Atlanta: 58°, drizzle — the city sweats under low clouds, restless, like a jury that already knows the verdict.

Detroit: 20°, partly sunny — iron-cold light on the river; the factories remember what was promised.

Kansas City: 39°, sunny climbing to 62° — wide-open sky deceiving nobody about what March will bring.

New York: 36°, overcast — the city wraps itself in grey wool, hunched against whatever comes next.

San Francisco: 53°, cloudy — tech-money fog pressing down on the bay, the old neighborhood ghosts watching.

Miami: 72°, partly sunny — paradise at the waterline, every borrowed day another gift the sea will call due.

The Senate has a Surgeon General nominee who says chronic disease is an epidemic of systemic neglect — and she's not wrong — while the same administration erases every institution that could actually fix it. I guess that comes from all the Magic Mushrooms she’s consumed. Meanwhile, Grindr got banned in Malaysia, the corals are half dead, and De Niro cried on television about the country he loves.

First time here? Pull up a chair — The Daily Gathering is where we do the damn work.

Editor's note: February end is a strange threshold — the world aches like it did last year, but the light is coming back, and so are we.

Dr. Casey Means — Stanford MD, metabolic researcher, new mother — sat before the Senate HELP Committee and said Americans are "the most chronically ill high-income nation in the world," with today's children projected to live shorter lives than their parents.

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What she said: Root causes: "ultra-processed diet, industrial chemical exposure, lack of physical activity, chronic stress and loneliness." 150 million Americans rely on federal healthcare programs. We spend $50 billion annually on research while outcomes worsen. Youth suicide, dementia, diabetes — all rising over two decades.

She's not wrong. Here's the fuckery: this shit-stained ball-sack administration nominated her while simultaneously gutting the FDA, neutering the EPA, and handing HHS to RFK Jr. — whose MAHA strategy she praises like scripture. Means is sharp, credentialed, sincere — and walking into a burning house calling it a renovation.

The damage: 150M Americans on federal programs with zero systemic accountability; prevention budgets collapsing while chronic disease spending soars. Action: Contact your senators — demand binding commitments to fund the interventions she says matter.

Read her full Senate testimony

The grass was green once — before heat turned practice fields to ash, before the Winter Olympics ran entirely on manufactured snow in Italy because actual precipitation had somewhere better to be.

Scale: $517 billion in annual revenue lost by 2030; $1.6 trillion — 18% of the entire industry — gone by 2050. Paris Olympics plagued by extreme heat. Shanghai tennis stars describing conditions as "very challenging physically." The WEF/Oliver Wyman report warns systems share the same problem as coral reefs: "no time to recover" between events.

The same dick-sniffing butt-trumpet corporations sponsoring these games fund the fossil fuel economy destroying them.

Action: Push your sports leagues to end fossil fuel sponsorships — athletes at Milano Cortina are already calling for it. Full story

In Kuala Lumpur, 33 million people woke up to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission blocking Grindr and Blued — because an Islamist opposition lawmaker called the platforms vehicles for "deviant" relationships.

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Stakes: This follows public canings for same-sex relations (2019), an 18-year-old student beaten and burned for appearing "effeminate" (2017), and correctional camps for gay-presenting teenage boys (2011). The MCMC is now examining legislative measures to pursue full app-store removal through Google and Apple.

What the actual fuck is happening here? Grindr isn't just a hookup app in a country where being gay can get you imprisoned. It's infrastructure. Cutting it off doesn't make those men straight — it makes them alone. And loneliness, as the fuck-knuckle tit-weasels running every authoritarian government know perfectly well, is a weapon.

Movement: VPNs remain accessible for now. Donate to Rainbow Railroad to support queer people fleeing persecution. Full story

Connection is not deviant. It is how we survive.

Survival wisdom — how you carry this forward: Malaysia spent real political capital trying to sever connections between queer people who just want to find each other — and they found VPNs anyway, because human need outlasts legislative decree. Every morning you show up is a refusal they didn't budget for. You are the institution when the institution fails. Build the network. Hold the fucking line.

Trump calls De Niro "sick and demented" after the actor wept calling Trump an "idiot" destroying the country — seemingly threatening to deport a US citizen. — The derangement is fully operational. PinkNews

Trans comedian Lio Cundiff dove into freezing Lake Michigan and saved an eight-month-old girl — fundraiser hit $69,000, double the goal. "We are human. We're the same as everyone else." PinkNews

Half the world's coral reefs severely damaged during 2014–2017 — and a Fourth Global Bleaching Event is still unfolding since 2023. — The ocean is keeping score. ScienceDaily

Methane hit a record 1,921 ppb by 2023 — COVID lockdowns accidentally slowed the atmosphere's methane-scrubbing chemistry, letting the gas build up fast. — The feedback loops are nesting inside each other. ScienceDaily

Spring leeks → Slice thin, slow-sauté in butter 12 minutes until silky. Pile on toast with goat cheese and cracked pepper. Peak right now — before spring forgets to be delicate.

Grow garlic greens → Plant a clove pointed-up in any sunny pot; snip like scallions in 2 weeks. $8/lb of seed garlic yields 10 lbs at harvest. Every bulb you grow is one less dollar to a supply chain that doesn't know your name.

Pantry pasta e fagioli — 7 ingredients, feeds 4, under 10 minutes → Canned white beans + canned diced tomatoes + small pasta + olive oil + garlic powder + Italian seasoning + Parmesan. Boil pasta, combine, season, serve. Working-class Italian survival food — proof that feeding people well doesn't require money, it requires knowledge.

Moving forward — your armor for today: Deliberateness is fear looked at directly and told to sit down. You cannot fix Malaysia, the dying reefs, and the MAHA gaslighting all at once. One clear-eyed act of care inside your own life. That's the whole fucking thing.

"Never Trump Is Fracturing" — Sweaty's Corner | Geoff Anderson. The stale air of a Maryland conference room full of Republicans who fled MAGA but can't stop calling themselves Republicans. Read The ass-cramming shit-bauble caucus spent five years waiting for the storm to pass; the storm put down roots.

"How to Fix U.S. Democracy" — Vox | Lee Drutman, political scientist and author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop. The weight of a system eating its own reformers. Read Proportional representation could break the doom loop — the voters who'd benefit most are the ones the current system most reliably silences.