Here we go again. Optimism. Hope.

The midterms will bring a blue wave. The Republicans will lose both chambers of Congress. The Democrats will finally take a Senate seat in Texas.

The whole nation always fusses over Texas, partly for the symbolism of turning the ultimate red state blue, and partly because Ted Cruz is so loathsome. But he keeps winning.

This year, Texas’s other Senate seat is open, and the Republicans are tempting fate with a phenomenally bad candidate. If Donald Trump didn’t exist, Ken Paxton would be the gold standard for a corrupt, swampy, cruel, incompetent politician. On the Democratic side, James Talarico is a preacher, a teacher, a Christian who talks more about the mercy of Jesus than the meanness of God. He’s an inconvenient mirror in the face of what passes for Christianity among MAGA folks.

If there was ever a winnable Senate election for the Democrats in Texas, this would be it. But we’ve said that before. Ted Cruz smarmed his way past several prototypes of “the perfect politician” in Beto O’Rourke (a tall, young, handsome, bass guitar player who said all the right things) in 2018 and Colin Allred (a tall, young, handsome, football player who said all the right things) in 2024. November always brings the reality check.

In 2024, a late poll showed Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3% in Iowa. Then he won the state by 13%. He outperformed everywhere.

Right now, Trump’s popularity is pretty deep in the toilet. His approval rating is at a record low. It seems likely that a lot of first-time voters he attracted in 2024 will sit this one out, while the anti-Trump vote is roaring back.

The thing is… I don’t trust this election. I sort of trust the polls, because there’s clear evidence of a severe shift against Trump. But I don’t trust the mechanics, the integrity, the legitimate outcomes, of this election.

They say that every MAGA accusation is a confession, and these people have been foaming at the mouth about voter fraud.

Meanwhile, Trump wages war on fair elections.

A quick rundown on Trump’s election prep:

• Promoting false voter fraud claims

• Using government agencies to promote the Republican Party (in violation of the Hatch Act)

• Targeting election officials

• Interfering with state election processes and records

• Appointing election deniers to high-ranking federal government roles

• Encouraging voters to cheat

The first areas of doubt will involve the casting and counting of votes. Then, there may be efforts to reject results.

It could get ugly. It already is — there are reports in Tennessee that voting machines are switching names.

There’s also reason for hope. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections denied students at several colleges access to a nearby early voting site. So they marched 40 minutes to get where they needed to be.

Early voting numbers are breaking records. And that’s what it’s gonna take: massive turnout, undeniable wins, and the will to see it through.

This election can’t be trusted. But it’s the one we’ve got. And we need it desperately.

Thank you for doing your part, and good luck to us all.

Voting from abroad as an expatriate is a strange thing. It’s like moving out of your parents’ house, then mailing them instructions on how to maintain the property so it’s a pleasant place for you to visit.

What if, in your town, the majority of voters supported a referendum, or a candidate, but votes cast from overseas flipped the result? Would you be resentful?

This dynamic played out on a national scale in Peru’s presidential election in June, when expat votes were a deciding factor.

The two candidates both bore the “far” label. Far-left Roberto Sanchez wanted to rewrite the constitution and establish a “plurinational” Peru with separate sovereign groups within the country. Far-right Keiko Fujimori promised to emulate El Salvador’s brutal mega-prison model to suppress crime and subdue the public. She’ll also strengthen ties with the US and Israel.

Keiko (commonly known by her first name) won. Barely.

The incredible stat here is that if the vote only included Peruvians who were living in Peru on election day, Sanchez would have won. Among in-country votes, the tally was 8,911,511 for Sanchez against 8,891,320 for Keiko.

Expat voters swung the result.

Among Peruvians who voted abroad, it wasn’t even close. Keiko picked up over 195,000 votes (63%), compared to just 113,000 (37%) for Sanchez. This outcome was predicted as soon as the domestic vote count showed a slim margin. Everyone knew Keiko would dominate in the overseas results and come out on top.

Why?

First, consider the confusing identities of “left” and “right” in Peru (and throughout Latin America, with varying details). The dichotomies that left/right represent in other parts of the world aren’t the same here. Neither wing is socially progressive. Corruption and authoritarianism are considered likely outcomes from both sides.

Economically, the left is boldly socialist and loudly pro-peasant. The right favors free markets and foreign investment.

Peru also has centrist politicians who align more with progressives in other parts of the world. But in recent elections, none has emerged from the first round of voting (in which dozens of candidates compete for two runoff positions). This year, the vote was so diluted that Keiko and Sanchez only received 17 and 12 percent of the Round 1 vote, respectively. In the runoff, over 70 percent of voters had to settle for someone other than their first choice.

So, when voters have to choose from two extremes, what factors push them left or right?

A voter can be motivated by hope or by fear. These days, fear seems to carry more weight.

If you visit Lima, you can trace the origins of voters’ fears at Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (LUM), a museum built into Lima’s rocky coast like a bunker.

LUM is dedicated to the “Peruvian internal conflict” that spanned the entirety of the 1980s and 90s. In those years, the communist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) battled the federal government for control of the country. Both sides committed massacres and other atrocities.

Peru’s internal conflict pitted an authoritarian right-wing regime against a violent communist uprising. While today’s Peru is more stable and moderate, tension between those poles still defines electoral politics. And any Peruvian has good reason to fear a return to either extreme. The question is, if your vote feels like a choice between the two, which side is more palatable?

In the Lima metro area, home to one-third of the population, right-wing parties dominate. The left wins in rural areas. It’s the opposite of the divide in the United States, where Republicans are mocked for being “afraid of cities.”

For many educated, middle-class Peruvians in Lima and other coastal cities, a right-wing vote is a vote for a modern, prosperous Peru.

Keiko’s father, Alberto Fujimori, was president from 1990–2000. At the start of his term, Peru had hyperinflation and the internal conflict was raging. My partner, who grew up in Lima in the 90s, remembers long drives out of the city to get groceries, due to shortages and out-of-control prices. There was a wave of car bombings. There was a deadly hostage crisis at the Japanese embassy that lasted 126 days. The city, and the country, felt poor, isolated, and chaotic.

Fujimori is credited with ending the internal conflict and pulling Peru out of its dark ages. His Fujishock economic program eased government control over private industry, while raising wages and boosting welfare programs. Through the 90s, inflation halted and the economy stabilized. International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and foreign investment poured in.

Prior to the Fujimori era, leftist policies were widely blamed for Peru’s economic woes. In the 1970s, an extreme Agrarian Reform program seized farmland from wealthy landowners and redistributed it among the workers. By the late 80s, agricultural output had declined, state-run cooperatives were failing, and the country was in a depression.

