The Worst Thing in the World

June 27, 2026

Is this what you wanted?

When you decided there was no greater nightmare than… young people existing in public?

Or that they must be banned from anything that “affects their developing brains”?

Such that when someone means to do harm to young people in a place, your conclusion is that young people must be removed from the place, rather than removing those who would do them harm.

So we all must lose online anonymity (as much as we have it anymore with data mining) lest one of those anonymous names be someone “underage”.

Because our society is so brain-rotted from anti-youth bigotry that someone can be taken seriously saying something like “social media is as bad for youth as smoking or alcohol” despite how incredibly fucking stupid that sounds.

We’re being inundated with ads for “Instagram Teen Accounts” about all the ways the social media sites of Mark Zuckerberg, who kisses the asses of the Orange Thing and others who spent a lot of time on Jeffrey Epstein’s island, are pretending they truly care about the well-being of youth by empowering parents to restrict the online activities of their chattel- er, I mean, nearly-adult offspring.

Parental control tools get promoted without a shred of acknowledgement that these things don’t actually know the relationship of the user to the “child” and thus get used all the time by abusive intimate partners. I’ve come to realize this is a feature rather than a bug.

Protecting kids is never the point. It’s a smokescreen, a flimsy excuse. A distraction.

In a country where kids are suffering actual severe trauma while locked up in ICE detention camps, the point is to pretend the real trauma is being suffered by the kids who are learning about it while scrolling through TikTok.

In a country where trans kids are persecuted more and more by the day, when their only escape from a family that doesn’t accept them just might be the affirming friends they find online, even those who fancy themselves supporters of LGBTQ+ youth still champion half-baked attempts of restricting their access to that lifeline, perhaps buying into those affirming friends being groomers.

In a country that recently bombed over a hundred Iranian schoolgirls and has been supplying the weapons resulting in Gaza having the largest cohort of child amputees in our time, we’re so convinced that consuming media that’s not “age appropriate” is so uniquely harmful to those under 18 that mountains must be moved to keep it from happening.

Or maybe the mountain moving is the point.

This does give Discord and others free rein to acquire (and sell) personal details about users they have no good reason to have. You’re forced to comply if you want to continue using your apps. Maybe you’ll grit your teeth and bear it. Maybe you’ll quit altogether, although the more sites and apps and countries implement such social media age checks and bans, the less you’ll be able to opt out. You’ll hate it, but underneath it all, you’ll decide it must be worth it. You made it happen, after all. When you decided that a 15-year-old using a social media site, or even in general just engaging with and taking up space in the wider society, was the worst thing in the world.

Maybe it’s time to ask why you believe that. So what if young people use “screens” a lot? That’s just the age we live in. Do you really buy all the concerns about brain development or age inappropriateness? Even if we’re to pretend for the moment those concerns are valid, well, so what? Isn’t that their own business, nothing to do with you? And, in your heart of hearts, is that what you’re really worried about?

Or are you so profoundly offended that you must share the world with those younger than you that you latch onto any remotely plausible excuse to reduce that sharing?

Put it this way. Those bombed kids in Tehran and Gaza? Those isolated trans kids? They aren’t sharing the world with you anymore, are they?

And those visitors to Epstein’s island whose asses Mark Zuckerberg likes to kiss? They’re still walking around free and part of the wider society, aren’t they?

None of this is to protect kids. It’s to keep them silent and ignorant. Exactly what those who would prey on them want.

Brookside Gardens – Spring 2026

April 5, 2026

It’s Easter Sunday afternoon, and as usual I’m on the way to Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, MD.

Except it’s pouring rain.

Pouring rain on my Perfect Easter Garden!

So I get there and park easily, something much harder if it were 60 degrees and sunny and thus packed. Time to walk around the garden in the rain.

Maybe not on this Forbidden Patch of Grass guarded by geese.

By the bridge, the pond, the Japanese garden…



Flowers, of course.


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Potomac River – Spring 2026

April 4, 2026

The Maryland side of the Potomac River is pretty much all national park land. A hiking/biking towpath runs the whole way along the C&O canal, with points of interest dotted throughout, usually at the site of a canal lock. Needless to say I didn’t come close to doing the area justice in the past several weeks, but I got in a few.

