From movies, I've learned that the sky in Mexico is a kind of hazy yellow.

I think maybe you want one of the better travel guides? And then skip the parts about restaurants and hotels and whatnot? (The WPA guides to US cities were absolutely amazing in just the way you're saying, but they're now very dated, obviously, and also not about Mexico.)

In a pinch, you could try this:

https://www.abebooks.com/WPA-Guide-1930s-New-Mexico-Writers/31377285759/

It would be nice if Oxford UP's Very Short Introduction series included places.

I was in to James Michener when I was in middle school but I assume half the stuff I learned from those books is incorrect.

I really like the DK Eyewitness travel guides. Alternatively, maybe pick a couple of states or a region to start learning about, as opposed to the whole country. Like Oaxaca, which is cool.

I think the answer is Wikipedia. You can start with the entry on Mexico and then work on to the entries for each state. Granted I wouldn't have the discipline to do that, and if I did by the time I was done I would have forgotten everything I read at the beginning, but that's true for just about everything for me.

Here's the very basics of geography. Other than the coasts almost the whole country is pretty high altitude. North is like the US Southwest: sparsely populated except for a few cities and richer than the rest of Mexico because it's integrated with the US economy. Most people live in a narrow volcanic belt in the middle (Mexico City, Guadalajara, etc.) with rich volcanic soil and a pleasant altitude. South is poorer and has a lot more indigenous people. Separated into various valleys. Yucutan also has offshore oil, but not in a way that extends into the broader economy.

I've just learned that Baja California is split into two states, but the one furthest from San Diego is called "Baja California Sur" instead of "Baja Baja California".

We could turn this into a blog project. "Let's teach heebie about Mexico!" Some of us may already know a lot about Mexico, but we can all pick out interesting facts from Wikipedia.

I accept your eclectic web proposal.

I was in Mexico once for maybe three hours in 1983 or so. I don't remember much.

I was in San Diego for many days, but don't remember much of that either.

I do remember that Caesar Salads were invented in Tijuana. Also, that they used to eat Chihuahuas, but stopped after the Spanish brought cows.

Well, we clearly have Alta California del Sur separate from Alta California, the main one.

There was a series called "A Traveller's History of" that includes a Mexico history. I don't know anything about the quality of it, and it came out in 2003 so it could be dated. I read one of the books in that series in the late 1990s, probably the one on Italy because that's the first country I ever visited in Europe, and I think the style is probably pretty close to what you're looking for.

Why, I am going to be in Mexico in about three weeks.

Try the food. It's very good.

I am looking forward to ant eggs.

When you are in Mexico you need to be extremely careful about putting condiments on your tacos. I like spicy, but some of that shit is nuclear.

It kills the ants though.

Mexico failed to call their Lower California and Northern California Lo-Cal and No-Cal, and I am deeply disappointed.

Buncha dinosaurs up in here. Search YouTube. Here's one. https://youtu.be/ORYGM9KElwE

A video?! That I have to watch? We're dinosaurs, not monsters.

Videos are such a bossy asshole way to present information. It's like "I have something to say and you must hear it in the way I want to say it or fuck you."

Unfogged could probably get a lot more clicks if we pivoted to video.

First you get the clicks, then you get the Ivermectin ads, then you get the money, then you get the women.

If you are women or straight men, your supposed to stop at "the money".

I messed that up. If you are straight women or men but nor straight....

Starting with the first Mexican state in the alphabet, Aguacalientes, which means Hot Springs. It's located near the center of Mexico, and it is one of the smallest states but also one of the most densely populated. Traditionally known as a wine-growing region, more recently it has become known for automobile manufacturing plants. Maybe it is best known for the San Marcos Festival which takes place in spring. The biggest attractions at the Festival are bullfighting and cockfighting

I come up short when I try to imagine a cockfight as a big event for spectators. Maybe there's a giant video screen like at an arena rock concert?

I think they give the chickens a gun or something. Otherwise it takes too long.

You can give a chicken a gun, but can you teach it to shoot?

Probably. Patience is key.