Venezuela casts a shadow, too, with its nightmarish downslide under left-wing rule. Lima is home to more Venezuelan immigrants than any other city — over one million. For many voters here, this mass exodus of hungry citizens is the inevitable result of electing a leftist. Not wanting to “become the next Venezuela” is why many here see the right as the lesser of two evils.

And so, a majority of urban, educated voters continue to put their trust in the Fujimori brand. Keiko is the one who will crush crime (which the right-wing media constantly reminds us to be panicked about). She’s the one who can end decades of political instability (which she helped orchestrate by undermining prior administrations). She’s the one to grow the economy (with mining and fossil fuel projects).

On the other hand: for rural voters, the poor, indigenous communities, and really, anyone who cares about human rights and the environment, Fujimori is an ominous word.

You see, Keiko’s father did some very bad things. He spent his final years in prison, convicted of human rights violations.

Fujimori’s crimes included:

• The Barrios Altos Massacre: a death squad, under Fujimori’s authority, fired machine guns at a barbecue party, killing 15, including an eight-year-old.

• The La Cantuta Massacre: a death squad, under Fujimori’s authority, abducted, tortured, and killed a professor and nine students.

During the internal conflict, thousands of citizens were killed or “disappeared” by the government. In the name of national security, innocents were swept up, imprisoned, and held for years without due process.

A forced sterilization campaign is Fujimori’s most horrific legacy. Using tubal ligation (“tube tying”), the government sterilized an estimated 300,000 women and 25,000 men between 1996–2000. They were lied to, coerced, and bribed before undergoing the procedure. Some victims literally traded their reproductive autonomy for a bag of rice.

It was the largest state-sponsored sterilization campaign in the history of the Americas. The victims, of course, were mainly indigenous women. It was eugenics. It was genocide.

Fujimori is the only democratically elected head of state convicted of human rights abuses in his own country. Yet, his next of kin has brought his name back to the top of Peruvian government.

Fujimori’s sins, of which I’ve only mentioned a few, are unforgivable. Monstrous. So, you might be wondering if Keiko ever disowned her father. She did not. In fact, after her parents split up — Fujimori’s wife accused him of torturing her — Keiko served as her father’s First Lady.

Regarding her father’s crimes, Keiko has never meaningfully admitted guilt, apologized, or reconciled.

Yet, for 50.1% of voters, Keiko’s faults (and again, I’ve only scratched the surface here) are forgivable — or, at least she’s not a communist.

Let’s return to the curious question of expat voters. The group that pushed Keiko over the top.

In fact, if you meet one of those voters, they might tell you there’s nothing curious about it. Of course they voted for Keiko. She wasn’t ideal, but the alternative was communism and terrorism.

Demographics explain why Keiko won the abroad vote by such a wide margin. Peruvians who emigrate tend to have more money and education (right-leaning factors in Peru) than the general population. They’re almost twice as likely to have university degrees. Moreover, voting abroad is surely easier to navigate for wealthy, educated individuals, compared to poor, less-educated expats (who would be more likely to vote left).

There’s also a bloc of hundreds of thousands of Peruvians who emigrated shortly after the last time a leftist was elected — Pedro Castillo, in 2021. Around 400,000 exited the country in 2022, more than in any other year since 1990. For many, the threat of collapse under left-wing rule is serious enough to influence an immigration decision.

On the left, some point at expats and say: you’re happy with “socialism” in Europe, but you vote against it here.

It’s an oversimplification. European nations are generally more functional and prosperous compared to those in LatAm. That’s the result of colonial history, not prevailing political ideologies.

Still, it’s hard to argue with this truth: life for an immigrant is usually better if the left is in charge.

Under Keiko, Peru will be rougher on foreigners. She’s promised to deport undocumented immigrants and remove restrictions on how long they can be detained. She praises El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison. She wants to build five of them.

Keiko’s expat voters probably don’t relate to the future victims of her harsh immigration policies. Most immigrants don’t see themselves as criminals, or leeches, or a poisoned blood supply. So, anti-immigrant rhetoric never seems to be about them.

We hear it again and again in the US from immigrants and their loved ones who supported Trump: “I never thought they would come for me.” “I never thought they would come for my wife, my dad, my employees.”

So, yes, you might see irony in voting for a right-winger from overseas… while living in Northern Europe, where “impossible” socialist programs flourish and right-wing candidates spew hatred your way… or while living in the US, where a paperwork error could get you sent to a concentration camp.

Sadly, even among those who loathe Keiko, many would argue the case against Sanchez was even stronger. For them, a communist is worse than a fascist, and he sounds a lot like a communist. He’s characterized as a charlatan who makes empty promises to the poor. He’s accused of ties to terrorist groups.

It was a difficult election. I would wish Keiko the best, but too many of her goals — cozying up to Trump, stripping more resources from the Amazon — run counter to my values.

So, I’ll just wish the best for Peru, and hope for a less evil lesser evil next time around.

Get 80% off forever

Haiku:

Gas station, strip mall
Dad says: when I was your age
I went hunting here

New Jersey is the most densely populated US state. Yet, the Garden State (official nickname) is more beautiful than its reputation would have you believe. There are no national park-level expanses, but you’re never far from a nice patch of wilderness. The suburbs have claimed way too much land, but they’re lush and green. They’re usually buffered by woods, and contain plenty of well-cared-for green space.

Unfortunately, for every sliver of woods, there’s a landowner dreaming up one more single-family home. For every meadow, there’s a developer who sees a strip mall. Or worse, a data center.

Every time I visit my hometown, I see new homes and businesses where there used to be woods.

Before the term was popularized, my father made me aware of shifting baselines — the slow changes in our environment that mean each generation enjoys a less vibrant planet than the one their ancestors knew. The losses are only recognized when we love nature, and when we tell stories.

Today, New Jersey is beautiful. If all new development froze, the state would remain a lovely place to be. That won’t happen, but there are a lot of good people fighting to protect what we have.

Here are a few photos from the bike ride that inspired this haiku.

In April, my partner and I met up with my parents in Progreso, a small port city in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. They flew south from New Jersey, we flew north from Peru.

This was our first time meeting in a “third place.” It’s a painfully expensive way to get together (four airfares instead of two, paid lodging instead of staying in one of our homes), and we might never get to do it again. But, it was wonderful to travel together. Progreso is a special little town, and Yucatan is beautiful, full of history, and brimming with wildlife.

On this trip, I met quite a few new birdies, like the turquoise-browed motmot, the tropical mockingbird, and the Yucatan woodpecker. A highlight was watching Yucatan nightjars hunt bugs in our backyard, every evening at dusk.

The birds I was most excited for were the flamingos.

