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.

We needed an apartment to each get our Foreigner Identity Numbers, called NIEs, but we needed NIEs to get an apartment, and we also needed jobs to get an apartment, which we couldn’t get without NIEs. AHHHHHHH!

Let me back up.

While it is true my wife and I were met with culture relief at Madrid–Barajas Airport in fall 2025, a timer had started: ninety days to find an apartment. Three months. Not just any temporary accommodation would do, because we needed something that the local immigration office would accept in a residency application: a “long-term” contract. You’d think, by now in April 2026, I could tell you what “long-term” means. An exact number of months, right?

Nope.

There are laws and rules, and then there are the whims of immigration officers. These vary from region to region here in Spain. Some, I’ve heard, are fine with contracts spanning no more than three months. Others will accept no less than six. Or eleven? Twelve, maybe? The only way to guesstimate what will work is through hearsay. At the same time, contract length matters for other reasons.

With non-trivial effort, my wife and I secured an annual rental. I strongly recommend this for most people moving to Spain, for several reasons. To start, short contracts tend to be more exploitative than long ones in a couple of ways. First, they generally cost more per month. Second, mistreatment by landlords is more likely. (Obviously, I’m talking about apartments for establishing permanent residency, not albergues and hotels.)

More importantly, non-seasonal leases lasting more than eleven months guarantee a suite of tenant protections. In regions that have declared zonas tensionadas in Ley 12/2023 (which is almost all of them at the time of this writing), yearly rent increases are capped well below inflation. Contracts automatically extend each year for five years for individual landlords, or seven for companies, so if you’re a good tenant, your landlord is stuck with you. Poor landlord.

And after six months, tenants can leave whenever they want with a month’s notice and a prorated penalty. Por ejemplo: three months remaining on a year-long contract at 1,000 €/month means only one quarter of the term remains. Multiply that by a month’s rent, and the penalty is just 250 €. That’s far less than what I’ve had to pay in the “land of the free.” Better yet, Spanish courts have recently leaned toward affording tenants the same protections even on those eleven-month “gotcha” contracts. I don’t recommend fighting landlords in court if it can be avoided, however. To maximize legal protections and the odds of residency approval, a year-long contract is the copacetic choice.

But knowing your rights as a tenant assumes you can become one.

Successfully renting in Spain requires three things: enough savings to support yourself or a family for at least a year, reliable income on top of that (assured by a work contract in Spain or “passive income”), and the NIE, which landlords almost universally require. And as it turns out, regional governments are more lenient than landlords.

Some visa paths, including the digital nomad and non-lucrative visa, let you apply for the NIE at a Spanish consulate before arrival, but EU citizens and their families take a different route. Freedom of movement means shorter waits and less paperwork, but it also means taking a chance without the NIE.

My wife is an EU citizen, so that’s the path we chose. We discovered it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. Landlords refused to rent to us… not because we were foreign, exactly, but because they needed us to meet the requirements of the non-payment insurance they had opted into. By acquiring insurance to protect themselves against unpaid rent, they narrowed the pool of renters to those with nationally recognized IDs and sufficient provable income. Without NIEs, we didn’t qualify (as far as they were concerned, but actually passport numbers are supposed to be valid).

Which brought us right back to that paradox: need an apartment to get the NIE, need the NIE to get an apartment, need a job to get the apartment, can’t get a job without the NIE. But magically, my wife and I found a landlord willing to work with us, which I detailed in my first-ever Bebop Libre post back in November 2025.

And now that an EU-based acquaintance is going through the same bullshit, I’m vicariously reliving it all over again. Ironically, he somehow bought a restaurant venue in Spain shortly after arrival. (Hopefully I’ll get free pizza.) Yet for weeks he’s been unable to find a landlord who will rent him an apartment. Not only is he lacking the NIE, but with my own ears I heard one real estate agent tell him that his existing business dealings outside of Spain wouldn’t count toward the income requirement. A man who bought a restaurant can’t rent an apartment. What?

Increasingly, it seems like the most expedient options for EU-based people are to either buy a domicile in Spain, or take an employer-sponsored route. But perhaps I’m extrapolating too much about Spain in general from how things are changing here in Galicia.

Anyway, the other day my e-friend in Barcelona shared news with me about homologation. Thankfully, neither my wife nor I need our computer science degrees homologated (certified for recognition within the country). If we did, we could be stuck on a backlog that extends until at least next year. That said, this effort has been drastically accelerated because of the impending regularization of hundreds of thousands of undocumented people living here.

As someone who had the privilege to comfortably move to Spain, it’s no mystery why so many skirted The Rules to stay. It’s an awesome place to be, yet the net effect of its systems has created an underclass that it ostensibly criminalized, much like my home country. At least Spain has chosen to recognize the backbone of its society, rather than throw them into a concentration camp or whatever. I can’t imagine introducing more precarity into the life of someone defined by precarity. Specifically, someone who has never felt safe, and who confronts undue risks and uncertainties, day after day, with more emotional regulation than I can muster in deciding which trufas I want from the bakery.

Isn’t it interesting how laws artificially create “illegal immigrants” out of thin air? As if the concept weren’t every bit as arbitrary as it is useful to the elites distracting, dividing, and conquering us with culture wars?

But I’m here to follow The Rules, and since I’ve had the privilege to do so, I’m happy to report that I’m now a Spanish resident. And therefore an EU resident. It’s official.

Previously, I was a “resident applicant.” Yes, even while writing a blog about living in Spain. What’s important is that I applied for residency within the three-month window available to me, which involved having my apostilled documentation translated and certified… twice. Back in December, I was informed that my existing apostilled documentation had aged out of its own three-month window by the time I submitted the application, so I had to rush-order new apostilled documentation and have it translated and certified to amend it. AHHHHHHH! Those are The Rules, after all, and they’re far easier to (accidentally) break than they are to follow.

To be honest, our situation has had to line up so perfectly that I cannot in good conscience suggest that anyone else do what we did. Obviously, there are other paths for moving to Spain or elsewhere abroad, but the keyhole truly has to be you-shaped. The sheer luck and privilege involved is humbling in its unfeeling randomness.

I wish it were easier for others to be who they want to be, with whoever they want to be with, wherever that may be. As long as they don’t fuck with me. 😌

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.

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Hola amigas y amigos,

It’s tu amigo, Reese. Half a year en España has exposed, again and again, a Spanish language gap I’m not proud of. When intending to move where a different language is spoken, you may think you’ll simply learn it beforehand. But you won’t, because the move itself distracts from this most important preparation. Moving to another country isn’t merely figuring out what to do with your stuff. It’s not just having documentation in order. Planning the first month’s itinerary is crucial, but even that’s not suficiente.

Here’s what those who move abroad underestimate most: time for friends and family.

And there’s another thing. Moving to Spain from a “culture” of cortisolmaxxing road-ragers with guns — who are pathologically incapable of regular breathing — has revealed my most American of flaws: not taking breaks. Decompression before and after moving is nothing to be ashamed about. Everyone should relax everyday, actually.

Between the siestas, fiestas, and strikes, Americans who move to Spain will feel as if they’ve been strapped to a rusty metal chair with electrodes clamped to their fuzzy nipples in an abandoned parking garage. Spaniards then approach. Some play accordions con mucho gusto. Others spraypaint avant-garde graffiti and maybe something about Palestine on a support column. Then they go in for the (ego) kill by offering their cultural hostage beer, wine, and tapas. The sweating, vein-popping American kicks and squirms and wretchedly screams until final surrender: calming the fuck down.

That’s when the restraints are loosened. Yet, the American stays despite the freedom to leave. Dropping the tension does feel good, doesn’t it?

Learning the language, Spanish in my case, also feels good, and I think that — creo que — breaks are the key. Everybody knows from school that cramming is ineffective compared to controlled and continuous engagement with a subject. How much learning is really happening once our eyes glaze over?

Yet, I’ve tried cramming Spanish. The American in me needs to know Spanish RIGHT NOW GOD DAMN IT. I should know better, given my fluency in other languages… programming languages. Since they’re mostly similar, I can effortlessly context-switch between them. Spending thousands of hours reading and writing in programming languages has a way of lodging intuition about them deep within one’s subconscious. With a mere glance, I’ll notice software issues ranging from the small to the structural.

But had my subconscious mind quit doing its job? After moving, I decided that a brain transplant was in order. Sure, I could — in a controlled environment and with much deliberation — say words, phrases, and sentences in Spanish. My pronunciation seemed to be… sort of okay. However, laboratory conditions pale in comparison to the messy, fucked-up interactions of the real world. These social contexts are not unlike what I had come to expect in America, albeit with subtle differences. Accumulate them, though, and an Americanized world model can’t keep up.

In the same way that moving isn’t just moving, learning a language isn’t just learning a language.

I’m speaking of matters more raw, perhaps emotional, than what is more commonly associated with cultural integration. The psyche of the Spaniard is distinct from that of the American. Forget language for a moment. Spaniards, or more specifically the Galicians that I generally deal with, tend to be raised under different conditions, so they process information in ways that require conscious effort on my part to parse. Since I cannot directly scan their neural oscillations (yet), I’m left with gestures, posture, tone, and facial expressions.

So, there’s no one cringe-inducing anecdote I have of misreading the room; it’s more like I was always slightly misreading it.

I realized that this is what my subconscious mind has been taking its sweet time doing: tweaking and adjusting my world model, generalizing it to encompass both the New World and the Old World. In software, this is what we’d call a “background process.” When it’s working well, it silently maintains system integrity to smooth out the “user experience,” often without the user’s awareness.

