8-Bit Newsletter, Volume 2
Back to the Newsletter's roots and free for everyone.
Greetings sentient beings,
I’m writing this a bit stoned because I’m currently in a place where getting stoned is legal—Chicago. The operation of procuring legal weed feels like a mix between entering a bank and a high-end candy store. But at this candy store, all the candy gets you high as fuck.
It’s still so incredibly bizarre to me that in my lifetime I went from a perpetual state of absolute paranoia about getting caught with marijuana to simply walking into a shop and just buying it with my credit card.
It’s been six months since I’ve been back in the midwest, the place that raised me, and the reverse culture shock always slaps me across the face, then on the booty because that’s where my wallet is.
One thing that’s hard not to notice in Chicago is the overwhelming number of online sports gambling and legal weed ads. They’re both relatively new businesses, and their ads are everywhere.
Not to be a huge bummer, but I can’t stop thinking about how we’re just distracting ourselves with these fun, new, novel things while the world falls apart. To be very clear, I love weed and I love sports. They’re actually two of my favorite things.
I’m not a huge gambler, but I see the appeal. If the Packers winning a game not only made me happy but also made me $100 richer, that feeling would compete with sex and travel.
Many of us are now at least able to eat potent gummy bears that make us high as fuck before we watch footage of the next natural disaster, global crisis, or coverage of our inept two-party political system.
Legal weed and legal sports betting are definitely both booming businesses, ones that I will participate in, but does anyone else feel like they’re just huge distractions from the mounting evidence that things are rapidly falling apart???
Yeah? No? Maybe so?
Now that we’re off to a cheery start, let’s get into the second Substack 8-bit newsletter! I hope you’re stoned too.
8-Bit Newsletter’s name and format are an homage to the ugly but utilitarian roots of the Not That You Asked Newsletter. (Not that you asked…)
The original Gmail newsletter had this description as the setup:
I started this newsletter to direct you to corners of the internet that I like, and that I think you might enjoy. Some will be corners I have created or am featured in, others will just be places that I found and liked. They will cover a gamut of topics, but four specifically:
Travel 🛫
Writting, Reading, & Memoirs 📖
Music (playing, listening, dancing, todos) 🎤
Remote Work/The Future of Work 💻
Trav Shares
I just published, what I believe to be the best blog I’ve ever written. It’s a true story of an afternoon spent at Mar-a-Lago, while the Trump family (and thousands of top secret documents) were there as well. How on God’s green earth you ask? Me too.
Sostebible_PE, a community-led volunteer group that I founded in Puerto Escondido, recently launched a “free water refill network.” Using the power of Ecofiltros, we’ve gotten over a dozen businesses to join the network and provide gratis drinking water to anyone walking around La Punta. I’ve been cleaning up 14 plastic recycling points once a week for nearly a year, and this project was born from trying to cut the problem off at the root. We hope to scale up the efforts and to even be an example for all other coastal communities dealing with the global plastic crisis. Check out our Intsa for more info, and if you live somewhere in Latin America with a coastline and have an interest in starting your own network, feel free to reach out! (More information in the form of an infographic at the very bottom of this newsletter!)
READ PACHINKO. I mean… if you want to. It’s a heavy book (both in actual weight and emotion) but one of my top ten books of all time now.
Tiny Desk has been celebrating Latin heritage month with an “El Tiny” takeover which has produced a ton of incredible performances—but for me, the best, and now ranked in my top 5 of all time, was Trueno performing live from Argentina with a full band. The music, production, videography, and the whole fuggin’ vibe are all insane.
I’ve published a bunch to my Medium since the last 8-bit, so along with the Mar-a Lago piece above, if you were going to check out just two pieces, let me direct you to my two favorites. 1. A slam piece about Russel Brand. Basically, I used to like him, and now I think he’s an Instagram clown cashing checks from the far right. (This piece got a LOT of traction on Medium.) 2. Four of my favorite culturally unique things about Mexico. #secompra!
If you want to join Medium for unlimited content from thousands of writers, use this link!
We’re officially raising money for Sobreluna, the coworking & coliving project in Puerto Escondido that Maria, Diego, and I have been developing for over a year. If you’re curious, check out our new landing page. If you’re even more curious after reading the two-pager, schedule a call to talk with the founders about joining the Sobreluna investment team!
Bob King Memorial Advice Section
I’m about a week out from my 39th birthday (so a week and a year FROM TURNING 40! What?!?! Como?!?!?), and I think more than any other, this quote has made the biggest impact on my past year, as well as my thinking and planning for the future. I invite you to take whatever advice or wisdom you can wrest from it.
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I’ve been building, creating, and starting a lot of things since moving to Puerto, and I’ve been doing even more maintenance to keep them going. You can’t do one without the other.
Pheatured Photo
Thank you for reading Vol. 2 of the 8-Bit Newsletter here on Substack, this newsletter’s beautiful new online home. Check out more interesting words on my Medium page, or by grabbing a copy of my 5-star travel memoir, Not That Anyone Asked.
