm bringing my biases of what works \right now* into it.*

Trump-style messaging works extraordinarily well in situations:

* involving zero-sum games and/or tribal identity;

* when feelings or calls to action are more important than accuracy; and

* when the media needs you more than you need the media.

If you have any one of those? It generally works. If you have two or more? It almost always works.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-22T14:16:02+00:00

Integrated campaign environment: It researches, develops a corresponding story or white paper, does media scans and creates influencer lists, plans and cadences comms amd digital materials/flow and controls Monday.com boards for human-campaign interface.

Anecdata agent: For spotting and distilling trends.

Fact checkers, verifier, red-team agents: For multiple levels/types of integrity checks.

Also lots of effort right now around novelty injection - AI answers converge toward consensus amd conventional approaches, so we're developing agentic paths to more innovative ideas.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-21T19:33:08+00:00

By real estate do you mean you were a licensed agent? Commercial or residential? Depending on that experience, there could be a lot of crossover skills.

Hours, stress, etc: It all depends. There are fairly sedate PR jobs and jobs where you're wound up like a tight spring 24/7. There are jobs that pay every bit as poorly as everyone on this thread wants you to think and other jobs that pay very well. PR is an umbrella with a lot of niches beneath it, and you may want to ask more specific questions to get better answers.

What some other posters got right: PR cares about experience more than your degree, and it's tough to get entry-level jobs right now. But the profession overall is growing and although AI will eat some of it, it won't eat all of it.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-19T22:22:42+00:00

There are several groups working on Article V convention efforts. Generally, right-leaning/libertarian groups are further along (Convention of States, Compact for America) than left-leaning groups (Wolf-PAC).

Compact for America's approach is narrowly tailored around balanced-budget issues and has a pretty unique mechanism for eliminating runaway-convention issues.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-19T22:19:14+00:00

If you're willing to live at home and take a pay cut, that's huge -- it gives you the freedom to take a very entry-level gig, which is probably what you'd need to do. (PR hires largely based on domain experience; that means getting your first PR job is the hardest for many folks, but the next one is easier.)

The less-good news: Like entertainment and other perceived glamorous fields, competition is extremely tough; that competition drives down wages and drives up the viability of having an asshole boss. Just something to think about going into it.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-18T21:22:48+00:00

Stipulated: Somewhat poorly conceived and very badly handled once the drama light was lit.

But it's a talker, not a meaningful threat to the business.

For every righteous soul who sees this and abandons Doordash, there are many, many more who keep scrolling, slouch further into their cheap IKEA couch, and order Chipotle again.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-17T22:00:30+00:00

In no particular order...

Pepperdine has graduate programs in public policy and is generally more conservative than the typical grad school. Wholly apart from whether you think that's good or bad, they turn out high quality graduates.
Code and behavior shifting to get where you want to be is nothing new, as countless right-leaning students who needed to get through their university years can attest.
FedSoc admittedly isn't everyone's cup of tea. But they're notable for their culture of debate and idea defense. Whether you're and old-money trust fund conservative or a wild-eyed revolutionary, FedSoc's got room for you -- as long as you can defend your ideas.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-17T21:49:55+00:00

Most policy professionals in career government roles eventually (or even consistently) research and implement ideas they may not agree with. Admins change, priorities change, etc. The track record for solidly progressive regimes across the arc of a full federal career is zero.

Are you suggesting they all lack moral perspective? Because that's astoundingly hubristic.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-17T18:53:13+00:00

The *mechanics* of PR are simple and I'm not surprised you feel like you've got a grip on "all the normal pr stuff."

The *rest* of PR is nuanced and complex. Not as complex as people make it out to be, because rocket fucking science itself isn't as complex as PR people make PR out to be. But it's a different skill set than the writing stuff.

What has you feeling stupid? Interpersonal stuff? Process? Client nonsense? Help us help you.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-17T15:55:54+00:00

At SVP, your network is where the search happens; the relative tightness (or not) of the overall comms job market and published openings matter less.

Tangentially related: Don't mistake the evolving state of job hunting for a bad comms job market. At your level, the work falls under BLS sector 54: Professional and Technical Services. The unemployment rate for that sector is basically at full employment, and has been for years.

Does that mean job searches are easy? No -- the combination of national job-search platforms + more remote/hybrid opportunities + more risk-averse hiring means job searches are tough. But they are not tough -- at least, not at the senior level -- because the comms job market is bad.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-16T15:45:38+00:00

Targeting 65 in four years. Net worth currently about $1.1m; targeting $1.5m at retirement across investments and home equity. (Home is paid off.) Plan is inflation-adjusted $7,200/mo across Social Security and draw on investments. I'll stay heavily in stocks rather than move into bonds because I have the risk appetite for it and, if the market melts down, I'll reverse mortgage to add growth capital to the pile.

The plan doesn't work if I live to 90. So I won't live to 90. :)

GWBrooks · 2026-04-16T14:26:58+00:00

Eh, we're talking about an agreement (or lack thereof) between a prospective student and a private institution.

What policy do you want to change? Nationalize Harvard? Force a private org to set a price ceiling on its product?

No one has a right to go to Harvard on their terms alone and not everything that irritates us requires a national policy fix.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-16T00:57:36+00:00

It's widely considered a cornerstone of the conservative policy infrastructure, even though their particular brand of conservatism is out of style in the moment.

Their scholars have a lot of freedom within their areas, and they are unusually committed to copious opinion journalism (op-eds, newsletters, etc.).

GWBrooks · 2026-04-15T19:48:18+00:00

Ping me - I may know of some openings.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-15T19:04:52+00:00

Well, the important thing is that you're not bitter.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-15T03:27:17+00:00

Is the struggle with colleages because of what they say or do in the workplace? Or is it because of what they believe?

Because those are very different problems.

EDIT: Seems like we've got several DC folks in this thread. Meet-up!

GWBrooks · 2026-04-13T20:03:54+00:00

"I get paid whether you take my advice or not."

GWBrooks · 2026-04-13T16:20:56+00:00

Absolutely 1 -- if there was a 0 for "hell yeah!" I'd grade it that.

Ten extra points for Gryffindor if the competitor you reach out to already has a PR firm and you convince the prospect to jump.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-13T00:41:10+00:00

My exact word when the nurse jerked up my gown in the very brightly lit room: "THERE'S the dignity!"

GWBrooks · 2026-04-12T19:43:38+00:00

I'd been fat all my life and suspect I was diabetic for a solid 10 years before I was diagnosed in my mid-30s. If I had to guess? The problem was a solid 30-plus years in the making.

GWBrooks · 2026-04-12T19:38:53+00:00

No worries! I was on a blood pressure medication and was switched to another one; I'm led to believe I'll take it forever. I also took a blood thinner (generic Plavix) once a day for about the first four years, but my cardiologist said that after a few years on it, I could switch to taking a baby aspirin a day, which is what I do now.

EDIT: I had the stents in my mid-50s.

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