Some days ago, this became evident shortly after I, with little conscious effort, strung together numerous sentences (arguably a whole unbroken paragraph!) to explain a problem to a Spaniard, and coherently so. And I didn’t trail off into English (although mixing them is quite useful). I didn’t voluntarily suggest that I only know “a little” Spanish. No request to switch languages. Nah, I decided, I’m gonna Spanish this Spaniard. I’m gonna Español it up. And I don’t care if I sound awkward.

I have words, I’ll use them.

This, mis amigas y amigos, wasn’t a routine grocery run. This wasn’t me stating for the zillionth time that I already have bags, or that I have an INTERNATIONAL! credit card. No rehearsal. Not another instance of me excusing myself out of what I’ve come to learn is the Galician Right of Way™. Indeed, I had explained a semi-contrived situation to a real Española de Español who I’d never met before, fully improvised and unassisted by modern technology. I knew the message had been received the instant she nodded, but for once without the furrowed brow and strained visage of confusion.

She simply continued, all mundane-like, as if engaged in a normal interaction with a normal person…

Meanwhile, I noticed my wife was beaming at me. I had impressed her, defying her expectations by solving a problem rather than creating one. You know, like by accidentally contracting rabies while opining about the moral implications of misplaced scissors.

Do I speak fluent Spanish? Don’t be completamente loco, of course I don’t. Not at all. I’m nowhere near fluent, and I recently remarked to my Spanish teacher that I’ll be in her class for many years to come (which in retrospect may not have sounded like a compliment). I’m just at the point where I can occasionally speak convincing-ish Spanish in improvised and protracted circumstances.

Knowing enough without the need to act everything out, as if in a black-and-white silent film, eases things. I’ve internalized enough words — palabras — to generally apply them. They come more naturally with each passing day.

Tried shaving cream? Improvising a lot of Spanish with inversely proportional conscious effort, for the first time, reminds me of another first: when spelling clicked for me. It was a total lightbulb moment I still remember. I used my little fingers to indent letters into shaving cream sprayed onto a desk. In a moment I went from hopelessly illiterate to actively destroying the English language.

My Spanish language acquisition is a good sign for people who aren’t me, and here’s why: as much as I’d like to be traveloguing in this country anywhere except Marbella,1 my time and energy have been dedicated to laying the groundwork for a software business here in Galicia. Translation: I’m often stuck behind a screen, and yes, I should take more breaks. Compounding that, I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine, and my hobbies are largely asocial.

For neurotypicals, who I’d expect get out and interact more than I do 👽, the learning curve must be shorter than mine. Plunging oneself into the deep end, and confronting all of the friction and discomfort going along with that is the optimal track to acculturation. No doubt. Still, protracted as my learning may be, I do seem to have hit a milestone. It’s unimpressive compared to pretty much anyone else who speaks some Spanish, but it’s a big deal to me. I feel good about it.

Everybody’s integration is different, and with enough time and breaks, we can just let it happen one vino at a time.

Oh, and by the way…

New and long-time subscribers, rejoice!

Bebop Libre has a new getting-started guide. In it, I’ve compiled lists of my “work” to atone for the profound lack of organization around here. Nobody received an email about this because I was trying to respect your spam folders. I am a gentleman, after all, but I’m also a growing boy, and that’s why I require so much tortilla de patatas. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Hola, Reese here.

You deserve a proper introduction to Bebop Libre. What is it? Caffeine-aggravated monologues about systems, culture, and not quite belonging anywhere. My wife and I moved from America to Galicia, Spain in fall 2025, and here I write from a changed perspective.

But where to begin?

We’ve come a long way since my first post about trying to get an apartment in Santiago de Compostela. There are so many posts, at this point, that new and long-time subscribers could use some direction. Being the remarkably helpful guy I am, I’ve compiled some lists for you. Take a peek…

Silliness & absurdity

Essays

Deep cuts

A special note

I make stuff at the Bebop Libre blog for nobody’s entertainment but my own, and that’s why I can do whatever I want. That means authentic content for you — unless my wife stops me, which has happened many times. (You can only imagine what has gone unpublished even, surprisingly, as a result of my own discretion.) Still, not being beholden to publication guidelines or advertiser-friendly mealy-mouthed bullshit means I can just do things… on this blog at least.

Consequently, I’ve received so much positive feedback from people like you. One reader seemed to imply that I was “bat-shit crazy.” Another suggested that I consider actually writing about Spain. At the quarterly earnings call, I’ll be sure to let the shareholders know.

Anyway, thanks for joining me, and I hope you get a kick out of my work.

Elsewhere

Do you like nerd stuff? Lodes & Lanterns is where I try to contain that. There, I’m releasing community-driven free and open source software for nerds (such as Torchfinder), along with blog posts. In terms of professional software, I’m building interesting things to be elaborated upon at a time of my choosing.

This blog is hosted on Substack, by the way. I’ve also established myself on YouTube and Medium. (Keep an eye out for video content in particular.)

-Reese

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.

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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. The US reputation continues to plummet as the Illuminati shuffles my home country across the world chessboard. Meanwhile, I’m just thinking about how I could’ve avoided my inevitable tar-and-feathering-by-association.

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 same reason I was encouraged to tell people I’m Canadian is the very same that justified the urgency of leaving: crazy-ass shit going on with my home country. Simultaneously, the recommendation to postpone… it was out of genuine concern. Another way of saying, “Don’t go.” But had I entrenched myself further in a national sunk cost fallacy, then I’m not sure I would’ve ever left. There’s examination and planning… and then there’s just making up excuses for why nothing can ever change.

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.

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My wife and I could’ve moved anywhere in the world from the US, yet in September 2025, we chose the country of Spain, region of Galicia, and city of Santiago de Compostela.

Why?

Well, personal preferences and circumstances are the linchpin.

Moving to a trade bloc that actually upholds social democratic values, the European Union, was most expedient for us given that my wife is an EU citizen. Therefore she has freedom of movement to live and work in any member state. Furthermore, this right extends to me as her husband. Basically, spouses and children may accompany EU citizens so long as residency is sought and requirements are met. For those intent on moving abroad, I recommend getting acquainted with the variety of visa paths throughout the world. Accessibility depends on where you’re at in life. Be aware: time is running out.

Options are diminishing for most people.

Logic, circumstances, preferences

Now, this isn’t a “move to Spain” post… per se.

There’s the EU, but if you’re… abroad-mogging(?), consider going wherever the future is being built. That very much depends on what the future means to you. For example, research strongly correlates financial prosperity with scores on a benchmark called PISA. That’s the Programme for International Student Assessment. So what better place to start a family or business than where people score highest on math, science, and reading?

And by that logic, I should be writing this from Seoul or Taipei, but… just how geopolitically stable are those cities, sitting where they do? What cultural barriers might somebody like me encounter there? What’s “financial prosperity,” anyway? GDP? Lol. Figuring out where to go is a multidimensional process, not just one score.

That’s why we’re building our future in Spain, because the logos of moving abroad isn’t a spreadsheet.

Circumstances may narrow opportunity, but they also provide a trade wind. Preferences provide steering. My wife’s EU citizenship made Europe an easy decision, while East Asia would’ve presented challenges. But if you’re younger, unmoored, have a knack for learning, and lack the EU shortcut we had? Don’t dismiss that part of the world. A language program could be your foot in the door someplace extraordinary.

And whether you call yourself an immigrant, emigrant, or “expat” — and yes, the connotations differ… remember that you’re not moving to a Costco.

You’ll be surrounded by people with real lives and struggles, who need support from anyone who can provide it. That’s why those of us with flexibility might consider spreading out. Cluster into enclaves, snatch up housing stock, inflate costs for locals, dilute the culture with consumerism, and you’ll eventually piss someone off. An added benefit in spreading out is that those of us who do move abroad are more likely to integrate by “immersion therapy,” since the comfort zone of the expat enclave doesn’t apply as readily.

While relating to others who move abroad comes naturally, we must spend more time integrating than we do recovering from the stress of integration.

Integration vs. Diogenes

Wherever one goes, integration is crucial.

It’s stressful, awkward, and, at times, downright humiliating; however, nothing is more enriching than leaving parts of yourself behind to adopt a broader perspective. You’ll be occasionally bullied, but the tradeoff is worth it… hopefully. As we all know, immigrants and emigrants are easy targets. You might be three months into living somewhere and have someone demean your entire existence for merely mixing up one word with another. But it could be worse: where I’m from, immigrants, citizens, and indigenous people alike are detained without warning and deprived of basic human rights for indefinite periods of time, no matter their documentation. Papers, please — or not.

To the contrary, Spain is in the process of regularizing around 500,000 immigrants so they have one less thing to worry about. These are individuals whose lives have not been easy. They’ve remained, perhaps, Stoic?

Diogenes the Cynic was an Ancient Greek whose philosophy partially informed Stoicism, the view that our universe is the manifestation of logos… that is, a generative logic as intrinsic to physics as it is to social dynamics. You’re probably wondering, “What the hell? What does this have to do with moving abroad?”

[Twirls mustache] Welcome to my domain.

The thing is, Diogenes was a complete weirdo who lived in a large jar (pithos), wore the least possible clothes, and once told Alexander the Great to go fuck himself directly to his face. Alexander couldn’t help but admit that Diogenes was… a baller, shot-caller, twenty-inch blades on the Impala. His “rizz” was unmatched, as the kids would surely say. And game recognizes game. Alexander suddenly realized that Diogenes was his only peer ruler, albeit one upon himself, because he was so belligerently far up his own ass.

