DOJ shelved the autopen witchhunt, Trump is slathering foundation on a mystery neck rash, and Pete Hegseth got told no by the goddamn Boy Scouts — before my second cup of coffee. I pivoted from rage to dark comedy. I wrote this.

Atlanta: 69°, partly sunny — warm enough to feel almost normal, which is exactly the kind of lie this administration tells.

Detroit: 62°, light rain — drizzle tapping the windshield while the rust belt counts what it's lost.

Kansas City: 38°, partly sunny — cold biting in off the plains, the kind that reminds you winter doesn't care what the calendar says.

New York: 40°, cloudy — gray sky pressing down on eight million people who are already tired.

San Francisco: 54°, sunny — crystalline and gorgeous and still on fire underneath the policy layer.

Miami: 78°, mostly sunny — hot and beautiful and entirely unbothered, which is frankly aspirational.

The machine eats its own this week — autopen investigations abandoned, rash cream applied to a president's neck, trans kids held in the arms of an organization that told Pete Hegseth to go fuck himself sideways. The ground shifts. Hold your footing.

First time here? You found the mycelium. Come on in: thistleandmoss.com

Editor's note: March light is back — longer days mean we see more clearly what's actually happening, and some of it, friends, is genuinely batshit hilarious.

The DOJ launched a nine-month investigation into whether Joe Biden's autopen was a criminal conspiracy — no grand jury, no charges, no crime — while the man who ordered it showed up to the MLS Cup ceremony with foundation caked on a mystery neck rash his own doctor could barely explain.

What they said: "We cannot comment on ongoing investigations." — Jeanine Pirro, on X, about the investigation she just closed.

The cunt-licking shit-gibbon in chief directed Pam Bondi in June to investigate Biden's autopen as a conspiracy to conceal cognitive decline — then watched that investigation crumble because prosecutors couldn't find a single federal statute violated. Not one. Nine months, zero charges. Meanwhile, Trump arrived at the ceremony with beige foundation on his right hand, a visible scab behind his ear, and cankles on full display for Friedrich Merz — his physician vaguely citing "a very common preventative cream" as cover.

The damage:

The sky already holds more CO₂ than at any point in human history — 2024 set another record — and the question is no longer just how do we stop it but what do we do with what's already there.

Evidence:

The ass-ramming cock-socket energy lobby spent decades ensuring we'd need solutions this desperate — and now the science is catching up anyway, because biology and physics don't take lobbying money.

Action: Support Earth.org's non-profit climate coverage. Push your representatives toward carbon utilization R&D. earth.org

The land doesn't wait for legislation. The microbes are already working.

Pete Hegseth posted a six-minute video announcing that Scouting America had agreed to ban trans kids — then CEO Roger Krone walked to an AP microphone and said, "We have transgender people in our program, and we'll have transgender people in our program going forward."

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Stakes:

What the fuck is happening here is a shit-stained ball-sack in a defense secretary's suit tried to turn the Boy Scouts into a MAGA propaganda victory — and an organization that has spent a century teaching young people to be trustworthy looked him dead in the eye and said no. That is institutions remembering who they are. Today, nearly one million youth remain enrolled — including trans kids.

Movement: HRC is tracking federal attempts to exclude trans youth. Donate to GLSEN. Follow the coverage. lgbtqnation.com

Survival wisdom — how you carry this forward: The absurdity this week is doing real work. The DOJ failed. Scouting held. A neck rash became national news. Let the dark comedy metabolize the rage when it gets too heavy. But don't mistake the comedy for safety. They'll try again Thursday. Come back rested. Come back sharp

🎭 Drag king Elsie Saldaña — performing since 1965, still taking the stage at 80-something, and it is insane that the world's oldest active drag king has been building this art form for six decades while the culture acted like drag kings didn't exist — because the art form has always been here, in full swing, bras thrown at the stage. lgbtqnation.com

