AAAAHH

I was speaking to a lawyer friend of mine a few weeks back about the power of judges. He was a clerk working beneath a district judge, and he described how confident she (the judge) was when giving orders to her staff. In the court of law, the judge is a monarch. She directs and the staff follows, even when she is wrong. My friend observed to me that judges are the most powerful people in America. You can appeal a ruling, sure, but the appeals will only go so far. If a case reaches the Supreme Court, it can go no higher. The way that supreme court justices choose to “interpret” the law is more powerful than the written word of the law itself, because there is nobody behind a justice checking their work. Their version of a law is the final version, unless a future supreme court justice chooses to re-interpret the precedent or congress re-writes the law.

Today, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court order to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from stopping random people on the street and arresting them without just cause or due process. The lawsuit in question alleged that ICE was using masked and armed agents to make arrests on the street based on racial profiling. The suit states:

“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.”

One plaintiff in the case, Jason Gavidia (US Citizen), describes being pushed around and harshly restrained by ICE agents after they did not believe his claims that he was a citizen. They demanded to know the name of the hospital he was born in. I personally don’t remember the name of the hospital that I was born in. I probably have never been told it and have never needed a reason to ask. People across the country describe similar circumstances: unidentified agents in plain clothing suddenly surrounding them, demanding personal information, and making an arrest without cause or warrant. ICE agents on the street choose their targets, according to the lawsuit, by racial markers. An accent with poor English, brown skin, and working a labor job outside are signs of being an illegal immigrant that ICE uses to make an on-the-spot arrest.

The district judge that ordered the stay on ICE argued that this activity by federal law enforcement clearly breaches the 4th amendment of the US Constitution, which states that American citizen are not to be subjected to unlawful search and seizure. I would gather that it also breaks a number of other civil rights laws that ban discrimination based on race. The Department of Justice had responded that profiling using a “reasonably broad profile” is necessary in an area of the country where as many as “10%” of the population may be residing illegally.

Regardless of anyone’s opinion on this matter, the Supreme Court has made its own decision. In a 6-3 decision pitting the conservatives against the liberals, ICE is allowed to continue making random arrests using a race, language, and place of work as a legitimate criteria. This means that hispanic-looking people will continue to face random attacks and arrests by federal agents that, for all intents of purposes, look and act like thugs.

Justice Sotomayor wrote this in her public dissent: “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”

I do not need to state the danger of these developments. Our right to live free within this country is being challenged by thugs. Well paid and with little oversight, these ICE agents are free to roam the streets, roughing up citizens and immigrants alike with impunity while they pursue their own idea of public safety. What qualifications do ICE agents have to wield so much power over their fellow citizens? Their right to make arrests is stronger than that even of police officers, who must abide by the constitution and must not make an arrest based simply on whether a person’s skin is too dark.

And when did the American psyche become so closed, so violent? Why do we cheer when people are torn from their livelihoods under suspicion of being alien? Why is it such a crime at all to be born somewhere else, or by extension to *look like* you were born somewhere else in the eyes of a federal agent? By accepting racial profiling among law enforcement, we create a two-tiered Democracy where white-looking people are free while brown, black, or otherwise foreign-looking people are subject to harassment and distrust by the system of government supposedly created to serve them. it is a system that privileges one’s genetic traits in dealings with the law. It is a system of white supremacy, named or not. It is a reversion to the segregation era.

And why are we so eager to make an American future marked by apartheid? Why do we rush to build a country where we must all be ready to identify ourselves, to prove our place to birth with exactitude to please the curiosity of enforcers picking us out of crowds like wolves stalking a herd of sheep? The implication of an ICE-based system of law is that every person in this country is guilty of being an alien until proven innocent. Will there be checkpoints? Will a copy of my birth certificate have to be kept in my wallet at all times to be displayed at request? Do I need to pin my license to my lapel, un-obscured and plainly visible for the convenience of the cop? Freedom is the ability to walk down the street unhampered, unquestioned. To be innocent by default. Freedom is the right to be unworried outside, to be able to conduct your own business in your own time. Freedom is not having to worry that random acts of violence will be committed against you on the street, by agents of the government or otherwise.

Real police officers are proud to wear their uniforms. They display their badges openly so that all Americans can identify them and know they are being protected. ICE agents hide themselves. Whatever pride they have in their work is made by persecuting enemies created in their own minds. Hitler’s brown shirts were much the same. A thug is a thug.

