A manager of mine once lamented a problem caused by “employees.”

I wasn’t specifically named, but there was a creeping realization that I might have been part of the problem. The pie chart projected on the wall showed that certain people were doing something wrong: not using the crosswalks into and out of the building. I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds of thousands of dollars had been lit on fire to study, graph, and report jaywalking. My coworkers and I were, at least, paid to have a meeting about our indiscretions.

How disgraceful: in the parlance of software or user experience design, some of us were using routes that might be called unhappy paths (from our employer’s perspective, anyway). These are cases in which something has gone wrong and needs special handling.

Yet, dodging traffic wherever I pleased was my happy path.

While at a restaurant with friends the other day, I caused a similar catastrophe. What was my happy path was the establishment’s unhappy path. This tension crystallized when I found our waiter suddenly hovering by my side. With his fiendishly dry affect, he began to address me with a stern “Sir.”

Apparently I had used the wrong bathroom minutes prior. In my defense, there appeared to be only the one bathroom based on its placement and exterior dimensions. I paid no attention to the signage because I had not realized that there was another at the far end of the restaurant. The waiter was only informing me, and noted that my use of this single-person bathroom was entirely understandable. He stated, repeatedly, that this happens “nine out of ten times.”

What an intriguing comment to repeat. “Nine out of ten times.” With all the sincerity I could assemble, I apologized profusely, much to others’ amusement. Yet, a thought nagged at me. If this is happening the vast majority of the time, then why?

This is the same question I asked when finding out that I wasn’t the only employee who crossed the road without regard for crosswalks. Most of my coworkers did the same. All the time. And it turned out we took the same paths (just not on the crosswalk). There were heatmaps to prove it…

When users of the road or bathroom or software or whatever overwhelmingly interface with the thing “wrongly,” and predominantly in the same way, design-level reconsideration is called for.

If user expectations are so counter to those of the designer, there are unfortunate possibilities. One is that the designer’s projections of user expectations are off-base. Another is that the designer did not adequately channel the users into, or nudge them toward, a desired happy path. Thus, users frequently stumbling onto the wrong path indicates a design problem. Offloading the solution to “the problem” onto the users themselves is a hallmark of flawed design.

And when the design deliberately manipulates users to stay on a “happy path” that’s unhappy for them personally, there’s probably a dark pattern at play.

By the way, as I turned back to the table after having been disciplined, I swear I heard the waiter utter it again to no one in particular. “Nine out of ten times.”

Obviously, I’m not alleging that the crosswalks or bathrooms as I’ve described were fine-tuned to torment anyone. They weren’t. Not to mention, designs themselves are often constrained and nudged by available resources and stubborn externalities. Therefore, inconvenience is usually not due to ignorance or malice. It’s probably just a downstream consequence of a narrow window of design opportunity. Arguably, then, the root cause of poor design is often another poor design. Perhaps a chain of poor designs. The higher their order, the more prohibitively resistant they are to change. It’s complicated, expensive. That’s why the more all-encompassing a design is, the more prone the entire system is to minuscule failures that cascade into big ones.

One guy not using the crosswalk, or walking into the wrong (unattended) bathroom, is not really a big deal. But when everyone does it, there’s a fuss. So here’s a radical idea: convert the single-person bathroom into a… bathroom. As a friend of mine noted during our lunch, unisex bathrooms are commonplace here in Spain. Another friend and colleague of mine had mentioned, during The Jaywalking Crisis, that crosswalks could simply be painted “where people actually cross the fucking road.”

I still happen to agree.

Nonetheless, over the course of my life, I’ve observed organizations allocating more resources over time to everything but solving the actual problems (the problems that cause all of the other problems). Sometimes, the root causes aren’t regarded as high-priority. Most of the time, the incentives to solve root-cause problems become outweighed by the incentives not to solve them. We live in a society of manufactured problems. Personally, I think this is great. I don’t want the restaurant to solve the problem I complained about. I want to go there again, and—

I want to hassle someone for using the “wrong” bathroom. Not on the basis of gender, which is inconsequential to my entertainment. No matter which bathroom is selected, I’ll be ready to announce the error. “Nine out of ten times,” I’ll say.

Feel free to confound a friend, no matter where you eat together. This trend has the potential to cause so many more problems that people might stop giving a shit about some non-problems. (The food was delicious, by the way.)

Fellow Beboppers, it’s your Reese.

A couple of weeks ago, mi mujer y yo took the train from Santiago de Compostela to La Coruña for a day trip (it’s just A Coruña in Galego). One-way, this is a thirty-minute journey. Multiply by two and voilà: the feeling of floating on a cloud… while reading about an extraterrestrial pathogen spreading across the world. Next to my videojuego-playing wife, no less. Now that’s my kind of trip for only twenty euros total. With that being said, people capable of doing things before 10am can find cheaper tickets.

We are not those people.

Oh. I must address the wrinkled elephant in the room: you thought I didn’t go anywhere, didn’t you? Well, I do, when I’m not fantasizing about hexagons. As long as the destination is within a 50-mile radius I mean 80.4672-kilometer radius of my secret evil world headquarters. I consider anywhere farther from me than three times the radius of the Large Hadron Collider to be really out of the way. La Coruña falls within this area I’ve deduced from pure logic; I took pictures of what I saw there.

You can look at them if you want. Commentary included.

How about that? No lifted pickup truck to roll coal upon the pedestrians, or plow into them. Wow. Seriously, consider the design of the newly renovated passageway pictured above. As those trees grow, they will absorb sound and carbon while providing shade for passersby and bench-warmers. The benches double as barriers. Combined with the trees, they narrow the paths. This narrowing has the psychological impact of slowing drivers (those driving only authorized vehicles in this case).

You don’t need an urban planning degree or certification to notice these features, but you do need people with such education to make these decisions and implement them for the rest of us. You also need urban cheerleaders to spread the word. Who plans your city? Are they doing a good job? Let me know in the comments.

Following a supersized lunch topped off with flan de café near Praza de María Pita, I was thrilled to discover that Dr. Seuss’ spirit lives on in these red lamps hugging the Atlantic coast. They accompany spacious walkways, bike paths, and serpentine streets punctuated by joggers and cyclists. The lamps really are peculiar. If you look closely…

You’ll notice different artistic renderings on them. They correspond to local history. I was going to take a picture of every individual lamp, but cease-and-desisted after receiving credible threats.

Despite the hOuSiNg ShOrTaGe exclusive to the country I’m living in and nowhere else, as the media has so informed me, there are just loads of wonderful apartments everywhere. And city-managed e-bikes. Wow, they don’t look like they’ve been chucked into the ocean even once. It’s as if the people living here enjoy having nice things. I saw a few people riding these bikes.

There are cool murals around the ciudad. If you walk around a lot in urban Spain, you’ll occasionally encounter a street artist in the act. Near my apartment in Santiago, por ejemplo, we have a Transformers-themed rendition that has evolved since we moved here last fall. But if there’s anything renovated more than the street art, it’s the apartment facades, mainly in the spring and summer.

La Coruña’s facades, particularly those facing the ocean, are well renovated. You’ll also find: palm trees adjacent to parks; cemeteries that look like parks, but with the restful dead smiling underneath at the life above; utilitarian low-bed utility vans; flower stores.

The red lamps, safe streets, and bike lanes wrap all the way to the Tower of Hercules. Nearby, there’s a visitor center where you can buy tickets for tours. We just walked around without paying, because inevitably a family member will drag us back here to breach the tower’s interior and have a professional photograph taken when I’m having a bad hair day. (En realidad, a Bad Fur Day.)

It’s a bit of a steep incline to the tower, hence there being a Segway-rental truck just past the visitor center. Too many early 2000s references… let’s bring back the singing, wall-mounted bass while we’re at it. Anyway, locals go up and down just for the exercise, by bike and on foot. There are also well-trodden paths much closer to the ocean, saved for next time. We saw people strolling along those.

Abusing my non-camera’s camera zoom along the steep way to the tower, I present the Horn of Gondor, which La Coruña must have borrowed from Santiago.

And see that jagged rock formation out in the distance? Such is the natural habitat of goose barnacles called percebes, a delicacy boiled in salt water at local restaurants. Percebeiros collect them, scaling down to the thrashing waterline of rocks like these in the Costa da Morte… the Coast of Death. You can only imagine how it acquired that name. It’s just west of the city.

Ah, the Tower of Hercules. I submitted an invitation to assume the oldest Roman lighthouse, A.K.A. Farum Brigantium, as my permanent living quarters for my fully immersive Skyrim cosplay. The city declined my offer, despite my having told them in the email that I would clean the inside — and only with vinegar-based solutions. No harsh chemicals. I told them: “If the toilet stops flushing, I’ll let you know.” No response, not even an automated reply. WHY DOES EVERYONE IGNORE ME? WHAT DOES THEIR SILENCE MEAN?

Anyway, between the tower and coast there’s a compass rose pointing toward different Celtic peoples. People, Celtic or not, like to stand on it. I took a picture of them. I have no idea who they are, but now they’re on this blog forever. How honored they would feel if only they knew.

The skull points toward the Coast of Death.

Can you guess where the clamshell points? (Hint: no hints.)

Pictured: more rocks that spell certain muerte for those who would purloin their winking barnacles, and another sailboat for you sailboat addicts out there. I know at least one reader of this blog is into sailboat life. After watching Waterworld as a child, however, I swore off boat-based modes of living. Don’t expect that kind of thing from me, okay? I suppose I could live in a sealab as portrayed in Sealab 2021, though…

A friend recently brought to my attention the floating hotel being constructed in Vancouver. I could live in that too, actually. Or a lighthouse. Hm, why not all of them? I really need to start planning this shit out. First: become a trillionaire.

Ethically, of course.

Sometimes you think you’re in San Francisco, but actually you’re in La Coruña. I could live in all of these places… Don’t mind my perfectly harmless, intrusive thoughts. They’re instinctual carryovers from pre-agricultural nomadic life, which I clearly would have excelled at. But, if there’s anything our species has learned post-agriculture, it’s that we can solve any problem with technology. And when technology causes problems, we can just add more technology to solve them. Basically, what I need is a Holodeck.

Holodecks are still in development, and I couldn’t afford one anyway. Instead, I spent at least twenty minutes imagining what it would be like to purchase limited-run plastic that has absolutely no cultural connection to Galicia whatsoever. This resulted in a complaint from my manager.

Point is, La Coruña has something for everyone.

On the way back, I couldn’t help but compare La Coruña and Santiago. To tell you the truth, the visit made me appreciate Santiago even more than I already do. Yes, I imagined myself puffing smoke rings out of my pipe from the top of the Farum Brigantium, wearing a wizard cloak. It’s true. Verdad. But I need not acquire smoking habits out of vanity when forest fires can do it for me. Indeed, I could see and smell a ginormous smoke column from my apartment as I was editing this post on the evening of June 13th. Galicia’s entered fire season.

But in spite of the onslaught of novel experiences that make me uncomfortable, Santiago’s home. It just feels like it. Especially when a thunderstorm abruptly rages through, snuffing out the smoke. Then everyone panics… to bring their laundry inside.

La Coruña: it has around 250,000 people compared to Santiago’s 100,000. The Glass City is named for its galerías reflecting ocean waves through brilliant facades; a gorgeous city with all of the hallmarks of grand urban design; an awesome place to live, it seems, but there is sprawl beyond my liking in order to accommodate the larger population. My preference for lean planning is copacetic with Santiago’s compactness. I don’t have much reason to think about locking up a bike, or studying a bus route. I could appreciate more anonymity instead of being the Perpetual-Tourist-Who-Is-Really-Weird. In any case, I wouldn’t trade Santiago’s personal charm for more venues to run my rotation of craziness.

I do plan some things, like having a secret evil world headquarters a short ride away from places I’d enjoy visiting every now and again… no doubt La Coruña. I don’t live in a city connected by high-speed rail for no reason. And you never know, I might even go somewhere more than three Large Hadron Colliders away.

Dear reader, I wish you an incendio forestal-free summer of love from the Iberian peninsula. Pursue your dreams. Even if they involve sealabs or sailboats. Or hexagons for whatever reason…

It is Thursday, May 14th, 2026. You are me, misanthropic melodrama extraordinaire.

After wrapping up your day, you graduate to editing what you had decided was your magnum opus in a manic fugue state. It’s a Substack post calling for the abolition of cruises. Upon publication, you wholeheartedly expect the global community to establish a truth and reconciliation commission for the industry, exposing their ecological crimes. While you guffaw and sip your overpriced Repsol wine, what ails you most goes unwritten: your Internet doppelganger is a cruise influencer named David, hence your having gone to great lengths to differentiate your brand by donning a hat. You resent him and his partner’s whimsically informative cruise videos that you secretly enjoy.

Meanwhile, you moved to Spain. You reside in Galicia, a region known for not having skipped its fiestas even when they were illegal under [guess which form of government?]. After publishing a work that would alienate the vast majority of anyone reading, a dislocated bass begins to thump in the distance. Layered on top of that are the echoes of a man whose mouth seems to have been permanently affixed to a loudspeaker. A lingering commotion and detuned melody rise.

For context, you are by yourself. You are solo because your wife is visiting family in Bulgaria. Accompanied by her grandmother, she’s about to watch her country win Eurovision. Meanwhile, you’ve put your e-reader through its paces with a modern philosophical work on pessimism… precariously balanced in one hand over a warm bubble bath. “Don’t stop me now,” you sing, celebrating your contribution to humanity, “I’m havin’ such a good time, I’m havin’ a ball…”

Then a real kind of magic begins: is that… is that an air horn?

From your faux-European charcuterie board, you swipe a chunk of brie whilst precariously attempting to click a button, and you hear BWAAAAAAAAAH. That was weird. You continue reading something to the effect of life being suffering itself. You can’t even begin to nod your head in affirmation before hearing BWAAAAAAAAAH. Thirty seconds pass and BWAAAAAAAAAH. Maybe a minute and BWAAAAAAAAAH. Twenty seconds? BWAAAAAAAAAH. BWAAAAAAAAAH. BWAAAAAAAAAH. BWAAAAAAAAAH.

After nearly dropping your e-reader into the tub, you text your wife:

She doesn’t respond.

