Another late one. I just started a six week sabbatical so my schedule is a bit off. I'm still going to try to post weekly, but the day might shift as I (hopefully) lose track of what day it even is.

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With the US being an absolute tire fire, the resurgence in hypothesizing about where to move when things get really bad has hit high gear, and Mexico has become a lot more of an option than in the past. The typical escape to Canada seems to have lost some of its luster as prices there have gotten expensive and they're not too eager to let a whole bunch of Americans in. So, Mexico City it is, apparently.

My family is mostly Mexican, with multiple generations native to Southern California, and northern Sonora before that. When I was a kid, my grandparents lived in Álamos for 15 years or something like that while they set up a church school of some sort. We used to go down there for Christmas every other year or so. Their house was huge since it was a sort of dorm for a lot of the students, and it was beautiful. I remember it being a bit strange, though, since my friend I'd play with directly next door lived in a kind of converted shed or warehouse type place with dirt floors. I was only around 6 or 7 so I didn't think too much of it. We went a couple more times before my grandparents donated the house to the school and moved back to CA.

Apparently that city was a popular destination for expats to land for cheap luxury retirement, though somewhat under the radar. Looking back it makes sense, as we visited a few old white people in big villa type places. It definitely seems like it was a nice place to settle down.

Fast forward almost 40 years and Covid has made being a Digital Nomad™ the in thing. Take your laptop anywhere with a wifi signal and you can live like a king. I'm not gonna lie, it sounds pretty awesome, especially after the inevitable Trump/De Santis victory in 2024. But I dunno. When it comes down to it, Portland and Oregon in general will continue to be a nice place to live (well, unless the whole "Portland is Sodom and Gomorrah" bullshit persists and the Proud Shirts continue to try to get some air time on Fox. which... of course they will), and articles like this remind me of the flip side to the cost of taking advantage of a place like Mexico City being "cheap" for Americans and too expensive for the locals. And, even though our family is mostly Mexican, which I feel would kinda justify a family like ours posting up, our generation was the one that had parents who didn't teach their kids Spanish, so we'd be burdening folks with English until we learned enough to get by.

Also, seeing a bunch of American tourists going around on fucking Taco Tours sounds pretty unbearable.

Anyway, this type of pondering is only going to get more and more important as things get worse and worse here. Not too sure what to do.

While we were in California a few weeks ago I bought some dad shoes:

After many years of flat bottom shoes, these things feel like clouds. Broke em in at Disneyland and they performed flawlessly.

The First Transformers Theme Was WILDLY Confusing
This is pretty rad. Apparently the original Transformers cartoon theme song was some sort of prog masterpiece with a time signature that would make Dillinger Escape Plan shake their heads in confusion.

I responded to a couple Craiglist posts looking for drummers a couple weeks ago since they guys I was playing with are moving and/or in Real Bands. Turned out both ads were for the two different bands the main guitar player / songwriter are in. The first band was a heavy stonerish type of band. That initial practice went pretty well, as that stuff is definitely in my wheelhouse. The other band already had another person lined up to try out but it turned out he didn't want to come over because it was "too hot out to load my drums" lol, so they called me up and I played with that crew as well. It's more singer/songwriter stuff which I'm pretty comfortable with after playing for a church band for like 7 years. They did have a song with the (apparently) standard Country Shuffle beat that I could not do for the life of me. But they still want me to come back so that's cool. I guess I'm learning the country beat.

Beautiful. From some buzzfeed listicle.

I wasn't aware of the La Menina painting by Diego Velázquez but it's pretty intriguing.

For 50 Years, the Zodiac Killer’s 340 Cipher Stumped the FBI—Then Three Amateurs Cracked the Code - Popular Mechanics – Apparently the Zodiac cipher was cracked? Pretty interesting read about how the people did it. The message itself has some Al Capone Vaults vibes, though.

— Toby

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