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In 2002, Billy Corgan’s world was no longer a vampire. Instead, the Smashing Pumpkins’ singer/guitarist declared his faith with a new rock supergroup named Zwan. Though the band’s debut was released unceremoniously in late January 2003, Mary Star of the Sea is the happiest Corgan has ever sounded. If he seemed excited, you couldn’t blame him based on the band’s pedigree alone. Corgan organized a roster of alt-rock all stars, complete with fellow Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney, Slint guitarist David Pajo, and former A Perfect Circle/current Pixies bassist Paz Lenchantin.

Happy Friday, and welcome back to The Microdose. Here’s the news of the week: Patenting candyflipping. “Candyflipping” — taking a combination of LSD and MDMA — has been in the party scene since the 1980s; one researcher even used the term in a 1998 study where rats received the two drugs. On Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent to a scientist for what amounts to a candyflip.

I pre-ordered it from Barnes & Noble or BiggerPockets.com. I can’t remember which. Last year, while I was on a break from ministry, my then 19 year old daughter told me she always wanted to fix up ugly houses and make them beautiful. That sent me on a learning journey of real estate, discovering that you could purchase houses “off-market” without a realtor and so forth. In all my learning, somehow I stumbled across a BiggerPockets.

Rafael Baca remembers it in flashes. Moments, really. The extreme heat. The extreme cold. The minutes ticking by when it wasn’t clear if his little sister, suffering from extreme dehydration, would make it through the journey. He was only six, but these are things you don’t forget, even after settling into a ‘normal’ life in Southern California. These are things that flashed through his head again when he was sitting in an office in Guadalajara 15 years later, watching as even the consulate employee shook his head and said, “I can’t believe I’m telling you no, but….

The headline this week is pretty ambitious, but I think I can live up to it. “What’s the meaning of life?” is a cliche philosophical question, but it touches on something fundamental about how humans relate to the world around them. People want to know that there’s significance to their lives, but not necessarily in any grandiose sense. Most of us just want to feel that there’s value in getting up and being active each day.

Blade Runner, which premiered June 25, 1982, was a $30 million film that made just $41 million. So not a box office bomb, but definitely a financial disappointment. Director Ridley Scott was coming off a science fiction success in 1979’s Alien, and star Harrison Ford was by this time Harrison Ford. Instead of a rousing, action-packed blockbuster to rival the other big sci-film film that opened that month, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Scott delivered a dystopian art-house film that transports Sam Spade — Ford’s Rick Deckard — to a terribly polluted and inequality-riven 2019 Los Angeles where human “blade runners” hunt down bioengineered androids called “replicants.

Of the 7 gardens I visited in Delaware, Winterthur seemed most at war with itself. What was it, exactly? A country farm on twenty four hundred acres of rolling hills? A giant 150-room mansion? A tribute to the history of American furniture? Pieces of the estate were breathtakingly open and simple — while the grotesquely enormous home sat patiently as the trees seemed to eat it alive. I knew nothing of the du Ponts when we visited this garden in particular.

The generational difference between Croatia and Spain in the teams’ meeting at Euro 2024 couldn’t have been more stark. While Spain flew around the pitch thanks to the energy of youngsters like Lamine Yamal and Pedri, Croatia laboured. By contrast, they looked old. That is, in no small part, because Croatia are old. Their starting lineup against Spain was the oldest selected at Euro 2024 so far. Luka Modric is 38.

Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations. Mexico City is home to the busiest airport in Latin America. This past year, 154K passengers traveled through the Benito Juárez International Airport daily. Before the pandemic, the airport was adding about 3M additional passengers served per year, peaking at around 50M. What's more, Mexico is also home to the 2nd-busiest airport in the region's top 5. Cancun's airport carries about as many passengers as those of Buenos Aires and Lima combined.