Upon consulting the Internet, you are appalled to discover that nobody had mentioned the presence of the Horn of Gondor — from the Lord of the Rings — in Santiago de Compostela. Flooding into your mind are the incessant lamentations of the post-blog travel bloggers: “There are no new experiences anymore,” they whine, “it’s all been documented by people like Ben and David.” But you know what’s really going on: they’re trying to hoard all of the experiences for themselves!

Since you must go outside, first you dry your left forearm with the heated left forearm towel. (You have one for each segment of your body because you’re European now.) Second, you put on your wife’s socks because you forgot to wash yours. Naturally, she’ll understand because she’s unaware that you’ve done this. At least you didn’t use her towel. Third and finally, you pat your scalp with perfumed rubbing alcohol, as the pilgrims do.

Now you’re ready for a night on the town… after you put on clothes. Can you pretend to be European… Spanish… Galician, er, or whatever? Let’s find out.

You step outside of your apartment complex. Despite the cantankerousness raging from afar, the streets are oddly empty. Wait. Your eyes dart toward… there! A Galician! The thirty-something is swaying, finding difficulty with his footing while dragging a frayed garbage bag of cans against the pavement. He kneels over a bush, quietly announcing, “Voy a vomitar.”

“¿Puedo ayudarte?” you ask as he wipes his mouth. “Estoy bien, gracias,” he says and goes right back to… doing whatever he’s doing. You watch him drag the bag of cans beyond the recycling bins. Odd. He’s infected… from a cruise ship?! After all, you did hear that some dumbass defunded a public safety apparatus intended for preventing these sorts of things. Anything is possible in the pandemicene, but the editorial board at Bebop Libre would like to disclaim that the zombie infection motif is a fictional dramatization that is neither funny nor timely.1

While walking about a kilómetro from your apartment to the historic district, your resentment for the woke editorial board at Bebop Libre simmers. You remember the time they prevented you from publishing a whole post… the gluten post. You scowl. Then you’re met with masses of cigarette-puffing, bobbing drunkards. They imbibe, laugh, and shout. You pass by one man whose back hair had crept up his neck like the moss of a distinguished tree, who times his cough perfectly so that it vectors directly into your open mouth hole. You notice signage proclaiming the Ascensión… into what? Increasing your viral load?

There’s no going back now that you’re down with the sickness.

While you make peace with this emerging pandemic at the facade of the world-famous cathedral, a woman yells to a man in English, “Hey, I’m your guide! The party is over there.” She gestures toward Alameda Park. Her client, double-fisting plastic cups of cerveza, staggers and yells back that he’s too busy having a blast. BWAAAAAAAAAH.

There’s a makeshift thunderdome concert nearby, steps and rafters filled to the brim with clapping Galicians and tourists. You’ve never seen such a concentration of people in Santiago. You nearly cross paths with someone wearing what appears to be a giant bobblehead (the likes of which someone else documented in the above video). There are cultural questions you’d like addressed, but you postpone them for later by making your way to Alameda Park.

You head for the illuminated Ferris wheel within view, at the topmost hill of the park. But your effort to evade crowds has failed. Indeed, that guide was right: there’s an ongoing party here. The main connection between the park and historic district is crawling with revelers; tourists and Galicians alike.

You pop an anxiety-busting gummy you found at El Corte Inglés, infamous farmacéutico procurer, and begin to vibe with the crowd as the sun goes down. Out of frame: a blushing granny with hair of pure blanco starts to dance a few meters ahead, stealing glances your way while erotically shimmying her replaced hips. Suddenly, she’s closer than she was before. You nope out of this particular situation with the same determination as you did noping out of America.

Awkwardly smiling, you meander to a hidey spot behind a large tree, watching the light show feed the leaves. BWAAAAAAAAAH. In your bones you feel an accordion solo with more exhilaration than you thought possible. Muchas gracias, El Corte Inglés.

You hang out for a while and loop around the stage to take a wide photo, as if you are a travel blogger. Hold on, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be documenting the fall of western civilization on Substack, remember?

Slipping by darty-eyed vendors wrapped top-to-bottom with glow sticks for sale, you behold a Super Mario attraction. If only you had come across this when you were nine, and not as a lone adult male in your mid-thirties. You consider requesting a viewing of whatever is inside with your broken Spanish, but the editorial board informs you by the covert speaker in your ear to, quote: “Abort.”

Well, at least you can take pride in having played more Super Mario than any of the little pissants who are allowed to go in there.

BWAAAAAAAAAH. The Horn of Gondor eludes you, although it seems to be somewhere around the Ferris wheel. Or is it the hydraulic system pumping air from the spinning ride next to it? You’re overwhelmed by people and noise, but feel surprisingly relaxed. Oh, right… the gummy. It’s no wonder you must exert such tremendous willpower ignoring the sweet and savory scents of the Galician staples wafting from a nearby tented area — filled with ravenous patrons — to ingest this scene. You suddenly realize that you’re right next to the Church of Santa Susana, a landmark you’ve wandered beside dozens of times.

You feel as if you didn’t come to the fiesta; the fiesta came to you.

And now, in defiance of the Bebop Libre editorial board’s wishes, an ode to the coming zombie apocalypse that will probably be caused by a UK-based cruise influencer…

Demand has never been higher for cruises, yet fuel costs have skyrocketed since Leeroy Jenkins entered the Strait of Hormuz.

The cruise industry purportedly wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, citing technological investment and “sustainable fuels” as the path forward. Yet the vast majority of cruise ships burn high sulfur fuel oil (HSFO). Scrubbers let ships burn this fuel, which can contain up to 3.5% sulfur, while still meeting the International Maritime Organization’s 0.5% cap that took effect in 2020. In actuality, “scrubbing” redirects the sulfur and contaminants, including various heavy metals, from the air to the ocean. A 2024 meta-analysis by Pacific Environment concluded that “scrubber discharge is extremely toxic to marine life at very low concentrations.”

A small proportion of cruise ships burn very low sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO), which contains up to 0.5% sulfur. This fuel, also dirty and unsustainable, meets the 0.5% cap by default, which is why it trades at the benchmark price for marine fuel. On average, VLSFO nearly doubled between January and May of 2026. The shipping industry refers to all marine fuel prices as bunker prices, a holdover from when coal was stored in bunkers on ships. Marine gas oil (MGO) has trended slightly higher than the benchmark. Whether ships burn HSFO with scrubbers (cheaper overall) or VLSFO without them, most can switch to the “cleaner” MGO when entering what are called Emission Control Areas, generally around ports or jurisdictions attempting to mitigate the poisoning.

Some cruise lines claim to be managing bunker price increases by “using less fuel.” One could almost feel a fleeting pity for these economic hostages, if they didn’t make it sound like they could’ve used less in the first place.

Cruises also incubate emergent diseases. Every time a passenger twerks for their well-adjusted instagoondom, the entire world plays Russian roulette over the next non-funny Trainwreck: Poop Cruise sequel. What kind of sick freak would watch the one where an outbreak spreads from a strain of hentaivirus hantavirus mutating on a cruise ship? With the right jump cuts and musical score, I honestly would. At least I don’t watch true crime.

While we’re radically redefining the world order, I propose a solution to all of the problems plaguing the cruise industry. It would meet their sustainability goals way ahead of schedule, but I’m not sure if they’d agree to it. Here goes: all cruise ships (and superyachts) using unsustainable fuels cease operation. Please clap. The super polluters could even be converted into housing for the needy, financed by retroactive social and environmental harm fines against the industry. Disincentivization of other exploitative and extractive ventures comes as a bonus. Anyone who can afford to destroy our environment can afford to pay for it. Right?

“But existential threats are good for the economy!”

It’s regrettable that people’s jobs depend on seafaring biohazards. It was also regrettable for the women whose jaws sloughed off painting radium dials, the coal miners who strained for their last breath, and the kids whose brains were rotted by leaded gasoline decades before the Internet took over the assignment. Industries exist by privilege, not by right. Insofar as hospitality confers goodwill, exist it should.

Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where I live, is the hub for tourists flowing in and out of the Camino de Santiago. It doesn’t get much better than buying locally while breathing fresh air, exercising, and socializing. By comparison, the sickening decadence of the cruise industry lies within the ever-widening chasm between real life and ziplining drunk — with an undisclosed heart murmur — into a strobing wave pool synchronized to a mumble rap remix of I Kissed a Girl by xX DJ GOAT Slayer 69 Nocap 420 Xx, who only drinks fluoride-free mouthwash. Echoing nearby is a self-described mystic with AI psychosis delivering a sermon on Bigfoot being the manifestation of the “divine feminine.” A divorced dad, energized by the sermon, insults the English language skills of a Filipino spa therapist named Rosita while attempting to barter with her for a discreet favor.

The patrons are en route to a luxury planned community where they can take a breather, segregated from the people who make them feel uncomfortable no matter where they are.

But here’s an alternative breather: hiking, or just being in a park. It’s challenging yet restorative because it reclaims attention from endless distraction, instilling a sense of control. Contrast that with paying rent to an industry that respects our oceans with the care Bigfoot would apply, after ten consecutive bean burritos, to the microecosystem of a condemned gas station toilet in remote Appalachia. Each year, one billion gallons of sewage, with varying levels of “treatment,” are dumped into a much more consequential ecosystem… THE FUCKING OCEAN.

So is it all right if I dump my sewage in your home?

Didn’t mean to catch you off-guard. Please understand: my sewage has to go somewhere. Stop being so selfish. Oh, your home is your property, huh? Or your landlord’s, at least. But then who owns the ocean? The cruise industry defiles it day in, day out, and the air too. A report by Transport and Environment found that “214 cruise ships emitted 509 tonnes of SOₓ [sulfur oxide], 19,125 tonnes of NOₓ [nitrogen oxide] and 448 tonnes of PM2.5 [particulate matter] around European ports” in 2022. That’s not to mention the CO₂ (carbon dioxide), CH₄ (methane), diesel PM, and soot, all detailed in the same report. Barcelona ranked as Europe’s most cruise-polluted port city. Is economic stimulation worth the cost of cardiovascular and respiratory disease? Certainly not to those affected.

At the same time, cruise line workers are just people trying to make a living. Like everyone else, they sustain metaphysical injury to survive in an unjust world.

Hiding behind complexity

Science likes to control its variables. Labs are made for isolating them, controlling others, and observing changes. The atmosphere and ocean aren’t labs. They’re open systems where chaos reigns. It costs mountains of dinero to install and maintain sprawling sensor networks in these environments, plus millions of hours parsing interdependent variables out of the data. This is yet another way the cruise industry externalizes cost onto third parties: marine pollution research.

One initiative that comes close to placing the onus on the cruise industry for their ecological psychopathy is the Commercial Passenger Vessel Environmental Compliance (CPVEC) Program out of Alaska. It ensures compliance with rules regarding wastewater and other public health matters. The program doesn’t fund open-ended science, however, and may not catch everything lurking underneath a porcelain veneer.

The effects of dumping millions of gallons of sewage into the ocean are largely unknown amidst the countless uncontrolled variables. We as a society can control the dump-sewage-into-the-ocean variable, but our failure to do so invites the uncontrollable. Back in 2007, nominative determinism gifted us a study by Nickie Butt that found, “Cruise ships represent less than 1% of the global merchant fleet yet . . . they are responsible for 25% of all waste generated by merchant vessels.” Her findings long preceded the post-COVID cruise bonanza. Toxicology studies and marine die-offs permit us to extrapolate that shit’s much worse now.

And then there’s the labor exploitation. All workers know precarity, but Andrew L. Yarrow of the Milken Institute Review summarizes the distinctive features of the cruise line worker:

“Workers” may be a better term than “employees,” given that many jobs are contract positions typically lasting from 2 to 11 months. Cruise lines generally do not discuss pay and benefits, although Carnival and Royal Caribbean — both publicly traded companies — reported median compensation of around $15,000 in 2022. CruiseCritic discussion boards are filled with complaints of minimal pay and exploitative working conditions.

He emphasizes that these workers need not pay for food and housing, and furthermore that they can send much of their earnings back to their families in impoverished countries… families they rarely see as part of the deal. Everyone agrees that positives include travel and socializing, which many workers themselves emphasize, but what recourse is there for the negatives? The solution that the cruise industry found to minimize its liability is common to all industries: alienate workers from their own labor through shell companies, subsidiaries, and contractors incorporated wherever regulations are weakest.

Remember Rosita, our Filipino spa therapist, and the divorced dads she deals with? She is placed by Recruiting Company to work for a “concessionaire” called Hospitality Company; Hospitality Company has a contract with a CENSORED-incorporated subsidiary of Cruise Line Company, operating a ship that is in fact owned by another subsidiary under a corporate umbrella, let’s say General Cruise Line Corporation, based out of CENSORED. To confuse the situation further, the ship itself is most likely registered under a flag of convenience, a different country than where the owners operate.

The end result is a shifting Escherian labyrinth of jurisdiction that, combined with Rosita’s commission-dependent wages, means she puts more into the system than she gets back. The difference is profit, but not for her. The whole structure exists to minimize liability, taxes included, by design. Rosita and the rest of her “crew,” contracted through similarly mystifying arrangements, often pay more in taxes proportionally than the companies that profit from them.

What about the new pollution?

In addition to workplace democracy, what we really need is a new pollution, a clean form of pollution, because anyone who hasn’t already decided that cruises are weird and disgusting will probably not be persuaded by the information I’ve outlined so far. To those of you who are still on the fence, or who disagree with my framing but are notably still listening, I present to you a proverbial peace pipe e-cigarette, fruit-flavored and FDA-approved. [blows blue vapor out of nose] Yeah man, like, realistically, these floating Superfund sites are, at the very least, wheelchair-accessible. A grandparent on dialysis can go on a cruise with the rest of the family, simplifying the logistics of going somewhere as a group.

Cruises can be very affordable and accommodating. I’m not here to commit class warfare over activities that can be sources of joy and broadened perspectives for the whole family. Nobody should feel bad just because I’m a cynical jerk, even those of you scheduling a cruise right now because I reminded you that they exist.