Riley’s Lock

Furthest upriver I visited was Riley’s Lock/Lock 24, off River Road, in mid-March. It was a record high 80 degree day, it was furiously windy, and we were under a tornado watch, but even with a looming storm there were plenty of people here. This is where Seneca Creek reaches the river.

Where it meets the river, an old aqueduct serves as a bridge over it to connect the towpath.

Lockhouse.

History.

And, of course, the Potomac River in the late afternoon.

With a looming storm, probably not the best idea to stay too long, but nonetheless I crossed the aqueduct and followed the towpath a short way.
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Rock Creek – Spring 2026

April 3, 2026

There’s Rock Creek Park as in the national park that’s in DC, and there’s Rock Creek Regional Park as in the extension of that park north into Maryland. The Maryland one consists of a ton of smaller trails and park areas along the Rock Creek Trail, as well as two parks with two lakes right by each other divided by Avery Road.

Lake Frank/Meadowside

I checked out Lake Frank on a Saturday morning in February, from the trailhead just off Avery Road. I’ve been to Meadowside many times before but hadn’t come around the lake this way.

Ah, two ways to go along the same path. Must mean there is a way to go all the way around the lake then. I had remembered it being more complicated than that in the past when I had considered doing so, but maybe they blazed new trails? Anyway, I turned right here.

Now up out of the woods and atop this dam path.

Wow, look at that frozen lake.

Coming off the dam the path was snowier but still paved and wide. For a little while, two people walking two dogs weren’t far behind me and I could hear their conversation. Seemed a mother and adult son, and she was speaking Russian and he was speaking English. Eventually they turned away along a path toward a nearby neighborhood.

Where that path met this path was a sign for the park.

Oh, the water in Rock Creek parkland is to be avoided? Shocker!

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Seneca Creek – Spring 2026

April 2, 2026

Sitting in northern Montgomery County, MD, separating Germantown and Gaithersburg, is Seneca Creek State Park.

It has trails and streams pretty much throughout the northwest portion of the county, following the eponymous creek and its various branches, though the main park is off Clopper Road, at the center of which is Clopper Lake. In December, Winter Lights is held there, where you drive through the main park and look at a bunch of cool Christmas light displays. Which means in 2020, since we all had to be social distancing and for this thing you just stay in your car, it sold way the hell out fast, as it was about the only Christmas display that wasn’t canceled that year.

Anyway, I visited it quite a bit over the past few weeks.

I even started with it, in a brief and brisk visit to a short trail just past the entrance one afternoon.

Mud and snow make it kind of slick.

Didn’t have time to go much further. But I was back a couple days later way across the park, at the Mink Hollow Trail.

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Black Hill – Spring 2026

April 1, 2026

There’s no shortage of green spaces in Montgomery County, MD. Lots of parks around, big and small, county or state or federal, for hiking, being near water, just plain being somewhere with lots of squirrels, geese, and deer. Over the past several weeks, as the season slowly changed, I visited many of them.

One of them, one I have a much longer history with, is Black Hill Regional Park in Boyds. Whether it was walking my dogs on some of the trails back in the 1990s, or looking for a sunset-soaked location for a nice after work hike.

First place I went was one I hadn’t checked out before, outside of the main area of the park. One day in late February, still frigid and plenty of crunchy snow all around, the still-early sunset was fast approaching, so I figured this roadside spot by Little Seneca Lake, across it from the main park area, would work well. Despite the, again, frigid temperatures and crunchy snow and looming sunset, a couple other cars pulled into the small lot around the same time I did, myself the third one. One took a picture of the lake and left. Another wandered down to the shore. I did the same at another lakeside spot away from them.

Oh, by the way, this was the lake.

Frozen over from the deep freeze we’ve had recently. You can see something walked across!

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Zoo – Spring 2026

March 31, 2026

DC isn’t just politics. It’s also, you know, a city, full of people and places and such.

Like the zoo of course.

It begins at the top of a hill on Connecticut Ave about halfway between the Cleveland Park and Woodley Park Metro stops. It’s free to enter, being the Smithsonian and all, but these days they make you get a ticket with a QR code. Not sure how long that’s been a thing.

