Good morning, beloved community. It's Thursday, January 1st, 2025. Today: Jack Smith's deposition drops truth bombs while Trump squirms, scientists prepare to bodyguard climate data from erasure, queer joy persists against all fucking odds, and the pollinators that keep your ass fed.

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Editor's note: The year turns, power shifts, but the mycelium keeps threading truth beneath our feet.

The conference room smells like old carpet and the metallic tang of consequence. Jack Smith sits down for his deposition, and the air gets thin—Trump's legal team sweating through their Brooks Brothers as the special counsel methodically catalogs every goddamn lie, every obstruction, every moment Trump chose power over country. The damage: Years of normalized corruption, a blueprint for future autocrats, democracy's guardrails bent to breaking. But here's what matters: The record exists now. Testimony under oath. Witnesses named. The historical archive getting its spine back. Legal experts calling this a masterclass in prosecutorial integrity—the kind of deliberate, unfuckable documentation that outlasts administrations. Link

Snow crunches underfoot in Colorado, thin air burning lungs, as researchers at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratories prepare for siege. Trump's goons want to dismantle decades of climate monitoring—the precise, unflinching data that proves what we're doing to this breathing planet. But scientists don't fold easy. They're backing up hard drives, establishing independent archives, building redundant systems across international borders. The science: Atmospheric CO2 tracking, ocean acidification monitoring, the baseline measurements that separate truth from propaganda. These researchers taste the stakes—their life's work versus willful ignorance weaponized. Action underway: Academic coalitions forming, data sanctuaries in universities worldwide, the knowledge keepers refusing erasure. Link

A hand finds another hand in courthouse hallways. Pride flags catch afternoon light through Seattle rain. Somewhere, a teenager exhales relief reading legislation that finally sees them. 2025 brought the usual political shitstorm, but queer resilience doesn't need permission to bloom. The stakes: Legal protections expanding in unexpected jurisdictions, cultural visibility breaking through mainstream resistance, youth suicide rates dropping where affirmation takes root. Movement momentum: Community organizations logging record memberships, mutual aid networks thickening, the particular courage of existing loudly when existence itself becomes protest. These aren't small wins—they're proof that love actually does some heavy fucking lifting. Link

Ice dancing gets gayer: British ice skating just opened competition to same-sex pairs, because apparently blade work and artistry know no gender. Watch queer athletes carve new patterns into frozen water, rewriting what partnership looks like at 30mph. Link

Community stands the fuck up: Real people, real organizing, real impact—activism that shifted power this year when everyone said it couldn't be done. Link

Pollinators: The workers keeping you alive: Beyond the buzz, into the dirt truth—why bees, butterflies, and beetles do more before breakfast than you do all week. Ecosystem services worth billions, delivered free by insects you've probably cursed at. Link

Fermentation Station: Take cabbage, salt, time. Let bacteria do the work while you sleep. Sauerkraut in two weeks—probiotic-rich, shelf-stable, cheaper than therapy. Measure: 2% salt by weight. Wait. Taste the transformation.

Winter composting that actually works: Dig a trench, bury scraps, cover with leaves. Frozen ground doesn't stop decomposition—just slows it. Come spring, black gold ready for planting. Measurable impact: 30% reduction in household waste, richer soil, fewer trash bags to the curb.

January's gift: Citrus season: When the world goes grey, oranges glow like small suns. Blood oranges bleed crimson, grapefruit bites back with bitterness cut by honey. Segment them into winter salads—the pop of juice against bitter greens, the way vitamin C tastes like optimism.

The Hill | Tom Steyer
Money talking sense for once—a billionaire explaining why profit-driven healthcare is a moral catastrophe you can measure in preventable deaths. Read

2025 Predictions: Trump will thrash and attack, flailing against his own irrelevance. Trump will fail, because incompetence compounds. Trump's arteries will remember the Big Macs—sooner rather than later, biology doesn't negotiate.

Ancient DNA spills secrets: Scientists extracting genetic stories from bones, rewriting human migration, proving we're all mutts descended from wanderers who fucked across continents. Wonder tastes like humility. Link

Photos that punch breath from lungs: Nature's best images from 2025—the universe's beauty delivered in pixels that make you remember why staying alive matters. Link

Clickbait: Doctors reveal the weird-ass symptoms that actually mean something's deeply wrong—because bodies whisper before they scream. Link

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Behind the Name: The Gathering connects you to the mycelial wisdom beneath surface noise—the ancestral knowledge that grounds us, the daily practices that keep us tethered to what fucking matters.