Stepping back from the affiliate revenue I’m leaving on the table: being against cruise ships invites criticism similar to that of antinatalism and drug prohibition. The Schopenhauers among us have accepted that existence wills itself unabated, and we humans are among its taste buds, inescapably wanting more. Now, to this human, it is absolutely goddamn ridiculous, in the grand panoply of bullshit one could waste time doing, that cruises have unique psychic resonance; that the experience of being on a cruise is so experientially orthogonal that nothing else can substitute for it. If this damning indictment of our shared pathology is rendered futile by the unstoppable pursuit of novelty (or profit?), then we might consider reducing externalized cost through environmental harm reduction.

Before introducing some emerging fuels, I’ll note that what is less bad for the climate isn’t necessarily less bad for public health. SO₂ (sulfur dioxide) emissions are unambiguously harmful to breathe, as are all sulfate aerosols. However, when scattered throughout the atmosphere, they ultimately reflect solar radiation, counteracting warming for a week or two until rain and gravity do their thing. CO₂ is what’s called a stock pollutant: it accumulates and locks in heat for centuries to millennia. Methane is a flow pollutant, much more potent but with an atmospheric concentration that noticeably decays within a decade or two.

Industrial emissions have pushed the carbon cycle far beyond its pre-industrial equilibrium, so understanding the difference between stock and flow pollutants informs geoengineering projects as well as consumer discernment. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) collected data showing “2025 was the third warmest year on record.” The ECMWF also found April 2026 to have “the second highest sea surface temperatures (SSTs) on record for the extra-polar oceans,” melting Arctic included.

Whether or not one trusts the scientific method — without which there would be no cruise ships — the following fuel sources are getting competitive with HSFO, VLSFO, and MGO on both climate and public health in newbuilds:

TL;DR: The gotchas, strings attached, and caveats of these fuels do not inspire confidence in sustainable cruising.

The new pollution won’t fix you

Picture this: we’ve achieved world peace. Leeroy Jenkins has exited the Strait of Hormuz on a cruise ship using green, electrolysis-derived hydrogen, made cheap and easy by an abundance of nuclear fusion reactors equitably arranged throughout the world because love and science prevailed. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is not actively sabotaging progress through regulatory capture or lobbying. Why, that would be wrong… they wouldn’t do that.

In this imaginary fairytale future we couldn’t be propelling ourselves any further from, still striking a few whales along the way, there is no engine swap that makes up for the sewage and mechanical damage to the seafloor.

Remember that sewage I asked you if I could dump in your home? Okay, yes, that was a big ask, but what if I first treated it with an advanced wastewater treatment system (AWTS)? Did you know that new cruise ships feature these technological marvels? They’re even better than land-based wastewater treatment in many ways. Such systems can treat fluids to a drinkable standard. Any reasonable person would allow this treated waste to be dumped into their home by a friend in need. And no, I personally choose not to drink it, not out of caution, not because there’s a mutating pathogen in it or anything, but because I truly believed you would want it. What are friends for? Oh, and by the way, the untreated microplastic-laden greywater and biosludge are part of the deal.

Also, would it be all right if I destroyed your home with a 20-ton steel anchor in the shape of Ms. Loomer’s bloated face? I’ve made the decision quite easy for you: the anchor’s already loomering over us right n—[distressed shouts buzz from the radio] HOLY FUCK! IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR US! Rosita, if you can hear me from the spa deck: run. Your contract doesn’t cover this and neither does the ship’s insurance, which is held by a shell company in a jurisdiction that has not returned my calls. And hey everyone, listen… I want you to know that I love you. No, not sexualmente, don’t make our final moments weird.

Oh, the anchor missed. False alarm, everyone. The divorced dads won’t massage themselves, Rosita.

The cruise industry is slowly polluting less per passenger-mile, all the while dragging its hideous anchors across, for example, seagrass meadows of Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean. According to Evelyne Chavent, such meadows have “lost almost 34% of their surface area in 50 years.” Posidonia is an oxygen producer that sequesters carbon and promotes marine biodiversity, including species in our food web. A 2001 coral reef study in the Virgin Islands showed that a single cruise anchor drop created “a distinct scar roughly 128 m long and 3 m wide from a depth of 22 m to a depth of 6 m . . . live coral cover has not increased significantly in the last 10 [years].”

All that is to say: introducing anchors, sewage, and scrubber wash into our oceans doesn’t seem very sustainable to me. And a world primed for SUPER EL NIÑOS doesn’t need any more heat-trapping greenhouse gases either, if it can be avoided. As a technologist feeling tenuous estrangement from technology, I grant that hydrogen-based ships are cool, but I find the Camino de Santiago to be much more so. Leisure is achievable by land, in a land near you, maybe right outside your door. Sure, you could cruise over to A Coruña, connected to the Camino via the English Way. Let me know if you do.

But you can take a hike anywhere, with or without the new pollution, even if you don’t live in Spain. Go ahead: be one with nature. It’s environmentally sustainable, practically free, and there’s no passport required (hopefully).

Last month I wrote about LaLiga, Spain’s national football league, and how they had messed up my Internet experience.

And not just me. An overbroad judgment vested these jocks with the authority to turn the Internet on and off for the millions of residents here in Spain. Why? Nobody really knows. I get the impression that LaLiga themselves don’t even know. “Just because” seems to be the most likely explanation, based on all available evidence. While the Spanish government didn’t invite me to comment in Espanglish at their public hearings about this (¿y por qué no?), I have been informed that my activism, via blog post, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Now, you may be thinking, “You’re a liar. Nobody knows who you are or cares about your stupid post.”

All of that is true, but may I present to you Exhibit A?

Exhibit A: Haha

Recently, a report by Álex Moreno was published at Demócrata titled, Congress will act against massive IP blockages by LaLiga. And that’s just what the Spanish government has been doing, working to put an end to this farcical Internet whack-a-mole. Across the political spectrum, amendments to the Digital Services Act have been submitted to rectify the situation. Everyone’s on the same 404: Not Found page that blocking random web services is weird and annoying. The aforementioned report notes possible endangerment as well:

Weeks ago, a citizen criticized that the geolocation application he uses to assist his father, who suffers from dementia, became overloaded when sharing a server with infrastructure flagged by LaLiga.

That same infrastructure is part of an app I made. Can you use it to track someone with dementia? No. But consider this: the joy it brings to at least a dozen nerds from all across the world.

And how do I know that? Considering I don’t use highfalutin analytics, I needed another way to know what joy I bring to others. So, I channeled The Nine. I held a séance, using my phone, and The Nine answered. Success depends on belief, which is why laboratory conditions need not apply. I need you to let your guard down, fully, right now. Simultaneously, I need you to consider giving all of your money to Bebop Libre. The reward? A good word with The Nine.

Subscribe now

Let’s move on to Exhibit B, or what The Nine has shared with me.

Exhibit B: Betwixt Fact and Fiction

OK, you’re being way too closed off for this to work. I told you to let your guard down. Why are you not following my commands? Go get a massage, or eat an edible food item. I’m sure you can find other ways to relax, too. You know what I’m talking about. I recommend doing all of these things, and then we’ll talk about The Nine. By the way, they’re always watching you. They report their findings to LaLiga, who have considered turning off your Internet.

And just who are The Nine?

Well, you know how in Stranger Things there’s a secret facility where psychic experiments are conducted? Whether or not you do, it seems to be based on the exploits of a man named Andrija Puharich, specifically his ‘space kids’ project in the 1970s. Involved in MK Ultra and the Stargate project, he also repeatedly tried to contact The Nine: nine non-human intelligences heading up an intergalactic delegation on a spaceship that loiters within our solar system. Allegedly.

The more you know: if you are reading this, you are now among the very few who know that Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, participated in Puharich’s sessions to contact The Nine. Proof? The tapes are kept at the Centre d’Archives et de Recherches in France.

Contact with The Nine is quite simple. I skipped the mediumship protocol, calling them on a phone number provided by a private data broker. The going rate was 0.0009 BTC. Here’s a 100% authentic, non-fabricated transcript of our illuminating conversation that I did not make up just now:

9: You are presently speaking with The Nine. We request for you to share what it is you would like to be called over the course of this transmission.

R: Me llamo El Señor Reese.

9: Do you prefer we communicate in Spanish, El Señor Reese?

R: Uh… no. Anyway, I was wondering if you could tell me about my future.

9: It has been foreseen — your astral body will exit the corporeal soon. Ages will pass, but not from your perspective. You are to be reborn on another world as a gastrointestinal parasite with hundreds of spiny bones that will pierce you from the inside whenever you move. You will only feel pain. In this form you shall persist for several human lifetimes, afraid and alone in the colon of a tusked, sewer-dwelling crustacean.

R: Looking forward to it. Switching gears, on this timeline in which I have gloriously defeated LaLiga, I was also wondering the extent of joy, if any, I will shower upon others.

9: You know only confusion. What we call you is a colloqualism to satisfy your reductive mind, and it is there that you harbor the delusion of separation between self and other. For the joy others feel, you too feel.

R: So I bring joy to others?

9: That is not what we indicated. We said it is possible.

And there you have it, folks: the butterfly effect in action. I think it’s clear based on that transcript — truncated slightly so as not to burden you with extraneous information such as God’s existence and the meaning of life — that I have steered our species into a higher density plane of consciousness by single-handedly defeating LaLiga. Yet Puharich proclaimed Uri Geller to be the savior of humanity.

Can you believe that?

Back to Earth

When I’m not torturing you with my bizarro autofiction, I like to walk in the park.

I often bring my reading materials there. Right now, there’s a book fair in el parque de la Alameda, near the reopened convenience shop, with no shortage of curious passers-by in spite of intermittent drizzles. The rain makes it pleasantly cool for those on their feet, I’ll add. As we proceed into the summer, more and more pilgrims make their way along the winding hills of Santiago de Compostela. And with increasing frequency, pilgrims-to-be march in unison upon rocky paths, walking poles in hand, mainly within the aforementioned public space.

I’ve observed that those preparing for their camino are determined, whereas those completing it are deliberate. Obviously, walking for untold kilómetros across difficult terrain takes its physical and emotional toll, but there is a prize to be won: equanimity. Visage and gait alone reflect the degree to which one has integrated with the path, rather than merely walking on it.

Relatedly, I’m happy to report that my zapatos impermeables nuevos, new waterproof shoes, make walks across the parque and ciudad far more comfortable than the flat ones I originally brought to Spain… What can I say? I’m a stubborn cheapskate. I even tested my new shoes the other day while lugging a packaged office chair to my apartment from the department store. I “walk the walk” of car-free life when I can, and I choose to enjoy it for its own sake.

Psychodrama about national football leagues and aliens, I find, is difficult to manufacture in Galicia — because, desgraciadamente, life is just too good here. Information wars carry proportionally little sway in lands where the tech oligarchs have not reprogrammed the populace. We in Galicia prefer independent news outlets to stay informed about what’s happening in the world, such as InfoWars. All of us in Galicia watch this programme every day in order to hone our critical thinking skills.

I don’t watch football.

Neither the grabby nor kicky kinds. But as you know, sometimes the grabby kind gets kicky, and the kicky kind gets grabby. It just depends.

And as if I didn’t have enough reasons to trivialize sports: LaLiga — Spain’s national football league — disables a core feature of a hobbyist website I maintain within the country. But only on certain days. And just what does my hyper-illegal, super-illicit website for criminal crimes of criminality do? Why, the worst thing you can possibly imagine: helping people share and synchronize virtual torches for a role-playing game called Shadowdark. (It’s like D&D but better.)

You can learn more about this at my nerd blog, Lodes & Lanterns. 😉

Anyway, so it turns out that the “live sync” part of my app, Torchtimer, is only blocked on “matchdays.” I’m not kidding. This is not a joke. April Fool’s has passed. Testing has confirmed that the following (translated) error message is only received on matchdays:

Access to this IP address has been blocked in compliance with the Judgment of December 18, 2024, issued by the Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona within the framework of ordinary proceedings (Commercial matters, art. 249.1.4)-1005/2024-H, initiated by the National Professional Football League and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital, S.L.U.

At first I thought, “OH SHIT WHAT DID I DO?”

But this is nothing I caused. For once.

What the fuck happened

Although I have one, you don’t need a computer science degree to understand what transpired.

See, I had committed the heinous act of having part of my nerd hobby app automatically assigned to the “wrong” IP address. An IP address, by the way, is like a house number. LaLiga, apparently, determined that an address my app happens to use, or that of a neighbor in the same “area code” perhaps, had at some point infringed upon their copyright, presumably streaming an unlicensed broadcast.

So the only rational course of action is to shut off services having nothing to do with it, right? On Sundays or whatever. Right?

Thus, without certain workarounds, my app’s live sync feature breaks once a week within Spain as collateral damage, despite the fact that it has no streaming video component. It never has. And it never will, because it’s just used to do nerd stuff that couldn’t be any further from copyright-infringing sports appreciation.

It should be obvious to any judge that vesting the jocks at a football league with the authority to turn the Internet on and off, whenever they want, would be spectacularly counterproductive. Yet, it happened. LaLiga can direct Spain’s big telecorpo, Telefónica, to do so without any oversight I’m aware of. If I’m being generous, internalizing the full extent of how stupid this is may require some — minimal in my opinion — specialized knowledge. Still, granting unilateral power to a private institution in dictating which Internet services can and cannot be accessed is… well, this isn’t the United States, okay?

Look, I’m not here to give my two cents on copyrights. It’s a foregone conclusion to me — and anybody else with a tangy brainstem — that intellectual property law has been completely broken since the inception of the Internet, if not before. I’ll refrain from going on a tangent, though. I’m just a guy trying to help people enjoy their tabletop role-playing game.

And by the way, what’s the deal, Telefónica? What the hell, man? You had something to do with this? Despite your troubled past, I distinctly recall glazing you in my post about how awesome the fiber internet here is in Spain…

But all of a sudden, new shit has come to light, man. Is this how you want to be remembered by Bebop Libre’s horde of juggalos, Telefónica? Do you even comprehend the gravity of what your unholy alliance with LaLiga has unleashed upon my tabletop role-playing game experience? You will never be forgiven for slightly inconveniencing a manchild who writes America’s favorite blog about his move abroad to Spain.

It’s beside the point that his special interest happens to involve pretending to be a dwarven cleric — who is very smart and attractive — in a fantasy world.

