This Week Is Really Starting To Suck

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Editor's note: As we move through winter's darkest stretch, remember that dormancy isn't death—it's the sacred pause before resurrection. Your rest is revolutionary.

The metallic tang of propaganda hits your tongue before you even finish reading the headline—Donaldo Shitsburger announcing "Operation Bolívar's Freedom" like he's some kind of bargain-bin liberator instead of a trust-fund fascist with delusions of Monroe Doctrine grandeur. The plan reeks of oil greed wrapped in freedom rhetoric, a putrid combination we've smelled before in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan—the scent of American imperialism masquerading as humanitarian concern.

This clusterfuck directly threatens Venezuelan sovereignty while putting Venezuelan LGBTQIA+ communities—already facing targeted violence under Maduro—in even greater danger as military action always amplifies persecution of marginalized populations. The proposal ignores that Venezuelans themselves have been organizing grassroots resistance for years, building mutual aid networks that actually feed people instead of bombing them. Congressional Republicans are salivating over military intervention while conveniently forgetting that every fucking intervention we've launched in Latin America has destabilized entire regions for generations.

Venezuelan activist coalitions are mobilizing international solidarity networks, calling for diplomatic solutions and an end to sanctions that have strangled civilian populations while strengthening authoritarian control. Organizations like the Venezuela Solidarity Network are coordinating letter-writing campaigns to Congress members, while queer Venezuelan organizers are amplifying voices from the ground that contradict the invasion narrative. You can contact your representatives through Resistbot, support Venezuelan mutual aid through direct transfers, and follow Venezuelan organizers on social media to center their actual needs instead of imperialist fantasies.

Historically, U.S. intervention in Latin America has meant death squads, disappeared activists, and decades of trauma—from Guatemala's CIA-backed coup to Chile's Pinochet to Nicaragua's Contras. The pattern is clear as fuck: American "freedom operations" mean corporate resource extraction, environmental devastation, and LGBTQIA+ people fleeing for their lives as right-wing governments installed by U.S. interests systematically erase human rights protections. See The Hill's breakdown of Trump's Venezuela operation takeaways.

The sound cuts through everything else—a coyote's howl that scientists finally understand isn't just territorial bullshit but actual mourning, the kind that vibrates in your chest cavity and makes you remember every loss you've tried to swallow. Researchers observed a male coyote returning repeatedly to the spot where his mate was killed by a car, his vocalizations shifting from the typical yip-howl to something lower, more sustained, unmistakably grief-soaked.

The science here demolishes the comfortable lie that animals don't experience complex emotions. Behavioral ecologists documented this male's mourning rituals over seventeen days—refusing food, avoiding his usual routes, spending hours at the death site. Brain imaging studies show that canid species process loss through neural pathways remarkably similar to human grief processing, activating the same goddamn regions associated with attachment and social bonding. This matters because our entire relationship with non-human animals is predicated on denying their emotional lives, which conveniently justifies everything from factory farming to habitat destruction.

Wildlife rehabilitation centers are reporting increased awareness of animal trauma responses, with caregivers documenting mourning behaviors across species from elephants to corvids to octopi. Conservation groups are pushing for policy changes that acknowledge animal sentience in land management decisions, arguing that understanding animal grief should fundamentally shift how we approach everything from roadway design to hunting regulations. Indigenous knowledge holders have been saying this shit for millennia—animals grieve, animals love, animals deserve our respect as relatives, not resources.

Western science is finally catching up to what land-based cultures have always known: we're not separate from the web of emotional life, we're threads within it. Every coyote howling for their lost mate, every elephant standing vigil over bones, every crow bringing food to an injured companion—these aren't anthropomorphic projections, they're recognition of kinship. And for queer and trans folks who've often felt more connection with animals than with human society's rigid boxes, this validation of animal emotional complexity resonates on a cellular level. Learn more about coyote love and grief through National Geographic's research.

The mushroom dissolves on your tongue with an earthy bitterness that promises transformation, and for thousands of LGBTQIA+ people, that promise delivers—not through mystical bullshit but through neurochemical shifts that temporarily quiet the relentless gender policing our brains internalize from birth. New studies document how psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA create windows of neuroplasticity where rigid identity constructs soften, allowing people to experience their gender outside the suffocating constraints of cisnormative programming.