Diogenes came to be this way because he may have committed some light fraud, hence his exile from Sinope to Athens.

Based on his colorful characteristics, some of which I’m omitting for brevity, one might conclude that he could not integrate, and that his philosophy ran counter to the act. Au contraire, his invention of cosmopolitanism was itself his integration: he declared himself a citizen of the world (maybe more accurately the cosmos), thus asserting that a country of origin was not morally binding, nor a grand determinant of identity.

The cosmopolitan to urban pipeline

For all of his faults, Diogenes teaches us that we too are part of the universal diaspora. Changed though we may be through integration, we must accept who we are to our core. We should be true to ourselves, including our preferences. Proof by contradiction: what if we weren’t true to ourselves when moving abroad? Then we’d end up relocating where values are in disharmony with those of our environs, which is ironically why we tend to move abroad in the first place. Again, I’m not telling you to move to Spain. I’m just saying: act in accordance with your own nature.

It is in my nature to revel in car-free urbanism.

Yes, my wife and I both unapologetically enjoy living in an apartment within walking distance of a preponderance of things to do, people to see, and food to eat. Living a short walk away from a high-speed rail line, and from a fifteen-minute shuttle to an international airport, is pretty sweet for convenience alone. But our car-free lifestyle is more than that: it’s great on the wallet. Not having our primary means of getting around be financially tied to war crimes committed in the Middle East is a plus. It’s also much safer, and since we rarely ever fly, much more ecologically sustainable than our preceding, car-dependent lifestyle.

And how about this: Spain is unique in the EU for sustaining a high urban-amenity-to-cost ratio across remarkably varied geographies, climates, and regional cultures.

There are many reasons why we’re here, but most of them cascade from that. Emphasizing this ratio made it trivially easy to select a region. Our preferences for Celtic-influenced, rain-drenched medieval alleyways did the remaining work. Simultaneously, we deemphasized English language proficiency. Younger Spaniards tend to speak English very well in Galicia, but older ones? Not so much. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

We don’t care because we’re trying to integrate. That means learning the language (in fact languages plural, since a little Galego goes a long way in Galicia). Being surrounded by English would only impede our acculturation.

Lately, most Americans move to Valencia because it’s beautiful, Mediterranean, and relatively affordable (for them). That’s nice, but it’s physically impossible for me to do what everyone else does. I’m always compelled to act upon my own devised strategies. One quality that unifies these is that they assume what everyone else is doing will be ruined because they’re all doing the same thing. A little game theory for ya.

Spreading out in Spain is easy when there are so many areas to choose from. And if you pick the wrong one… you can just move to another.

It’s a big country, and its population density is around 93 people per square kilometer, which is quite low. When you live here car-free as my wife and I do, surrounded by grocery stores, bars, and parks… that number doesn’t sound right. That’s because only a small proportion of Spain’s land area is occupied by people. That’s 49 million mostly stacked atop one another. To account for situations like this, a professor in Urban Studies and Planning named Alasdair Rae developed a metric called lived density. It’s similar to population density, but restricted to the areas people actually inhabit. You might call it real population density.

How Spain pioneered urbanism

Lived density resolves an apparent contradiction: how can a “low-density” country feel so… profoundly urban?

By that metric, the country clocks in at a whopping 737 people per square kilometer. This is unsurprising, because I’ve seen apartment complexes in Madrid that were so gargantuan, they seemed to defy reality itself. It occurred to me that a space elevator could harness whatever black magic fuckery is going on over there. And let’s not forget Barcelona with its 400 square meter superblocks (superillas), where each block contains all the amenities one needs to live and enjoy life within walking distance. According to Alasdair Rae, Barcelona has a single square kilometer containing 53,000 people.

The densest equivalent in England? 20,000.

Spain’s lived density is higher than anywhere in Europe you couldn’t fly a kite across. Close to two-thirds of Spanish residents live in apartments, the highest rate in the EU. That’s why so many of us have 10Gbps fiber internet for 25 € a month. It’s why a train can take us from Madrid to Santiago up to 186 miles per hour. It also explains why finding a good doctor (un buen médico) can be a short walk away. All of this is possible because Spain’s population is so concentrated. Being rurally hollow has its advantages.

What makes Spain a great place to live, even for those who prefer rural life, is its lived density. How was this achieved? Long story short, a caliphate built dense cities here while the rest of Europe was workshopping interesting ways to die of dysentery; then a series of aggressively Catholic medieval knights emptied the interior (on the net); then a royally chartered sheep rancher cartel kept it empty for six centuries; and finally, Marta Bausells explains how a Catalan engineer named Ildefons Cerdà coined the term urbanization:

He had created a neighbourhood without class divisions where, both for ideological and public health reasons, the population would be spread out equally, and there wouldn’t be exclusive areas for the rich or poor. Over the following decades, Eixample grew with magnificent modernist buildings standing cheek by jowl with artisan homes demanding much cheaper rents.

Cerdà molded urbanism into what it is today. He not only influenced modern Spain’s urban planning, but his benevolence is experienced throughout the world. Spanish urbanism is old and new. That’s how you know it works.

Galicie-hunting for apartments

Selecting a region is one thing, finding an apartment is an entirely different beast. If you don’t mind the rain, Galicia has pretty cheap rents available, alongside great public transit. But that’s not why Ulv the Viking came here a thousand years ago. His purpose was instead to show up, take stuff, and leave.

Oh, Ulv.

The jarl’s enthusiasm earned him the title “Galiciefarer.” That means Galicia-traveler. The local monks had a Latin phrase for when his sort arrived: dies Nordemanorum, “day of the Northmen.” They scrawled this phrase in charters the way you might tearfully scribble “the poopening” on a calendar with a squeaky marker. It was not a holiday.

A thousand years later, I’m typing this shitty blog post from Jakobsland, as the Vikings called it. That’s the “Land of James.” While Ulv arrived by longboat, I went with American Airlines. Another way I might distinguish myself from him is that the locals haven’t invented a Latin phrase for my presence. Not yet. And unlike Ulv, coastal escapism for me doesn’t include pillaging Santiago de Compostela, but it can involve enjoying drinks in front of an artificial oceanic backdrop. Raid or trade? Why can’t we all just sit back and have a margarita?

Now, it’s only natural to ask, “But why Santiago? Why not Ourense? A Coruña? Vigo? And hey, what about Porto, Portugal?”

Fellow Galiciefarers, honestly, we just kinda winged it.

“¿Como? How so?”

You have to pick at some point, don’t you?

I sense you’re uncomfortable. Okay… are you familiar with the term analysis paralysis? I try to avoid that. Also, who are you to judge me? What does reading this far into one of my blog posts say about your mental health? Sure, it’s true that we just picked a city, but that wasn’t without weighing variables. The uncertainty I’m alluding to in this decision was made up for by the fact that my wife and I only brought a few bags when we moved abroad, meaning if we messed up, we could have just picked up and gone someplace else.

Our Plan B was basically “go wherever.” Yep.

Ourense vs. Santiago

As for selecting a city in Galicia, mainly we optimized for the best balance between cost, walkability, and public transit quality. By cutting costs down and simultaneously requiring a considerable baseline of transit access, we narrowed our search between Ourense and Santiago. Ourense is quite compelling. It’s packed with apartments. On a monthly basis, rents there tend to be around 200 € cheaper than those of Santiago, and it’s about thirty minutes closer to Madrid by high-speed rail.

Also, it has hot springs.

On the flipside, it’s quicker and easier to visit other cities in Galicia from Santiago by train, bus, or taxi. Santiago has more storefronts and cuisine options. There's the airport I already mentioned. Furthermore, its microclimate keeps it cooler than Ourense (just a preference), and more protective against wildfire risk as a result of being nearer the Atlantic coast. As Spain desertifies, wildfires will worsen. This coming summer is a bit worrying considering the historic rains we’ve received this winter. (More rain in the winter means more kindling for the summer.)

Is paying an extra 2,400 € in rent annually to live in Santiago as opposed to Ourense worth it? Well, I certainly can’t answer that question for anyone thinking about moving here. It depends on your means, preferences, and how you actually spend your time after you arrive.

A Coruña vs. Santiago

If we were willing to pay more in rent, A Coruña would’ve been on the table. On average, it’s even cooler there than Santiago, being on the northwestern tip of Spain. It’s Celtic as can be. It has an airport, too. The arts scene there is dynamic and active. I was particularly partial to this city, based on vibes alone, but we couldn’t justify the added “tax” of living on the coast.

This is a flood-prone city, so you have to wonder what climate chaos will mean for its long-term livability.

Vigo vs. Santiago

Vigo is another coastal city with an airport, and though I’ll headbang to some Nine Inch Nails, it’s a tad industrial for my tastes. Its flagship industry is manufacturing automobiles, after all. There’s a lot of great development and initiatives happening there, but it was also more expensive to rent there than Santiago, at least when we were looking. And by the way, these comparisons aren’t comprehensive. The best opportunities are found by detail-oriented scrutiny, not generalities.

But again: coastal city, coastal tax.

Porto (Portugal) vs. Santiago

While not technically in Galicia (or Spain), I’ll mention Porto. It’s where my wife and I originally considered moving abroad before shifting gears to Galicia. It’s a reasonable bus or train ride from Vigo (that will drastically shorten upon completion of the high-speed rail line between them one million years from now). It’s a beautiful Portuguese city at the mouth of the Douro River Valley, but it has a problem. Recently, too many people have moved there all at once. This has rapidly increased cost of living and stoked resentment (Lisbon already had this problem). Spain, in general, differs in its attitude toward those who come here.