How dare you. How goddamned dare you, and how dare LaLiga for treading upon muh freedum (which accompanies me anywhere I go because I’m American). This blog is literally called Bebop Libre. You thought taking away my right to reappropriate culture, fictional or otherwise — and present that as freedom — wouldn’t mobilize a mass protest? Despicable. Disgusting, in fact.

Godzilla, Mothra, King Kong & your Internet

Other outlets have written much about this shit, such as this recent piece by Chiara Castro at TechRadar. Quoting her:

Spanish [Internet service providers] are increasingly blocking content by restricting access to specific IP addresses. Because multiple websites often share the same root IP address — particularly when hosted on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare — this method is “highly likely to have collateral effects," [according to] Alissa Starzak, Cloudflare’s Vice President and Global Head of Public Policy . . .

While I’m reappropriating cultures, there’s a Japanese word for what’s going down: kaiju, or basically “giant movie monster.” LaLiga and Telefónica picking a fight with Cloudflare is pure kaiju cinema. It’s the equivalent of Godzilla firing his laser at Mothra while King Kong watches from a skyscraper converted into a cuck throne.

Love or hate big corpos like Cloudflare, there’s no universe in which playing indiscriminate whack-a-mole with Internet services like mine will achieve anything but more problems (if this strongly-worded letter of a blog post is any indication). Castro’s article even reports that the Madrid City Council website had been taken down as a result. I just don’t think pissing off municipal governments within Spain, or monied interests that are absolutely sustaining financial damages because of this bullshittery, is ideal in the long term.

Now, it occurred to me that maybe this boils down to indirect legal activism against monopolies that I’m misreading but… court orders aren’t laws. They’re bespoke commands. Laws ostensibly involve planned implementations and guidelines for relevant parties with support of the public (haha). I repeat: ostensibly. Say what you will about laws, but they are at least more sensible than ordering LaLiga to be the king of Spain’s Internet for one day per week.

Incidentally, if you’ve read my fiber article, you can probably surmise that I’m the kind of person who was quite entertained watching Lina Khan terrify the monopolies — in the administration preceding the one that rolled over for Live Nation and Ticketmaster. When in one moment the state works for its people, but does the exact opposite in the next, I’m not terribly enthusiastic about the assumptions underlying the concept.

That’s why you won’t find me cheering for Team Godzilla or Team Mothra when states and corporations duke it out. Nonetheless, we hoi polloi are King Kong on the cuck throne, and who can’t appreciate watching the other monsters beat the shit out of each other? I suppose that’s one thing sports fans and I have in common.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: What are we even doing here if you don’t like this post and subscribe? And go ahead and enjoy the complimentary music video below from the Viagra Boys… before it’s banned in your country. When that happens, you bring the pitchforks. I’ll bring the (virtual) torches.

Subscribe now

Hola amigas y amigos,

My wife and I love to walk together. Caminar means “to walk” in Spanish. Not too different from camino, is it? A camino is a path on which we can walk. Notice that the language treats verbs and nouns as two sprouts of the same seed — an analogy befitting a verdant spring.

Primavera!

Primavera is almost here, and in Galicia, the greenery is… greenifying. There are dogs (perros) everywhere! Big (grande) dogs, little (pequeño) dogs. Some look like wolves (lobos), but they are very well-behaved. Do you know why? It’s because, in Spain, many people have a Catholic guilt complex that makes them feel ashamed about everything — including having an anxious dog, which motivates them to actually train the damn thing.

But the dogs, you must understand, can’t stop trying to hump each other in this season of hot and wet fertility. And who can blame them? Certainly not the Catholics. Among the humans around here, many of whom are Catholic, the rate of public displays of affection has steadily risen as well. Even in “conservative” areas, Spaniards aren’t particularly shy about their… desires.

But more importantly, my new balcony furniture arrives soon. I’ve been preparing for the warming weather — stocking up on wine to try, friends to share it with, and for times of sober solitude: comic books to translate.

Everyone knows Batman, of course. And a couple of years ago, just before a suburban Chicago primavera, I nearly became something of a bat-man myself. But rather than someone killing my parents in front of me, my origin story was a bit different. It was more like that of Spiderman.

When Americans walk around, they all think, “I just need to watch out for cars and murderers, and I’ll be fine.”

But as I’ve learned, that’s not enough. Tricky Vicky and I had, up until one particular moonlit stroll, walked countless nights without a hitch — in Chicago and beyond. But that doesn’t mean much, considering Chicago didn’t just feel safe… it felt cozy, contrary to what people who’ve never lived there will tell you.

Anyway, it was a chilly night, but all the walking warmed me up, so I unzipped my jacket. Then I tucked my hands in my jacket pockets, and might have been passionately debating my wife on the matter of scissors. Now, this is just my opinion, and other people don’t have to agree — assuming they have no morals or principles — but I think scissors should be returned to the same place every time after they’re used, so they can be found by other people who want to use them.

I wanted to make it very clear that randomizing the position of the scissors, in time and space, was inconsiderate to those of us whose astral projection prowess is not on par with that of Magneto from X-Men.

Then, suddenly, it felt like someone tugged at my jacket from behind! Was I being punished for my hyperobjective rationality? Was it Mothman, a cryptid allegedly sighted in Chicago? Or was it Lobo — of DC Comics fame, much like Batman — who murdered Santa? And brutally so.

If Lobo could murder Santa, he’d murder me. I don’t have a secret polar base, elvish indentured servants, or magical flying reindeer. But despite my apparent worthlessness, did I deserve to be murdered for merely insinuating that shared belongings should have a governance model more sophisticated than barbarism? I think not. And of course, while you and I both know that I will one day be murdered, and probably for speaking truth to power on this very blog, we’re still a long way off from that.

But there was no Lobo. No Mothman. It wasn’t even Batman roundhouse-kicking me in the mouth for the crime of trying to explain how pro-social behaviors work.

Instinctively, I tried to grab at whatever was tugging on me through my jacket, like any practiced kung fu warrior would. Then I felt a bulge on my right side — in my jacket. This was no primavera fertility ritual.

“Ow!” I yelped, as something stung my hip.

Then, out of my jacket flew a winged menace.

PROTIP: if you ever get scratched or bitten by a bat, go to the emergency room E-FUCKING-MEDIATELY. You can literally die… of rabies. You do NOT want to die of rabies. It is not a good time.

Anyway, I was pretty pissed off about the whole scissors thing, so I just went to bed.

The next day, at some point I remembered that I had been scratched or bitten by a bat. Heh, not me, I thought. I’m the main character. The main characters of this universe, like yours truly, have a thing called “plot armor.” Like Batman, we have destinies to fulfill. So what if some destinies involve starting new pandemics and finding ourselves repeatedly in the path of a total solar eclipse? Somebody has to be the main character for that sort of thing. Some of us have to be anti-heroes, like dear old Lobo. And yet there appeared to be a scratch and a couple of bite marks on my hip. Hmm…

I looked up my prognosis online, which immediately prompted me to haul ass to the ER. When they think you might have rabies, you jump the queue (just a little life hack for those of you who live in America). Four different nurses came to see me, ecstatic that I was possibly their first rabies patient. They couldn’t have been more excited, and they all wanted to hear my story. They smiled with undeniable smugness, hoping they’d have front-row seats to watching me die of a terrible disease. Then the doctor injected me with various shots, told me he’d googled my situation, and was pretty sure I’d be fine.

“However,” he said, “you’ll have to come back for more shots.”

And so I did. However, a follow-up nurse administering one of these shots asked me a disturbing question that undermined my confidence in the entire process. This medical professional asked me — the guy who was scratched and bitten by a bat — “So how do you even avoid getting scratched or bitten by a bat?”

Are you fucking serious? I thought. I’M ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE THIS HAS HAPPENED TO. I’M LITERALLY THE LAST PERSON ANYONE SHOULD ASK.

This primavera, remember that it’s not just dogs and Catholics out on the prowl. Don’t let the Easter bunnies and flamenco fool you. The merrymakers come out at night, but so do the bats. The temperature changes between winter and spring confuse these creatures, and if you’re a human radiator like I am, they might want to snuggle inside your jacket. Be mindful of their territories and hours, as the sick ones are more likely to have… encounters.

Just the other day my wife and I were walking around the park at night. And there were creatures flapping around us amidst the street lamps. We gazed upon them with suspicion.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: And then an argument ensued over whether they were bats, according to my wife, or just big black moths, according to me. Besides, I have the rabies shots now. So, what's the worst that could happen? LIKE and SUBSCRIBE if you believe Mothman is real, por favor.

Share

Parents often look at me crookedly when I tell them how to raise their children.

And look, I’ve never had a kid, but, I feel uniquely qualified to proffer my advice. Sometimes it’s the absence of any relevant experience or competency whatsoever that gives rise to true wisdom. When parents share their problems with me in confidence, I practice deep listening. This is an empathy-building methodology I’ve cultivated through a years-long Vipassana practice. So I nod and say, “Maybe you shouldn’t have had kids in the first place.” Then I explain how they’ve damned their descendants to the hellfire of human-caused ecological collapse. Yet these people, clearly in need of my expertise, just stare at me as if there’s a mushroom cloud emerging from my forehead.

And unfortunately, not everyone is an expert at giving advice. Not like me. Before I moved abroad, several people, none of whom had ever done it, decided I needed their advice.

10. “Tell them you’re Canadian.”

Out of this entire listicle, here’s the one piece of advice that, in retrospect, I probably should’ve taken. I don’t want to lie to anyone, but uh, holy shit… I should not have been telling my newfound neighbors I’m American. Huge mistake. While the Illuminati shuffles my home country across the world chessboard, I’m just thinking about all of the excuses I’m gonna have to come up with.

I should’ve gone around announcing, “Soy canadiense, eh,” here, and a little “Me gusta el Trailer Park Boys” there.

9. “Prepare for a few more years, then leave.”

The recommendation to postpone was out of genuine concern. Another way of saying, “Don’t go.” But at a certain point, you just kind of have to do the thing. Wanna move? Then move. And if it doesn’t work out? Oh well. That’s life.

8. “Plan to move back in a year.”

Ah, the hope that I’m punished for doing something differently… disguised as advice. How generous of others to pre-plan my failure, presenting their concern for my wellbeing as if my moving to a place with universal healthcare called for a “Get Well Soon” card. And this piece of advice was always followed by a practical recommendation: keep your stuff. You know, just in case. Translation: hold on to everything, because surely you’ll come crawling back.

7. “Find a house, not an apartment.”

As George Carlin said about stuff:

If you didn’t have so much goddamn stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. That’s all your house is. It’s a pile of stuff with a cover on it.

I don’t need a house, and I don’t need more stuff. That’s why I can just… walk around. Everybody laughed at what George Carlin had to say. But did they listen?

6. “Live on the beach.”

Everyone who gave me advice assumed I wanted what they wanted. But I don’t like the heat. And sand? Not for me. And you know what I think? Everyone else should only enjoy things I like. If they don’t share my interests, naturally we’re left to ask: what’s wrong with them? How could they not enjoy dedicating untold hours to optimizing a network of conveyor belts and automated trains in Factorio?

5. “You must immediately speak fluent Spanish or you’ll die of exposure alone in an alley.”

Please trust me when I say I have not mastered the Spanish language. We'll leave it at that, but I’m still alive somehow.

4. “Get a storage unit for all your stuff.”

Again: refer to George’s bit on stuff. By the way, have you ever… rented a storage unit? Other adults say “get a storage unit” as if it’s a fond experience they reminisce about. “Oh yeah, they doubled the rent and our couch grew a mold stain in the shape of Willem Dafoe’s face. It’s like the smartest decision we’ve ever made.” Ugh. Having, you know, used storage units in the past, I’ll go ahead and recommend avoiding this. If I described my past storage experiences in detail, I’d probably get sued.

3. “Ship your stuff to Europe.”

Imagine if Morpheus from The Matrix visited you and asked: “What if I told you there was a way of getting a storage unit for all your stuff, but it was an order of magnitude more expensive, destructive, and complicated?”

Oh yeah, that sounds awesome, man… question: which pill numbs me to everything? And is there any way to skip the line of perpetual rebirth without achieving enlightenment? Can I take a smoke break outside Plato’s Cave, maybe? I won’t run away, I promise.

2. “Go on a multi-month scouting trip first.”

You don’t need to go on a scouting trip if you get rid of… take a guess.

Your stuff! My wife and I simplified our move abroad by getting rid of our stuff. Move to the wrong place? Then move again. It’s not the end of the world if you’re not dragging stuff around with you. Also, if you can afford to ship your stuff, why not just acquire other stuff after you settle in? Speaking from experience, your tastes — if not your needs — will change after you move abroad. While I only brought some checked bags with me to Spain, guess what?

I still brought too much stuff.

1. “Ship your car abroad.”

Ah, shipping a car… the special case of shipping stuff and the most tone-deaf advice I received, given my forceful refrain that I wouldn’t be driving anymore. I gotta ask: am I living in The Truman Show? Because it seems like (some of) the people introduced into my life intentionally push my buttons to entertain extradimensional entities.

“Just ship your car across the Atlantic Ocean” feels like advice I’d casually receive from somebody being blackmailed by the Illuminati. And if George Carlin was right that a house is merely a pile of stuff, then a car is just a mobile pile of stuff for moving stuff between piles of stuff. I don’t need any of it.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: Like and subscribe for more stuff about stuff, and consider not letting AI-generated YouTube videos raise your children.

Share

Some nights ago I overheard a grown-ass man in his mid-thirties remark to his wife, in the whiniest and most unbecoming voice he could muster, “I hate school! I hate bedtime!”

That man’s name? Albert Einstein. Just kidding, it was me.

Why? ¿Por qué? Because — porque — I had to go to school the next day. NO, I thought, I want to keep playing video games! I don’t WANT to go to bed! I hate everything!

It turns out I’m not done with school and learning stuff. Like most Americans, the education system of my home country did not instill in me a value for learning. I was taught, instead, to value popularity and money. That would explain the current national predicament, but I’ll keep the political invectives brief: something, American exceptionalism, something something.

Now that I’ve moved to España, I have to be a truly exceptional (US)American and accept that the world doesn’t revolve around me. Pfffftt. Whatever.