There are six flamingo species. Four are native to the Americas, while the other two occur in Africa, Southern Europe, and southwest Asia. The species found in Yucatan is the American flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber). Of the six species, American flamingos have the brightest plumage.

My partner and I don’t own a camera. So, it was a special treat on this trip to have access to my dad’s camera.

We took some obligatory flamingo photos with our phones, of course… totally worthless. While we waited in line for our turn with the camera, we also attempted the art of phone + binoculars photography.

It’s a painstaking process. We worked as a team, one of us holding the binoculars, the other squaring up the phone and tapping the photo button. You need to get the angles just right, hold both devices very still, and execute the button-push without ruining everything. All while your subjects stay sufficiently still.

Eventually, we got a shot that I’m quite fond of:

It’s low-def, but it’s grainy in a good way.

Obviously, the photos we took with the “real” camera captured a much greater level of clarity:

Progreso isn’t quite an island, as it’s connected to the peninsula by a bit of land. The city is on a long, thin mass that lies parallel to the mainland, separated by ocean and wetlands. That’s where we spotted flamingos. This isn’t one of Yucatan’s best-known spots for seeing them, but the entire northern coast is known as the “flamingo coast,” as they’re common throughout.

You don’t have to be an avid birder to be wowed by flamingos. They stand up to 4.5 feet (1.4 m) tall, with wingspans as broad as five feet. And they’re nature’s most famously and fabulously pink creatures. That hue comes from consuming copious amounts of beta-carotene via brine shrimp and algae.

A flamingo’s appearance is so different from what we’re used to that they confound our sensibilities. They’re extravagantly beautiful and elegant, but also bizarre and sort of wrong-looking.

Their bills are enormous and oddly shaped. Rather than sloping evenly to a point, they make an awkward downward turn, while also changing from pink to black.

The way the head tilts down in front of the neck, which can S-curve dramatically, creates a sort of coyish posture that adds to the intense expressiveness of the face.

That long neck goes on and on, converging in the big pink body with an even longer set of legs.

Those legs are stick-thin and comprise another surprising set of angles. They seem to bend the wrong way at the knee joint. In fact, those are ankles — very high-up ankles connected to super-long feet.

Flamingos are comfortable on their feet, where they spend their days wading through shallow water. They’re also capable flyers. However, their unusual bodies do present difficulties.

They need a running start to take flight. So, if a group is startled, it becomes a dangerous mess of necks and legs and wings, which can easily result in a broken leg — a fatal injury. Thus, you should never intentionally spook these birds in order to enjoy the spectacle of their flight. It’s a good reminder to always minimize your contact with wild animals to avoid causing unforeseen harm.

Even when they take flight calmly, it’s a chaotic scene. Those long legs are a lot to manage.

In flight, they’re gorgeous. When their wings are lifted, black feathers appear.

Flamingos lead rich social lives. They can live up to 30 years in the wild, much longer than most birds. They spend those long lives in large colonies, usually numbered in the thousands. Within the large group, they form strong pair bonds. Mates work together to build nests, protect eggs, and feed chicks.

Long-term mated pairing is complex and wonderful, but there’s much more to flamingo society. They also form same-sex pair bonds, close-knit trios and quartets, friendships, and cliques. Researchers have even observed enemy relationships within flocks — certain flamingos that avoid one another and display hostility when they cross paths.

Some flamingos make short migrations, but they usually spend most of their lives in the same small area. They’re as deeply connected to their bit of coast as the local fishermen, while tourists like me come and go.

Get 80% off forever

On June 14, there will be cage fights on the South Lawn of the White House.

The South Lawn is the president’s backyard, a large open space ringed by trees. It was designed to provide the first family with outdoor privacy while maintaining public sight lines around the perimeter of the grounds.

Woodrow Wilson kept a flock of sheep on the South Lawn. Eisenhower installed a putting green.

Donald Trump opted for a 5,000-seat UFC arena.

For the UFC, it’s a weird coming-of-age moment. The organization has long asked to be taken seriously, to have a seat at the table with the “big four” US sports leagues. Yet, the general public has a limited appetite for brutal knockouts and blood-drenched canvas.

But who needs the mainstream when you’ve got the president?

The UFC held its first event — UFC 1 — in 1993.

The early UFC cards had a significant freak show element. A sensible ruleset was lacking, and there were huge discrepancies in the combatants’ sizes and abilities. Yet, even as many of those early bouts played out comically or gruesomely, the noble question behind the venture was evident: what happens when experts in different martial arts square off, free of the restrictive rules that govern other combat sports?

Bruce Lee had correctly answered that question decades earlier:

“The best fighter is not a boxer, karate or judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt to any style. He kicks too good for a boxer, throws too good for a karate man, and punches too good for a judo man.”

Ever since Royce Gracie introduced the world to jiu-jitsu chokes at UFC 1, this quest for hybridized combat genius has played out in the UFC octagon. The UFC’s founders didn’t invent organized mixed martial arts (MMA), but they were the first ones to build a scaled-up modern league around the sport.

For years, the fanbase was extremely niche. I was an angry, athletic boy in the 90s — presumably, within the target audience — and I recall zero awareness of the UFC.

In 1996, Senator John McCain got a look at UFC action and deemed it “human cockfighting.” He sent letters to all 50 states, urging them to enact bans on MMA events. Thirty-six governors complied.

Ironically, McCain’s efforts to suppress cagefighting had the opposite effect in the long term.

In response to their blacklisting, the UFC added rules to eliminate dangerous or unsightly techniques, like headbutts and groin strikes. They coordinated with state athletic commissions to codify the policies and procedures of MMA events. By 2000, the UFC looked more like a legitimate pro sport and less like a freak show. States began reversing their bans. The fanbase grew.

In 2006, the UFC put on its biggest show to date — UFC 66, featuring a Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz rematch. The event sold 1 million pay-per-views, attracting many first-time viewers. I was part of that statistic.

I was in college. My brother invited me over to “watch some fights.” I didn’t even know what that meant. Prior, I had zero interest in combat sports. But that night was a revelation. I watched a fighter gracefully snake an arm under his opponent’s chin and rapidly render him unconscious. I watched athletes getting tossed around, battered and bruised, surviving, and then winning. I watched Liddell let loose a cathartic roar after TKO’ing Ortiz.

For me, UFC 66 kicked off around 10 years of avid fandom. And, look, if you’re turned off by MMA, I get it. If you perceive the sport as brutally violent, you’re not wrong. But it’s also the most raw, honest sport in the world. At the highest levels of competition, MMA fighters display mesmerizing form, creativity, and heart. There’s simply nothing like it.