Immigrants and emigrants still quite enjoy Porto, but we feel plenty welcome where we’ve landed in Spain. Spaniards typically exhibit nuanced views about travel and immigration. Their bone to pick is with rent-seeking landlords who buy up homes to rent out. By and large, they’re very kind to mindful visitors, immigrants, and emigrants.

Reflections & concluding thoughts

Some months ago, an angstier version of myself concluded the following:

I cannot comprehensively enumerate every single mutually consistent axiom as to why we moved, because they’re surprisingly difficult to parse in retrospect. When you invite a singularity into your life, there’s gravitational lensing involved.

— They Warned Me About Culture Shock. Not Culture Relief.

I stand by that statement, although the rest of that post is… a lot. As intense as it may be, it’s at least honest. The “culture relief” I’ve experienced since stepping outside Madrid–Barajas Airport has chilled me out. I still have my moments, but overall… I’m changing more rapidly than I anticipated. How so? More and more, an inner stillness accompanies me wherever I go, whatever I do. It’s strange, frankly.

And as sprawling as this post may seem, there are yet other reasons we moved abroad, not even counting ones we’ve retroactively accrued.

To wrap up the practicalities: there are plenty of other places to choose from in Galicia, such as Lugo with its pristine tract of still-standing Ancient Roman walls. However, high-speed transit and central access to Galicia itself were of utmost importance to my wife and me. We knew if Santiago wasn’t right for us, we could at least easily explore alternatives from the city. Thankfully, we’ve come to love it here — and we’re a short trip away from the aforementioned cities. Our emphasis on walkability, transit access, and centrality meant that, for us, smaller cities and towns simply didn’t register. I can’t say much more about those until we visit them.

And of course, if we were open to rural life, our plans might have been radically different.

The supporting pillar of our move-abroad logos is urbanism. My wife and I are confident that, at least initially, it’s a boon to integration. Be that as it may, does this rule out an off-grid goat farm in the future? No… it could happen. Shit, I’d move to another solar system if I could. The rate of our disillusionment with other humans and technology has only accelerated over the course of our lives. Nonetheless, we expect that our urban community here in Spain will more than compensate for a long time to come.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: No matter where we land, all of us are but mere crumbs of a cosmic fruitcake that was not cooked long enough. That includes you, me, Diogenes, and Ulv the Viking. If you enjoyed this post: please like, share, and subscribe to help spread the crumbs throughout this universe.

I’m never gonna financially recover from this.

— Joe Exotic, AKA the Tiger King

I went to the doctor here in Spain recently because of [REDACTED]. Like I’m gonna tell you specifically why. It’s not a big deal, okay? Sometimes people have medical problems for reasons outside — or possibly inside — their control. Who’s to say?

(No, I did not shove anything up my ass, thanks for asking.)

Anyway, I made my appointment on time by leisurely strolling from the parque — where I was reading about summoning demons in a fictional world — to the clinic in less than ten minutes. No line. Then I handed over my insurance card to one of the secretaries. She handed it and a numbered slip back to me.

For about five minutes, I continued reading about summoning demons in the waiting area while a granny studied my evil intentions. With a chime my number flicked on a screen. From there I almost proceeded to the wrong room, but someone gesticulated at me with zeal. I ended up in the right room… with a doctor wearing a lab coat. This subverted my expectations. I thought a series of three nurses were supposed to ask me the same questions repeatedly, phrased slightly differently as if I were being interrogated, while waiting thirty minutes in-between each perplexing encounter.

But no, a real, actual doctor sat before me.

She listened to my concerns with empathy… also WTF. She wasn’t rushing — even more WTF — but quickly diagnosed the issue and determined that I was not a hypochondriac. Ha! I knew I was diseased! She wrote detailed instructions with some underlining for emphasis to circumvent my ignoring any critical detail, printed a couple of prescription orders, and gave all of that to me. While stuffing my backpack with these goodies, I asked her if I needed to stop by the front desk.

She shrugged: “¿Por qué?”

“No importa,” I said, and maniacally laughed in my own mind at every previous experience I’ve ever had in the ludicrously expensive and objectively godawful American healthcare “system.” I hope to never experience it again. For the rest of my life. To my fellow Americans, just send this blog post to your local congressperson and I’m sure they’ll start representing your interests immediately. Maybe your ticket will get prioritized if you throw some dinero at the Venmo for their super PAC or something.

Now, at this point you’re probably wondering, “Wait a second, you smug piece of shit, the title of this post indicates you put down an entire mortgage payment to go to the doctor in Spain. Are you going to address that?”

Just have some patience, okay? We’re getting there. Everybody always wants instant gratification, but I like mine in suspense so I can savor it.

Continuing on, I did not stop by the front desk. Instead, I held a door open for someone with mobility challenges. This person smiled and thanked me, and, with all of the sincerity you’ve come to expect, I said to her, “de nada, de nada” in a sweetly soft tone. I exited the clinic with a huge grin on my face, scaring several people in the bar across the street. Then I walked — yes, walking is possible where I live and not illegal — to the pharmacy a few blocks away. Haha, yes.

And no, nobody needed to call a specific pharmacy to fill the prescription in maybe one to six hours. No drive-thru where you wait an hour for the operator of the vehicle in front of you to wake up from a nap or whatever the hell they’re doing in there. That’s not how it works here. The “free market” doesn’t get to enshittify every corner of life in this country, hence why I could just arbitrarily choose a random pharmacy, of several, that I’ve wandered by countless times. No call ahead. No appointment.

I walked into one particular pharmacy and was instantly greeted by a pharmacist or technician of some kind. “Un momento, por favor” and I withdrew my prescription orders from my backpack. The pharmacy person kindly took the orders and located a couple of boxes with the exact prescriptions I needed. Grand total for my prescriptions? 5,47 €.

Eso no es nada.

So if I paid almost nothing for this, what’s with the title of the post? A mortgage payment is a lot of money, far more than five or six euros.

For 1,900 € annually, ballparking to a Chicago suburbs mortgage payment, my wife and I are both (not each — both) covered with fancy private insurance here in Spain. Fancy in this context means: no co-pays; international coverage in case of travel; includes dental; etc. We’re relatively young-ish in the grand spectrum of adulthood, so some of you might be wondering why we don’t have cheaper(!) insurance. In fact, you can find plans much closer to 1,000 € per year for a couple. It’s possible!

Regarding our “expensive” insurance, we’re not exactly experts at the living-in-Spain thing. But there’s another matter: when you move here like we did, having fancy private insurance is a requirement for residency, at least for a year. This is interpreted differently depending on the region and who exactly processes the residency application. I’ve heard some applicants fulfill the requirement by monthly payments with a year-long contract… somehow.

I’ve gotten the impression, however, that the insurance (with the aformentioned characteristics and others) needs to be paid in full for a year. When we applied for residency, proof of payment for this sort of insurance was explicitly requested. Seems kinda important.

I’m not a lawyer: Nothing I say is professional legal advice, if the colorful words scattered throughout this blog are any indication whatsoever. Consult an immigration lawyer when immigrating to places. Those, too, can be very affordable in Spain.

At the end of the day, our medical costs have been significantly cheaper here than they averaged for an equivalent duration in the US. Our medical bills were bonkers even as young, relatively healthy people. I pumped iron at the gym all of the time, paying an arm and a leg, just to be healthy. There’s no bare-minimum tax deduction, credit, or voucher for trying to be healthy in my home country. Health is an individualistic privilege that costs even more money.

All things health and wellness are significantly cheaper here in Spain. I don’t even need a gym membership anymore, because I constantly walk around outside. By the way, at the same park where I study demonology, there’s galvanized exercise equipment freely available for anyone to use. And people use it.

Within walking distance of our apartment, there are — amid clinics and pharmacies — steps, trails, hills, and free exercise equipment in abundance. We’re surrounded by Spaniards who spend too much time in the sun, inhale more than the recommended serving size of diesel fumes, drink like sailors, smoke frequently, and yet: they seem happier, healthier, and far more well-adjusted than the average American.

Imagine… just imagine going to a grocery store without a man looking at you like he’s going to kill you, for literally no reason. In America, I experienced that all of the time. In Spain, at least, they have good reasons when they look at me like they want to kill me…

Lastly, affordability is relative. I’ve met many Spaniards who hustle in order to survive. It’s not a panacea, although having one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world mollifies hardship, from what I can tell. It just so happens that public universal healthcare is popular here (and elsewhere) — because it works quite well. Despite premiums being manageable at 2–3% of the median income, most Spaniards skip complementary or supplementary private insurance.

I’ve yet to find the basis in reality for the talking points against universal healthcare that I was subjected to in my home country. Here, and in many other places, the socialized system does not exclude private options. And somehow, despite being highly regulated and arguably niche, the private insurance companies here still make enough money to justify their existence. Hmm, seems like a free-er market for individuals than massive corporations paying off politicians while denying any possible claim.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: Think you should get that checked out? Weird moles, brain worms, waking at odd hours of the night to announce the exact time and promptly fall back asleep, skin turning blue from consuming too much colloidal silver, whatever. In Spain, you might be able to afford treatments for such maladies. But this newsletter is affordable anywhere. It’s free. SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

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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.

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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?

Shortly after my wife and I moved into our mortgaged condo in the Chicago suburbs back in 2022, someone asked us, unironically, if we had purchased the unit in cash.