Thankfully Spaniards have tolerated my shortcomings… so far. I’m trying. Take, for example, the Spanish audio lessons I’ve practiced; these have been instrumental in building some social credit with my newfound neighbors. They do appreciate my efforts to use their words mostly incorrectly at inappropriate times. It reminds them of what it would be like to be equal parts stupid and insane, to the exclusion of all other qualities.

The lessons my wife and I have been practicing were produced long ago. Colloquial Spanish language use has changed since then. Moreover, these lessons prominently feature meeting random women at hotels, or abruptly arriving at their homes and asking whether the husband is present; announcing the possession of money to such women; and, how could I possibly forget: upon meeting a woman, always asking her if she wants to get a drink (en el hotel). Just to be clear, my wife and I just wanted to learn Spanish. There were no sensual obstacles we were trying to overcome with our move abroad, to our knowledge.

The teachings of these lessons, however, have nothing to do with how I mortified my new Spanish teacher.

I’ll introduce her. She's a world traveler from southern Spain. She mentioned deliberately adjusting her accent to accomodate us so that we sound normal-ish in Galicia. We probably won’t. Anyway, it turns out Andalusians don't pronounce the /s/ sound, like, at all — hasta luego becomes ahta luego. As an American, I like pretending to know everything, but honestly I didn't know that. While our teacher was very careful not to imprint her accent (or dialect?) on my wife and me, she is providing much-needed context for people new to Spain like us.

Truly, we couldn’t have found a sharper and more enthusiastic Spanish teacher. Her style? Perfecto, at least as far as we’re concerned.

During our in-person lesson, the first of many, there was a transgression committed by… well, you know who. Who else? When it comes to your need to have horrors burned into your memory forever, there’s no better blog than Bebop Libre. And no, I didn’t solicit our Spanish teacher for a drink. I didn’t show up to her home and tell her I have mucho dinero, shout INTERNATIONAL! at her, or anything of the sort.

Here is, to my shame, what I did…

I managed to make my teacher recoil in disgust at what I thought was an innocuous comment. Apparently this was no laughing matter to her. What, you wonder? Reese, what did you say to this poor woman? What did you DO? Okay, fine, I may have accidentally mentioned that I buy premade tortillas — the kind made of eggs and potatoes — from the grocery store. Not all of the time, just sometimes. I mean it’s not like I just eat them straight from the packaging. There’s effort involved in frying them, of course. I’m not completely disgusting. So to demonstrate my mastery of the Spanish language to our teacher, I called them “tortillas del supermercado.” That was a mistake.

Because she looked at me as if she might die.

It has become clear (claro) why the clerks gaze upon me with fear and disgust when I put these affronts to Spanish culture in my basket. Apparently it’s an atrocity, not far off from a war crime to be adjudicated by an international tribunal. Never, under any circumstances, get caught buying these tortillas from the store. It’s morally wrong, probably illegal even. Do not joke about it. Doing so can cause instantaneous brain death in a Spaniard.

Thankfully our Spanish teacher did not collapse or dematerialize, handling the emergency situation I created with a reflexive command. First, she informed me of the best establishment to find an tortilla here in Santiago. Then she demanded I eat one before I was to look her in the eyes again. That was my homework. She also told me that, if she were being honest, authentic tortillas must forgo onions (sin cebolla).

The ones I’ve been buying from the supermercado had onions in them (con cebolla), but I decided not to mention that.

Onions versus no onions is a point of contention fought over by Spaniards, constantly. There’s also the matter of whether authentic paella can include seafood. “It does not,” our teacher told us, “but it can be very good.” She’s judicious, and further recognized that it’s possible for some people to enjoy Spanish tortillas with onions (con cebolla), even though it’s wrong.

Furthermore, in an abundance of caution and reasonably assuming I cannot do anything correctly, my teacher warned me not to buy sangria from bars. She told me that only the homemade stuff is good, and furthermore that I should instead order “tinto de verano con limón” because it’s cheaper and better. Yes, “summer” wines with lemon are served year-round.

For those of you who plan on traveling to Spain or moving here, I’ll continue exfiltrating valuable information for you. To the Spaniards and long-term residents: I am deeply sorry. That said, you wouldn’t be reading my posts if you didn’t get a sick form of pleasure out of them, so I retract the apology.

As a palate cleanser, I present to you a video of people eating tortillas the right way in the nearby city of Ourense, famed for its hot springs and exceptional longevity.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: Hasta luego, I need to practice Spanish. Also, like and subscribe or whatever — my teacher told me to say I need at least ten more followers before I can be trusted as a source of journalistic integrity (not really).

Not long after I moved to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, I bought the Spanish translation of a graphic novel — the psyberpunk (see what I did there?) Akira Volume 1 — from a local comic book store.

Determining the coolness of a store: Is there a giant facehugger from the Alien franchise mounted on the wall? If so, you’re required to enter the store and compliment such fine taste. You might buy something so they can add more to the collection.

My Spanish was severely lacking. When prompted for a payment method, I announced that I had a “tarjeta de crédito.” The clerk, upon hearing this, grinned widely at the store manager, who had been — up until that point — explaining the significance of that particular manga’s translation to me, which I half-understood despite nodding along. All of a sudden, the clerk began wildly gesticulating and repeatedly shouting “INTERNATIONAL!”

The manager responded in kind, and of course I adapted to the evolving social context by joining in while pumping my fists. My wife watched with amusement. I could tell, based on the head bob of the clerk and her rolling shoulder movements, that I was being a Mr. Fancy Pants with my fancy credit card from a fancy foreign land. To her, I’d been overly formal, having learned the Spanish I knew from audio lessons produced decades prior. (These lessons were better than nothing, but didn’t reflect modern developments in the language’s real-world use, or the regional quirks of Galicia.)

I knew this much: the clerk’s response was intended to correct me in a playful manner that I immediately understood: too much formality! “Tarjeta” alone would have done the job, as is common throughout Spain.1

Anyway — back to the comic book store.

The laughs didn’t stop. “Aquí está” I said as I handed her my INTERNATIONAL! card, and she asked me if my purchase was a gift. There was a brief pause. Yes, I told her: a gift for me.

“Para mí!” I exclaimed, as pathetically as possible.

This was received with hysterical laughter, and reinforced my confidence. It turns out that communication, comedy, and grace are all possible with comically bad language mastery on the part of at least one participant. An intuition for social context helps; that is, mindfulness of facial expressions and body language. Not everywhere would I be received as warmly, as you probably figured out by now (especially if you’ve read other posts on this blog). But a comic book store? That’s my home turf. A nerd is a nerd anywhere. We can suss each other out.

How’s that work? Well, back in America, I learned about scenes.

For example, I have a punk-rock denim jacket with patches I’ve haphazardly attached to it, as I’m not the world-renowned tailor I’m so often mistaken for [lie detected]. I even brought this jacket to Spain. But am I punk? Sure, I could find inner peace at a punk rock concert next to a dumpster wafting toxic fumes over the crowd on a sweet summer day. Punks are, by the way, much more welcoming than many people realize. While I could present shared symbols and appreciation of the natural punk habitat, they can tell I’m probably not going to rub blue margarita juice all over my face and scream into a microphone until my lungs collapse.

Though I straddle the line between nerd and punk, I know which side I land on. Comic book stores are my scene. Institutions of tabletop gaming? For sure my scene.

We all have scenes. Whether you’re staying in place, traveling, or moving abroad, these are the places you can go with minimal social friction — where long-term friends are made. They’re not a crutch, and you should always step outside them, but they’re where you start.

The nerd and punk scenes are INTERNATIONAL! like so many others, yet participating in them lets you absorb regional and national influences at a forgiving pace. Find your scenes. Find your people. Your crew.

Making the wrong impression in the wrong scene — we’ve all experienced that. The outcome can be not awesome. When you are treated as if you have shat upon someone’s doorstep, you will know that perhaps an urgent change of scenes is in order. For those like yours truly whose defining personality trait is causing faux pas shitstorms, I urge you to try. Just try. Try, for a moment, to not be an asshole. There’s an art to changing scenes without making matters worse…

That’s all for now. I’m changing scenes to the parque — while it’s not “PISSIN’ RAIN!” as men in wool caps randomly shout in Ireland, so I learned — to read a graphic novel.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: Like this post, and go forth to your scene.

Share

DIARIO DEL CAPITÁN: 30.01.2026

Sit on the floor by rain-patter and windy creaks of the balcony. The North Atlantic says ‘good morning.’ Take a deep breath. Listen to the coffee maker huff and puff, and cha-cha-chatter. Hear the scurried tip-taps to the elevator. It burrs to life. You think they’ll make it on time, wherever they’re going.

You don’t know who they are. They make you proud. That’s… okay?

Honk — extended return honk — you imagine a driver. Your doppelgänger? You press the back of your head to the cool of the balcony’s sliding door. Revealed: an image of a mirage of a shadow of a person you once cut off in traffic. Good job.

Hey, shouldn’t you get off your ass?

Pour coffee into a tempered glass mug. Why is all glass tempered here? Is it from France? It is strange. Cathartic. As dream logic penetrates the overcast gleam in the window to your left, you watch steam dissipate. A wizened evildoer, you stroke your cold, humidified whiskers. Hoo-hoo!

That person you knew, with all of the tempered glassware? Hereditary? Maybe. Staring into a void of bean fluid, you squint. Your blue blockers reflect in its depths.

Fuckery, fuck-a-dee doo.

The ringing staggers you momentarily. Comes and goes. Nobody hears it but you, except for those who hear it too. Peculiarities of seasonal wear and tear, they say. Then a marshmallow of a man yodels from an Alpine, snow-glazed ridge. What a diaphragm! (He is not real.)

Memories of commercials past?

Your wife says ‘hola.’ You call her ‘esposa.’ Ah, a warm embrace of bureaucratic formality. She is cotton. She is wool. Natural fibers, good-natured soul. Yours is hollow, and yet you poured coffee for her, too. What is it like, you wonder, to be a creature of the forest, elven as she?

Wish granted: she tells you of a dream. About China, and Grand Theft Auto. You would create a database of TikTok withdrawal symptoms, but for whose benefit? Goddamned communists.

Just kidding, but seriously.

You should get to work. Or should you take a walk? Walk… CAPITAL! Tempered glass. The Dalí Museum comes to mind. Melting clocks, Freudian fractalese. Mug. What about the mug? Do you know what was in the paint?

Reese here from Bebop Libre: I fucking knew it! You read the entire post, didn’t you? Even though it’s literally called “Secret Diary: Do NOT Read This!” Wow, way to respect boundaries. You read anybody else’s secret diary, lately? …Well, if you grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s, rain would be your love language too. Add that to the list of reasons why I chose Galicia, okay?

I made a mistake in my past. A grievously heinous act for which I may never be forgiven. For which I may never repent. What I’m about to reveal is not for the faint of heart. There’s a reason, when I pass clergy in the historic district of my newfound city here in Spain, they look upon me and involuntarily perform the Sign of the Cross. For I have soiled my very soul with an incomprehensible indignity unbecoming of this human vessel gifted to me by the graces of our bountiful world.

For years I wondered if my transgression would catch up to me. If one day — I, too — would become a victim. A victim of what? Well… first, we must go back in time.

The scene: I was ten years old. In the bathroom. And something happened.

“♫ MACHO MACHO MAN,” I sang, “♫ I WANT TO BE A MACHO MAN!”

The entire summer I stayed with my grandparents in San Mateo, California, I sang this one verse from this one song, over and over, every time I took a shower. Later, I learned that other people could actually hear me the entire time. Including people who weren’t my grandparents. Yes, the neighbors. They could hear me too.

And now I am a victim. My wife as well. We were minding our own business in our apartment, when from somewhere beyond our walls…

“♫ ALLLLLL BYY MYYYSEEELLFFFFFFFF!”

I know. For 2026, this is quite the anachronism, especially in Spain of all places. But that’s also how you know I’m not lying. Apartment living has its… compromises. And no, that’s not the only song I’ve now been reminded exists — against my will. There was another musical masterwork I had purged from the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind. It has returned, with a certain volume and enthusiasm that made my wife laugh hysterically like a madwoman.

“♫ MAI-IA-HII, MAI-IA-HUU, MAI-IA-HA, MAI-IA-HAHA!”

I’m sorry, but like a re-emerging infectious disease, the meme that popularized this song been reintroduced into my life, and so now it has been reintroduced into yours. You thought you’d never have to hear or see this again. You were wrong. Now we can share in the suffering, together. Everything is my fault, of course. Go ahead and blame me, but I’ll remind you: there have been multiple opportunities for you to stop reading, and yet what did you do?

You couldn’t stop, because I’m one of the best at what we Substack intelligentsia like to call “the biz.”

Anyway, my wife’s uncontrollable chortling seems to pause the… serenades, but only temporarily. The Karmic Macho Man giveth, and He taketh in mysterious ways. Ugh, now that U2 song is stuck in my head. And yours. As long as we don’t sing it in the shower, we can contain the spread.

If you or someone you know has been affected by shower singing, please dial this hotline: 1-800-SUBSCRIBE-TO-BEBOP-LIBRE

Subscribe now

Within minutes of listing our Honda Accord Sport for sale online, the phone rang.

What followed was a battle of wills that will be sung about in the beer gardens of Valhalla for ages to come. On one end of the arena, I present to you my chainmail-clad wife who was at the summit of corporate dispassion, grimacing with rage at the forlorn path now behind her. She clutched my mechanical keyboard with fury, which she’d confiscated for being “too loud.” On the other end, some guy in a polo… wielding a Big Gulp. A man who resold cars across state lines for reasons we’ve yet to fully understand.

With all due respect to the lady, I was ordinarily the one to fight and negotiate for our interests because I’m an insane person. She isn’t.

But by the end of the “conversation,” had you asked me if Super Saiyan Mike Tyson personally visited and beat the shit out of this guy, I’d have nodded in the affirmative. With a tremor in his voice, he offered a couple thousand dollars less than what the car was originally purchased for brand new. SOLD!

Oh, I’d miss that car. We had so many experiences in it, like the time when an impatient imbecile nearly t-boned us at an intersection. Or when a man with abnormal pupil dilation tried to merge into us, forcing me to swerve and correct out of fishtailing. Or… uh, the time when a haranguing lunatic barely sideswiped my wife and ran her off the interstate. You’d think gangstalking assassins were hunting us, but no. Driving is America’s techno-barbaric program for its subjects to let off steam.