It’s not for everyone. But, starting in the late 90s, the UFC brass spent years tirelessly pushing their sport into the mainstream. There was The Ultimate Fighter reality show, featuring teams of fighters living together, MTV Real World style, while competing for contracts. They got fights aired on cable TV, then network TV, then ESPN+. Fighters and executives were paraded through sports shows and late-night talk shows, often treated as oddities, but usually representing themselves well.

At the helm was Dana White, UFC President since 2001. He was everywhere, telling anyone who would listen that MMA was the world’s fastest-growing sport, and assuring skeptical talking heads that cage fighting was safer than they’d heard.

In the early 2000s, MMA had a fun subculture. The fighters were a motley crew, but they were entertaining and likeable. Since most of them weren’t very rich or famous, they were accessible. They posted on online message boards. You could join their gyms and train with them.

There were oddballs like Evan Tanner, a UFC champion who said, “I always thought of myself as the poet, the writer, or the philosopher — I never thought of myself as a fighter.”

There were chill, noble fighters like Demian Maia, who could enfeeble and strangle an opponent without throwing a punch. He once said, after a win, “I want to show jiu-jitsu to the world, and show to the people that you can win the fight without hurting your opponent.”

For self-conscious fans like me, these thoughtful gladiators were an encouraging presence. Meanwhile, there was plenty of the bad behavior you might expect from cage fighters and their fans — but it wasn’t normalized.

A 2011 incident shows how different the sport’s culture was in the pre-MAGA days. That year, Miguel Torres, a bantamweight contender, made this offensive joke on Twitter: “If a rape van was called a surprise van more women wouldn’t mind going for rides in them.”

If you’re familiar with today’s UFC culture, you know that Torres’ behavior, sadly, is unremarkable. What is noteworthy is the way the incident was handled.

Torres was fired. Cut from the roster. Yes, he was reinstated later that month, but only after issuing apologies, meeting with Dana White, and performing community service.

In those days, the UFC still cared about fitting in with polite society. In 2013, they joined other major sports leagues in instituting a code of conduct for their athletes. That same year, they held their first women’s fight, between Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche. From that moment on, the UFC became a premier platform for women athletes. Women in the UFC aren’t just included, they’re showcased. That includes some of the world’s most celebrated lesbian athletes, such as Amanda Nunes and Jessica Andrade. And in 2019, the UFC began annual Pride Month campaigns.

For a while, the UFC was kinda woke. Mostly, it was nonpolitical, like most sports leagues aim to be.

Then, in 2016, Dana White spoke at the Republican National Convention (RNC). He described Trump as a close friend who supported the UFC in its early days:

“Nobody took us seriously. Nobody. Except Donald Trump. Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC.”

White emphasized that he spoke for himself, not for the UFC, and that “just for the record, Donald has nothing to do with my business.” But this was the start of the UFC/MAGA bond. For a large swath of the fanbase, it was a disheartening moment.

In 2017, MMA’s cultural shift had its next dividing moment, from a surprising source. Meryl Streep, in a Golden Globes acceptance speech, was criticizing Trump’s immigration policies. She said:

“Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

Lots of the same MMA fans who hated seeing Dana White at the RNC were also irked by this out-of-nowhere insult. For me, it felt like confirmation of a suspicion: polite society thinks I’m an idiot for liking this sport.

Streep’s carefully-chosen words were accurate: MMA is not “the arts.” The subtext, that MMA is artless, was wrong, and the MMA community — fighters, fans, and executives — objected loudly. It was the liberal Hollywood elites against the misunderstood cage-fighting enthusiasts, led by Trump’s pal Dana White.

For MMA fans who identified with the rest of Streep’s pro-immigrant, anti-Trump message, it was another alienating moment.

For White, Streep’s jab probably looked like evidence of the limits of courting mainstream acceptance. After 15 years of talk shows, rule changes, and codes of conduct, the sport was still a punchline.

Meanwhile, the UFC’s ever-growing roster was proving a difficult bunch to keep in line. The two biggest stars of the 2010s, Jon Jones and Conor McGregor, both derailed their careers with bad behavior. Jones’ incidents included a hit-and-run crash with a pregnant woman, a domestic violence arrest, a DUI, and multiple failed drug tests. McGregor has repeatedly been charged with assault, including multiple sexual assaults.

White had his own domestic violence incident in 2023. During an argument in a nightclub, caught on camera, his wife slapped him, then he slapped her back. He apologized, but the UFC didn’t discipline him or even issue a formal statement.

In part, the UFC created its own monster by encouraging fighters to build their own brands. If a fighter is more famous (whether they’re loved or hated), they get higher-profile matchups and bigger paydays. This leads to outrageous behavior, like fighters constantly trying to brawl during press conferences or in hotel lobbies, or spouting offensive tirades in post-fight interviews.

It gets ugly. In 2024, Sean Strickland went on a vile transphobic rant at a press conference. He was a UFC champion at the time. Dana White’s reaction: “Free speech, brother.” A lot had changed since 2013, when Miguel Torres had to go on an apology tour for posting an offensive joke.

In 2025, featherweight star Bryce Mitchell said that “Hitler was a good guy” and “the Holocaust ain’t real.” Again, zero disciplinary repercussions. Again, White cited free speech.

Since Dana White’s first RNC appearance (he also gave speeches there in 2020 and 2024), the UFC and the global MMA community have become increasingly identified with right-wing politics. There are so-called “Active Clubs” where neo-Nazis promote MMA as a tool for defending the White race. An estimated 187 such clubs exist in 27 nations. There’s Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, who enforces horrendous anti-LGBT policies and also runs his own prominent fight club. He and his sons personally train with elite fighters, generating photo evidence to bolster the strongman image he curates.

In the UFC, discipline for bad behavior is a thing of the past. And extreme right-wing and antisocial views are incredibly common among top fighters. For the general public, it’s a turnoff. But, as the UFC gained more influence in right-wing politics and the manosphere, mainstream appeal was no longer the priority. The UFC is the anti-woke sporting refuge where you aren’t shunned for hitting women and espousing hate. As long as that vibe connects with enough fans to fill stadiums, then who cares what Meryl Streep and everybody else thinks?

For Trump, it’s a comfortable environment. In 2021, he showed up at UFC 264 in Las Vegas. He was at a low point: he’d lost the presidency, led a deadly, failed coup, and was in serious legal trouble. But in the UFC arena, he walked side-by-side with the boss. The crowd cheered.

In the 2024 election, Trump’s campaign mirrored the narrowing focus of the UFC’s appeal: don’t try to please everybody, just monopolize the support of a core base.

In the republican primary campaign, Trump didn’t attend a single debate. Instead, he attended a whopping seven UFC events in 2023–24. While the competition argued about policy, Trump got some of his biggest momentum boosts simply by strolling down the walkway to his cage-side seat. Throughout the evenings, one fighter after another would limp over to pay tribute.