“Uh… no,” we replied.

The interlocutor spitefully noted that our inability to buy an absurdly inflated home outright was a lamentably poor financial decision. It turned out this real-life sleep paralysis demon never held a job, having inherited multiple homes before the turn of the century. I wouldn’t care to point that out had it not been for the continuing passive aggression regarding matters… that were nobody’s business but our own?

I sometimes wonder if recurrent encounters like this forge the prevailing psychotypes for those who emigrate. Older publications on the subject tended toward the autobiographical, warts and all. This is an approach I’ve come to appreciate for its earnestness, established before the cynical grift of engagement farming redefined public discourse. Today, there’s a tendency to frame those who move abroad as a faceless mass of goofballs who don’t plan ahead, but…

Stereotypes don’t move abroad! Individuals do. To demonstrate…

Her

Eastern Europe is where my wife was born. She therefore has the right to live in any EU member state. As her husband, I have the right to accompany her. These are rights, not mere privileges or entitlements. One aspect you have to respect about the EU is that, broadly speaking, it takes such matters seriously. As people who come from a country that routinely wipes its ass with the Constitution it was founded on, the difference is stark.

My wife’s immediate family fled the collapse of the Soviet Union, bringing her to the US in the late ‘90s, back when it was a popular destination. Her parents did well enough thanks to their engineering backgrounds — paid in full by the Soviet Union, I might add. Yet as a first-generation immigrant with limited familial support, my wife faced challenges. She told me that when she was little, she had an accent. The other kids didn’t let her live it down until her English had sufficiently Americanized.

Her saving grace was growing up in Chicagoland. The isolation and dislocation were minimized by her proximity to other Eastern Europeans with similar origin stories. There was some semblance of community. On top of that, she had access to fantastic schools with well-compensated teachers, benefiting from urban amenities I had no idea existed until I met her.

Me

When my wife’s family immigrated to the US, I was living in the Pacific Northwest in a double-wide with ventilation issues, surrounded by blackberry bushes, and only connected to civilization by a gravel road cratered by potholes. I spent an inordinate amount of time beating back blackberry bushes with a stick, and eating the berries of course. While we were in the boonies, I had Legos, video games, and a trampoline to jump on. Whereas my wife’s dislocation came before she could remember much, mine arrived abruptly.

One day I found out we were moving to Southern Illinois. There were financial problems, to put it mildly, so proximity to family could help in a few ways. My mom did a great job raising my sister and me by herself, but I was inherently a bit of a mess.

Some years later, I nearly failed out of high school, but after a concerned teacher pleaded with my dumb ass, I competed — last-minute — in a test on business and computing. I won and received a scholarship that covered most of my tuition at the local community college. At first I was a graphic design major, because I (still) enjoy digital art and animation. However, I changed majors and transferred to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where I met my wife… before realizing we were in the same computer science program!

Outrunning Burnout

What’s a mortgage, and why did we need one for our condo?

It’s a loan. An equitable arrangement in which you may be permitted to live in a box should you, on a monthly basis, deposit a bunch of money into the pockets of the Monopoly Man, who unilaterally sets the prices. Not everyone grasps the precarity of these loans. The possibility of losing a job or getting sick — both increasingly likely in these trying times and as we age — verges on wrongthink, because so many don’t have a sufficient safety net for the alternative.

After starting our careers, it came into focus that my wife and I were brushing shoulders with people who inherited family friends, networks, and rolodexes. Not to mention material assets, like houses. These individuals were practically built for corporate environments, groomed from adolescence for middle management. We were not. Especially not me.

The reason we as millennials owned anything whatsoever, like a car and some IKEA furniture, is because of our software engineering backgrounds. Because we studied in the right field at the right time, we could pay down debts and eventually save enough to leave. Raises were possible by a willingness to move across states, which necessitated distance from family. I had discovered early on that loyalty to a company far from guarantees reciprocation. We operated on part luck and happenstance, part brute force and ignorance.

We knew, early on, that a system that had us working nonstop the moment we turned 18 was not one in which we’d sustain comfortable lives. As such, we were vaguely under the impression that we would eventually move abroad. Given my wife’s background, we assumed we’d move to the EU. We wanted to slow down to a pace more becoming of people, not cogs in the machine.

We experienced degrees of isolation and dislocation that imperceptibly unmoored us from the US over time. To be very clear: I did not have a horrible upbringing. In fact, I quite liked much of it. My family, I think, has been exceptionally supportive. I was freely given the space to drift, so I did. I experienced densely populated urban areas, and sparsely populated rural expanses — with cats, and hay.

Un-isolating, Un-dislocating

Here in Santiago de Compostela, Spaniards have asked me more than a couple of times: “Why are you here?” Not in a please-leave sort of way, at least not yet, but out of genuine incredulity for why someone would move here in Galicia of all places. Look, I like the rain. Makes me feel cozy. Even so, someone even asked me if I was on a temporary rest stop to Valencia. I responded with my folksy sarcasm(!) by telling them I don’t want to live around the other Americans.

Why are some of my newfound neighbors inclined to discount their home? I think it’s because America has spent decades projecting a very photoshopped image of itself. Low taxes, baseball, big McMansions — with so much shit nobody can even fit their Ford Derpatron Turbo into the garage. My home country pushed the limits of soft power through media and Hollywood, now only ceding the spotlight because it forgot why you need to stay in the good graces of others to survive.

So here we are in the verdant and rain-soaked hills of Galicia, where people puzzle over our bizarre origins. The most thorough explanations I can provide are in the form of long-winded monologues and diatribes, or links to music videos as in the one below. As I develop more fluency in the Spanish language, I’m not even sure I want to pollute it with my American complaints, anyway. Furthermore, I don’t know what will happen in the US. The members of my wife’s family who stayed in Eastern Europe fared far better than her parents did.

I try not to think too hard about what that might imply for us.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: Thanks for joining me. I hope this was more enjoyable or relatable than it was depressing. If you got something out of this post, please like or share it. Isolated and dislocated we may be, but it doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it.

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Greenland’s so hot right now.

Temperatures and tensions rise. Neta Crawford reported in Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War that the Department of Defense War emitted more greenhouse gases than any other institution back in 2019.1 This carbon bootprint exacerbates the climate chaos melting Greenland, and could tread upon its sovereignty should “grab ‘em by the pussy” grand strategy continue to be applied at the international level. The raging mentality of petty tyrants and their “anti-war” political base brings Norse sagas to mind.

Ah, the escapades of Erik the Red, who for his violent killings over batshit insane property disputes, was banished from Iceland, so he had to move abroad. Relatable. He founded Greenland after embarking for its fertile-ish southwestern fjords with other settlers, whose resolve was sorely tested as several ships were lost or turned back along the way. They were plausibly pissed off upon learning Erik had embellished the “green” part.

It’s far less of an embellishment today; Greenland is greener than ever, having shed 4,890 billion metric tons of ice from 1992 to 2020.23 Colonization of an increasingly verdant landmass would be arguably rational — if it weren’t already inhabited and claimed. There’s no evidence that Greenland was simultaneously occupied by anyone else when Erik discovered it, in contrast to our barbaric present. Where there’s mass starvation and death, there’s a “master plan” to build a luxury resort.4 With sights set on Greenland, casino bankruptcy extraordinaire Donald the Orange seems enticed by runaway feedback loops that raise alarm in private circles yet are publicly lampooned.5 One of these is the weakening Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

While it’s easier to fling a hamburger at a wall than to remember whatever AMOC stands for, it’s one climate tipping point of many instigating our Age of Climate Conquest.67 This age is defined by two strategies: coercion and cooperation. Only one works in the long-run, whether you’re imagining luxury hotels along your neighbor’s melting coastline, or an individual deciding where to put down roots.

Back to AMOC: as the Atlantic’s heat pump, it continuously transfers one million large nuclear power plants worth of energy from the tropics to the North Atlantic, warming northwestern Europe in the process.89 Well, for now. As Greenland’s ice melts, freshwater dilutes the salty North Atlantic, making the water less dense. This diminishes the sinking action that sustains the whole cycle. If the circulation stops, then bye-bye heat. As Western Europe resultantly cools by 1.5 °C per decade, its climate shifts precipitously. Precipitation, specifically, shifts southward, effectively freeze-drying the continent and diminishing the African and Asian monsoons that billions depend on for agriculture. The US East Coast, meanwhile, would endure rising sea levels as the current stops tugging water away from the shore.10

This, by the way, is already happening.

The long-term sea level change [at the US East Coast] was found to be ~two times faster than the global averaged rate. Dynamic sea level changes due to a weakening of AMOC are mainly responsible . . .

According to whom? Why… Zhang et al. of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at NOAA, of course.11 You haven’t heard of them? These happen to be extremely intelligent scientists who should make Americans proud of their country. How do I know that? I mean, who the fuck else works at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory? It’s distinctly possible these bookworms might deserve acclaim and recognition for their contributions to humanity… erm, wait a second.

Uh-oh. That lab was disrupted by cuts thanks to the people who should, under no circumstances ever, make decisions for anyone else.12 I’m not even including Erik the Red in that grouping. Maybe we can pray the climate change away — even if the science, conducted by the sharpest minds in the world, implies beyond a reasonable doubt that prayer is as ineffective as Sharpies for controlling atmospheric and oceanic systems.13

Noping out of America & Americanisms.