“You got to be crazy, you gotta have a real need
Gotta sleep on your toes and when you’re on the street
Got to be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
Then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight
You got to strike when the moment is right without thinking” – Pink Floyd, “Dogs”

2025 US government using artificial intelligence to create nationalist propaganda.

“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.” – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States

Indeed, the belief that freedom is worth dying for is central to our American culture. From a young age, we are taught about the pilgrims, who braved a vast ocean to make a new life for themselves in a new world in their own way. We are taught of the revolution, where the Patriots fought to be free from the rule of England and defeated the British Empire. In every story, liberty is an ultimate good in itself– a way of life that you would trade your life to maintain. “We the people,” reads the constitution, “in Order to form a more perfect Union […] secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” It is a founding principle of our country that we should work to protect freedom so that our children may enjoy its blessing. A tolerable (even comfortable) existence under the yolk is not worth accepting.

Even as America has grown into a global power with hundreds of military bases spanning nearly every country on the globe, the idea that freedom should be promoted has largely been the status-quo of American foreign policy. Until now.

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

“Section 1.  Purpose.  The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.  They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.

“Sec. 2.  Policy.  It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.

The above is an excerpt of Donald Trump’s “REEVALUATING AND REALIGNING UNITED STATES FOREIGN AID” executive order from January 20th, 2025. In this excerpt, we find an assessment of the USA that is at once craven and aggrandizing. The order is aggrandizing, because in Sec. 2. it demands that foreign assistance programs align not with the principles of our constitution and the people it serves– but the capital “P” President of United States and *his* foreign policy interests. The order is craven because it says that the help America has been providing to the globe for the past 85 years since the conclusion of WWII has destabilized peace. In fact, Trump claims that the food assistance, medical treatment including AIDS medicine and prevention, and free educational programming that the US has worked to provide to the world for decades has been “in many cases antithetical to American values.” Since when has peace and harmony been worth abandoning people in need of help? When has it been an American value to let people suffer so as not to upset the tyrannical peace of a dictator’s kingdom? Why must the foreign policy of a single President override the enduring project of successive generations of Americans willing to fight and die for freedom? By this I mean to say that I disagree with Trump on all fronts: *his* American foreign policy is not god’s word. He does not have a right to steer the machine to his own policy interests. Policy belongs to congress. And it is evident that foreign aid delivered to the most downtrodden corners of the world does far more to promote peace than simply allowing rulers to rule their countries in solitude.

Of course, it is a crude joke that the executive order claims that “world peace” is in the cards for Trump at all, he who has bombed his way up and down the middle east, who strings along a war of attrition in Ukraine, who builds prisons in far away jungles for prisoners that will never go to trial, and whose weapons power the armies of despots from South America to Africa to Afganistan. The so called “foreign aid industry” that Trump despises apparently needs to be dismantled while that other government sponsored bureaucracy, the all-powerful military industrial complex that churns out war grows bigger every day. USAID has been dismantled. The Peace Corps is in the process of being torn apart. Voice of America is shuttering. Radio Free Asia has been defunded. All while the budget for American contracts with industrial weapons manufacturing and resource extraction grows by trillions.

Make no mistake– Trump’s foreign policy is one of the appeasement of dictators. God forbid a radio broadcast from the United States upset the sensibilities of the Martial Law government of Myanmar! God forbid Xi Jingping be offended by his characterization as a dictator on a small English radio broadcast from the Pacific! Xi merely suspended term limits in his country and has overseen all branches of his government with absolute authority for 13 or so years now… In the name of peace and harmony, Trump has ordered that federal agencies speak of other nations neutrally in regards to their political systems. Marco Rubio has written an order to the state department that its public communications “should avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.” Trump has conceded that the American system, freedom and democracy itself, is not worth fighting for.

As Trump’s America shrinks back from Democracy abroad, it embraces authoritarians. Namely, Vladimir Putin, the ruler of Russia for over 21 years, former KGB operative, a leader who directed his Wagner Company to pillage African countries for gold while arming warlords to commit genocides, perpetrator of the ongoing war in Ukraine, has been allowed to walk free on American soil this week and ride in the president’s own limousine. They shook hands, smiled, talked in private, refused to answer questions, cracked jokes like old friends, and then parted ways without a deal.

It has been leaked that Trump has briefed the European Union that he intends to back a plan by Putin to exchange the Donbas region of Ukraine to secure a peace deal. Peace. Ten years since Russia’s last advance into Crimea. Not a drop of American blood spilt. Chamberlain went home after his meeting with Hitler declaring “Peace in our time!” America, of course, is a country that has never lost its own territory. America has only ever won wars and grown bigger. For the president of the USA to ask Ukraine to give up the fight against the Russian Empire has got to be the greatest hypocrisy ever uttered a senile old president. Would we accept a peace deal to trade Maine and parts of New Hampshire for peace? I don’t think so. I think Canada would have to kill us all first.