Actully, Aguacalientes is where some friends of mine are from. That's the kind of place to which I'm embarrassed not to be able to assign some basic properties in my head. This is so helpful!

Just mention you've heard about their cocks.

Just don't mention *what* you've heard about their cocks.

30: I'm going to dust off some knowledge from a college class and note that Aquascalientes (the capital city, not the state) was the home of an important meeting to try to figure out what to do when the rebels won the Mexican Revolution. (It didn't really work, and it led to a schism between Pancho Villa, whom you, Heebie, have heard of, and Carranza, who became the first post-Revolution president.)

So now you, Heebie, can switch between asking your friends "When you're walking around your hometown, do you ever imagine alternate endings to the Convention of Aguacalientes in which Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa are better able to unify their revolutionary forces?" and "Oh, how are the cockfights?"

If you ever visit Salisbury, be sure to point out that the cathedral's spire is 128m tall.

34, 37: Wow! Maybe this can actually work.

39 just don't do it in a Russian accent

I know about Pancho Villa, Zapata, and Carranza because they were in a Choose Your Own Adventure book I read as a kid.

American Foreign Policy for Children.

You too can have a 9 year old's understanding of historical events

I don't want to be over qualified.

30: Next in the alphabet is Baja California. As already mentioned in this thread this state in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula. Baja California is actually the original California -- Spanish explorers "discovered" it and believing it to be an island named it after the fictional island of California from the chivalric novel, Las Sergas de Esplandián. As some of you Spanish-speakers may know Baja means lower -- hence, Moby's joke in 9.

Baja California is the northernmost and westernmost state in Mexico, and is a very much a border state. Much of the economy is tariff-free export oriented manufacturing (maquiladora). It has the lowest unemployment rate in any state in Northern Mexico and the jobs draws many people from other parts of Mexico as well as Central America. Many people come there hoping to get into the US. Meanwhile many Americans live there to enjoy the lower cost of living while maintaining their US citizenship.

this state in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula

This is definitely wrong, but I can't decide if it should read, "this state is in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula" or "this state is the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula".

On the one hand, it seem like I should know English, by this point in my life, and on the other hand, this seems like a complicated philosophical question.

This is definitely wrong, but I can't decide if it should read, "this state is in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula" or "this state is the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula".

The state of Baja California actually extends slightly north of the peninsula, so technically both are wrong.

It would be easier if we called Oregon "Alta California" and Washington state "Alta^2 California".

48: Also Guadalupe Island with a recorded population of 213 people. So, it should read, "this state includes the northern portion of the Baja peninsula".

How many don't have a music career?

49: teo therefore inhabits Altissima California.

Indeed.

Russian colonization in Alaska was actually the main thing (along with the British and French poking around in the Pacific) that got Spain to finally decide to colonize Alta California in the late eighteenth century.

Has anyone here been to Oaxaca? Basically wondering what the airport/transfer in CDMX (or I guess maybe CUN) is like (ie is the small plane part of travel well-organized and how old is the small plane), and also wondering about the roads from the city to the ocean.

I've been to Oaxaca in 2016, transferred in Mexico City. My MEX-OAX flight was delayed by an hour or two, but otherwise it was a pretty normal flight. It wasn't a tiny plane.

The one caveat to that is you have to understand that they deal with time differently in a Mexican airport. Like in Europe you have to wait until your flight is ready before they announce the gate. But they don't consider a flight that leaves within 20 minutes of scheduled time "late." So if it's the listed time for your flight to depart it will just say that it's departing now but without a gate, and that means it's late. Eventually they'll say it's late and then after 20 minutes or so they'll pick a new time and it will go back on the board as "on time" but at the new time. This is rather stressful if you expect to either know the flight is late or know the gate before the scheduled departure time, it also means you need to look at the flight number and not the flight time once a new time is announced. But once you get what's going on it's not a big deal.

I was in Oaxaca in 1975. I don't remember the airport at all, which suggests it's not anything that unusual.

