Every day I experience another “Mexico moment” and I am hesitant to share them publicly because I don’t want to ruin things here, nor be a stupid gringo. But today was great.

We bought a car back in October but it hasn’t been registered to me yet because to register a car you need a drivers license and to get a drivers license you need residency plus proof of address and a blood test.

Proof of residence is hard because addresses aren’t really a thing in regional Mexico so you use electricity bills and most electricity bills are in the name of a corporation because individuals can’t own properties.

So I find out last week I can get a letter of residence instead of using an electricity bill.

It takes me like four different government offices to find the right person in a back office of an office that is full of young people talking and laughing and this lady agrees to help. We’re talking the back office of the back office of a building without a sign near the building I thought I had to go to.

I need this important letter and she drafts it up, spells my name wrong, we correct it, and then the big boss of the department needs to sign it. By big boss I mean “President of the Municipality”.

He’s busy talking to important people.

She sits there for like three minutes clearly thinking it all through and then she just forges his signature, smiles at me, and hands me the letter.

I get a blood test from a local doctor and I’m now a licensed Mexican driver.

Policy and procedure means everything and nothing over here.

Wednesday in Todos Santos

Wednesday in El Pescadero

If Marie Kondo can give up on having a tidy house you can give up on a whole range of crap. Celebrate quitting, cancelling and giving up. Not everything or everyone needs to be driven to the edge of sanity.

This is on the menu as Fresh Water or Agua Fresco.

Sometime before now Mexicans weren’t taking to actual water that was fresh and without watermelon straws, so smart boffins in Mexico City mixed in some fruit and sweetener, and hey presto, fresh waters and an obesity problem!

Ed Catmull in Creativity, Inc.:

"We aren’t aware that the majority of what we think we see is actually our brain filling in the gaps."

Nick Cave:

“Rather than feel impotent and useless, you must come to terms with the fact that as a human being, you are infinitely powerful, and take responsibility for this tremendous power. Even our smallest actions have the potential for great change, positively or negatively, and the way in which we all conduct ourselves within the world means something. You are anything but impotent, you are, in fact, exquisitely and frighteningly dynamic, as are we all, and with all respect, you have an obligation to stand up and take responsibility for that potential. It is your most ordinary and urgent duty.”

A smart Australian government would’ve sorted their colonising the indigenous population problems out before the Internet.

UnClobber by Colby Martin 📚

“In the essentials, unity; in the nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

From Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull 📚

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

D.H. Lawrence:

“the world fears a new experience more than anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences.”

Anthony shared this signed cover art in today's edition of The Sizzle and very few images can conjure up so much nostalgia. I still remember visiting the shareware kiosk (computer in a box) at Video Ezy and downloading the shareware version of Doom onto two 3.5" floppy disks.

In You're a Miracle (and a Pain in the Ass) by Mike McHargue 📚:

"You are a miracle because 86 billion neurons in your brain form into thousands of structures and networks, built from a map created over billions of years to understand the world you live in. But sometimes, you are a pain in your ass because all these networks are running a playbook that’s been around a lot longer than you have. The cells in your body have survived through the eons by eating every delicious calorie they come across, allowing fear to make them run, and using anger to make them fight for their lives."

Spotting a scam email

The most Mexican thing I've seen yet is a guy who has a table to sell so he's just carried it around the neighbourhood singing out if anyone wants to buy a table. Take that, Zuckerberg, and your stupid Marketplace.

Don't believe everything AI tells you. This bio sounds right, but it's not. From what I understand I've never been in Vogue, The Knot, or Martha Vomit Stewart Weddings. I am not a founding member of the AFCC, and I've not been Sydney-based for over a decade. I also don't write my couple's vows.

Dan Shipper writes:

"Honestly, I’m usually annoyed when something gets trendy"

and I felt seen. So his article Permission to Be Excited About AI obviously spoke to me.

From Love Matters More by Jared Byas 📚

"Social media encourages the myth that who we are is defined by the opinions we type. But the older I get, the less interested I am in how well people can script their beliefs in front of a computer and the more interested I am in how tenaciously they go about grinding out their moral existence. I’m impressed when someone can get up every single day, determined to be a better human being than he or she was yesterday. Typing out what we “stand for” is easy. But loving well isn’t. I am not down on typing out our opinions—clearly. I’m only down on thinking that typing in and of itself constitutes an ethical life. May we stop thinking that becoming the kind of person we want to be is as easy as typing “me too” at those we agree with and “stupid people” at those we don’t. That’s a distraction from the real work of being human. And I’m ready to work."