As the story goes, Fascism is the reverberation of imperial cruelty back to the homeland. The values of an empire toward its colonies inevitably comes back home to torment the citizens of the empire. As Trump works to devalue democracy abroad, it is difficult to ignore that his real aim is to eventually devalue democracy at home. Already, the will of congress has taken a second seat to the president’s policy interests. Already, due process is ignored while agents nab citizens off the streets for social media posts. Already, the state of Texas has had its district maps so mangled as to grant 5 extra Republican seats in an already Republican skewed state. Is freedom not sacred here? Is the tree of liberty not watered with the blood of tyrants? What is this??

A murderous dictator gets the red carpet treatment while hard working Americans are jailed without a trial. What secret thing did Putin have to share with Trump? So secret that they had to be alone together in-person to discuss it.

An unrelated word from our secretary-

SECRETARY RUBIO:  “I don’t know actually if it’s primarily student visas.  It’s a combination of visas.  They’re visitors to the country.  If they’re taking activities that are counter to our foreign – to our national interest, to our foreign policy, we’ll revoke the visa.”

QUESTION:  “Are all of those related to pro-Palestinian protests or (inaudible)?”

SECRETARY RUBIO:  “I’m trying to remember – there’s a lot of them now, because I’ve gone through every one of them.  I think there might be a few that are not, that are related to other groups that are – of people – we’ve also identified – but this actually is – it should be automatically revoked.”

QUESTION:  “And what does it mean when you say against the foreign policy of the United States?”

SECRETARY RUBIO:  “It runs counter to our foreign – that’s how we issue visas coming in.  I think about it this way.  If we knew this information – my standard:  If we knew this information about them before we gave them a visa, would we have allowed them in?  And if the answer is no, then we revoke the visa.”

One thing is for sure: members of the Trump administration are incapable of answering questions directly or concisely. After years of shitting on the Biden stutter, the Trump administration has found itself no more capable communicating with the American public when the questions get heavy.

It’s not easy spinning pretty lines from bullshit!

In January of 2025, Israel achieved a ceasefire with Hamas to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza. Though temporary, the ceasefire agreement contained a tiered plan to negotiate a permanent end to the war assuming all parties involved were willing to pursue peace. Unfortunately, the ceasefire negotiations collapsed in mid-February and Israel fully resumed its attacks in Gaza by mid-March. At least 10,000 more Gazans have been killed since. To this day, August 2025, Israel’s war wages on with new horrors being revealed every few hours.

Israel had peace in its hands. With full air superiority, control of the Mediterranean sea, and the destruction of over 70% of all infrastructure in Gaza, it would seem that Israel’s perceived enemies in Gaza have been utterly subjugated. Netanyahu’s army has a godlike control over Gaza, as sleepless drones roam the skies autonomously seeking targets and vast systems of fences and checkpoints prevent the native population from moving freely above ground. The bombings continue regardless. One has to ask– are there any Hamas fighters even left alive in the enclave? Do their numbers even exceed a thousand people? Or is Israel pumping Gaza full of lead just for the joy of it? Given the lack of transparency on the ground, nobody is able to confirm exactly what the military’s goals are or if a given target marked for death posed a military threat at all.

On the ground, structures resembling concentration camps have arisen. The American corporation established to distribute food in Gaza (the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” an Orwellian name for an Orwellian age) has constructed long corridors of barbed wire fencing to corral Palestinian bodies across the landscape toward aid distribution points.

Live ammunition is used to frighten and often kill Palestinians seeking aid. Despite the veneer of humanitarianism suggested by the organization’s name, the people of Gaza are being treated more like animals in line to the slaughterhouse than humans.

What profit does this American company turn by militarizing food assistance to starving people in an active war zone? We don’t know. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, despite receiving public funding from the US government, is otherwise a private organization that keeps its revenue and backers secret.

Despite the blockade of journalists in Gaza (Israel does not allow outside eyes to report on the situation in the enclave), images of the impacts of Israel’s war are nonetheless leaking out. Photographs of emaciated children have begun to proliferate online.

There is little hope for peace in Gaza. Israel has decided that starvation is an adequate punishment for its neighbors that it has deemed mortal enemies. The United States has decided to fully back Israel militarily, so no country can hope to intervene unless it is willing to be pummeled to ash by the most powerful military on the planet. Every time a country threatens to send missiles to Israel, America’s military presence in the middle east rises out of the shadows and shuts down all opposition. Economically, the USA has no incentive to stop. US tech firms like Google and Palantir all have military contracts with Israel. American guns and bombs feed Israel’s operations, and now American food distributors are playing an anonymous role in “feeding” Gaza’s population through shadowy organizations defended by mercenaries.