Gradually, a three-headed force emerged: MAGA, the UFC, and the manosphere comedian/podcaster community. Their supporters coalesced.

On October 25, 2024, the election was less than two weeks away, and Trump was a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Rogan, who’d built his brand on anti-establishment open-mindedness, gave Trump an easygoing chat and an official endorsement. Suddenly, it felt like every young man in America was about to vote for Trump. “Free speech, brother,” had won the day.

Now, Trump is rewarding the UFC community with an epic party. It’s UFC Freedom 250: the first-ever pro sports event held at the White House. Fourteen of the world’s best cage fighters will bash each other’s faces on grounds that were originally graded by Thomas Jefferson.

The event has drawn a lot of Idiocracy comparisons.

Across town, June 14 will be a quiet night at the Kennedy Center, the national cultural center of the United States. The Kennedy Center hosts performances of ballet, musical theater, and opera. But, the number of events and their sales have plummeted since Trump replaced the trustees, took over as chairman, and changed the name to the “Trump Kennedy Center.” Starting in July, the venue will shut down completely for renovations. For two years.

Meryl Streep’s warning back in 2017 was snooty, but she was on to something: follow this path, and “you’ll have nothing to watch but mixed martial arts.” Indeed, when a movement like MAGA flourishes, so many good things are devalued and diminished. But not the glorification of violence.

So, on June 14, if you want to fight the power: read a novel. Play an instrument. Go dancing. Do whatever makes you feel whole, and try not to get into any fights.

Get 80% off forever

Having spent a few years in Ecuador and Peru, I’m used to being casually referred to as a gringo. But, it was strange at first.

My first experience in Latin America was 10 years ago, in a small city in the Peruvian highlands. Very few foreigners pass through the area, and I stood out. I became aware of how interesting my presence was to the locals during a trip to a hair salon. After I got my haircut and paid, the stylist asked me to take a photo with her. Confused, I obliged. Then, one by one, everyone else in the salon came over to get their own photos.

I learned that I was a gringo, and an object of curiosity. Men would lean out of their car windows as they drove by and shout: “GRINGOOO!”

While any word seems aggressive when it’s shouted at you, I was assured by my hosts that gringo doesn’t carry any negative connotations. But really, the meaning of the word depends on where you are and who you ask.

Gringo comes from 18th-century Spain,¹ originating from griego, meaning Greek. Similar to the English phrase “it’s Greek to me,” griego/gringo referred to foreign speech, and then to foreign people. The word went out of common use in Spain, but spread to Mexico and then throughout Latin America.

My early associations with gringo are from old Western films. I hear a Mexican gunslinger growling the word at his Anglo opponent. The gringo face I see? Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s Dollar Trilogy films. He was actually referred to as Blondie and Joe, not gringo. But, there were plenty of gringo Westerns, like Song of the Gringo (1936), The Fighting Gringo (1939), Adios Gringo (1965), and Savage Gringo (1966). And who could forget 1968’s Requiem for a Gringo?

More recently, we’ve had Mel Gibson in 2012’s Get the Gringo, Charlize Theron in 2018’s Gringo, and a 2024 Netflix series called The Gringo Hunters. Most of these are quite violent, perhaps contributing to or reflecting the negative associations with the word in the United States. Comedian Brendan Schaub didn’t help — his 2022 release The Gringo Papi is widely considered one of the worst stand-up specials ever produced.

In most places, gringo is considered a neutral term.

In Brazil, gringo means foreigner, regardless of nationality or race. In other parts of South America, the word refers specifically to US-Americans. Elsewhere, it’s used for any White or fair-skinned person.

In Mexico, a gringo is someone from north of the border. In the US, the term is most often used by Latinos to refer to Anglo Americans. The term may also be used — playfully or insultingly — by Latinos to refer to other Latinos who don’t speak much Spanish or who aren’t in touch with their roots.

Of course, any informal word for a race or a nationality can be objectionable if it’s hurled as an insult. Thus, I’ve always been reluctant about gringo.

In the US, words that label groups of people are routinely scrutinized and reconsidered, so it should come as no surprise that gringo has run into controversy.

In 2022, Mary Casillas Salas, mayor of Chula Vista, California, told city council member John McCann: “You’re such a gringo.” This was in response to his saying that the food in a Mexican restaurant was too spicy.

McCann filed a complaint with the city, writing:

“Mayor Casillas Salas insulted me by calling me a racial slur ‘Gringo’... I felt shocked by her statement since it was aimed at diminishing me because of my ethnicity and race.”

McCann, a Republican, must be horrified by some of the racial language his own party leaders use.

The city concluded that Salas’s comment was “inappropriate” but not discriminatory. Later that year, McCann was elected to succeed Salas as mayor.

In South America, many travelers and immigrants from North America, Europe, and elsewhere embrace the gringo label. They make “Gringos in ___” Facebook groups and complain about getting ripped off by “gringo prices.”

Meanwhile, you’ll find countless videos and articles on topics like “how to avoid looking like a gringo.” If gringo is defined as foreigner, these titles are innocuous. But, the word’s association with Whiteness makes things weird. I don’t want to be in a “White people” Facebook group, and I don’t want to “learn how to avoid looking White.”

So, I’m sometimes turned off by the way gringo is used.

In the US, we spend a lot of time discussing labels. We’re taught that words have power, words can be weapons. Words get canceled. Thus, we deliberately move terms in and out of our personal lexicons to reflect our values. And many of us would be hesitant to use any slang word that indicates race or nationality.

In Peru, where I live now, people are much more casual about labels. For example, my partner is ethnically half Chinese, and her friends and co-workers call her China (Spanish for Chinese, pronounced Chee-nah). As in, “Hola, China!” She thinks nothing of it.

Back in my first visit to Peru, I received a surprising introduction to how casually the term gringo is tossed around. Dining out with my host family, the restaurant staff asked if they could film us for a commercial. They took some footage of me shooting pool (missing a shot).

Later, I found the commercial online and was amazed to hear the word “gringo” uttered during the precise moment in which my face appeared on-screen. Here’s what they said:

“La Cabaña es el mejor lugar — para los amigos, para la familia, para los cumpleaños, para los gringos, y para toda la gente que sabe comer rico.”

The translation:

La Cabaña is the best place — for friends, family, birthdays, gringos, and everyone who knows how to eat well.

Naturally, I filed a complaint.² Plus, their food was too spicy.

Footnotes

¹The most well-known origin stories for the word “gringo” involve the phrases “green go” and “green grows.” However, these are considered folk etymologies, i.e. transformations of unfamiliar words to create relationships with familiar words. The earliest recorded uses of “gringo” relate to “griego.”