There’s an old saying about not being the one who pisses in the punchbowl. You can kindly ask the pisser to stop, but when more pissers show up to prove to you how cool it is to piss on everything, what do you do? You try to ignore it, but piss is dripping all over the floor. It’s on your shoes. Eventually, you’re just swimming in piss. You try calling attention to the piss, but everybody’s like, “Piss everywhere is normal, bruh.”

I noped out; I moved to Spain, where that’s no longer the case. We flush our piss here. Or hose it off the street, in any case.

[lights carbon-emitting cigarette] Whew, “dodged a bullet there,” another idiom you can take literally. But did I? Moving abroad involves risk exchange. “A discerning emigrant acknowledges privilege while reducing net risk over time, a deeply personal calculus of factors prioritized situationally and by preference” — this is a “politically correct” way to describe moving abroad. Can’t stand living somewhere because the social contract demands pissing in the punchbowl? How dare you exercise your personal autonomy, invoking your right to leave, without demonstrating your purity or capacity for nuance to the Personal Decision Police? Go forth and self-flagellate.

It’s popular to lambast individuals pursuing freedoms and opportunities under threat by the very systems that pushed them away in the first place. This “discourse” stems from one of two mutually inclusive Americanisms: attention-farming ragebait, and a marketing strategy of condescension intended to convince prospective emigrants that they are helpless without a consultation. Thankfully, that’s all bullshit. This blog, Bebop Libre, offers an alternative — mind the Libre.

⚠️ CONTROVERSIAL TAKE ALERT: Unlike some people, I believe in liberty. We are citizens of circumstances, but also citizens of the world. Liberty — libre — is the freedom to move between these modes. It can be expressed as free association; self-determination; embarking for another city, region, or country; building an earthship in the middle of the desert; joining an ecovillage; living in a large jar; or squatting inside an abandoned missile silo. The weirder, the better. Personally, I love when people do whatever they want as long as they don’t tread upon others.

You have the right to nope out. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. Now, if there’s anybody who has some explaining to do, that would be the people actively destroying our world — and who make decisions for us, on our behalf, without our consent. They didn’t corrupt our world without first corrupting our systems of governance. I, as an American, don’t recall voting to subsidize the fossil fuel industry by $34.8 billion in 2025.14 Is a free market, like, when you give taxpayer money to Scrooge McDuck? Or is it when your banana republic invades another banana republic for crude oil nobody wants?

Coercive petrostates, cooperative electrostates.

Either way, taking things from others like the schoolyard bully doesn’t build resilience. Strife and instability don’t help anyone. In the cynical game of climate conquest, saber-rattling at an allied sovereign territory — and well-functioning democracy — isn’t the winning strategy. So, who will win?

The countries that nope out of coercion will win — those cooperating, and minimizing their emissions through electrification. Are we gonna blow past some climate tipping points anyway? Yeah, shit seems fucked. Is the outcome less bad if we electrify? Probably. At the very least, resiliency by way of renewable power generation is wise, not just to weather ensuing climate chaos, but to minimize costs and dependency on petrostates — these are the advantages of electrostates. To that end, a 2024 report showed that photovoltaics were on average 41% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuels.15

Plummeting photovoltaic costs have prompted many countries to go all-in on renewables, including my host country. Having squandered centuries and vast resources on colonial conquest only to lose what was stolen, Spain has learned that building resilience at home beats extraction abroad. In fact, at the end of 2024, solar accounted for one quarter of Spain’s installed generation capacity.16 Even better news: one of Greenland’s neighbors is already fully renewable — Iceland is conveniently situated for geothermal and hydroelectric power generation.17

Wanting to nope out to any country that puts its people ahead of quarterly profits is not a sick impulse. For those with the means, opting out of a coercive culture that will result in millions of climate refugees shouldn’t be treated as a guilt-inducing transgression. Integration into a new culture and the learning — or re-learning — involved is about as cooperative as it gets. Disingenuously framing structural problems as personal ones is not an American habit I’m exporting abroad.

No thanks, my neighbors deserve better.

I admit, it’s a privilege paying taxes that contribute to projects other than conquest. Most people can’t just leave, which is why those with options shouldn’t waste them on performative hand-wringing. You know what’s worse than privilege? Squandered privilege. Having observed so many squander theirs, I try not to squander mine. After all, I come from the country with the most squandered privilege in the world. If only we could learn from any number of historical examples.

Finally — Erik the Red exaggerated the ‘green’ in Greenland to compel others to follow him there. A thousand years later, the people living there don’t need to be colonized — they deserve the same liberty Iceland has: to run on renewables, host no foreign bases, and export electronic music the world actually wants. No conquest required. Some countries just get it.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: Thanks for joining me. Unless you hate-consume my content, I have a favor to ask of you: please hit that like button. Here’s why: it increases the odds that Bebop Libre will reach other people, some of whom may be looking for permission to no longer seek permission from the Permission Givers.

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When I smile and say ‘please, text or call anytime,’ here’s what I do not mean:

Now, this is a hypothetical example. I’m not so petty that I’d openly berate someone on the public internet who may have allegedly done this. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental and honestly? A suggestion to the contrary hurts my fee-fees. I’m a gentle, self-respecting indigo child. I would never, under any circumstances, resort to public shaming after having explained the time zone situation a mere several times, both before and after moving abroad.

I’m not unreasonable. If an event of biblical proportions occurred — an increasingly regular phenomenon — I’d be thrilled to be awakened during REM sleep, while dreaming of a Pure Land curiously devoid of inane bullshit, to deliver my knowledgeable commentary in a state of uncharacteristic manic delirium. I’d even make coffee.

How grand I’d feel if I got that call.

Oh, to be recognized for my analytical skills by an individual of such unimpeachable credibility and moral character.

I’ve worked at different places where I’ve used such skills. Assignments included acting as a conduit between my employer and a consulting firm in exchange for Jimmy John’s sandwiches. One time, thirty minutes before I was to clock out one afternoon, I had also been assigned a dozen people I found most tender and amiable, based out of another country. Was I outsourcing my own job? This stirred ambivalence. Meanwhile, I modernized databases and their abstract interfaces. Amidst my usual coding duties, co-managing a “developer lab,” presentations, architecture reviews, and security audits, I entertained those around me with my trademark goblinry.

Why am I telling you this? A couple of reasons. One, I prefer injecting autobiographical notes into what ostensibly appears to be a joke post, because the only readers who deserve to know are the ones who tolerate my zest. Two, my work experience might indicate I know something about [drumroll] time zones. But it turns out one need not have ever been an overworked employee, coordinating with people around the country and world, to be vaguely aware of a global convention everyone uses every day. A vague awareness of when other people might be sleeping is achievable, I think, for the vast majority of the world population, but I’m not here to provide anything resembling help.

Instead, I shall address the peculiarity of my time zone here in Spain. It’s weird. Francisco Franco had something to do with it, because of course he did.

Since relocating to the northwestern autonomous community of Galicia, it’s been comparatively easier to reflect and think about time zones in a country with a government that’s not kidnapping and murdering as many people as possible. Au contraire, my host country has sent aid to the victims of genocide — rather than abruptly halting aid, dooming millions, and undoing a subsidized farming industry that voted for its own unlubricated assfucking. Now, I could comment on the implosion of a post-WWII international order that coincidentally favors Aleksandr Dugin’s notions in Foundations of Geopolitics, but that’s what everyone else is doing, whether they know it or not.

Time for your great-granpappy’s fascism.

Speaking of kidnapping, murder, and other activities preferred by xenophobia-certified theocratic nationalists supposedly beholden to the teachings of a refugee — who, to my recollection, advocated for something quite different than kicking your neighbors in the balls until they die — let’s segue to the past. When? Just before my antifa great-grandfathers deplorably fought in some world war for “freedom” and “rights.” Ha! Why would anyone want that? My ancestors were so unpatriotic and un-American. I’m truly ashamed. Like, can you imagine the sheer audacity of the idea that people who aren’t hurting anyone can enjoy their existence without being detained while conflicting commands are barked at them?

Anywho, in 1940, Franco’s regime aligned Spain’s time with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, adopting Central European Time (CET).

Today, that translates to Coordinated Universal Time plus one hour in winter (UTC+1), and UTC+2 in summer. For reference, Chicago is UTC-6 in winter, and UTC-5 in summer, but the ranges for the seasons are defined differently, just to add to your palpable confusion and fear. The time zones become even more annoying when you consider that Portugal is on Western European Time (WET), not Central — that’s UTC+0 in winter, and UTC+1 in summer.

What does all of that mean? Honestly, I don’t know, lol.

You might be wondering, “Reese. Dude. You just spent the past five hours patronizing everyone by way of an unhinged folksy tirade with elements of a résumé, origin story, and call to action speech in a B movie. We internalized your entire disjointed traumatic technobabble dump for ‘I don’t know, lol?’”

Uhhhh... erm. Franco. Time zones. Portugal. Spain. Galicia!

[Rebooting...]

I live in Galicia, north of Portugal. Let’s say I take the train here in Santiago de Compostela south to Porto. As soon as I cross the border, you know what happens? I go back in time one hour. As soon as I come back from drinking all of the port vino from the Douro River Valley, I’ll be wasted like that one time with the rakia in Bulgaria — homemade by a man who fondly referred to himself in broken English as The Genius of Gintsi. I’ll be super messed up… and I’ll have travelled an hour in the future! No doubt I’ll botch a train switchover and run late with one million notifications on my phone from my wife.

“Blame Franco,” I’ll text her at 3:30 AM, to which she’ll assume I made a new friend whose parents are clearly Francoists.