I guess it’s still technically winter, on the day I visited, but that’s shouldn’t be an issue.

Oh.

But here’s a fishing cat on the Asia trail.

Down this way is the major quintissential attraction. And I know they like the cooler weather…

Awwww!

And now you’re slumped forward on the log!

The Bird House is over this way. I got inside but then had to wait in line. A door alarm kept beeping somewhere nearby which the staff were doing nothing about. Then they let us into some exhibit about Delaware Bay shore birds.

Hi, sandpipers!

Followed the exhibit through another room with some cool ducks and then the rainforest room. Back outside and around the building were more birds.

Flamingos!

Back across the bridge to-
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Signs of Resistance – Spring 2026

March 30, 2026

I spent the past six weeks out and about a lot. Exploring the region. Watching the snowy freezing winter thaw and blossom into spring.

Also, the world is still going to hell.

So for a couple of excursions (the getting out and going somewhere kind, not the bombing a girls’ school and closing the Strait of Hormuz kind), I checked out events where people were demanding change to all this.

Stand Up for Science

First was on March 7, when down on the National Mall was the Stand Up for Science rally. It was an overcast but mild day. I hopped on the Metro and made my way there.

To see this.

Rep. Jamie Raskin was on stage speaking when I arrived, followed by other speakers decrying the massive cuts the Orange Thing’s administration have made toward scientific research over this past year.

I checked out the few tents around, grabbed some stickers and flyers that will sit in that tote bag untouched for like three years. One tent had a stack of plain poster board and an assortment of markers. Nice. So those who didn’t have time to make a sign could just make one right here. I took the opportunity to touch up my own.
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Mmmm, Candy Hearts 20

February 14, 2026

BE MINE

I belong to no one.

LET’S HANG

So we’re meeting at midnight at the tree?

4 EVER

Nah, we’d just get sick of each other.

Once again, it’s Valentine’s Day. The saint’s feast day where those with partners are encouraged to act on their mutual attractions, and those without are assumed to be bitter about it. I guess not that different from the rest of the year, come to think of it.

We sure do place a lot of expectations and importance on the whole thing. Such that the acquisition of a suitable partnered scenario is tied to happiness, identity, and even inherent self-worth.

Is this partner of yours of your same gender? Now that’s your whole identity, complete with all the homophobic garbage that comes with it.

Are you a woman married to a man? You may now have his last name, because, regardless of anything else in your life, being this dude’s wife is now your whole identity.

Are you having too much sex? Slut. Too little sex? Prude.

Unless you’re having the exact correct amount and frequency of sex according to “experts”, your relationship is doomed.

Polyamorous? What, are you just unfaithful or irresponsible?

Monogamous? What, are you just uptight and jealous?

Whoa, wait, what is that you’re up to? Is that… a kink?!

Bisexual or asexual? Pfft, that’s not a thing, you just want attention!

No partner? Not only assumed to be bitter about it, on a day like today or whenever, but if you’re not, let’s make damn sure you are. Or even turn it around, to assume any unhappiness or negativity must stem from said lack.

Are you an angry rightwing shithead? They’ll call you an “incel”, for “involuntarily celibate”, regardless of what your actual history or activity may be. Since apparently that’s an acceptable basis of insult rather than, say, the fucked up rightwing views.

Are you recently out of a rough marriage? Enjoy your “divorced” status getting equated with “sad” or “pathetic” for the rest of your days.

Nevermind the prevalence of abusive or otherwise detrimental romantic/sexual relationships. So many still seem stuck on the “happy ever after” myth despite reality providing galaxies of evidence to the contrary.

Surely there’s better uses of time and energy. Is it so hard to just do away with the judgment and scrutiny, to agree that as long as everyone involved is fully freely consenting and at least a few years past puberty then whatever is or isn’t happening is fine and not anyone else’s concern?

I guess not today.

Let’s see…

DATE NIGHT

Yeah, that’s what the calendar dictates.

YOU & ME

It is just you and me right now, candy heart. About to be just me.

BESTIE

Hey, no friend zone complaints from me. This is actually better.