²This was a joke. I did not file a complaint against the restaurant.

Get 80% off forever

I first encountered Latin America’s stacked-tomb cemetery style a few years ago in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Since then, I’ve visited more cemeteries in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

As a traveler and photographer, I’m drawn to the beauty, form, and character of stacked cemeteries. As a former urban planner, I’m enamored by the efficient use of space.

A stacked cemetery is made up of paths and walls. The walls contain slots, known as niches. Each niche holds the remains of a deceased individual. This above-ground entombment method, brought by the Spanish, is common throughout Latin America.

A tomb wall usually has four or more rows of niches. A major cemetery contains dozens or hundreds of walls.

Tomb walls are similar to columbariums, interment structures that are more common in other parts of the world. Like the Latin American stacked cemetery style, a columbarium also contains walls with niches. The difference is that Latin American tomb walls contain entire corpses, while columbariums hold urns with cremated remains.

Cremation isn’t common in Latin American nations with majority Catholic populations. Catholicism previously outlawed cremation, and as recently as 2016, the Vatican stated that “the Church insistently recommends that the bodies of the deceased be buried.”

“Buried” does not necessarily mean “underground.”

In a large Latin American city, cremation may not be widely available or preferred, while a graveyard would quickly run out of space. Thus, a stacked cemetery is an ideal design.

In a graveyard, each plot demands around 24 square feet (2.2 sq m). In a stacked cemetery, that amount of space holds dozens of tombs. Yet, the setting doesn’t feel crowded. The grounds can be densely populated, but also pleasantly spread out and full of greenery.

In the past year, my partner and I visited two cemeteries in Ecuador and one in Peru. All three are beautiful, in different ways.

The Patrimonial Cemetery of Cuenca, Ecuador

Cuenca, Ecuador, is one of South America’s most aesthetically pleasing cities, featuring a splendid historic downtown. Everywhere you look, there’s a wonderful level of detail and craftsmanship in elements like doors, windows, and balconies.

Cuenca’s Patrimonial Cemetery meets the lofty standards of design and care that the city is known for. The walls, statues, and mausoleums are polished and clean, and the landscaping is meticulous.

Even the older tombstones are well-maintained, and each one is unique.

Across from the cemetery, the street is lined with florists and artisan workshops that work with marble, metal, and glass to create tombstones and grave displays.

Although each tomb offers only a small space to work with, there’s room for creativity. The front face can be painted or plated with a tombstone. Then, there’s a small ledge for creating a 3D display or adorning with ornaments or flowers. In front of that, a glass plate or decorative grill is sometimes added.

An entire wall of artistic, well-kept tombstones creates a gorgeous aesthetic.

General Cemetery of Guayaquil, Ecuador

Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city, is not as scenic as Cuenca. However, the General Cemetery of Guayaquil is one of the most famous and beautiful cemeteries in South America.

The General Cemetery covers 17 hectares and contains over 144,000 wall niches, 133,000 graves, and 1,047 mausoleums.

The cemetery’s nickname is The White City. The walls (made from a mixture of lime, sand, and gypsum) shimmer brightly under the intense equatorial sunshine. Marble tombstones and statues add to the abundance of white.

The cemetery’s color scheme also includes the blue sky and the greens of the grass, palm trees, and surrounding hillsides.

The General Cemetery was founded in 1823 with a three-tier class system. The wealthy hired Italian sculptors to design elaborate mausoleums; the middle class purchased niches in the tomb walls; and the poor were buried in a traditional graveyard on the outskirts of the cemetery.

Today, the old graves on the hillside are in crowded disarray, with tombstones and crosses pointing in all directions.

Presbyter Matías Maestro Cemetery in Lima, Peru

After visiting two bright, immaculate cemeteries in Ecuador, we encountered a different vibe in Lima, Peru’s Presbyter Matías Maestro Cemetery (PMMC).

It’s a gray, eerie place.

This is the oldest municipal cemetery in the Americas, inaugurated in 1808. Its vast network of walls contains around 220,000 burial niches. There are also 766 mausoleums and 92 historic monuments.

PMMC’s focal point is the Crypt of Heroes Mausoleum. The crypt was built to honor those who died in the 1879–1884 War of the Pacific, a conflict between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.

Most of the cemetery feels old and worn down.

Lima is in a desert that receives virtually no rainfall (less than one inch annually). In wealthy districts, plenty of labor and precious water are allocated to maintaining trees and grass in public spaces. Elsewhere, the default ground cover is bare earth.

PMMC is not located in a wealthy area and doesn’t receive the level of care that would keep it clean and green. As a result, the cemetery is full of empty landscaping strips and unruly shrubs. Many of the paths, walls, and tombstones are cracked, fading, and dirty.

Lima’s cemetery is not pristine and tidy like the others we visited. Yet, it’s the most captivating. More so than in Cuenca and Guayaquil’s lovely cemeteries, PMMC feels like a sacred place.

A green, perfectly-maintained cemetery has the feel of a nice public park. Meanwhile, in Lima’s cemetery, it’s impossible to ignore the presence of the dead.

The gray tombstones against the occasional splash of floral color, the cracked pathways, and Lima’s ever-gray sky — these elements create a setting that’s both disturbing and alluring.

The Charity of Lima, the group that runs the cemetery, embraces the spookiness. They offer nighttime tours that celebrate the cemetery’s dark imagery and legends.

The presence of vultures was particularly poignant, and maybe a little unnerving.

In the United States, cemeteries and graveyards occupy around two million acres of land.

It’s lovely to imagine having your own piece of earth to rest in for eternity. But, continuously providing this option to the masses is obviously not sustainable.

Around the world, the cemetery land use crunch is largely being addressed by the growing popularity of cremation. In the US, the cremation rate has risen from 3.6% in 1960 to over 60% today.

While cremation is a more practical modern practice compared to underground burial, it deprives mourners of having a special place to visit. A stacked cemetery, meanwhile, offers a compromise: a compact, efficient home for the dead that’s also a beautiful destination for mourners.

When I first read about the opening of the BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham, I knew I had to visit. From early descriptions and photos, it was clear that this place was something special — a magnificent Hindu temple that happened to be located in suburban New Jersey, not far from my hometown.

On a frigid afternoon in January, 2025, hours before a snowstorm hit, my partner and I visited the temple. Here’s an account of everything I found most fascinating, impressive, and disturbing about this marvel of modern architecture.

Why New Jersey?

Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) is a Hindu denomination that worships the yogi Swaminarayan (1781–1830) as God.

Akshardham means eternal abode. Thus, the name of the temple in Robbinsville — Swaminarayan Akshardham — names the temple as an eternal abode for Swaminarayan.

