Bits and Pieces, Vol. 6

Hi Alex,

To begin with, is the Johanna still afloat ? Send you letters is going to be really hard if it sinks and you end up stranded on some island. And that's the best case scenario. Anyway, I don't have a big story, just small bits and pieces. Starting with....

The Next Bubble

In my last Trek article/letter - about it being in deep trouble - I said that a lot of critics would be gone soon. And that it was a longer story. Turns out it's not that long a story. You see, a while ago, Buzzfeed went public. And it didn't go well. In a matter of days, the stock went from $10 - which isn't that much - to only $5. It also didn't help that the employees couldn't sell their stocks due to some kind of mess-up.

Fast forward a couple of days and BuzzFeed's owner - Polygon - buys up one of its competitors, Voxmedia. Which is bad for the people working there. Whenever there's a merger, layoff's are never far behind. The problem is that two sites making too little, is still too little. Or put another way, two times zero is still zero. If this becomes a trend, the news sites are going to cannibalize one another. So it's not going to be a pop, but more of an implosion. Only time will tell, so moving on to...

Dark Empire

After I posted Chapter 18, I felt I needed a break to recharge the creative battery. Also, things got insanely busy at my day job. Which I why I haven't been writing letters for a while either. Also, what little free time I did have, was being taken by playing the Outer Worlds. (Great game, for the record. It was a bit short at first, but the DLCs fixed that.) 

But now, with Christmas behind us, the dust is settling and I can get back to it. So that is the plan. I want to write Chapter 19 and 20 and then leave it on a cliffhanger. (And nope, I'm not going to tell you what it is going to be.) Today, however, is going to be me finishing Outer Worlds. <G> Finally, I want to talk about...

Writing Letters to RMB

Speaking of things I haven't done recently....I haven't written to The Burnettwork for a while. Simply because I didn't feel like I had anything good to say. It was a case of quality over quantity. But now I want to try to get back into it again. All I need is something to write about/meaningful to say.

And that's all I have for today,

Ruben A. Hilbers (Commander Nash)