The decision to choose war over peace is an insane one. But for now, those in power in Israel and the USA see the continuation of the conflict as lucrative. All across the globe, conflict is rising. From Sudan to Congo, from Yemen to Ukraine, people are dying while the whole world divides itself into allies and enemies. We have seen this happen before. The results are obvious and somehow unavoidable.

Continued Reading:

https://apnews.com/article/palestinians-israel-gaza-contractors-aid-distribution-fe27f3ea83e06a09d66424eed7a5d56f

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/13/israel-humanitarian-city-rafah-gaza-camp-ehud-olmert

It is August 2025, and I just re-signed the lease on my apartment with my three beautiful roommates. This marks the first time I have lived an entire year in a single location without needing to move since mid-2022. After a year living at my grandfather’s house, my then girlfriend and I moved to New Jersey for a few months, then on to Kayla’s couch in New York City, then finally to an apartment. After the relationship collapsed, I was jettisoned back home, then back to my grandfather’s house, then on a farm, then all over the farm because of renovations, then my childhood home in Middleton, then Connor’s couch, then Mark’s bed, before finally finding this lease here in Malden. Miraculously, the lease didn’t collapse, and here I am today one year later.

Let me tell you: it is awesome to have a stable room! Most of you reading this probably take that for granted. My stuff can be taken out of boxes and displayed on shelves. I can decorate. I can accumulate more stuff without worrying about where it will be stored. Not having to worry about moving in a few months allows me to relax. That numb feeling, that “here we go again..” is hopefully vanquished forever! Well, vanquished for a year at least. I do not know if our coalition will hold for a third lease, but there is plenty of time to sort that out.

I am extremely grateful for these circumstances, to say the least. While my time as a nomad was educational, I am not interested in living that way again. However, with my back against the wall, I know I can handle anything life throws at me.

“They wasted our lives like pieces of scrap paper.”

“Never die for Emperor or country.”

– Mr. Sato, Japanese soldier during WWII

The people that fought and died during World War II are all mostly dead now. A few hang on, 80 years later, but there are not many today who are willing to hear their advice. Our modern world is slowly inching back toward the same impulses that lead to the horrors of the 20th century. Some countries, like Russia and Israel, have already succumbed and wage war with abandon. America is happy to watch and supply weapons, as we did 80 years ago before the violence finally found its way back to our shores and forced Americans to fight and die too. The folks that remember how awful the 1940s were are warning us about what is coming, but we don’t listen!

Joe Rogan has a horrifying prophecy that I hear bandied about these days:

“Hard times make hard men.
Hard men make easy times.
Easy times make soft men.
Soft men make hard times.”

The soft men don’t realize how good they have it. They don’t see their softness as a virtue. They want to be hard so bad that they’ll trade blood for it.

How long until the whole world is engulfed again? Why do we try so hard to justify conquest? Having a little piece of land cannot possibly be worth the death of an entire generation!

Palantir sponsors our government. How can our government be ‘independent’ if weapons manufacturers and data corporations are paying for it?

“In my dream, I saw him, the man without a head..”

An Australian woman online is creating electronic dance music about the online world. Her most recent song, uploaded today with a music video on YouTube, is a pumping track with simple repetitive lyrics about seeing a man on a screen in her dream on her screen. And so on.

I thought the song was a great background track to playing some Minecraft, but then I looked over at the video and was amazed. Watch it:

The music video opens with a VOD of a livestream of the artist using her computer. It seems like a sped up time-lapse of Ninajirachi mindlessly browsing and watching various YouTube videos across a few random subjects. Pure social media scroll. Then the lyrics kick in and suddenly every single lyric is being shown on screen via google images. What seemed like a slice of life VOD is actually a deeply choreographed montage set to the beat of the dance music and coordinated with the haunting lyrics. If you actually sit down and listen to the words themselves, they come off as creepy. The singer describes seeing a headless man she knew when she was 4, then 14. Slenderman? Or real life abuser? Popping up in the media feed for a moment like a jumpscare? Disappearing into a dream?

Ninajirachi has another piece of digital introspection in the form of her single “Fuck My Computer” in which she sings over and over again, “I wanna fuck my computer, ‘Cause no one in the world knows me better.”

It’s loads of fun! The dance music is addictive and repetitive like candy, with a tasty and relevant subject for the computer minded zoomer of 2025.

