Grounded wisdom for curious souls

Good morning, beloved community. It's Saturday, January 24. Today: Trump threatens to economically kneecap our northern neighbor, the Navy's counting bodies while ignoring the ecological carnage they're causing, Hollywood proves it's still got its head shoved firmly up straight culture's ass, and the neuroscience that'll help you unfuck your dopamine-hijacked brain.

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Editor's note: Winter's damn grip tightens while power plays its same tired games. Please Stay safe and warm. And take care of yourselves. I can’t do this without you all.

New York: 30°F and that bone-achey kind of cold where your goddamn knuckles scream just walking to the bodega, grey slush puddles threatening your shoes, wind cutting through your coat like it fucking hates you personally.

Kansas City: Hovering around freezing with that Midwest bite that makes your teeth hurt, clouds thick as cement overhead, the kind of day where even the fucking pigeons look depressed.

Atlanta: A merciful 50°F but with rain threatening like a passive-aggressive relative, that sticky southern dampness that clings to your lungs, enough cloud cover to make you wonder if the sun's ever coming back.

San Francisco: 55°F with fog rolling in like nature's own bullshit curtain, that maritime chill that sneaks under your jacket no matter how many damn layers you wear, making everything taste like salt and disappointment.

Detroit: 25°F and mean about it, ice forming on every surface like the city needs more reasons to be treacherous, wind howling down from Canada like it's personally pissed at your existence.

Feel the cold metal of economic leverage in your hands—that's Trump on Saturday, threatening to slap 100% tariffs on every Canadian export if Prime Minister Mark Carney dares finalize a trade deal with China. The air tastes like burnt diplomatic bridges and the metallic tang of betrayal. Here's the visceral truth: Trump called the same fucking deal "a good thing" just last week, then flipped like the opportunistic bastard he's always been. Now he's calling Carney "Governor" like Canada's some wayward state, threatening to destroy an entire nation's "social fabric" because his ego can't handle sovereign nations making their own damn decisions.

The damage:

Canadian businesses hang in limbo, cross-border supply chains face annihilation, and working families on both sides of the border get fucked by this petty power play. Carney negotiated to allow 49,000 Chinese EVs at 6.1% tariff while dropping China's canola tariffs to 15%—a balanced deal that Trump initially praised.

The response:

Canadian officials scramble while economists warn this could trigger the trade war that finally breaks NAFTA's successor agreement. Trump's wielding tariffs like a toddler with a blowtorch, and everyone's about to get burned. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5704383-trump-threatens-tariffs-canada/

Taste the salt spray mixed with blood—that's Hawaii's waters under Trump's Navy, where they're counting dead whales like fucking scorecards while ignoring the slow death they're inflicting on entire ecosystems. The Navy's newest environmental "review" claims their training exercises will kill only two whales over seven years. Two. While admitting to 3 million instances of behavioral disruption, hearing loss, and injury to marine mammals. Feel that math in your gut—that's the same sick arithmetic Trump's people use everywhere, counting bodies while pretending collateral damage doesn't exist.

The ugly truth:

Sonar blasts at frequencies that shred cetacean hearing, turning apex predators into disoriented victims who slowly starve because they can't echolocation their food anymore. The Navy doesn't count those deaths—whales that beach themselves months later, seals that can't find their pups through the acoustic fog, dolphins abandoning breeding grounds. Trump's military industrial complex weaponizes sound itself, turning the ocean into a fucking war zone, and then produces reports so sanitized they're basically propaganda. Less than 0.15% of pristine habitat remains in the Falklands, and Trump's Navy is systematically destroying what's left in Hawaiian waters. Commercial shippers like Matson already slow down for whale season—but Trump's Pentagon? They just keep blasting, keep killing, keep lying about the body count. Conservation groups beg for expanded protected zones, reduced sonar use, slower vessel speeds. The response? More exercises, more noise, more death disguised as "acceptable impact." This is Trump's environmental "policy" in action: deny, minimize, kill, repeat. https://earth.org/counting-deaths-not-damage-what-the-us-navys-environmental-review-leaves-out/

Look at the Oscar nominations and taste the straight-washing, that bitter fucking pill Hollywood keeps force-feeding us. The 2026 Academy Awards proved yet again that when mainstream cinema looks at queer art, it sees nothing. Out.com straight-up called it "Oscars So Straight," and they're not fucking wrong.