As a former subject, I no longer have an outlet to express my indignation — presently fixated on European cosmopolitanism.

Yes, I admit my mistake of going “car-free” in a “15-minute city” after moving to Spain. I fell for the liberal propaganda. I feel so “owned” now that grocery stores, restaurants, cafes, pubs, and clinics are a short walk away. I must honor the social contract or my neighbors will remember my face. At least I can hop on a 300 km/h train to a new city once I’ve exhausted their good will — or take a quick shuttle to the airport and reach anywhere in Europe within hours to maximize my carbon emissions.

In this socially-cohesive hellhole, my cortisol levels have plummeted to life-threateningly low levels. Without constant activation of my adrenal glands, how else will I channel my Orgone energy outward? I know of no other means than by chronic and disproportionate stress responses to arbitrarily unharmonious stimuli. These don’t exist in Spain other than in its bureaucracy.

Requesting appointments is unfortunately restricted to a secret cabal of magicians called gestors who pawn them on a black market known as Facebook Marketplace, so I’m suspended in limbo, unable to interface with one of the most irritating aspects of living here.

I’m in a state of crisis over the lack thereof.

Wait. Is this my one-third life crisis, then? Probably mid-life at best, based on how things are going so far. From what I learned in America, when a man has determined his future to be devoid of any meaningful impact or joy whatsoever, there is only one thing left to do. That is…

Buy a hot rod!

You can take a man out of America, but you can’t take the America out of a man. That’s why a certain convertible appeals to me. A vintage-style dedication to Aphrodite with all mechanical controls. That said, I’m the kind of man who cares for the environment. As you know, I spend so much time outside, enjoying all things Mother Nature: from the rocks upon which I could sprain one of my dainty ankles, to the spiders watching me with their multitudinous eyes, furtively grooming their neurotoxin-laced fangs. I wouldn’t want to recklessly disrupt the ecosystem.

That’s why, at first, I considered buying a Carice. Car-Reese. Get it? That’s how narcissistic I actually am.

This is a Dutch-made vehicle that Austin Powers would drive if he were thawed out again to save the world. (I wish he would.) Better yet, the Carice must be environmentally friendly, because there’s a huge lithium battery installed between the seats. Plus, whatever ecological impact is potentially involved in manufacturing this car would be limited to the Netherlands, not Spain. That’s how ecology works. Anyway, these stunners can be shipped all over the European Union, and they’re certified to drive in all of the member states.

I broached the subject of buying a Carice with my wife, but unfortunately she told me she’d take away more than my mechanical keyboard if I went through with the purchase.

A cheaper alternative was in order — without a battery.

We did in fact replace our Honda Accord with a cart. In Spain, this is called a carro, or the alternative cutesy naming is the carrito. The word used seems to depend on function and mood. To expand on that, carrito tends to describe strollers for bebés. Carrito de bebé literally means “cart of baby” — a baby cart.

Allow me to further confuse the hell out of you: I’ve heard Spanish speakers in Galicia sometimes describe my carro, which is for not-babies, as a carrito. From what I can infer, this is a casual choice of words. Teasing? Maybe. The diminutive ending “-ito” means smallness, but connotations can go beyond that. Meanwhile, much of Latin America invokes carro to describe a car, but not everywhere. In countries like Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, auto is more common, or so I’ve read. There’s a lesson here: integration depends on internalizing the living nature of language.

Whatever nomenclature you prefer, for 1/1000th the cost of a Carice, I can now transport a grocery cart’s worth of frozen seasonal depression bites between my apartment and the store in a matter of minutes. There’s no fee for a parking space, insurance, or energy. Thus far, my four-wheel carro has required no maintenance to speak of. (Honestly, I should start a trend of ironically calling my cart an auto.)

Sometimes I wonder, had the oil and automotive industries not captured the American regulatory apparatus, if carros and carritos could be broadly viable replacements for cars there too…

That’s why, next week, we’re talking trains… in Spain! En España! And the profound lack of rail infrastructure, particularly of the high-speed variety, in America. It’s the Spainfrastructure post you’ve been waiting for, packed with cross-cultural inquiry, and my signature humor: the kind that isn’t funny to anyone except for me.

Subscribe now

Victoria and Reese here to wish you a Happy Holiday (in Technicolor)!

As of tomorrow, December 22nd, we’ll have been in Spain for exactly three months. We love Galicia. We’re so glad we picked Santiago de Compostela as our newfound home. It’s an amazing city, brimming with people who’ve shown us unbounded patience and grace. Never before have either of us so casually shared laughs with strangers — despite the language barrier. (We’re working on that!)

In all of our years, we’ve never felt more welcome anywhere outside the presence of immediate family.

And in no other place have we observed a man in a full-on Santa costume, beard and all, riding a comically-tiny moped with such gusto. There’s no scarcity of silliness, light-heartedness, and sheer hilarity in this city. Festive attitudes extend far beyond the walls of homes and into these walkable streets, alleyways, and parks. It’s impossible not to smile on the train, or even on a short taxi ride. This place feels like a happiness preserve, and we’ll go to the furthest lengths possible to keep it that way.

At night, our neighbors’ echoes of cackling laughter and raucous shouting are open invitations to come out and celebrate the human experience. While it’s true that Victoria and I tend to be introverted homebodies, likely from the conditioning of our former environs, we’re thankful to be surrounded by those who refuse to hide underneath a rock in what is objectively a scary fucking time to be alive. It’s with extreme gratitude that we are permitted to be in the presence of those with such a contagious form of hope.

Bebop Libre, this experimental blog-thing, is just over a month old. In truth, I’ve harbored second thoughts about it because I’ve been skeptical — for many years — that I’ve anything worth sharing with anyone, let alone those close to me. I stopped writing long ago because I had decided that my voice, perspective, and attitude were of no value.

Thus, what you find here is not reinvention… it’s a return to form, consequences be damned.

I’ve my wife Victoria to thank more than anyone else, even more so than the fine people of this beautiful city and country, for always being there for me. She ensures I meet my responsibilities. And to my utmost bewilderment, she says I’m doing a good job. I’m not so sure, but who do I have to trust if not her?

I don’t know who’s reading this, but I want to thank you for taking the time to do so. I’d also like to remind you that — no matter who insinuates to the contrary — it’s okay to be you. “You,” as it would happen, is inclusive of your hopes, dreams, passions, mannerisms, talents, faults, etc. Separation from these qualities — from anything — is illusory. Don’t stray from who you are to accommodate others, accommodate others in the pursuit of being who you are. Do it not for yourself, but to embolden others to be themselves.

Anyway, I thought we could all use a break from my usual ritualized assholery to get a bit sentimental.

But not for long 😏! I’ve conceived of a “Spainfrastructure” series, to be continued this Tuesday. A prior post of mine was an inadvertent template for an ongoing education about the country I now inhabit. As an enduring misadventure, I’ll occasionally pass on what I learn to you in the aforementioned series in the only way I know how: as absurdly as possible.

🧑‍🎄 Anyway… go have fun! 🎄

I want to apologize for calling you a baby in the title of this post. You’re not a baby — you’re an adult… Wait, unless you’re actually a baby. What the hell?

This blog isn’t a daycare for babies, okay?

This is a safe space for adults, hence the age gate everyone democratically consented to on bastions of free thought like the platform hosting this blog. So get outta here with that fake ID, baby. Go watch Bluey someplace else. And did you smell the cigarette smoke and diesel fumes? European blogs are bad for babies. You know what baby is in Spanish, baby? Oh, lucky guess. Yeah, it’s bebé. No, you’re not that smart. Where’s your mom? She needs to correct your attitude and your diaper.

Just ignore the bebé, everyone.

Nope, let it cry. That’s how they learn, by wailing alone for several hours, completely deprived of attention. What do you mean it’s not an it? Whether it’s a boy, el bebé, or girl, la bebé, doesn’t matter. Ah, problem solved! I blocked the damn thing. Did you see its profile?

That baby had problematic views. It was sharing Jordan Peterson quotes… far worse than any expressed here at Bebop Libre.

Don’t forget to subscribe for more sophisticated opinions from the mind of a humble adult who’s much more mature and smart for his age than Mr. Peterson. Our editor-in-chief, Reese, whose voice does not resemble that of Kermit the Frog, is a relatable everyman. A thought leader. He’s also super attractive, but with the wisdom of Gandalf, or Jesus Christ. Not that they aren’t attractive too. We’d agree we’re different flavors of “unconventionally” attractive, which is the best kind. We look distinguished. Me with my beanie, Gandalf with his robes and staff, and Jesus over here with his fat stack of paternity tests. Need I say more?

Subscribe now

Indeed, I will say more. This is the time of year when we’re all bundled up like bebés, unless you’re a blue cartoon dog from Australia. Or from anywhere else with summertime weather in December.

Truth be told, I’m not particularly bundled up here in Santiago de Compostela, I mean… not compared to the layers I needed to brace the chill wind on an elevated railway platform covered in blood-vomit stains in Chicago. But that was a year ago on a mandatory bubble tea binge in Chinatown. This is now.

And it would seem someone left the heat on in our apartment.

We can’t afford heat. What’s going on here? Why’d she leave the heat on? Can you infer who would do that? It’s getting crispy, actually. I know what I’ll do: loudly mumble to myself about someone leaving the heat on. That’s a productive and emotionally developed way to resolve a dispute with a person you’ve been in a relationship with for almost twelve years. Wow… twelve years? That would bring a tear to my eye, if the damn heat hadn’t evaporated it off!

Oh, according to my messaging app, she’s sending something. What? What’s this..?

She sent this message to me with words I can’t read, because I can only read American despite having moved to Spain. What’s an electricidad? An electricity daddy? She has an electricity daddy? Oh, this twelve-year relationship is so over, bruh. This revelation is shaking me to my core. Fine, I know what I’ll do: the opposite. By finding a muscle mommy. But only after I de-stress with a bubble tea.

Oh, hold on, she’s sending something else.

Now I’m very confused. Gas? Must mean something different in Spanish. What could Spanish gas possibly be? Sounds like slang for drugs… She’s doing drugs?! And not sharing them with me?! Oh, I see how it is. She and her electricity daddy have been drugging it up while I’ve been content-creating for my ten followers, listening to What is Love by Haddaway on repeat, alone. Solo. Wait until Muscle Mommy hears abou—

Another message…

“Add the numbers together, dumbass.”

Oh, I think I will. I was already going to do that. Hold on, let me pull up my calculator app.

Where the fuck is the comma? This calculator doesn’t let you add numbers with commas in them. One cannot simply add 13,72 and 11,75. That doesn’t even make sense. In America, we put decimals in our numbers, and that’s difficult enough. Okay, I’ll ask ChatGPT. He says…

“13,72 isn’t a number — it’s a way of life.”

…Uh, what?

“And here’s the truth: 11,75 isn’t just your mom’s favorite number — it’s a grindset with a vibe — and it will SHOCK you.”

What are you talking about, ChatGPT? You’re supposed to do things for me more convincingly than that! God damn it. How am I supposed to add the numbers together if the AI won’t do it for me? If it can’t do that, it probably can’t write blog posts worth a shit either. Why do I have to do everything myself?

And she’s typing again…

“Stop mumbling to yourself. You’re like my dad. I can hear you. I’m downstairs. And stop trying to use ChatGPT to perform basic arithmetic, or you’ll make the energy bills skyrocket here too.”

Holy shit — this changes everything.

Those were… energy bills? The numbers in those bills, 13,72 and 11,75 — whatever they mean — are so small here in Spain. If I add the front parts of those numbers together, that would mean one Chicago deep-dish pizza costs about $20 more than what we pay for energy here in Spain. For a month. And yet, it’s so hot in here.

I think I’m gonna take off m—

This post was abruptly terminated by Reese’s publicist, otherwise known as his wife. Hi, there! Please stop encouraging him. I sincerely urge you not to press the subscribe button below. Just so you know, we’re a normal couple trying to integrate here in Galicia, and we deeply respect local customs. We’re happy and don’t have problems in our relationship.

My existence was once defined by debilitating cycles alternating from depression to anxiety, and anxiety to depression, ad nauseam.

I’m nearly a year out from these miserable moods that were exacerbated by the unresolved and compounded stress of my twenties. In those years I lost myself in the attempt to move mountains. Without time to reflect and cultivate self-understanding, I conflated others’ expectations — anachronistic fantasies, regrets, and insecurities huddled atop one another in a trench coat — with my own. These adverse thought patterns, shit-gremlins I call them, were unceremoniously yeeted one-by-one from my consciousness as I underwent psychedelic therapy.

Before we get into that… I’m not providing professional medical or legal advice. I’m not a self-anointed YouTube shaman. I’ve never had any desire to paint my skin like Braveheart at Burning Man whilst wearing an assless girdle. I didn’t smoke a fat blunt on the Joe Rogan Experience and demand the producer pull up blurry footage of a levitating Marian apparition recorded with a BlackBerry Bold 9650.

I’m no guru. Just a dude, man.

Nonetheless, my life experience informs an observation: we all go through phases of people-pleasing. It’s normal.

Unfortunately, people-pleasing or other maladaptive behaviors can persist and shroud the path to fulfillment in shadow. We’re all different, so we must choose our own path. When you choose a path that’s not for you, guess what? You’ll have to trek all of the way back to the fork in the road where you went the wrong way. That’s how you acquire the tools needed to stay on your path. If you can graciously accept that going the wrong way is in fact part of your greater path, you are in the right place, at the right time.

How quickly we identify that a wrong turn was made, and how well we handle that realization, is crucial. These are the segments of the journey in which fateful plot developments occur. The outcomes are far-ranging, and can include paralysis when confronted with perceived purgatory. We’re all personally familiar with examples. It takes empathy and wisdom to discover that others’ suffering is actually our own. When you encounter someone down in the dumps, literally or figuratively, remember this…

That could be you.

Our shared consciousness: Nonlocality being what it is, I believe we’re all knitted together in a fractal dynamo of sweet, salient experience. Don’t nope out on me yet, though, as I’ll withhold further musings about consciousness for a future drunken outing with complete strangers held against their will.