“When machines learn to feel, who decides what is human?” – YouTube Commenter

This morning, Republicans in the senate passed a resolution to cut $1 Billion dollars in funding that went to public broadcasting and another $8 billion dollars for foreign assistance programs. The cuts to foreign assistance originally included the deletion of PEPFAR, a Bush era program to provide global assistance to fighting the AIDS epidemic.

Republicans backing the measure to cut public broadcasting claim that these public broadcasting networks promote an “anti-right bias.” In short, Republicans disagreed with the content of the stories reported on by NPR/PBS and decided to punish these organizations by withdrawing valuable funds used to pay for localized journalism throughout all areas of the country. This is a shame because, while wealthy states with many donors can afford to keep their local NPR stations funded despite the shortfall in federal money, the poorest states in the country will be unable to pay the difference and will lose access to programming. Local news infrastructure (personalized to the state and even county level) will be lost, worsening an already dire crisis of “news deserts” expanding across the country. “News deserts” are regions of the USA that do not have local journalists covering state and county level politics or current events, leaving residents uninformed of news immediately relevant to their lives. National news, impersonal and often frustratingly beyond an individual’s capacity to influence, is not an adequate replacement for the loss of local news reporting. Republicans have decided, in short, to eliminate valuable journalism jobs in the most vulnerable regions of the country to save a handful of pennies.

NPR delivers the facts, even when they aren’t pretty. Republicans can argue that the reporting leans into issues of interest to lefties, sure. Lately, NPR has been covering the war in Gaza a ton (with emphasis on the massive civilian death-toll), and Republicans would probably rather some reporting that painted Israel in a more positive light. Fortunately for us civilians, politicians cannot dictate the news. NPR has a duty to report the capital t Truth: true information! If Republicans do not like what they hear on the radio, perhaps instead of trying to silence it, they should act to improve the world and change the headlines for the better. That is, in fact, the purpose of journalism– to hold lawmakers accountable to the material reality of the country, to shine light on corruption, and to depict the events of the world as they are. If republicans are upset by the goings on reported in the news; the endless Trump power grabs, the atrocious wars propagating everywhere, the lurking suggestion of pedophiles and Nazis underpinning our institutions of government…. well my Republican friends… act! We can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand. Pretending everything is dandy in the world won’t solve a damned thing.

This all goes without saying that NPR’s broadcasting is generally very good, positive, community-oriented, and educational. The quality of the productions both at the local and national level are really high. I happen to like NPR a lot. I listen to WBUR Boston (90.9) and NHPR of Southern New Hampshire (88.3).

I wonder, what would an NPR without an “anti-right bias” look like? What stories is NPR neglecting that Republicans want to hear? Is Fox News the model for conservative broadcasting…? The same Fox News that removed its stock ticker when the market slipped this year?

Why are we letting a war criminal visit the white house? Benjamin Netanyahu has accrued a lot of blood on his hands over 18 years of prime ministership.

Repeatedly closing off pathways to peace, his administration continued the blockade of Gaza to the point of war. To this day, his settlers continuously encroach upon the people of the West Bank, harassing and killing Palestinians for their land and building walled fortifications to keep the land for themselves.

I am not sure how Bibi can still smile and joke in front of a crowd. Is ordering killings that easy for him? Does the weight of his blood lust simply slide off, like droplets of rain off a tarp? He doesn’t seem to feel anything at all. He appears in public always smiling wryly, smirking over his detractors as if he is untouchable. His moments of solemnity are overdone, as if he learned how to mimic expressions of grief from old Hollywood movies.

The pursuit of a Jewish state (Israel: a place where one’s Jewish bloodline grants them rights over non-Jews) has lead to mass death. These people of the Jewish faith, once victims of brutal fascism under the Nazis, now revive the old doctrine of war to carry out their own deadly crusade in the middle east. Though for many this is a new conflict of the recent decade, the seed of violence first took root in 1948 when a group of Zionist Jews, only a few years within the wake of the Holocaust, decided it was worth picking up arms again and killing for a piece of land in what was then called Palestine. The killing started in 1948 and never stopped. As Israel continued to find reasons to go to war with its neighbors, its territory expanded. In that way, the legacy of death that Hitler began in the 20th century was allowed to propagate and flower anew into the 21st.

Thank you, Netanyahu! You have given us the gift of a war-blighted world.

Day 1 (June 2nd): Malden, Massachusetts -> Sunset View Farm Camping Area, Monson, MA

Car wouldn’t start, we replaced an ignition coil ourselves and got moving by sunset.