The snubs:

Wicked: For Good got exactly zero nominations despite Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande slaying last year's Wicked. Daniel Craig's queer detective Benoit Blanc in Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man? Ignored. Eva Victor's Sorry, Baby, a raw examination of a non-binary professor recovering from assault? Shut out completely. Tessa Thompson and Nina Hoss's devastating performances in the sapphic Hedda? The Academy couldn't be bothered.

What this means:

Every queer filmmaker watching knows the game is rigged. The few crumbs we got—Elio, A Friend of Dorothy, KPop Demon Hunters' "Golden"—feel like tokens thrown to shut us up. The Academy proved it's still more comfortable with straight narratives playing at diversity than actual queer stories told by queer artists. We see you, Hollywood. We see your cowardice. We see how you'll take our money, appropriate our aesthetics, and then shut us out when it's time for recognition. Wicked made you rich, and you couldn't even throw us a nomination for the sequel. Fuck your gatekeeping, and fuck your straight comfort. https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/01/23/oscars-2026-accused-of-being-too-straight-lgbtq-snubs/

Hollywood's Oscar machinery runs on the same white supremacist, heteronormative engine it always has. Lorde's words cut through the bullshit: we can't dismantle their exclusionary systems by begging for their validation. Every snub reminds us that mainstream recognition isn't liberation—building our own platforms, celebrating our own artists, and refusing to let straight gatekeepers define our worth is the only path forward. When the Academy ignores Sorry, Baby and Hedda, we respond by showing up harder for queer cinema. We buy tickets, we stream, we shout about the art they're too cowardly to acknowledge. Our validation matters more than their statuettes. Keep creating, keep resisting, keep refusing to play by their damn rules.

Fallout's trans mystery deepens:

Xelia Mendes-Jones's character Dane is giving fans serious Commonwealth spy vibes in Fallout Season 2. Eagle-eyed viewers caught how Dane immediately clocked that the power armor wasn't actually Xander, then proceeded to steal the cold fusion relic and help Maximus escape. Add the Season 1 self-inflicted injury to avoid frontline duty, and suddenly Dane's looking less like a loyal Brotherhood member and more like a deep-cover agent working to bring down Quintus from the inside. The fan theories are chef's kiss levels of detailed, tracking every suspicious glance and convenient intervention. https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/01/19/dane-trans-fallout-fan-theories-xelia-mendes-jones/

Community organizing moments continue building momentum across digital platforms, with grassroots movements utilizing social media to mobilize and document resistance efforts in real-time.

Falklands fighting back:

On New Island's windswept edges, conservation warriors are waging war against invasive species to reclaim lost ecosystem. Feel the wet peat under your boots, hear penguins screaming overhead—this is restoration on the knife's edge. Falklands Conservation is targeting rats, mice, cats, and rabbits for complete eradication, trying to bring back the burrowing seabirds that once fertilized the tussac grass that held the soil that stored the carbon. Less than 0.15% of pristine habitat remains. White-chinned petrel colonies collapsed from 50 pairs to five in two decades. But New Zealand proved it's possible—Zealandia went from written-off bushland to thriving urban sanctuary with kākā parrots flying free. Now trained sniffer dogs patrol New Island's 80-acre expanse, detecting single surviving rodents by scent alone. If they succeed, endemic species like Cobb's wren and Falkland camel crickets can return home. https://earth.org/saving-the-falklands-the-fight-to-reclaim-a-lost-ecosystem/

Break any bad habit in 3 steps: Neurologist Dr. Arif Khan breaks it down—(1) Cue Shift: Catch the feeling before the behavior kicks in. Stress? Boredom? Loneliness? That's your window to choose differently. (2) One Step Rule: Your prefrontal cortex tires easily, so shrink tasks radically. One page. One push-up. One glass of water. Small repeated actions create dopamine. (3) Reward Rewrite: After the new behavior, give your brain something meaningful—a deep breath, hand on chest, "I did it!" Your old habits formed by accident. New ones form through awareness.

Mycelial cleaning method: Use hydrogen peroxide and baking soda paste on grout lines—let it sit 15 minutes while it fizzes like underground networks breaking down decay, then scrub in circular motions mimicking fungal spread patterns. Removes stains while the chemical reaction does the heavy lifting, saving your damn joints.

Phone zombie cure: Set app timers that shut down social media at 30 minutes daily. When the screen goes black, that's your cue to do one physical thing—stretch, drink water, step outside for 60 seconds. Your dopamine system needs reality anchors, not endless scroll infinity.

January Brussels sprouts glory: Halve 2 lbs Brussels sprouts, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper. Roast at 425°F for 25 minutes until edges caramelize to burnt-sugar amber. While hot, toss with balsamic glaze, dried cranberries, toasted pecans. The char + sweet + acid trinity that makes winter vegetables worth the cold walk to the farmer's market.