Research teams at Johns Hopkins and Imperial College London tracked over 800 participants through guided psychedelic experiences, finding that 34% of cisgender-identified participants reported questioning their gender for the first time, while 67% of already-questioning individuals reported major breakthroughs in gender understanding. The mechanisms involve temporary reduction in Default Mode Network activity—the brain's self-referential hub that maintains our constructed sense of self—combined with increased connectivity across regions that typically don't communicate. Translation: psychedelics temporarily disable the mental algorithms that enforce binary gender, allowing authentic self-experience to emerge.

Trans activists and therapists are exploring psychedelic-assisted therapy protocols specifically designed for gender exploration, with underground networks providing guided experiences for people navigating transition. These aren't recreational trips but carefully facilitated journeys with integration support, harm reduction protocols, and community accountability. Queer psychedelic researchers emphasize that substances don't "make" anyone trans—they remove the static that prevents people from hearing their own truth. The work happens after the trip, in the integration, in the courage to honor what you discovered.

This research emerges as gender-affirming care faces legislative assault, offering an additional tool—though currently illegal in most jurisdictions—for people seeking authentic self-knowledge. The historical context matters: psychedelic research was crushed in the 1970s partly because it threatened social hierarchies, including rigid gender roles. Now, as both psychedelic science and trans visibility expand, we're reclaiming these medicines as tools for liberation, not escapism. Learn about studies showing how psychedelics open doors to gender awakening.

The cold bites exposed skin at 4:47 AM as hundreds gather at ancient stone circles, their breath visible in the pre-dawn darkness, waiting for the exact moment when Earth's axial tilt reaches maximum—when the sun appears to pause before beginning its slow return toward longer days. Alban Arthan, the Druidic name for winter solstice meaning "Light of Arthur" or "Light of the Bear," marks not just astronomical phenomenon but spiritual rebirth, the promise that darkness always, always gives way to growing light.

This last year's solstice on December 21st drew over 5,000 people to Stonehenge alone, with thousands more gathering at Newgrange in Ireland, where the 5,000-year-old passage tomb's inner chamber floods with golden light for exactly seventeen minutes as the sun crests the horizon. Druidic tradition frames this moment as the birth of Mabon, the Divine Child of Light, emerging from the Cailleach's womb of winter darkness. Modern celebrations blend ancient ritual—lighting fires, sharing mead, speaking intentions for the returning light—with contemporary awareness of climate crisis, acknowledging that our planet's cycles face unprecedented disruption.

Celebrations vary widely, from silent vigils in old-growth forests to raucous gatherings with drums and dancing around bonfires. Queer Druids and pagan practitioners emphasize winter solstice as a celebration of darkness itself—not as something to overcome but as fertile void where transformation gestates. Many LGBTQIA+ folks find particular resonance in solstice's promise that after the longest night comes gradual brightening, a metaphor for surviving the darkest stretches of dysphoria, rejection, or closeted existence. Indigenous winter ceremonies from Yule to Dongzhi to Inti Raymi share similar themes: honoring darkness, celebrating community survival through scarcity, trusting in cyclical return.

The astronomical precision of Neolithic monuments proves our ancestors understood these cycles intimately, building entire cosmologies around Earth's relationship with the sun. As we face climate breakdown disrupting seasonal patterns our ancestors could predict, winter solstice becomes both celebration and grief ritual—honoring what remains while mourning what we're losing. Explore Druidry's teachings on winter solstice traditions.

The Hill | Alexander Bolton. The cold marble of Senate hallways amplifies every footstep as Democrats introduce a resolution requiring Congressional authorization before Trumpty MouthAnus can launch his Venezuelan invasion fantasy—a legislative Hail Mary attempting to restore checks and balances while Republicans pretend the Constitution doesn't apply to their Dear Leader. Read

Archaeology Magazine | Sarah Kuta. Your fingers trace the rim of a 2,800-year-old clay vessel, feeling the ghost of the artisan's thumbprint pressed into wet earth—Iraqi archaeologists have uncovered massive pottery production facilities that challenge assumptions about ancient manufacturing scale, proving that assembly-line production and specialized labor existed millennia before we gave capitalism credit for inventing efficiency. Read

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