Day 2 (June 3rd): Monsom, MA -> Mt. Davis (Forbes State Forest), Pensylvania

Visited “Negro Mountain,” climbed the high point of Pensylvania

Day 3 (June 4th): Pensylvania -> Middlefield, Ohio -> Findley State Park

Met the amish

They shop at Walmart too

Day 4 (June 5th): Ohio -> Michigan (for weed) -> Indiana (Sand Dunes) -> Gabe’s House, Chicago (South Side)

Come on… feel the Illinoise!

Day 5 (June 6th): Gabe’s U Chicago Graduation

Ate an entire deep dish pizza myself

Day 6 (June 7th): Chilling in Chicago

Saw Aunty Sybil and Uncle Steve, dodged fare on train

Day 7 (June 8th): Chicago, IL -> Pella, Iowa -> Elk Rock State Park, IO

Dutch windmills and quilts

Day 8 (June 9th): Iowa -> Omaha, Nebraska -> Platte River State Park, NB

A blood red moon loomed over us

Day 9 (June 10th): Nebraska -> West Bend Recreation Area, Crow-Creek Reservation, South Dakota

Fields of grass that smelled like fresh bread, friendly Indians

Camped on the banks of the Missouri River under a bright full moon

Day 10 (June 11th): Crow-Creek Reservation -> Sage Creek Campground (Still South Dakota)

I will miss Crow-Creek ;_;

Day 11 (June 12th): Sage Creek -> Rapid City -> Mount Rushmore -> Crazy Horse -> Center Lake Campground in Custer State Park (Still South Dakota)

Fish leapt out of the water at sunset, giant black eagles soared over head

Day 12 (June 13th): Remained at Custer, SD

Stayed in Custer, climbed Black Elk Peak and reached the highest point in South Dakota

Day 13 (June 14th): Custer -> Rapid City (again) -> Oglala National Grassland, Nebraska -> Some campsite in Nebraska??

Met Robert Young Dog Senior, went to a gay powwow

Day 14 (June 15th): Random campsite, Nebraska -> High Point of Nebraska (looked like every other place in Nebraska) -> Cheyenne, Wyoming -> Golden, Colorado

Saw the Union Pacific in Wyoming, headed south to the front range of the rockies to stay in Golden for a while

Day 15 (June 16th): Stayed with Colin and Hunter in Golden

Day 16 (June 17th): Chilling in Golden

Biked 2000 feet up Lookout Mountain, Chloe climbed a 14,000 foot peak and survived

Day 17 (June 18th): Chilling in Golden

Colin gets into Melee

Day 18 (June 19th): Chilling in Golden

Day 19 (June 20th): Julian arrives in Golden

Biked up the South Table on a cyclocross bike, Chloe and Julian have a miserable backpacking trip in the rockies

Day 20 (June 21st): Golden, CO -> Arrow Head Campsite in Buena Vista, CO

Trump bombs Iran

Julian becomes the crew’s musician

Aaron drinks too much buzzball and pukes

Day 21 (June 22nd): Buena Vista -> Curecanti National Recreation Area near Blue Mesa, CO

Bluest water I have ever seen in my life (it was freezing)

Day 22 (June 23rd): Blue Mesa -> Black Canyon, CO

Camped in a ravine

Day 23 (June 24th): Black Canyon, CO -> Moab, Utah -> Islands in the Sky, Canyonlands National Park in Utah

Camped on the edge of the largest canyon I have ever seen in my life… and the grand canyon is apparently larger?

Day 24 (June 25th): All day in Canyonlands

Ate mushrooms

Day 25 (June 26th): Canyonlands, Ut -> Moab -> Salt Lake City, Utah

It’s like Chelsea but worse

Day 26 (June 27th): Salt Lake City -> Willow Creek in Wells, Nevada

Hang gliders soared across the horizon over salt lake

Said goodbye to Julian

Camped in a cow pasture

Day 27 (June 28th): Wells, Nevada -> Reno -> Lake Tahoe, California

Fucked a prostitute (legally)

Day 28 (June 29th): Lake Tahoe -> Palo Alto south of San Francisco

Lake Tahoe is a freshwater Caribbean in the mountains

Aaron decides he needs to make a family

Reconvene with Aunty Sybil and Uncle Steve

Day 29 (June 30th): Chilling in Los Altos with Aunty Sybil

Day 30 (July 1st): The Pacific Ocean

Aaron and Chloe will see the redwoods north of San Francisco and part ways at last….

From here, Aaron will go East again to Texas. He will spend the Fourth of July in New Orleans. Chloe will continue North to Portland, then Seattle, and possibly beyond to Vancouver. The fellowship is broken but will never be forgotten.