Food sovereignty tip: Start a kitchen scrap garden. Regrow green onions in water (they come back forever), plant garlic cloves in pots, save herb stems in soil. You're building food independence one cutting at a time, refusing to be completely dependent on supply chains some billionaire can fuck with on a whim.

Preserve citrus season: Juice every lemon, lime, orange you can find this month, freeze in ice cube trays. Come August when citrus costs $3 each, you'll have flavor bombs ready. Add preserved lemon peels to salt for instant fancy finishing salt that tastes like you know what the fuck you're doing.

When everyone's pretending the emperor has clothes, speaking plain truth feels like violence—but that discomfort is exactly the point. Your unfiltered observation breaks the collective delusion keeping everyone docile. This week, practice naming one obvious thing others are tiptoeing around. Not to be cruel, but because silence protects systems that harm us. Whether it's calling out a workplace inequity, naming family dysfunction, or saying "this doesn't make sense" in a meeting where everyone's pretending it does—that pistol-shot of truth creates the opening where change becomes possible. You're not being difficult; you're refusing to be complicit in the lie.

404 Media | Becky Ferreira. Scientists made men rate computer-generated dicks by how threatening they looked as rivals, and holy shit did they find something.

From a woman's perspective, this study is hilarious in how seriously men take their own equipment. Dr. Upama Aich's team recruited 600+ men to assess nude male figures as potential rivals, and surprise—dudes judged other dudes based partially on dick size, assuming larger penises meant both better fighters and more attractive to women. They were right about the women part (confirming previous research), but here's the kicker: penis size mattered four to seven times more for female attraction than male intimidation. Translation: Men are out here size-comparing in the locker room, thinking it's some gladiatorial status marker, when women mostly just want someone who knows what the fuck they're doing and doesn't need a trophy dick to feel like a man. The evolutionary angle is wild—males may have avoided confrontations with better-hung rivals, inadvertently selecting for larger penises across generations. But let's be real: any woman who's been with men knows size doesn't mean shit compared to attentiveness, communication, and not jackhammering like you're auditioning for low-budget porn. The study used flaccid computer-generated figures, which is its own commentary on how much time men spend thinking about their dicks in non-sexual contexts. The researchers designed it carefully to strip away "cultural baggage," and still—still—men couldn't help but rank threat level by penis size. Meanwhile, women have been trying to tell y'all for decades that the motion of the ocean matters more than the size of the ship, but here we are, funding studies to confirm what anyone with functional communication skills already knew. The real finding? Men's obsession with their own dicks is a competitive status game they're playing with each other, and women are just trying to find partners who listen and don't finish in 30 seconds.

Stargazing escapes:

National Geographic rounded up seven fucking stunning glamping spots designed specifically for dark-sky watching—from Montana's Green Haus with its skylight the size of a bed, to Clear Sky Resort's 62 glass domes outside Bryce Canyon, to Death Valley House's retractable roof deck. These aren't your crusty camping trips; these are climate-controlled luxury pods where you can watch the Milky Way while soaking in a hot tub. The Lodge at Primland in Virginia even has a resident astronomer leading nightly sessions. Because sometimes you need to remember you're a speck of stardust on a rock hurling through infinite void, and you deserve to do it comfortably with good snacks and indoor plumbing. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/best-cabins-stargazing

Clickbait:

Neurologist reveals the three stupidly simple tricks to break bad habits—and they're actually backed by brain science, not wellness bullshit. Spoiler: It's about catching emotional cues before you autopilot into behavior, shrinking new habits to one tiny action your brain can handle, and rewarding yourself immediately after. Your basal ganglia doesn't care about your five-year plan; it wants right now feedback. https://www.upworthy.com/neuroscientist-reveals-3-tricks-people-can-do-right-now-to-break-any-bad-habit

Poetry and Feelings: thepoetmiranda.com
Personal Queer Journey: thistleandfern.org
Life Banter: brandonellrich.substack.com
Lisa's Porch Talk: wuzzittoya.org / wuzzittoya.substack.com
Presence Not Permission: presencenotpermission.beehiiv.com

Become a member: thistleandmoss.com/upgrade

Behind the Name: The Gathering pulls you down into the undergrowth where truth grows wild—that decomposing leaf layer of wisdom your ancestors knew before capitalism taught us to look up instead of down, where the real intelligence lives in networks too complex for quarterly earnings reports, connecting you to what fucking matters beneath all the noise trying to convince you survival is the same thing as living.