The duo behind Instagram - who sold for good coin and then left Instagram/Facebook in 2018 - have a new thing and it's right in my ballpark. Think TikTok's algorithmic feed but for text: artifact.news.

The many branches of the Fediverse by Per Axbom.

Do you know the most disappointing thing about the United States of America?

That the entire narrative of and about the country is defined by a small handful of topics recycled so quickly that outsiders often don't even know which Police Officer killing, which mass shooting, which disappointing President, or which sexually abusive old white male you're all angry about this week. It's hard to keep up, and you need new stories. Not new fake stories so the rest of the world thinks you're cool again. You need new truths so the new stories just kinda flow pretty easily.

Or be like Iceland. No-one ever hears about Iceland unless it's a photo of some cool landscape.

Luna just asked Britt, “will you ever kill me, mummy?” And honestly, at the age of four it’s impressive that she’s already assembling friends and enemies lists, and that I got an auto-invite to the friends list but her mother required some investigation first.

It might be 8yrs late, but you're finally getting my book: The Rebel's Guide To Getting Married is coming in 2023. It's a book about planning a wedding with intention and purpose, written by yours truly, Oz's most hated celebrant & I'm writing live on my wedding blog.

Every time Buzz Aldrin comes up in the news or conversation I think of this Rhys Darby standup piece from 15-odd years ago. Starts 2:30 in.

Current status: forgot to put coffee in the percolator.

Throwback to that time ten years ago when I had awesome not-grey hair

Judging by the many different recordings I'm hearing and also seeing pop up on the web of Rick Rubin doing the circuit to promote his new 📚 book, The Creative Act, he's much better in conversation than the written word. I'm reading the book and I'm struggling to stay tuned in.

📚 The Art of Growing Up by John Marsden:

"A friend of mine told the story of driving along a country road one day with her little son, when he remarked: ‘Look at the beautiful tree, Mummy.’ She replied: ‘Yes, it’s a manna gum.’ There was a long silence from the back seat, broken at last by her child asking: ‘So is there a name for everything, then?’"

Current status: horizontal at El Pescadero

E.B. White in Here Is New York:

“New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.”

If you’re wondering how Starlink is going, at my local Todos Santos (Baja California Sur, Mexico) post office today there 16 new Starlink packages and they say that every day there’s “lots.”

Why is no-one talking about how most movies are just made up in people's brains?!

Sad. The person typing this has finally given up on the dream of eternal youth and is scaling back his dream of More Space to Default.

Bill Bishop on living in DC.

Popped up to say hi then went back down again

Hola

I’ve lived around the ocean my whole life and I’ve never seen the ocean as angry and ferocious as I have at Todos santos, Baja California Sur, this week.

In so many ways existing on earth has never been better with threat of war or famine never being lower for so many of us. But for 339 million people in 2023 things aren't so rosy. The New Humanitarian writes: Why these 10 humanitarian crises demand your attention now.

Currently reading: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin 📚

Rick Rubin is the guest on episode 649 of the Tim Ferris show and this is one of those podcasts you really want to listen to.

"Look for what you notice that no-one else sees."

Robert Henri's quote is quoted and man, this is sitting with me all day every day:

"The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state that makes art inevitable"

This is a good listen.

Somehow both our girls have learned to pose like this and I have no idea how, or why, or where it’s from.

Craig Hockenberry, of Icon Factory and Twitterific fame, unloads on Space Karen.

In 1978, neurologist Dr. James Austin proposed that there are 4 types of luck:

(1) Blind Luck (2) Luck from Motion (3) Luck from Awareness (4) Luck from Uniqueness

Sahil details them in this tweet thread.

Passport Photos is a very fun and cool photo series by Max Siedentopf.

Steve Jobs on how asking for help is a superpower:

"I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help. I called up Bill Hewlett (founder of HP) when I was 12 years old. He answered the phone himself. I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter. I asked if he had any spare parts I could have. He laughed. He gave me the parts. And he gave me a summer job at HP working on the assembly line putting together frequency counters. I have never found anyone who said no, or hung up the phone. I just ask. Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things, versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act."

Polina Pompliano with 15 People on the Most Important Question They've Ever Been Asked.

“Would you do this if you weren't being paid?”

I've never felt more inadequate and stupid as a person whilst reading this essay and list of recommendations for writing good English prose by David Bentley Hart.

My favourite fiction/not-really-not-fiction book of 2022 was Russian Sleeper Cell by Nathan Monk 📚

Reading Publishers Weekly top twenty-five bestseller list is something I'm finding depressing, not because of the content of the list, but the numbers. So few books are being read. Props to Colleen Hoover, someone I'd never heard of before now, for having eight books on that list, it sounds like romance still sells.