The BAPS organization is internationally oriented, with more than 1,300 mandirs (Hindu temples) and 5,000 centers worldwide. These include spectacular temples in major cities like Nairobi, London, Toronto, Chicago… and, of course, Robbinsville, New Jersey.

Actually, Robbinsville isn’t a city at all, but rather a township with a population of 15,000. Now, this little town is home to the largest BAPS temple of them all, as well as the organization’s North American headquarters.

Robbinsville was a surprisingly perfect fit for a 185-acre Hindu temple campus.

Robbinsville is small, but you’re never far from a crowd in New Jersey. Robbinsville is close to medium-sized cities like Trenton and Princeton and is centrally located between Philadelphia and New York. Proximity to these major metro areas (and their international airports) made the site reasonably accessible for international visitors — first, for the volunteers who traveled from afar to build the temple, and now, for the tourists and Hindu pilgrims who visit.

Meanwhile, New Jersey is both the most densely populated US state and the one with the highest proportional population of people identifying as Indian (4.6%) and Hindu (3%). Just north of Robbinsville, Middlesex County is home to a district known as “Little India,” as well as one of the highest proportions of Indian American residents of any US county (over 40%).

So, it’s easy to see why central New Jersey was a desirable location for BAPS. But, it’s surprising that they were able to gain permission to build something so grand in a place like Robbinsville.

Robbinsville is charming, with a distinct small-town feel. The neighboring town of Windsor, just outside of the temple site, is full of beautiful historic homes.

“When you come over the hill from West Windsor, you are looking at what the town looked like 200 years ago, with farms and fields, and here we were proposing to build a large Hindu temple that might be visible from that space.”

— Thomas Halm, who represented BAPS in the Robbinsville approval process, via Community News

If you have any experience working for or against the approval of a major construction project in a small town, you know that such ventures are often enthusiastically opposed by local officials and residents. The intensity of the opposition is proportional to the smallness of the town and the bigness of the project.

In Robbinsville, a foreign group wanted to build a massive place of worship in a very small town. The project shouldn’t have had a chance. Yet, according to local reporting, the township’s population and decision-makers were open-minded and receptive.

Throughout the approval process, BAPS representatives successfully responded to residents’ concerns. This included floating a blimp to the proposed height of the temple in order to analyze the project’s potential effects on local views.

“Wherever they could see the blimp, they modified their plans so that the building would be invisible to the surrounding area.” — Thomas Halm

Although the campus is enormous and the temple is 191 ft (58 m) high, the site is mostly concealed by woods — a sort of hidden wonderland, just around the corner.

Construction and controversy

After gaining the necessary permissions, BAPS broke ground in 2014.

The following year, an eight-year construction process began, powered largely by 12,500 volunteers who came from all over the world to work for days, weeks, months, or even years. Many had no relevant experience, but they were assigned serious tasks. Volunteers helped with everything from design and engineering to stone carving, providing the bulk of the project’s skill and muscle.

The details of the construction process, and the results, are incredible.

An estimated 4.7 million labor hours went into building the temple and campus. The mandir’s size of 655,591 square meters makes it the second-largest Hindu temple in the world.

The volunteer workforce saved BAPS millions in labor expenses, but the project still cost $96 million. This price tag almost seems low, considering that the mandir is made primarily from 68,000 cubic feet of Italian Carrara marble, a luxury material that’s in limited supply. The marble, along with limestone and other materials, was quarried in Europe, sent to India to be worked on by craftspeople, and then shipped to Robbinsville for assembly.

It’s hard to comprehend that most of the construction and craftwork was performed by non-professionals. However, volunteerism is a key tenet of Hinduism, characterized by the Sanskrit word seva. Seva refers to selfless service — performing helpful deeds with no expectation of reward.

On the walls around the campus, there are photos of individual volunteers, along with their inspirational tales of travel and service. The BAPS website says that the Akshardham is “the epitome of volunteerism and serves as a symbol to show the value of sacrificing one’s time and efforts towards bettering the community.”

The construction of the temple is a shining triumph of seva, but accusations of labor exploitation suggest that the volunteer experience may have varied significantly from person to person.

In 2021, a group of workers filed a lawsuit accusing BAPS of luring poor workers from India to New Jersey, then forcing them to work 87 hours per week for a wage of around $1 per hour. Allegedly, BAPS targeted low-caste workers, confiscated their passports upon arrival, and confined them (under threat of punishment) to the worksite during their stay.

At least two deaths occurred as a result of temple construction activities: a 57-year-old man died in 2022 from an unspecified “construction accident,” and a 16-year-old boy died from a 45-foot fall in 2017.

In their response to the allegations of labor exploitation, BAPS stated that the workers were volunteers, not employees, and that the organization provided financial support for their families in India. As of the most recent reporting on the case, the lawsuit is still pending.

Visiting BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham

Activist Sunita Viswanath, founder of the group Hindus for Human Rights, told NBC News in 2023:

“I would want anybody who goes to the temple to really ask themselves, really do some soul searching, about going to a temple where there are such serious allegations of labor and human rights violations.”

Having read a little about the allegations before our visit, I had mixed feelings as I took in the temple’s splendor. I also contemplated the enormous wealth and power, in the hands of religious leaders, that’s required to bring such a project to fruition.

Nevertheless, we chose to visit, and it was quite a sight to behold.

The temple is sensational. Despite its grand size, the level of detail is extraordinary. Every centimeter of marble is beautifully and intricately carved.

The temple is even more stunning on the inside, where there are over 13,000 individually carved pieces, 58 decorative ceiling designs, and more than 10,000 statues.

Visitors must remove their shoes before entering, and photography is not allowed. Thus, there’s no click-clack of shoes and no queues of selfie-takers. Even when crowded, the place can maintain a calm, hushed ambiance.

Visitors may also be quieted by the realization that what they’re seeing defies description. The temple is so detailed and vast — simply mesmerizing.

Being inside the temple is like drifting through a shimmering mandala. The space is mostly open, but organized into a series of spaces partially separated by pillars and shrines dedicated to Hindu deities.

There’s no blank space — every iota of material is a tiny work of art, within a larger work of art, within a boundless masterpiece.

In my life and travels, I’ve come across countless beautiful places of worship. In many places, they tend to be the most impressive examples of local architecture. Usually, they’re very old.

The BAPS temple in Robbinsville is brand new.

If you visit, you’ll surely be impressed. Additionally, you might find food for thought in the temple’s newness, and its controversies — questions about the interplay of religion, class, and money in the modern world.

Get 80% off forever

In the late 90s, Bill Gates was a weird sort of cultural icon. He didn’t score touchdowns or collaborate with Dr. Dre or beat up bad guys in movies. He wasn’t good-looking or charismatic. He wasn’t constantly on camera.

