If you’re new to Unqualified Opinions, or maybe even if you’ve been reading since the beginning, you may be wondering what the heck the deal is with the Dots. The answer is: It escalated quickly. It really got out of hand fast. It jumped up a notch.

Looking back at my notes, it started when SarahBethGDub and I were talking about what to call this thing that didn’t yet exist way back in January 2023, and (after we nixed “From the Trenches”) I suggested Unqualified Opinions (an audit and accounting joke). She said she liked that and so I asked her to come up with some branding to put at the top of the email that “was a little irreverent and maybe incorporates your dot people somehow.” Next thing we knew she was putting hats on Dots and making punk rock Dots and investing icon Dots (sometimes both at the same time) and now, for better or for worse, we have legions of them (see the beach party scene below that evokes Seurat’s 1884 pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte).

Between you and me, I thought about not bringing Unqualified Opinions back for a fourth season. It seemed like it had had a good run and done its job, and I have some trepidation about becoming boring and/or didactic and/or repeating myself (and Danny-didn’t-get-a-glass has accused me of at least one of those things). But then SarahBethGDub made the new Season 4 nameplate with Swaggy Dot above, and now I’m all in (and hope to live up to expectations without being boring, didactic, and/or repeating myself).

So the deal with the Dots is that they’re fun. And if you’re going to do anything for an extended period of time, you need to have fun. Dots are fun. I hope you’re having fun. I’m having fun. Let’s have some fun.

See you Monday for Season 4.

-Tim

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