I've never been that far south. I was going to say Tijuana is the furthest south I've been, but I decided to look into it first. I think Orlando is the furthest south I've been. Edinburgh is probably the northern limit.

My northern record is Eshaness, Shetland 60.5N. Southern is Franz Josef Glacier, NZ 43.5S.

I think it's funny that the first California colonization efforts were sort of half-hearted about California itself. "I guess California might be useful to supply/protect our other colonies."

The Yucatan peninsula, probably Tulum if not somewhere nearby, seems to be the furthest south I've been. Surprisingly close to Taiwan's latitude.

Furthest north is Tromsø.

Germany sending to Ukraine leopard, 2 tanks.

The best part of the Americas is Long Chile.

Huh.

That's really a geography.

I like the flag.

I think the furthest south I've been is Roatan. Furthest north is Utqiagvik.

If we're counting airports, the farthest south I've been is Addis Ababa (8.9N). If I have to have actually been somewhere, then Aden (14N). North, it's Fairbanks, narrowly edging out Reykjavik (airport only).

Furthest north: Trondheim. Furthest south: Kenya.

But I'm going in circles trying to figure out furthest west.

The west starts at Fort Worth, so probably Dallas.

Arlington erasure!

I only knew about the one in Virginia and the two in Ohio.

They have an NFL team and an MLB team. And the original Six Flags!

I've been to that Six Flags.

People sometimes claim that Alaska contains both the westernmost and easternmost points in the US. I feel like this conception of directionality doesn't really make sense even though I get where it comes from.

It's easier to see Russia from the easternmost point.

Not counting airports, I think I'm - furthest north: Tampere, Finland; furthest south: East London, Eastern Cape; furthest east: Manado, Sulawesi; furthest west: Vancouver, BC.

I'm quite narrow. I've never been to Africa or anywhere in Asia, and in the Americas I've only been within the continental US

Furthest north: Oslo and/or Stockholm (similar degree)
Furthest south: southern border (ish) of the US*
Furthest west: San Francisco and Bay Area
Furthest east: eastern Mediterranean (Turkey)

* I always forgot just quite how far south the US is, as the places I've been in the Med (Crete, etc) are all a good few degrees of latitude north of that.

N: about an hour drive north of Reykjavík (near Innrihólmur)
S: Montevideo
E: Athens
W: Kauai

Bergen in Norway; Dunedin in New Zealand, and are we counting the extremes of East and West by proximity to the international date line? Because I know it runs through Fiji so that's one side, depending on which side I was on. If that's my furthest east, then Samoa is my furthest west.

North: Reykjavik
South: Hong Kong
East: Tokyo
West: San Francisco

I suppose I'll cross the equator some day.

North: Derby, UK
South: Al Ain, UAE
East: Singapore
West: San Francisco

I think that's right

North: Galway, Ireland
South: Tulum, Mexico (I was surprised to discover that Hawaii was farther north)
East: Stary Smokovec, Slovakia
West: Hiroshima, Japan

(centered on "home", so northeast US, so Europe is East and Japan is West)

In an ironic twist given one of my academic specialties, my sense of geography is terrible and so I had to look at maps and Google latitudes. Nevertheless:

North: Steese National Conservation Area (Alaska)
South and West: Kona (Hawaii)
East: Wuhan

Now that I've paid off my personal debt (mortgage notwithstanding) and student loan forgiveness is within sight, I've realized that I make enough money to travel somewhat regularly for reasons other than work, and can go places other than conference locations and without 20-30 feral students in tow.

I think I need to get a travel rewards credit card--any suggestions? Academic Twitter seemed to favor the Chase Sapphire Preferred, but I'm not sure I would spend the $4000 in 3 months to get the bonus. My nearest airport is an American Air hub, and I fly roughly half American and half Southwest. No real preferred hotel chain.

Yeah I had to check if Al Ain is farther south than Miami.

85: If you do Costco, their card through Citi is a decent one for travel - 3% cash back on travel expenses (and dining), no foreign transaction fees. I like it better than trying to deal with points and being stuck to one airline alliance or hotel brand.