Now that you know why the time in Madrid is the same as Paris, subscribe to Bebop Libre to show your appreciation for my world-class, concise pedagogy. Stay tuned for the next post about a phenomenon known as AMOC… it keeps our weather much more oceanic here in Galicia as compared to the rest of Spain. Well, until it collapses.

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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

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Cold pepperoni pizza empanada. 186 MPH. Saturday morning. Spain.

Yes, I knowingly smuggled an invasive species of food on the last leg of my move to Santiago de Compostela in September 2025. On a tourist visa. I’m a dumb American, okay?

American horror story.

Dozens of times before Spain, I took the Amtrak between Carbondale and Chicago, Illinois. It’s about 310 miles.1 We’d stop for freight almost every trip. Once, the engine failed. Six to seven hours was normal, five and a half if lucky (or by car 🤷‍♀️). Rudeness, weirdness, or discomfort guaranteed. And that didn’t include the walk between stations in Chicago, the hour-long wait when Amtrak ran late, the Metra connection to Palatine, or the drive home from there.2

I lived in the Chicago suburbs to be near in-laws, not because I had, like, a choice.

Did you know? Telling people you’re from “Chicagoland” sounds more dignified than “strip mall purgatory punctuated by the Portillo’s hot dog chain.”

Anyway. High-speed rail between Madrid and Santiago.

Despite tearing through mountains, it’s nearly the same distance, and typically takes just over three hours.3 There’s more legroom and space for belongings. The Wi-Fi actually works. The doors between cars open automatically, so one need not contract virulent E. coli by fiddling with a handle or button. There are no mystery stains in the bathroom. Around the vending machines between cars, passengers form steering committees to deliberate over culinary options. And on Spanish rail, I’ve never even had strangers threateningly murmur to themselves about me for not letting them borrow my phone.

Each year, residents of “the wealthiest country in the world” celebrate their freedom by lighting red, white, and blue bottle rockets in precarious proximity to their reproductive futures. Perhaps this is also an opportunity to reflect on their car dependency, crumbling parking lots, sidewalks going nowhere, and nonexistent high-speed rail. I should qualify: Amtrak’s Acela serving the Northeast Corridor can reach 150 MPH for short stretches.4 By technicality, it barely qualifies as “high-speed” serving 2% of the landmass containing a measly 15% of the population. Better than nothing, I suppose.5

What’s the major malfunction for rail in America, anyway?

Well, let’s contrast with the AVE — Alta Velocidad Española, or “Spanish High Speed,” though the acronym also conveniently means “bird.”

Public investment consensus.

Modern Spain was forged by Felipe González’s PSOE government — the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, or Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party — and its push toward European integration. The González period from 1982 to 1996 was characterized by the urgent and utilitarian desire to leave an autocratic, inequitable, and relatedly inefficient past behind. Spain’s accession to the European Economic Community in 1986 validated democratic legitimacy previously in question.

While the center-right Partido Popular (PP) — People’s Party6 — criticized initiatives as opposition parties do, the broader direction of European integration and infrastructure investment achieved consensus.

High-speed rail planning began with a decidedly European standard-gauge (1,435 mm) rather than traditional Iberian gauge (1,668 mm) in 1987 for a couple of reasons.7 One, compliance with parameters for high speeds. Two, potential border-crossing between Spain and France. This was later realized from 2010 to 2013 with the Perpignan-Figueres cross-border line.8 Barcelona to Paris by rail is therefore under seven hours of gorgeous scenery.9

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves by accidentally moving to France.

In 1992, the Seville-Madrid AVE inauguration intentionally coincided with the Seville World Expo. The Summer Olympics, hosted in Barcelona, followed a couple of months later. It was Spain’s time to exhibit its “Europeanness.” Since then, it’s taken about three decades to develop the longest high-speed rail network in Europe, second globally to China.10 A blip in the grand scheme of things.

But politically? That’s an infinity, at least from my American perspective. When the PP took the reins in 1996, they didn’t derail the high-speed rail effort; they took the ball and ran with it. My American intuition of “right-wingers” is that they pathologically tapdance on the decaying public investments they’ve bludgeoned to a pulp and impeded from resuscitation at every opportunity, but that’s — to my surprise — not the PP’s legacy, and furthermore exemplifies how far to the right American politics has moved compared to the rest of the world.

Apart from their recent courting of far-right Vox voters, the PP has, for quite some time, operated within systems that would make most American Democrats blush: universal healthcare, labor protections, higher education, parental leave, the social safety net, and public transit. They didn’t set the stage for most of it, and they’ve certainly tried to trim some muscle along with the fat. But credit where it’s due: they’ve governed in deference to the Spanish Constitution which mandates much of this “general welfare.”11

If only Democrats and Republicans could take the US Constitution as seriously. To start with, how about its preamble?12

Welfare isn’t free money for undeserving poors to spend on soda and Cadillacs, as certain projection-prone voters have foamed at the mouth about since Reagan; no, it’s the glue of “a more perfect Union.” Who are the welfare queens, anyway? American city-dwellers disproportionately fund rural and suburban sprawl — only solvent by building more sprawl — and in the process doom urban planning and public transit.13

There are, unsurprisingly, echoes of “no taxation without representation” right around the 250th anniversary of my home country.

But, back to Spain: the PSOE and PP have swung back and forth like a pendulum since the European integration that accelerated in the late 80s. Nonetheless, they’ve both supported high-speed rail. It was built at substantially lower cost compared to that of other developed nations. According to a 2023 report, €17.7 million per kilometer in Spain versus €45.5 million elsewhere.14

Taxation with representation: Domestic funding has accounted for around 75% of Spanish high-speed rail. The remaining 25% originated from the EU.15 From 2000 to 2017, nearly half of EU high-speed rail funding was allocated to Spain.16 The disproportionate allocation is due to a highfalutin political theory known as “the early bird gets the worm.” Want funding as a member state? You have to not only aggressively ask for it, but you must be prepared to front most of the bill.

The low cost of Spain’s rail has much to do with urban density. As explained by CityMonitor, “the ‘lived density’ for Spain is in fact 737 people per km² . . . Spain could claim to be the most densely populated major European country by this measure . . . “ An analysis of the country's lived density would kaleidoscope into a whole thing, one I plan to explore separately.

In short, the peculiar quality of being rurally hollow has been most favorable for high-speed rail, but it didn’t build itself.

2,500 miles of not fucking it up.

Some have argued that the Madrid-Galicia route I used to move to Spain, cold empanada in tow, was a political vanity project. Yet, just four years after completion in 2021, its ridership exceeded passenger air transport between Madrid and Galicia for the first time.17 This coincided with the completion of Santiago’s intermodal, a station combining train and bus services.18 (What a fantastic case study in “if you build it, they will come,” and an absolute indictment of what holds America back.)

Around that same time, the network once dominated by the state operator Renfe, was opened to private competition (Ouigo, Iryo) by EU mandate.19 The result? Lower fares, plus fees from other operators.20

Anti-monopoly liberalization was invoked after first architecting a level playing field for both rail and telecom, hence why Spain has some of the best fiber optic infrastructure in the world. Thus follows a lesson for Americans: public investment and market competition need not be warring religions. They can be phased with vigilant oversight.

I stress vigilant oversight, as opposed to opening the door to regulatory capture. To illustrate, Spain recently bought back a 10% stake in Telefónica — the once majority state-owned telecom company — for which major privatization began under the González period. Why? A Saudi Arabian entity built a curious and substantial “private” financial stake in the historical state monopoly.21

The implications: Control of public networks — rail, internet infrastructure, and the like — by profit-seekers is no bueno, but opening regulated access on those networks to competing operators can yield marginal efficiencies.

It’s hard to argue against what Spain has accomplished. As of 2026, there are approximately 2,500 miles of high-speed rail connecting 46 stations.22 This system is a vastly overlooked force multiplier of economic activity, carrying hundreds of millions of passengers every year.23 I look forward to riding it on many future, jolly adventures.

I’ll conclude by acknowledging Spain’s car-free infrastructure is extreme even by European standards. With that in mind, I’ll come clean about my true feelings… everything I said was a lie. Do NOT move to a country that values public investment like I did. This is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my entire life.

Now that I’m a “europoor” in a modest apartment, I’ve no yard, only pristine parks, trails, and pilgrims’ ways I’m forced to share with the other people who exist. Coexistence… it’s excruciating. When I need to travel far, I must suffer being chauffeured on a train, faster than I could ever drive, in unparalleled comfort. I miss the need to stop for a Mountain Dew-carbonated piss at a truck stop, alone and vulnerable, where congregating meth heads thoughtfully contemplate petty theft and assault. That’s my safe space. Without a car sitting idle 99% of the time, who even am I?

Reese here. I’m the guy who wrote this post, for some reason. I’m a normal person who moved from America to Spain. Sometimes I talk about infrastructure and its intersection with politics, economics, and history. At other times: bizarro monologues and whimsical fuckery. Subscribe to Bebop Libre if you can dig it.

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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.

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In the Spanish and Galician languages, this medieval marvel is called the Catedral Basílica de Santiago de Compostela. Construction began in 1075, but the structure wasn’t “consecrated” until 1211 — basically, the equivalent of a religious ribbon-cutting ceremony.1

This shrine to the apostle James, patron saint of Spain, is where nearly half a million pilgrims now converge each year.2 There are numerous routes spanning the interior of the country and exterior: namely, in Portugal and France. People like my aunt tend to have a wonderfully intoxicating time on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage — the Way of Saint James.

