Gifts of Experience/Digital Nomad History/Netflix Worth Watching
Nomadico issue #84
A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.
Last-minute Gifts for Travelers
If you’re down to the wire for a gift for another traveler or you need to supply ideas for yourself on Christmas Eve, the virtual options can go far beyond an Amazon gift card or cash. It’s possible to gift a tour (through GetYourGuide), a stay (via Airbnb or Booking.com), a train pass (via Eurail/Amtrak/ViaRail), or a city attractions pass (via Turbopass or Sightseeing Pass). Wrap up some memories instead of more stuff.
The History of Digital Nomadism, Continued
Many issues ago we highlighted a comprehensive history of digital nomads published by James Clark of Nomadic Notes. Recently the Tropical MBA podcast dove in to revisit the subject, about halfway through this episode, after hearing another podcast from a pair who started traveling in 2016. When you were on the road as a working nomad seems to color your lens as to how the scene progressed. (The founders of the Tropical MBA podcast also run the Dynamite Circle membership group, a previous advertiser, as well as Dynamite Jobs.)
Remote Work is Entrenched Now
There’s been a lot of conflicting noise over the past year about RTO (Return to Office) mandates, hybrid work, and companies giving up the physical HQ to go virtual. Underneath all of that media attention, it seems that we’ve reached a state of stasis, a plateau that’s here to stay. One Stanford economist study showed that remote work spent the whole year of 2023 hovering near 28% in the USA and the top-10 metros only saw 50% of workers swiping in regularly to sit in a cubicle. Meanwhile, respondents to this survey said they’d be willing to accept a salary of 8% less, $5,000 to $8,000 per year, to work from home instead of in an office.
2 Netflix Recommendations
Netflix is still the easiest streaming service to watch internationally from anywhere if you have a subscription, so here are two limited series options to check out that came out this quarter. The new Bodies series is expertly plotted, has a diverse range of interesting characters, and plays around with time travel without getting as complicated (and incestuous) as Dark. Wildly flamboyant and inventive is Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher. It pulls in thematic elements from Poe stories with a wink and works them into a very twisted modern story with great cinematography.
12/28/23