Underneath the cracks of my mechanized carapace, there’s a fluffy caramel nougat within. Case in point: when presented with the opportunity, I give food to the less fortunate. No need to thank me, however — my moral compass expressed as a Dungeons & Dragons alignment is Chaotic Neutral. It’s essentially license for self-indulgent whimsy, ideally the kind that vexes those around me. So the banal truth is an altruism of convenience: I give away food when I don’t feel like carrying leftovers around, or if I notice someone lingering outside a grocery store.

Yet everybody deserves to eat. Whatever reasons culminated in their being hungry is irrelevant. Those reasons could just as easily apply to you and me, because they are systemic. I’m not making grand claims about determinism here, but it’s unclear what’s within our control aside from acceptance of things as they are and maintaining a positive attitude. On a microscopic level, rejection of self and others is the source of intra- and inter-personal friction. Zoom out to the macroscopic, and it’s everything wrong with society.

Aspirations to sainthood or transcendence are not required to vaguely locate the soul. Here in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where I moved some months ago, I’ve noticed people dining with the less fortunate outside cafes and pubs, exchanging grins and laughter. They’ve big hearts in this place. But a heart can be difficult to find when ossified trauma-gunk — so freely gifted to us by the traumatized — blocks the doors of perception.

Aldous Huxley titled his book documenting his forays with mescaline, The Doors of Perception, after Blake’s remark. Huxley rediscovered a method — refined by generations of priestesses, oracles, seers, witches, and shamans preceding him — that unlocks doors. Jim Morrison didn’t call his band The Doors for no reason. Of course, I’m not telling you to go do mescaline or anything.

And just because a door is unlocked doesn’t mean one has any business passing through it. Some doors are one-way only. Nothing quite hits like casually knocking on one of these doors, and subsequently grasping the frame that is the liminality between life and death as if an airlock burst open. Knowing which doors to unlock, and how to do so, was once esoteric. Psychonauts contemporary with Huxley performed the timeless duty of the Trickster, taking that which was coveted by the gods and showering it upon the masses with the same abandon as a fake blood cannon at a Gwar concert.

Services in the name of the Trickster don’t go without their corporeal punishments, especially for the other. That’s what the war on drugs, still waged today, has been about: punishment for the out-group, and profit for the in-group.

We’ve come a long way, in that drug profits aren’t just for the big pharmaceutical companies with budgetary allocations for buying off our “representatives.” Today, there are some legal islands of psychedelic therapy in America. These have been historically justified for tackling the mental health crisis among military veterans, but they’re profoundly effective beyond that cohort. Evaluating clinics employing psychedelic treatment requires sober discernment, although the vast majority are serious medical practices with rigorous vetting and protocols.

Not every prospective patient is a good fit, but I was good enough. At least with strict monitoring of my blood pressure and record-keeping. Quite a bit of homework, if I’m being honest. I met with the doctor often, even when I felt fine.

I felt fantastic, really.

This is coming from a guy who tried some stuff. In the years leading up to the treatment, I had exercised with a dogmatism I disdain in practically any other context. Initially, I read the work of household names such as Eckhart Tolle and the late Thích Nhất Hạnh, both of whom, to their credit, helped reframe my perspective and ground me.

Cue the montage: I deepened my study of Eastern traditions, practiced breathing exercises, meditated, and self-medicated with a variety of different compounds and supplements — all with habituated punctuality, and temporal independence so as to avoid confounding variables. No matter what I tried, the trauma-gunk — like the dental plaque of someone who couldn’t afford a visit to the dentist for a couple of decades — needed pressure washing from a licensed professional. No wonder, as I’d never been to a therapist, let alone a world-leading psychiatric wizard.

With this medically-licensed shaman’s help, I shed neuroses lurking in my shadow, and moreover enjoyed a front row seat to crazy-ass visions with transcendental implications for the nature of reality. Or mine, at least.

Not feeling perpetually terrified or like the lowest of the low has been freeing. To be honest, I was only loosely aware of my problem. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal to feel horrible all of the time, and I had long forgotten my rekindled childlike wonder. The current revision of the story I tell myself about my life, to make sense of it, is not divided into conventional chapters as it once was.

There’s now only one demarcation line snuggled between two sections: pre- and post-psychedelic therapy. That’s how significantly my outlook changed following the treatment. Let me put this into perspective... While perplexing the readership of this blog is an unavoidable consequence of my being the author — the main through line is this: an American’s farcical acculturation after having moved across the Atlantic Ocean.

I’ve never been more ill-equipped to deal with a situation.

Moreover, I cannot deny the move has constituted a most considerable change in environment, but the turning point that instilled me with the self-confidence to confront the unknown head-on was the aforementioned therapy. Thus, the most important change was within — but what really changed? It wasn’t a tectonic shift so much as acceptance of the evolving visage underneath a mask, one I continuously sculpted as a guard against years of psychic transgressions. When there’s nothing left of the mask to carve, the chisel is driven into one’s core convictions. Moral injury ensues.

It’s not enough to remove the mask, but to let go of the chisel.

If you’re struggling, do what works for you, so long as it’s legal in your jurisdiction and safe. “Set and setting,” as they say. Also, a well-established meditation practice is worth trying for reasons beyond the allure of mental health improvements. By the way, if you know someone struggling (you probably do), be present and deeply listen to them, without judgment. As human beings, the last thing we can possibly excuse is not being there for someone else.

Before anyone asks: I won’t recommend any therapy or clinic. I can raise awareness about mental health and normalize discussion about it, but I’m not comfortable with recommendations. Everybody’s different. Here’s one thing I will say: avoid outfits embroiled in serious controversy, if it weren’t obvious. Your safety is so much more important than convenience.

No matter what calamity visits what you perceive as your life — and it will — don’t forget: you are loved.

Just relax, and listen to this…

A Past Life Regression

Before I moved to Europe, Spain as it would happen, I decided my big gaming rig wasn’t coming along.

I didn’t intend to build a new one, either.

Being a nerd who’s built PCs since I was thirteen, professionally repaired them once upon a time, and whose passion has involved gaming and creating software with a thrumming, RGB-vomiting air conditioner, this was no trivial oath of poverty. My most recent build featured a wall-mountable case. My tempered glass bastard weighed around 50lb, requiring quite the wall mount to attach inside of the closet I’d converted into an office. My life depended on proper installation of the bolts, since I’d be sitting below my own handiwork. A risk I was willing to take, if that’s any indication whatsoever of how much I value this particular life.

A little factoid about me: I have no intention of spiritually transcending samsara any time soon. It’ll be trillions of years before I’m one of the last souls in line to become a bodhisattva, undoubtedly due to my preference for managing a virtual society of technologically-advanced beavers over interacting with other people.

Anyway, it’s not that I couldn’t bring the parts to Europe.

I took moving abroad as an opportunity to miniaturize, minimizing the complexity of relocating and living here as a gamer. My reasons were twofold: one, I wasn’t sure how much I’d move around after arriving; two, I was sick and tired of forking out the dinero to change out parts on my Rig of Theseus. Upgrading one component often necessitates upgrading another, and so on, amidst rapidly evolving standards and advancements.

Had I not moved abroad, I’d have gone “minimalist” anyway... eventually, or so I would’ve told myself. But then there would’ve been no pressure to change.

This is commentary on what I did and why. Maybe you just want to downsize. Or perhaps you’re moving abroad. And in that case, if you can’t part with your monster PC, you could ship the parts. That’s really expensive, though, and may involve paying an import tax depending on where you’re going. Other than the power supply, which likely uses differing electrical standards (replace it!), I recommend securely packaging your components in luggage. Bring your motherboard, processor, video card, RAM, hard drives, etc., and put them back together. You could sell everything and buy replacements, but in Europe, for instance, electronics tend to be more expensive than in America.

Fashion upgrade: I’m relieved I brought mostly non-clothing items to Spain, by the way. I had more room to bring stuff I care about, while at the same time benefiting from the fact that the thread count-to-price ratio is difficult to beat here. I’ve been gradually replacing my wardrobe so I can blend in with the daywalkers in comfort and style.

All the Small Things

So then, what does miniaturization entail?

For me, it was migrating to a mini desktop computer I can carry in one hand, although that’s an inadvisable way to lug it around. My wife and I had committed to moving abroad a year in advance of doing so. Thus, I bought my mini-PC well before moving in observance of Spain’s customs exemptions for personal electronics.

The problem with my particular machine is game compatibility, even though it runs many games very well (muy bien). Often, developers don’t target the underlying platform. Makes sense, as the business decision of supporting a platform, and the labor that goes along with that, must be balanced against speculative sales. What’s one to do, then? Sure, I can do all of my work with my computer, but can I play all of my games with it?

No. Well, yes, actually. I’ll explain soon.

Allow me to now present two ways in which I game “minimally,” and maybe they’d work for you too.

1. Streaming games

Did you know you can directly stream games to your computer, phone, or TV? Processing a game doesn’t have to happen on your device. It can be offloaded to another computer someplace else, a remote server, that you effectively rent with a subscription fee. There’s a big catch, but I’ll get to that — and my recommendations — soon.

First, here’s how streaming works: you upload input such as button presses, and download output including video of the game and even vibration.

Offloading processing isn’t the only dimension of the value proposition.

What primarily wears down electronics over time? Heat. Modern devices don’t generate much by decoding video, but processing a game absolutely can. There’s a certain elegance to leveraging the economy of scale that is a server farm, because cooling management is no longer your problem. It gets better, because centralized data centers can manage heat far more efficiently with industrial cooling than hodgepodge PC builds distributed about a given region.

Aging nerds unite: I’m old enough to remember when Microsoft transitioned away from lead-based solder for the Xbox 360 to comply with EU law. Say what you will about lead, but for solder, it preserves malleability over a wide temperature range. Consoles with lead-based solder, such as the original Xbox, had excellent longevity. Nevertheless, the pervasiveness of the subsequent 360’s disappointing “red ring of death” was by and large attributable to a defective post-lead soldering compound.

Anyway, when you offload game processing to a data center, you need not monkey with a PC anymore, or choose between myriad video game consoles on a release cycle that never conforms to whatever hostile force is annexing your life. Even if money is no object, you can end up with old stuff that piles up if you don’t sell or donate it. All of these electronics are prone to breaking by simple accident, too. If you’ve ever lived with someone whose fetish is to precariously position valuables on edges or corners of tables, then we are more similar than we are different.

I have enough problems as it is, so that’s why I love Boosteroid.

Full disclosure: I’m not affiliated with Boosteroid, but I could be. 😉

This is footage of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — a 2025 turn-based role-playing game by the French studio Sandfall Interactive — streamed with Boosteroid:

Boosteroid has servers in Madrid, while competitor GeForce NOW doesn’t — at least not at the time of this writing. It matters because the closer the server, the less latency. Too much latency and the game won’t feel responsive enough. Plus, Boosteroid has more cost-effective plans, in my opinion. GeForce NOW probably has a graphical advantage, although I’ve never noticed a difference for the games I play. Both services allow access to a Steam library, meaning you’re not locked into either.

Modern TVs can run apps for these services and others, and even connect to a controller via Bluetooth or USB. The TV with webOS that was included in my furnished apartment can handle this as if I were playing on a beast of a gaming PC in the same room.

Nevertheless, I must address the catch.

It’s my opinion that a fiber internet connection is a must for cloud gaming services — and a wired Ethernet connection — not Wi-Fi. That’s how I play. I have fiber, and use a wired connection. I’ve never had much luck with Wi-Fi, fiber or not. By all means, for those with posh routers conversant in the 6GHz band, give it a shot. Although, I’d venture to guess for most, the results would be predominantly disappointing.

Anyhow, it just so happens I explained in detail how Spain has some of the best fiber infrastructure in the entire world. Let me tell you, it’s top-tier for streaming games. Back when I lived in the States, I tried different cloud gaming services with cable. The result? Horrendous if not intolerable latency. In every test I conducted, the servers were closer than Boosteroid’s Madrid servers are to me today. So, cable just kind of sucks.

⚠️ It’s expensive to be American: I actually got charged extra by my cable provider for using over 1,000 gigabytes of data by way of a cloud gaming service — they have high usage demands. My current fiber provider in Spain doesn’t pull that bullshit.

There are other cloud gaming services out there, but Boosteroid and GeForce NOW are popular while at the same time enabling Steam library access. Everybody’s preferences are different, so I recommend evaluating these services and others based on their strengths and weaknesses. I think they’re ideal for “minimally” gaming while abroad, but your opinions may differ.

2. Handheld games

…I’d also be misrepresenting my situation if I didn’t mention I still play handhelds! They’re an excellent solution for gaming “minimally.” Perfect for pixel junkies abroad… so yes, I did bring my Steam Deck across the Atlantic Ocean. What of it? What did you expect me to do? Not bring it? Haha, lol.

Full disclosure: I’m not affiliated with Valve, purveyor of Steam, the Steam Deck, and other hardware they just announced.

The Steam Deck is one of the most impressive handhelds ever, and this is coming from a guy whose childhood involved playing every major release of the Game Boy on the bus. I won’t pretend like the Deck is more user-friendly than the Nintendo Switch. It’s not, and I think the Switch is great, but here’s the thing: it’s as if the Deck were fine-tuned for my particular placement on the spectrum; a hackable, repairable, and couch-friendly device. Meanwhile, as you might’ve guessed, it works with Steam, the platform brimming with indie games both my wife and I love.

The Deck comes with SteamOS, a usability-centric operating system for gaming based on (Arch) Linux. Yet, it can play most Windows games on account of Proton, an abstraction derived from a software called WINE that remaps Windows-specific ways of doing things to Linux-friendly equivalents. CodeWeavers is the employee-owned company that spearheads this effort and is contracted by Valve to improve gaming interoperability. WINE and Proton work on Linux for software in general, not just within a gaming, Steam, or SteamOS context!

For the techies in the house: I’ve been converted to the Cult of ARM, the popular implementation of the reduced instruction set computer (RISC). ARM-based desktops are replacing x86 (complex — CISC) alternatives on the market. ARM can be more efficient in terms of cost, electrical consumption, heat production, and form-factor. While the ARM-based Apple M4 system-on-a-chip (SoC) with its integrated graphics cores has been a surprising bright spot for gaming, new affordable competitors such as the Minisforum MS-R1 — with dedicated PCI-E x16 slots — are emerging.