It just so happens that Santiago translates to “James.” Not “extended bar crawl.” Don’t tell my aunt that, though, and definitely don’t tell her about this blog post.

Nonetheless, throughout these lands there’s an abundance of vino (wine) to accommodate every kind of aunt on her debauched pilgrimage: those who prefer vino tinto (red wine), and of course who can forget the ones with a hankering for vino blanco (white wine)? Aunts into cerveza (beer) won’t be disappointed either. And for aunts who don’t partake, there’s always agua (water) and Pepsi (Pepsi 😉).

Let’s get some things straight…

Having nearly failed three years of Latin in high school, I’m uniquely unqualified to opine that the meaning of compostela is less certain than Big Santiago would like you to believe.

To my Latin teacher, Ms. May: Just trying to redeem myself for that time I used your color ink to print a picture of my face superimposed over Ash Ketchum’s body.

It’s often repeated that compostela means “field of stars,” deriving from the Latin campus stellae (field of the star)3 or campus stellarum (field of stars). The folklore goes that a shepherd saw weird lights loitering over a field (probably aliens), and thus found the namesake apostle’s tomb. Yet, compostela more likely derives from compositum (burial ground), or composita (cemetery).4 As compostela is a diminutive form of those words, implying a sense of smallness, it might mean “little cemetery.”

“James of the burial ground” doesn’t sound as cool as “James of the field of stars.” Of course, both could be true. Wordplay isn’t a modern invention. Why couldn’t it be, “as above in the stars, so below in the grave?” I’m unable to keep my Hermetic dictum in my pants.5 Sorry.

Loamy burial grounds aren’t generally known for being able to support structures weighing roughly one hundred goddamn thousand metric tons.6 That is, 220 million pounds. Around the weight of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.7

But before we dive into how this is physically possible, let me address the proverbial elephant in the room…

Most people have a spiritual awakening when gazing upon the Santiago de Compostela Archcathedral Basilica. When I moved to Santiago de Compostela with my wife — I did not. In my critically-acclaimed and groundbreaking piece, “Moving to Spain: Holy Sh*t, Is That a Tarantula?,” I recount my first encounter as such…

Most people see an ornate monument of historic significance; I see a mass composed of matter. We are not the same.

That’s why I can produce articulate thesis questions capable of betraying the comforting retreat of our spiritual kinship: How in the fuck is this thing not sinking or leaning? It constantly rains here… are the stone buildings and corridors sinking as one hulking contiguous mass? Are there ongoing and publicly invisible efforts to lift this bad bitch with hydraulics? Is this beautiful fairytale city actually a simulation orchestrated by my final neural impulses?

The answer, my hombres, will be revealed. Soon.

But first — when cathedrals go wild. 👺

This wouldn’t be a Bebop Libre-certified shitpost without going down a distracting, tangential, and self-indulgent rabbit hole that pisses off readers from all over the world. Even you. May I redirect your attention to the cathedral from Hell?

It’s called Salisbury Cathedral.

Construction began in 1220. Consecration? 1258.8 It doesn’t outwardly appear evil. However, any structural engineer of repute would tell you this is merely a sinister facade (hehe).

Join our research initiative: Lead scientists at Bebop Libre have developed a novel theory that targeted advertising on social media becomes muddled at the sites of engineering-challenged buildings like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Our research division respectfully asks you to leave a comment on this post if you notice — while doomscrolling in the bathroom — more erectile dysfunction awareness ads than we know you usually receive based on our market research.

Now, before we get into the engineering challenge of maintaining Salisbury Cathedral, I want to emphasize: I’m not a real engineer, even though I call myself a software engineer.

It’s a euphemism for “code monkey,” obfuscating that I have no idea what I’m doing in both a technical and ethical sense, just like the rest of my “colleagues.” We love pretending to be engineers, as the title conveys some sort of certification, vetting process, or basic scientific fluency that is rigorously maintained over the course of an enriching career. But — if there’s anything I’ve proven in mine, it’s that I’ve a penchant for hyperfixation whereby I provide no tangible utility whatsoever.

Case in point: cathedral load-bearingness.

In an article titled “The miracle of Salisbury Cathedral,” Jerry Everard of The Fog Watch details the problem, or miracle as he frames it. Quoting him:

Unsurprising for Britain’s longest medieval spire.9 (For all of Europe, it’s the second-longest behind Strasbourg Cathedral in France.)10 Everard furnishes photographs documenting the bend in the spire’s erection, and he also points out a curious hole exposed in the floor ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). He explains that it was dug to measure the water level underneath the cathedral’s foundation twice per day with a dipstick… so because of this tenuous situation, Salisbury Cathedral has needed extensive repair to prevent its collapse.

Water-based dilemmas are not uncommon in rainy locales such as England. Salisbury is near Southampton, which sustains ~819 mm of annual rainfall on average.11 As for Santiago de Compostela? ~1,900 mm.12 And I daresay England isn’t drowning in nearly as much vino as Galicia. Cerveza, however, is debatable.

Again — how is it that Santiago de Compostela’s famed cathedral hasn’t yet sunk or floated out into the Atlantic all without a yearly US defense budget being spent to prevent such a calamity? It’s relentlessly pummelled with rain. And we’ve every reason to believe it was built on a haunted burial ground visited by aliens.

Probably the same ones who manipulated our DNA.

The answer lies within.

So, where was all of that granite sourced from to build Santiago’s famed cathedral? Did the builders simply ask the aliens to do them a solid? The following is a dramatization of what might have occurred in the fateful years preceding its construction…

HUMAN: “Hey, aliens.”

ALIEN: “Shit, that one can see us. Uh, so we’re not actually extraterrestrials.”

HUMAN: “Ah, semantic deflection. You’re cryptoterrestrials, aren’t you? Those silly biosynthetic humanoid avatars 3D-printed from deep within the ocean?”

OTHER ALIEN: “…Er, why’s he speaking modern English, man?”

HUMAN: “I’m a time-traveler.”

OTHER ALIEN: “Fuck, man. This is bad.”

ALIEN: “Dude, you can’t just insert yourself into your own history like that. You’re gonna do something you’ll regret and create a time rift that will seriously confuse a 20th-century author named Kurt Vonnegut. Go back to your own time.”

HUMAN: “Oh, I’m sorry… I didn’t realize the Prime Directive applied temporally, and not spatially.”

ALIEN: “…What do you want, you little asshole?”

OTHER ALIEN: “I’m freaking out, man.”

HUMAN: “I’m gonna need you to tractor beam some construction materials over here for a cathedral I’m gonna use to control my kind with religion in the future, you know, like in a Dan Brown novel. Unless of course you want me to ping the Galactic Federation right now.”

OTHER ALIEN: “He’s blackmailing us, man!”

GHOST OF SAINT JAMES: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

ALIEN: “We were just refilling our heme iron reserve from these cattle. I know what it looks like, but we were not doing anything untoward with them.”

HUMAN: “Mmhmmm. You reek of sulfur.”

ALIEN: “Look, I scanned the haunted burial ground below you. The apostle James was laid to rest down there, hence why his ghost is presently mocking us, and there’s also a Variscan massif — that is, an antediluvian sheet of metamorphic rock. You should know that since you’re from the future. Dig a quarry, douchebag.”

OTHER ALIEN: “Quick, manipulate his DNA!”

Again, I need to stress that this is a dramatization. There’s no credible evidence of anything portrayed in this scene except for the “Variscan massif.” This refers to a zone of raised and erosion-resistant rock formed in the Paleozoic continental collision that transpired roughly 290-370 million years ago.13 Northwestern Spain lies atop an enormous so-called “crystalline basement” — related to the Appalachian formations I’ve seen exposed in road cuts while driving on I-40 through Tennessee, remnants of the same mountain chain before the Atlantic Ocean opened for business.14 But that part of it was deliberately drilled, blasted, and mucked out for vehicular travel.

Before our continents distinctly separated as we know them, thus ending their geologic bromance, they formed one to rule them all — Pangaea — where a single, connected Variscan belt once ran unbroken.

What geologically distinguishes the western Iberian Peninsula is that its crystalline basement and chunk of Variscan belt are naturally exposed to a significant degree — but especially in Galicia, because of its tectonically uplifted and erosion-resistant rock. Thus, the Galician granite sourced for the Santiago de Compostela Archcathedral Basilica differs little from the bedrock of the landmass it rests upon. Water doesn’t penetrate the granite; it runs right off.

Basically, Galicia is like a massive granite tabletop.

The rain? It’s mainly a concern for those living here, not for granite-based cathedrals. Weathering is certainly an issue for decorative elements, which do require ongoing maintenance, but it’s far harsher on less resilient materials. Having been embedded in an ancient Roman (and granite!) aqueduct, take for example the statues of the Virgin Mary and Saint Sebastian in Segovia, which is about 60 miles north-northwest of Madrid. The statues had been hoisted into their respective niches back in 1520. But the rendition of Saint Sebastian was removed in 1972, and the Virgin Mary later in 2019, both due to weathering.

The restored originals can now be viewed in the Casa de la Moneda (Royal Mint) of Segovia. Resin-based replicas were inserted in place of the originals. And they look good,15 but not all restorations have been as well-received…

Limestone is more workable than granite, but significantly less weatherproof. The Santiago de Compostela Archcathedral Basilica’s decorative elements are mostly granite, with some marble. It was constructed and sculpted the hard way, no pun intended, to stand the test of time.

If you enjoyed this Russian nesting doll of tangents, then subscribe to Bebop Libre for more! That’s our specialty. And by “our,” I mean some guy who moved to Spain from America.

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