I think there's a lot of wisdom in this. I was in that small window of kids who cut my teeth playing games found at C64 swap meets where anything could be a game. ASCII military sims, moon mining, criminal sentencing...

From that perspective, I'd say the most contemporary Bond might be Barry.

I believe I heard speculation he may challenge Goldman's seat

C.W. McCall of Convoy fame had a pretty fun song about that train

If I could, I'd like to recommend two books that may give an idea of Portland in this moment. Chuck Palahniuk's semi-autobiographical sweep of Portland's counterculture and Srdja Popovic's instruction manual on undermining Milosevic

Might argue about the order but I think you've got it. Honorable mention to Shadows of Tomorrow though - got my son interested in Sun Ra

If I had to guess it's equal parts rank flattery, purposely obscuring the signal in the noise, and because incurious people equate raw follower count with cultural influence