I had to check if Orlando is south of Tijuana. And if it was south of St. Augustine.

Like heebie I object to east/west as a concept on a globe, but using positive and negative latitude it'd be Kekaha, Kauai (-159.7) and Wellington, NZ (174.7).

84: You couldn't, for the sake of Unfogged, go the extra couple hundred meters east to Horny Smokovec?

87: I do have a Costco membership, and that's tempting!

North: Bergen, Norway
South: Cape of Good Hope
East: Zanzibar
West: Oahu

West: St. Paul, Alaska.
East: Kabul.

Looking at these, I'm struck that East, West, and South were all work trips. North was hitching home (the whole way!) after going up to Alaska to see the Grateful Dead play there.

I have a smaller range than the median here: London north, Guanajuato Mexico south, San Francisco west, Norcia Italy east.

The farthest north I've ever been was that time I fell asleep on the 2 bus, and when I woke up I was in Graceland.

I had to check if Calgary or Trondheim was further north.

Elvis calls you.

95: oops! That's wrong. It turns out St. Petersburg is further north.

I think the furthest south I've been is Guatemala. And the furthest east is Japan and the furthest west is California, unless you want to include the flight from Tokyo to San Francisco, but that would be silly.

North: Berlin, just beating out Amsterdam which beats out Cambridge.
South: Tamil Nadu, India (possibly Tiruniveli? definitely significantly south of Chennai)
East (counting Greenwich as the center of the world): Tokyo
West: either Bainbridge Island or the Gulf of the Farrallones, depending how far the whale-watching boat went before the rough waters forced us to turn back

My south and east are the same as peep's, but Rialto Beach, WA, a stunning spot worth anyone's visit, edges out California for westerliness.

I like how this conversation really avoids the silliness of "well does it count if you had a layover there?" because you're much less likely to have had a layover in an extremity.

There is that whole routing flights through Iceland thing, but once you've gotten to Iceland you damn well better take some time to be in Iceland.

I had a layover in Muscat so if we're counting that then...

There was a meme going around for a while based on a quiz page where you colored in the states differently depending on how substantially you'd been there (airport only, driven through, stayed 1+ night, resided, etc.).

I tried to get to go to a conference in Iceland, but failed.

I know someone who did an airport-only layover in Hong Kong on the way from San Francisco to Osaka, but he was an idiot who wanted to go through all that agony and extra carbon to save one or two hundred dollars.

I've had Denver as a layover going from Omaha to Pittsburgh. It's not even uncommon.

105- States where you've fucked/married/killed someone?

Hmm. The first is hard to count.

I'm concerned that you have a very precise list of all the places you've killed someone.

109: It's called the Sextoral College Game.

You gotta get enough states to be elected president.

111: It's far far more concerning if someone doesn't have a list of the states they've killed people.

It gets awkward for the "Four Corners Killer".

I've registered my skepticism about east/west above, but based on longitude from Greenwich I believe my westernmost is Gambell, Alaska and easternmost is the Golan Heights.

You can just go by distance from the West Pole.

Lech Walensa? Is he still alive?

I mean the one in Bear Cave, Texas.

Taiwan is the furthest west I've been if you go by direction of travel from my home, but Japan is the furthest east I've been if you go by longitude coordinates. Same trip.

I'd need to look at a map again for easternmost point for me relative to home. It would be in central Europe. I spent about a month going north from Ljubljana to Rovaniemi by train, bus, or ferry.

118: Yes, and he's younger than Joe Biden.

The old that is strong does not wither.

Huh. Rovaniemi is east of Vilnius, just barely, so Rovaniemi is my easternmost trip.

122 to 109.

N: 179th St; S: Battery Park

125 would be fantastic if the E and W points were around the world.

E: Hamptons
W: Meadowlands

conversation really avoids the silliness of "well does it count if you had a layover there?"

My visit to London (my northernmost) consisted entirely of a trolley ride between terminals at Heathrow, but I figured nobody cared about the asterisk.

That's a funny name for a trolley. The one at the Pittsburgh Airport is called a people mover.