🏕️ Scouting holds the line — Scouting America told Pete Hegseth that trans kids are staying, in plain English, on record, to the AP — because sometimes institutions remember their own damn purpose. lgbtqnation.com

🦴 Bone regrowth breakthrough — Lund University built a cell-free cartilage scaffold — stripped of cells but preserving natural growth signals — that guides the body to rebuild damaged bone without triggering immune rejection; over 2 million people need bone grafts annually — this changes that math entirely. sciencedaily.com

🐑 4,000-year-old sheep solves plague mystery — A Bronze Age sheep bone from the Ural Mountains carried Yersinia pestis DNA — the first nonhuman host ever found — cracking open how prehistoric plague crossed Eurasia before flea transmission existed. sciencedaily.com

Streaming subscription sprawl (avg. $85/month) → Rotate one service per month instead of stacking. Cancel, use another, come back. Cost drop: $40–60/month for the same content over a quarter. Feeling: The relief of money staying in your account.

Grocery produce waste → Store herbs stem-down in a glass of water like cut flowers, cover loosely with a bag, refrigerate. Parsley, cilantro, and basil last 2–3x longer. Trigger: Every Sunday, 5 minutes of triage. Feeling: Your brain stops dreading the sad herb graveyard in the crisper drawer.

Spring leeks → Halve lengthwise, caramelize cut-side down in a hot oiled pan 4 minutes, finish with white wine and thyme. Fifteen minutes. One pan. Something genuinely beautiful. Leeks arrive before the rest of spring and they're worth the wait.

Grow your own garlic → Plant cloves in October, harvest next July. One grocery-store head ($1.50) yields 8–12 heads. Zero corporate supply chain. Your kitchen table doesn't have to depend on anyone.

Pantry pasta, 4 servings, under 10 minutes → Garlic in oil, red pepper flake, canned tomatoes, pasta, parmesan, torn basil. Seven ingredients. $4. Feeds a table. Good food shouldn't require a budget or a recipe blog.

Moving forward — your armor for today: Today handed you wins alongside the wreckage — an institution that said no, science that said yes, a drag king who's been on stage since 1965 and isn't done yet. None of this resolves the bigger shit. But it feeds something. Carry it like food, not like comfort — not because the world got easier, but because you got more resourced.

Look alive — the ancestors are here, bones and nerve and gold-chain history rattling.

Kate Bornstein | Nonbinary Author & Gender Outlaw Gender Outlaw (1994) tore the binary apart before the word "nonbinary" existed — translated into 5 languages, adopted at 300+ schools and universities — and Hello, Cruel World kept queer kids breathing through decades this country tried to suffocate them. She earned two NYC Council citations for it. The woman saved lives and called it a Tuesday.

Christine Jorgensen | Trans Pioneer, 1926–1989 In 1952, with only half of American homes owning televisions, Jorgensen walked off a plane in Copenhagen as herself — sparking the world's first press conference held by a transgender person. Her 1967 autobiography sold nearly 450,000 copies. She kicked the sexual revolution in its binary ass decades before the movement had language.

Leslie Feinberg | Revolutionary Trans Author & Organizer Stone Butch Blues won the Lambda Literary Award, circulated hand-to-hand inside prisons, was translated into 10 languages — and Feinberg's dying wish was to release it for free, because the revolution belonged to everybody.

Hit Dogs Do Holler — Wendy Parker is Eternally Irritated | Wendy Parker. A Senate that voted to keep war powers in the hands of Captain Doodie Pants gets named, addressed, and told to get on the plane at 0500. mfnmuumuus.substack.com War-power vote failed; Wendy names every senator and offers them a one-way ticket to the theater of operations they just voted to sustain.

Do You See Yourself As Others See You? — Brandon Ellrich is So Gay | Brandon Ellrich. A gay man covered in sticky notes (adorkable, baker, so gay) asks what it means when how you're seen doesn't match who you are inside. brandonellrich.substack.com The internet gave Brandon descriptors; he used them to excavate the distance between visibility and interiority — quietly, hilariously, worth your 5 minutes.