Recently, CodeWeavers began offering x86 emulation on ARM via CrossOver, the Windows-inoculating brew for Mac and Linux gamers. This is my roundabout way of suggesting ARM-based gaming is preparing for takeoff. Relatedly, how interesting it is that Valve’s recently announced Steam Frame VR headset will run games stand-alone, yet it uses a 4nm Snapdragon 8 Series Gen 3 (ARM) processor. Translation: Valve is betting on ARM. Ongoing collaboration between them and CodeWeavers seems to prove more and more fruitful for ARM-based and Linux gamers everywhere.

Update: relatedly, not a day after this post was published, an interview revealed that Valve has been funding open source x86-to-ARM emulator FEX for years.

With tinkering it’s possible to stream games to the Deck via a cloud service, because the Deck’s hardware isn’t always optimal for the latest and greatest titles. Through Steam, streaming games from one’s own PC has been possible for quite a while. Similarly to the Switch, the Deck can be docked snugly beside one’s TV, or wherever. The point here is not to advertise the Deck — which I am for some reason doing in an unpaid capacity. I simply have a parasocial consumer relationship with Valve.

Watch out for the Steam Frame: I never cared for virtual reality (VR) headsets, because they’ve been historically gimmicky, uncomfortable, and prone to spiders nesting inside of them. Spiders and I aren’t on great terms. That said, Valve’s new Steam Frame VR headset is making me turn my head (no pun intended). I suspect it may be a compelling minimalist alternative to handhelds, but I’ll hold my breath until release.

The Deck is amazing, but any handheld is suited for “minimalist” gaming.

Not long ago in Santiago de Compostela, I stopped by a used video game store. They were selling what I used to play all of the time: a purple-tinted, transparent Game Boy Color, and a copy of Pokémon Yellow to go along with it. I fondly recall standing in line — at 4am — with my mom at a Target in Everett, Washington. In the chaos of that 1999 Black Friday bonanza, I didn’t know I’d soon walk out with a game I’d use to torch hundreds of hours of my life.

With a gun held to my head, I could probably still recite the names of all 151 original Pokémon. Thanks, Mom. And thank you, Pikachu — he’s basically my dad, just like Mr. Mime is Ash’s dad.

And hey, the older stuff continues to work in all its lead-solder glory, and it’s affordable despite much of the supply residing in the accursed depths of your local dump. Reusing bygone handhelds is a thriving hobby. Be aware: there’s a scene for modifying old handhelds with quality-of-life improvements, if you’re a tinkerer.

Zen sashay away

An alternative to cloud gaming or handhelds is playing whatever your computer or phone can handle, like… solitaire. My computer can in fact play a lot of pretty cool games, but your mileage may vary depending on your hardware and platform. Or, you know, just stop playing entirely. That’s the most “minimalist” option of any. Unlike true Zen masters, however, that’s unthinkable for those of us who refuse to be alone with our thoughts for more than a few picoseconds.

We find our Zen in video games.

And… with (legal, well-regulated) psychedelic therapy!

But that’s a post for next Tuesday. Patience. This is a one-man operation. Despite the unparalleled production value, the only help I receive is curiously delayed feedback from my wife. Why get media training when she can instead tell me to “stop inserting imagery of genitalia in your writing” after I’ve already published it? I was put on this Earth to learn, dear reader. Just like you.

No matter what you’re learning in our shared human journey, subscribe for more random infotainment I tangentially shoehorn into this publication that is ostensibly about living abroad in Spain. 😏

Subscribe now

You too can spread awareness about this catastrophe by liking this video and subscribing to Bebop Libre. Godspeed.

Subscribe now

The following music used in the video is licensed under the Attribution 4.0 International License:

• Step Right Up by Lenny Pixels

• Successful Corporation by Yuri Megis

• Cinematic Trailer by Music for Creators

• Into the Unknown by Maarten Schellekens

When the technician arrived, I was doubtful. His signal tester glowed red. A Sith lightsaber tempting me to the Dark Side.

But after he made a couple trips between the telecommunications room and an exposed wire cabinet in my apartment: flashes of Mean Green Yoda energy. The tech literally ran a line to my unit, by himself, in less than twenty minutes.

The result? 10Gbps symmetrical fiber internet for €25 per month.

Before I explain what that means, let me first say this moment marked the first in my American life in which I benefited from telecom infrastructure without being waterboarded — by moving from America to Spain. In celebration, the first thing I did with my internet connection was order a phat doner kebab. Doners are serious business in Europe. The delivery fee and cost of the meal were a pittance compared to what I’d have paid in America for a less appetizing meal. In literally ten minutes, some man on a bike handed over my hot doner in a bolsa.

Did you know? Bolsa is Spanish for “bag,” something you’ll be asked about in any grocery checkout line after you move to Spain for high-speed internet.

If you’re wondering, wait, you had your food prepared and delivered in ten minutes?, yes, welcome to Things Not Sucking All the Time, a through line to be explored by various pieces of this publication which I call Bebop Libre. Subscribe for more America-to-Spain culture shock relief.

Subscribe now

Let’s back up, because I forgot something. This wasn’t the first time I benefited from Spanish telecom infrastructure… For €10 per month, I had signed up for a mobile plan with unlimited calls (anywhere in the EU) and 64GB of data, meaning in the interim of days waiting for the fiber installation, I could semi-carelessly use my phone as a hotspot for other devices, listen to music, watch videos, and write my observations in the cloud. Not the best plan out there, but it was the most expedient for me at the time.

You can’t go too crazy with 64GB, but, for comparison, I only had 4GB in America. What manner of absolute horseshit is that?

My rant you may as well read in Bernie Sanders’ voice: The US is one of the richest countries in the world, and for whose benefit? If Americans knew what their government could do for them, you know, the government they pay for — the government that is supposed to represent We the People — who started the whole thing over “no taxation without representation” in regard to tea shipments, TEA SHIPMENTS… well, then a friendly conversation about reforming infrastructure wouldn’t be an unwelcome sequel.

Do I allege Spain has a perfect system?

No, but don’t let anyone distract from Spain having done an exceptional job with their internet situation when others haven’t.

While I acknowledge America has an expanding fiber network, the coverage is not great. It’s expensive too, and I say that without accounting for the hundreds of billions of dollars(!!!) telecom companies have swindled from loyal patrons and taxpayers since the 90s for little-to-nothing in return.1 Instead of any level of government applying price controls, we American consumers have been charged millions of retirement funds’ worth of arbitrary fees for receiving the worst customer support in the world. And how can any of us ignore the monthly bill documenting this extortion and its flagrant price hikes that have been out-inflating inflation by an order of magnitude for decades now?

This is in contrast to Spain, which through regulation ensured billions of euros were reinvested into telecom infrastructure instead of executive pockets, mostly.

What does a fuckload mean to you?

Something that is hammered into a nerd who studies computer science as I did is there are eight bits (basically on/off switches) in a byte. This is true whether the bits are Spanish or American. In decimal representation (as opposed to binary),2 there are 1000 bytes in a kilobyte; 1000 kilobytes in a megabyte; and 1000 megabytes in a gigabyte. How much data can transmit through a medium per unit time is called bandwidth. (Please don’t leave.) My internet connection’s bandwidth was now one gigabyte per second. That’s eight gigabits of throughput after overhead on what’s marketed as a “10-gig” plan. And remember it’s “symmetrical,” meaning my network could send up to eight billion bits per second, and receive up to eight billion bits per second, simultaneously.

In the words of a layperson, a fuckload.

Regarding my cheap fiber, the stereotypical American response to what may be perceived as jovial gloating (and that’s what I’m doing, by the way) is envy. But don’t brandish your semi-automatic rifle and shoot me dead yet. Don’t run me over with your SUV that can fit less stuff in it than a 1990s town car, for some reason. Don’t make healthcare so unaffordable that I skip my annual checkup. Take a deep breath, because I’d like to serenade you with something called information.

When confronted with such things, some Americans have been preconditioned to short-circuit their prefrontal cortex with a frothy and engorged amygdala to retort that the US has effectively subsidized the defense of the EU, and that’s why [insert EU member state here] has awesome [insert public good here].

But that’d be historically inaccurate, and less weird than what actually happened. And America had something to do with it!

Spanish telecom-onomics through the ages.

Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España was founded as a private company in 1924 during the military dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera. Telefónica still constructs and maintains manholes, ducts, poles, and building access. Today, such pathways are leased to various internet service providers (ISPs) who install fiber-optic cables within the preexisting routes.3 By way of the founding Behn brothers’ sexual business partnerships, the main shareholder of Telefónica was initially an American one called the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT).4

The Rivera regime conceded the private monopoly to ITT in classic heavyhanded dictatorial fashion, as Telefónica urgently solved an infrastructure crisis. Plus, its founding as a nominally “Spanish” company kept the protectionists at bay.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Is this asshole suggesting the answer to the problem of fiber in America is a military dictatorship allowing the creation of a private monopoly?”

Uh… well, I mean, uh, after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Colonel Sosthenes Behn (one of the two brothers — the other died in 19335) would be counted among Hitler’s early American visitors. For the succeeding Francisco Franco regime in Spain, ITT became radioactive because it was an American company with German subsidiaries that had profited from Nazi rearmament contracts. That’s why in 1945 the regime acquired the vast majority of share capital in Telefónica, essentially nationalizing it in a bid to avoid consequences from the Allies while appealing to the Francoists’ desire to project economic independence (“autarky”).6

“Let me get this straight,” you’re wondering, “is this fool saying we should nationalize a private monopoly like Comcast with a fascist takeover?”

The tangent line we’re riding isn’t as close to validating horseshoe theory as it would appear. As we fast-forward, it’s clear the Franco years were slow at the outset because of the very civil war Franco instigated and tore apart the country over. The ensuing years of hunger (años de hambre)7 were caused by his destructive actions and divisive rhetoric which included open support of the Axis Powers.8 The completely avoidable ensuing depression dragged down industrial entities, including Telefónica — until everything changed.

Franco’s regime hesitantly abandoned autarky with the passage of the Stabilization Plan of 1959,9 a series of reforms set to take advantage of cooled international relations, once again infusing foreign capital into Spain by the early 60s. Some refer to this period, which lasted until 1974, as the Spanish miracle (el milagro español). That’s like setting one’s home ablaze and then claiming a miracle occurred after the smoke naturally clears. Is it so miraculous to enjoy the same post-WW2 boom the rest of the West had been benefiting from for quite some time? It’s more objective to refer to this as Spain’s period of developmentalism (desarrollismo), emphasizing policy change.10

“So capitalism saved Spain and Telefónica?”

The situation was nuanced: market liberalization was better than Franco’s failed attempt at autarky, but it allowed capitalists, American and European, to exploit a national growth opportunity on terms that would’ve been far more amenable to Spaniards themselves had Franco not taken power. Of course the capital injection provided significant opportunity to those who migrated to urban areas, but at the cost of 1) concentrating wealth, 2) hollowing out rural Spain, and 3) initially causing an economic recession.11

Developmentalism could only indirectly stimulate Telefónica as it had not been open to world markets. The transition government spanning between Franco’s death in November 1975 and 1977 (when Spain held its first free elections since 1936), had little impact on Telefónica. Nor did the subsequent center-right transitional coalition.

To date, the most profound transformation of Telefónica began in 1982 when social democrats took the helm. Through 1996, they extensively privatized Telefónica.12 I repeat: the people in the same approximate political category as Bernie Sanders privatized Telefónica in the pursuit of economic integration with the rest of Europe. Having reduced the government to a minority stake in the entity, the stage was set for market-driven change to dominate. But why didn’t Telefónica end up like that one American telecom monopoly everyone hates? You know which one I’m talking about.

That’s another distinct difference: regulation to promote competition.

In America, politicians with a paper trail of being paid off by monopolies tell us regulation is bad for competition. Huh, can’t imagine why.

Since 1996, alternating right and left governments in Spain kept the pressure on Telefónica so it couldn’t maximally abuse its monopoly status, allowing other operators to use its infrastructure at set rates, among other obligations.13 Tight regulation of the monopoly, with strategic loosening over time as competitors gained ground, led to Spain’s fiber boom that gained serious momentum around 2013. Thus, the reason my internet connection now kicks ass is because of the mixed economy, where anti-monopoly laws, labor, and consumer action stifle the things Karl Marx predicted would happen over two hundred fucking years ago.

Spain has one of the best fiber-optic networks in the entire world.

Compared to the rest of the EU, Spain’s fiber-optic progress was laggard until Telefónica began offering multi-service packages in 2012. To do this well amidst competition, the company knew how best to corner the market: fiber-optic cables. Cables made of glass fibers that can convey data near the speed of light. In 2013, private investment in fiber surged, and it didn’t stop there.14 Today, Spain has enough fiber-optic cable installed to go to the moon and back, I guesstimate.15

One could argue that of the EU member states, Romania has higher coverage (95.6% as of 2022), or that Portugal has a higher percentage of homes that use fiber, with a penetration rate of 81.95%. Still, Spain has the highest take-up rate at 91.03%, meaning of the homes that can use fiber, they almost always do.16 Moreover, Spain’s not just significantly larger than other member states with comparably great fiber infrastructure, but its geographic diversity is considerable. Spain is around 505,000km² by land area, whereas Romania has less than half that. Portugal has less than a fifth. Denmark, which has excellent fiber infrastructure, has about one-twelfth of Spain’s area.17

Considering infrastructure costs scale with distance, the fact that Spain has one of the highest rural fiber deployment rates in the EU is simply remarkable. Is it the best in the EU? Without taking its size into account, maybe not, but it’s close. Omdia’s Fiber Development Index Analysis conducted in 2024 placed Spain among the top ten countries in the world with the best fiber infrastructure, in the same league as China and South Korea.18

Speaking of infrastructure, Spain has the second-longest high-speed rail network in the world behind China, but that’s a topic for another time.

Final point: infrastructure matters. Not in an abstract economic sense, but in tangible lived experience. Fast internet and a hot kebab that arrives in ten minutes shouldn’t be considered luxuries. This is the baseline of a flourishing society. If we learn nothing else from history, vigilant oversight supercharges infrastructure.

When fiber comes to your town, get your bolsas out. Or just bring your bolsas to Spain.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for more about Spain from the perspective of a disturbed American transplant.

Subscribe now