I didn't even ride a trolley in Addis, but I looked out the windows at the terminal.

I don't mean to flex, but since we're talking about trolleys, it's true that I'm related to Lady Aberlin.

He's dead and the trolley is long gone, but technically, I live in Mr. Roger's neighborhood.

Mr. McFeely lives just up the street from us.

132: He's dead and the trolley is long gone

Ran that motherfucker over and just kept on going.

There's really not much that drives home just how different the 70s were than the names of characters on children's tv.

Mineshaft challenge: Who was on the other track?

135: Admittedly 80s, but I like to remember that there was an actual character named Boner on Growing Pains.

Yes. And it wasn't even Kirk Cameron's character.

And heebie is right about E/W falling apart in the exercise above.

Was thinking my NW and SE were each potentially embodied in single places--Fairbanks and Auckland*, but turns out Wonder Lake (Denali) and the eastern shore of the Kenai Peninsula are further west. So I think my west was in a smallish boat in the Cook Inlet where I fucked up pulling in a big salmon, but did pull up an 100+ pound halibut (like catching a large frying pan, not much sport to it). Whole trip was a hoot, me, my friend, my pregnant wife, and an old experienced Minnesota fisherman out with a guide of way back Russian descent on a tiny flat-bottomed boat. We three newbs catching a lot while the Minnesota dude got squat. Skill (other than landing the fucking salmon, I still visualize what went wrong from time to time...) not really involved. Guide had lots of good stories about his time homesteading up there and startled me when he pulled out a pistol and dispatched the halibut (necessary given the smallness of the boat).

*Actually at first I thought the SW corner of Australia would be further south than Auckland, but it is not.

136: Ted Nugent.

Was thinking my NW and SE were each potentially embodied in single places--Fairbanks and Auckland*, but turns out Wonder Lake (Denali) and the eastern shore of the Kenai Peninsula are further west.

Yeah, Fairbanks feels like it's approximately due north of Anchorage but it's actually a bit further east. I assume you mean the western shore of the Kenai (eastern shore of the Inlet), although the eastern side is actually slightly to the west of Fairbanks as well.

Yes, meant the western shore. Camped at a neat little place called Ninilchik.

My north is actually a camping area up near Poker Flats on the Steese Hwy. at the solstice. Plan was to drive up to Cleary Summit in the middle of the night, but the mosquitos were so bad that both my wife and my friend refused to get out of the tent (tiredness as well). Demotivated me as well.

Ninilchik is very cool. I've only been down that way a few times, but my family has been developing a lot of ties to various parts of the Kenai recently so I'll probably be down more.

Next in the alphabet is Baja California Sur that occupies the southern part of the Baja California peninsula. It is the newest state, the least densely populated and next to last in population. It has two major industrial/technology parks, and some mining, but the most dynamic aspect of the economy is tourism with popular resort areas, Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo.

The large disparity in population between Baja California and Baja California Sur got me wondering if Mexico has the same kind of problems with unfair representation in their Senate. It turns out the Mexican system seems to have been designed to mitigate these problems. The Mexican senate elects 2 Senators for each state like the US, but in addition there is a third senator for each state that is awarded to the party that won the second most votes. In addition there are 32 national senators-at-large divided among the parties in proportion to their share of the national vote. This seems like a better system than the US, but might be a little too complicated.

If we copied their system directly, it seems like we'd have 150 senators elected by individual states plus 50 at-large. So California, for example, with 12% of the population, would go from having a 2% voice to a (3+(50*.12))/200 = 4.5% voice. Still pretty bad.

(Also, I don't think it's a problem of our Senate that the runner-up doesn't get a pity seat, but whatever.)

The pity seat may make more sense in a country like Mexico that has a long history of coups and unstable governance. So far we only have a short history of that.

Although I wonder how old that provision is, given all those decades when the PRI had an electoral stranglehold on the country.

They stayed in control longer than the French did.

I don't think you can use a phrase like "Long Trump Russia Story" without a date range like (1987-2022).

But you can post in the wrong thread.