ICE and Them

January 26, 2026

A month ago, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were two anonymous names of living breathing people. Whose names now we all know as they are no longer living and breathing because some ICE dipshits executed them in broad daylight, in cold blood, caught on multiple videos.

They’re both white US citizens. Their crime was being in the general vicinity as said ICE dipshits hassled those who are neither.

A crime that apparently carries the death penalty, according to the Orange Thing as well as to the dog-killing piece of shit running DHS and to the bald Nazi ghoul that is deputy chief of staff and to the couch fucker, among others.

In response, we all know the names Renee Good and Alex Pretti, saying their names and affirming their humanity in protest all over the country.

Because fuck everything about this shit.

There’s detention camps in our country, in 2026. Those not sent there go to ones abroad where they’ll never be seen again.

There’s a secret police force whisking people away to these places without trial or anything resembling due process, and murdering people in the streets for trying to keep their neighbors from being abducted, for trying to record what’s happening to make sure the world knows.

And Congress? The legislative branch who’s supposed to counter nonsense like this as part of that whole checks and balances thing?

The House voted to keep funding DHS… this past fucking week!

They saw the snuff film that was Renee Good’s murder and thought “awesome, let’s have more of that”. And more of that they got, in the form of federal agents proudly counting Alex Pretti’s bullet wounds.

Support for all this among the general population is in the tank. But some approval for ICE’s bullshit remains, even now. Why? Is it they believe the lies that these two were attacking the ICE thugs? Do they get all their information from those spouting these lies and that those saying otherwise are just brainwashed woke liberals or whatever? Do they have some stake in these operations? Are they afraid of what will happen if they don’t support them?

I think it’s all of that to some degree. I think also it speaks a little bit to how we got here.

For anyone to support ICE’s brutal tactics, they must be completely utterly convinced that simply being present in the country without proper authorization is in itself a mortal sin, deserving of the harshest retribution. Something you would only give the slightest shit about, let alone express this rabid hatred, because someone wanted you to because it was convenient for them. As I said before, immigrants are not the problem; the ones trying so hard to convince you of this are the actual problem.

It goes beyond immigration. We’ve been fed decades and decades of local news breathlessly peddling fear of crime, particularly that committed by non-white youth, skillfully tapping into the general public’s contempt for teenagers and for people of color. All for the ratings. All convincing the public that, despite all data indicating crime is way down in recent decades, we’re under siege and need beefed up law enforcement to protect us, to be tough on crime.

They’re basically this line from Mr. Burns in Season 3 “Bart the Murderer”.

So anything remotely resembling law enforcement gets more and more funding, with elected officials petrified of doing otherwise and getting pegged “soft on crime”. Such that our cities have militarized police forces rather than better funding for schools and vital social services so to more easily kill innocent unarmed black people and pretend they’re heroic for it.

But it’s okay. They’re just targeting… them.

A lot of support for beefed up police and border enforcement comes from the idea that, even if they just use the Constitution as a napkin, at least those on the receiving end are “those” people, not “us”. These goons are on “our” side.

Until they aren’t.

That’s the simple fact about bullies. They are never your allies. They might convince you of that, so you look the other way when they torment others, that those they torment deserve it and should have acted better. But sooner or later, you’re in their sights. And you’re the one who should have acted better. Because all along, you were their victim just as anyone else, only you were also a useful idiot.

A useful idiot who disastrously undermined our vital national document enshrining our rights just because a couple of Spanish-speaking 20-year-olds outside the grocery store made you uncomfortable.

The saying “land of the free because of the brave” is usually referring to the military, but it applies too to those with the courage to swallow any irrational prejudices and understand that our rights and freedoms apply to everyone, even those you’ve been conditioned to distrust and exclude. Because no one is free unless we are all free.

A courage displayed by the great people of Minneapolis these days.

A courage sorely needed in our legislative and judicial branches, as we’re sure as shit not seeing it in the executive.

A courage required for anyone entertaining any ideas about running for or staying in office this year. Because if you’re just going to spout mealy-mouthed concerns about ICE “needing better training” or even praise them, even after all goddamn this, no one needs you, get the fuck out.