“I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked,” – Christie Noam in the latest Trump Administration letter to Harvard

Just as Congress is in the midst of working out how to pass the Big Beautiful Bill to cut services like healthcare access in exchange for massive tax cuts for rich people, Trump throws another insane distraction into the mix.

Today, his secretary has declared that Harvard cannot admit foreign students and must expel its existing body of foreign students.

“This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.” – Christie

Trump is being very cheeky and having his secretary send the letters because he is a little embarrassed sending so many inquiries to Harvard, his crush.

Needless to say, it seems the federal government will soon be mustering an armed force to attack and expel International Students from Harvard University. A federal police force of brown shirts are on the prowl looking for unprotected graduate students to nab off the street and ship to Louisiana for processing.

Needless to say, the people of Boston need to be vigilant and actively work to protect their fellow man during these brutal times. We cannot hesitate to protect the ones we care about from being attacked and sent far away. Go to Harvard!

Exactly a year ago now, I was half asleep on a couch in an AirBnB motel with a busted leg in Wells, Maine. My leg was throbbing, half from a tiny stress fracture above my ankle and half from the effort of hobbling around in a giant plastic boot. The boot was sort of like a cast for my left foot that could be velcroed on and off for sleeping and showering. My doctor gave me the thing to keep me from walking on my busted leg. It didn’t work. Simply put, I was motivated to move and I could not be stopped.

I was visiting Maine that weekend to watch my buddy Liam run his first official marathon, the Maine Coast Marathon. The race is beautifully located right off the beach in Wells with the starting line placed idyllically at the end of a peninsula surrounded by beautiful beach houses on all sides. Unfortunately, this location made getting to the starting line very difficult. When we reached the point where cars could go no further, I set about hobbling down the half mile or so to try and catch Liam at the starting line. I made it maybe halfway before I heard the distant cheers and the wave of runners began to pass me. It was totally unlike the marathons I had seen in New York or Boston. Absent the massive crowds of cheering onlookers, this procession of runners was strangely serene. With nothing but the quiet sounds of lapping surf and sea air, the runners trudged forward in relative silence, smiling and focused on their singular task. I leaned against a fence and quietly watched them pass.

I eventually did see my friend and cheered him along. Then I faced the prospect of a long hobble home. The race soon passed me entirely, and a line of cars from the starting line began to form along the beach road. I held my thumb up to all of them, and somebody did end up taking pity on me and let me catch a ride. As fate would have it, it was actually an old friend from high school that picked me up (Alex Brovenov, if anyone remembers). He had his sweet old dog in the back seat for me to sit with. With his help and the help of some other friends in my company, I eventually made it back to the AirBnB and slept through pretty much the whole rest of the race. I then grabbed the Downeaster back to Boston and went off to NYC where I lost my wallet.

I distinctly remember not being able to sleep at all the night before Liam’s race. Besides the pain, I was stressed out about my leg. I was googling symptoms frantically, drafting emails to my doctor, and generally freaked out that I was doomed to a life of random minor injury that would prevent me from pursuing the active life that I had begun to dream about. I was a hobbling mess, and a pessimistic part of me thought I’d never recover. I hadn’t broken a bone before or anything like that, so I was unacquainted with the incredible power of the human body to heal itself. I was very naive about the body in general.

At a certain point in middle school I forswore movement for brain work, and I know now that this was a terrible mistake. The rewards of fitness are hard to describe but plain to see. You look good, you feel good, and you can tackle anything life throws your way. So many of my problems– hyperactivity, sleeplessness, depression, obesity– were symptoms of a lifestyle that denied my body its drive to move and play. After witnessing the Maine Coast Marathon, I dedicated myself to movement!

I started small. I did the stretches that the doctor told me to do to help build strength in my feet. I went out and bought a brand new pair of shoes with some cushion but not too much (this helped me more than anything else, I think). I started walking, and then by mid summer I tried running a mile. I started running a mile every day. I got a job as a letter carrier for the USPS and really started adding miles to my days. I’d come home from work and do a little running, and then I’d just relax. Like actually relax– watch TV or basketball or play games. Eating felt deserved. Sleep came very easily.

By December, I had lost 40 pounds and ran my first half marathon informally along the Cambridge promenade. I also had a fleeting romance with a woman from Al Salvador. The heart needs sustenance too. It was a magical Christmas season. Around this time, I set my sights on the ultimate challenge– a full marathon, 26 miles of running. I was going to run the Boston Marathon in April, my legs be damned. I quit the USPS sometime in February and dedicated myself to chilling and running, though I will admit I did a little too much chilling and not nearly enough training. Winter is a hard time for movement, I know that now more than ever. For the first time in my life, I desperately waited for the thaw. We got an honest to god winter in Boston for once.

Well, the snow did melt, as it always does, and I ran the Boston Marathon on April 21st, 2025. My quads were like cement afterwards and I could barely walk more than a hobble. But this time I knew I would recover and be stronger for it. I can do absolutely anything! I slept for two days and ate anything I could get my hands on. In no time at all, I emerged from my room to find a blooming world rife with flowers and bees. The sky was so blue it hurt to look at.

They weren’t kidding– eating right and getting plenty of exercise carries miraculous health benefits. My brain, now supported by a strong body, is capable of dreaming again. Pessimism feels increasingly childish to me. As people, we are capable of achieving so much in very little time. Those who can, should, to support those who cannot.

One year later, and I am back in Wells watching Liam run again. He is doing a half this time with his girlfriend– after multiple marathons and an ultra, he has nothing to prove to anybody and can run at his leisure. The weather is wet, but rain has so far spared us. A great fog descended from the sea to enshroud the starting line in clouds. I decide to jump into the race with him at one point and crank a few miles. I do some shopping too.

In a single year, I have achieved things that I thought impossible. I’m going to pivot now to strength training and see if I can’t sculpt a physique capable of winning the adoration of a beautiful woman. And maybe I’ll see you at the Boston Marathon next year!

The chapter titled “Getting By” in Robert Leo Heilman’s Book Overstory: Zero begins with an excerpt from a Development Report by a timber logging company in Oregon:

“While the 1979-1985 years were disappointing for wood products manufacturuers and workers alike, the net result may well have been a blessing in disguise for the survival and long-term health of the industry. Hundreds of inefficient sawmill, veneer, and plywood plants have been shut down. Others have been modernized and streamlined to achieve maximum return per unit of product. New products have been developed which require lower labor costs, cheaper raw materials, and results in a better value to end-user. The net effect is a leaner, more productive and cost-effective industry. One of the principle means of reducing costs, of course, is to lower wage rates.” ~ Development Report and Plan, CCD Business Development Corp. Roseburg, Oregon, July 1986

The author goes on to tell about his experience keeping his family alive in rural Oregon timber country during the economic decline of that period. At one point, the author is having a conversation with another dad while their kids played.

“My dad told me the other night that there’s a plan for this area,” he said as we passed the bottle back and forth. His father was an accountant and local business consultant. “He says the mills are going to stay shut until everyone who can afford to move leaves. The mills are all automating and whoever’s left will be the people who can’t go anywhere else and they’ll work for cheap […] I don’t mean to say that this recession’s all been rigged. They’re just taking advantage of it is all. They owners are all going to use it to get people to work cheap. Once everybody gets hungry enough, we’ll all take pay cuts just to go back to work. They’re talking about ‘cost effectiveness’ and ‘competitive wages’ and like that.”

The author surmises:

“There was an inescapable logic to what he was saying, almost like an algebraic equation: Hungry people work cheap; people who work cheap go hungry.”

The author gets by by purchasing a milk cow. He trades the raw milk for eggs and a little cash from the neighbors and they keep each other fed for a while. He notes that everything they did was illegal– they sold raw milk without permits, drove their cars without insurance, didn’t report odd job income, ate poached venison.

“When the unemployment checks ran out, our little towns started to empty.” Eventually, too many neighbors moved off to Texas or some other place to justify the feed cost and Robert had to sell the cow.

“By the fall of 1985, there weren’t enough of my friends still living in the valley to cover the cost of feeding my cow. I sold her and her calf at auction and waited for the trickle-down.
It was a long time coming, that trickle-down. Ten years later and we’re still waiting for it. The mills and businesses and government agencies recovered, but the recovery never arrived for the people who live here. For the first time in our country’s boom-or-bust economic history, business boomed while people stayed busted.”

Something spectacularly odd had happened to the timber town by 1985. In defiance of economic sense, the businesses churned back to life but the lives of the people left to work the mill towns were never the same.

“It was an odd sort of recovery. Employment rates, timber harvest levels, and emergency food use rose. The cost of cutting, hauling, and milling a million board feet of timber dropped and so did the wages and per capita income. Timber harvest levels of Douglas County were 400 million board feet higher in 1986 than in 1978 but produced $55 million less in wages. While the timber industry has become “leaner, more productive and cost-effective,” the people have simply become leaner.”

“I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.

I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.””