He was rich.

Bill Gates had more money than anyone else for such a long time (continuously between 1995 and 2007) that world’s richest person was more like an official title than a temporary status. John Paul was the Pope, and Bill Gates was the richest person on earth.

I know, I know — his riches weren’t the initial driver of his fame. He cofounded Microsoft. He changed the world. And it would be impossible to overstate his work’s impact on society. Before he topped Forbes’ The World’s Billionaires list in ’95, he was already a massively important and famous person. Yet, over time, being the richest man on earth became more iconic than the achievements that earned him that status.

In the 90s, I couldn’t tell you much about Microsoft. But I knew who the world’s richest person was.

Titanic was the #1 film for 15 straight weeks in 1997, Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998, and Bill Gates’ wealth topped $100 billion in 1999.

To be clear, my memories from this era are those of an adolescent. But I remember viewing $100 billion and 70 home runs in a similar light: special cultural achievements. Milestones that we, the little people, could share in and celebrate.

The mainstream media in the 90s and early 2000s didn’t cast billionaires as villains. For the most part, they still don’t. Rather, we’re fed stories about companies that started in garages, illusions about bootstraps and sparks of genius.

They (the billionaires and the media) love to let us in on little bits of wisdom and slices of life from the “elites.”

Bill Gates reads 50 books per year!

Mark Zuckerberg wears hoodies… in the office!

Jeff Bezos used to hold staff meetings at Barnes & Noble!

The obsession with their early years, daily routines, and spending habits suggests we could all become obscenely wealthy if we just followed their lead.

The messaging is even preachier when the topic is money. An endless stream of commentary tracks the investment strategies of Warren Buffett (net worth $148 billion). And for decades, writers and interviewers have fawned over his humility and frugality.

Skip the avocado toast on Tuesday, wake up a billionaire on Wednesday, right?

My favorite quote I came across while writing this article came from the media mogul Ted Turner:

Don’t think too hard about your wealth in relation to mine. That can only lead to trouble. Instead, learn to be humble, like I have (with my $10 billion).

The thing is, we can emulate their humility, their morning routines, and their investment strategies, but that won’t make us more like them. Because, while most of us have some drive to grow our monetary wealth, we don’t have what it takes to become billionaires. And I mean that as a compliment.

First, there’s the path to a billion dollars, likely to include spurning partners, crushing competition, and exploiting the heck out of a lot of people and resources. Then, there’s the reality of keeping hold of that much wealth in a world where children starve, where people sleep on the streets.

That level of hoarding is a sickness. And eventually, the little people begin to recognize it as such.

Every billionaire knows that when the threat of being eaten by the poor starts getting too real, it’s time to s̶t̶o̶p̶ ̶e̶v̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶a̶x̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶b̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶n̶e̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶b̶e̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶1̶0̶ ̶d̶i̶g̶i̶t̶s̶ rebrand your image.

So, they show the public that they’re one of the good ones — a philanthropist.

Pull up a list of billionaires, pick one, and find a bio. More often than not, you’ll read that so-and-so Sally Billionaire is an entrepreneur and a philanthropist.

It’s a funny word — philanthropist — because there’s a big gap between the dictionary definition and the way the word is used. A philanthropist is someone who donates money to charity or who “makes an active effort to promote human welfare.” Yet, you’ll rarely hear the term applied to social workers, community volunteers, or middle-class folks who give generously. Rather, the people who keep more money than anyone else — those are our philanthropists.

Own the politicians, avoid any meaningful tax burden, flick a few billion dollars at charity — and you’re a philanthropist.

If we didn’t let them “give” their money to charity, rather than “pay” taxes, how would we know that they’re friends, not food?

And so, in 2010, three of the most tenderhearted billionaires made it easy for their comrades to communicate their good intentions. It’s called The Giving Pledge.

The Giving Pledge was founded by Bill Gates, his then-wife Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett. It’s a voluntary, non-binding *promise* that billionaires can *publicly* make to *eventually* give away most of their money. Maybe soon, maybe after they’re dead.

As an original pledger, Gates sets the tone. He says he’s given away more than $100 billion, but “still has more to give.”

Here’s what it looks like when a billionaire goes full philanthropist:

Since deciding to give all his money away, he’s managed to trim his wealth from $53 billion to $115 billion. It’s inspirational.

Putting sarcasm aside, the word I would really use to describe this behavior is trashy. Trashy people can be poor or rich, and I’d argue that the billionaires — especially the ones who palled around with Jeffrey Epstein — are the trashiest among us. Trashy people lack class. They behave indecently. They’re often obsessed with money, and want everyone to know how they’re spending it — whether it’s on a fur coat, or a Giving Pledge.

At this point, let me pause to acknowledge a few things. Bill Gates is one of the biggest charitable givers, by any standard, in world history. And he doesn’t just throw money around — he’s the chair of the Gates Foundation, actively turning his philanthropic ideals into major initiatives around the world that improve health and fight poverty. He also pays more taxes than most billionaires and calls for higher taxes on the rich.

But… “saving the world” can’t work this way — with the top 1% owning more wealth than 95% of the human race and a tiny number of ultra-elites deciding who gets saved, which diseases get cured, and what progress looks like in developing nations. In this scenario, the one we’re already living in, we’re subject to the shifting moods of the Gates’s and Musk’s and Bezos’s of the world. And these are fickle individuals with questionable motives, at best.

In the 2024 US presidential election, Bill Gates backed Kamala Harris. Yet, in 2025, there he was at a White House dinner, seated next to the First Lady, thanking President Trump for his “incredible leadership.” The same president who dissolved USAID, a move that the Center for Global Development estimates could lead to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. That makes Trump the antithesis of everything Gates claims to stand for.

Perhaps, like so many world leaders, Gates thinks there’s more to be gained (in his case, for his philanthropic causes) by cozying up to Trump, rather than standing up to him. I would disagree.

In October, he did another favor for Trump when he published some surprising comments about climate change, blaming a “doomsday outlook” on diverting innovation away from “improving lives.” He argued that “from the standpoint of improving lives, using more energy is a good thing.” And then, more recently, he announced the Horizon1000 initiative, a partnership with OpenAI (a notorious energy consumption beast) to bring AI healthcare into 1,000 clinics throughout Africa. Separately, he’s talking about using AI to turn Africa into a “significant net food exporter.”

So, buckle up, Africa. AI is coming, along with its ravenous data centers and unregulated privacy concerns. A 70-year-old white guy from Seattle is in charge.

Maybe Bill Gates wants what’s best for us. But no unelected individual should have this much power to simply dream up their own vision of the future and impose it on the rest of us.

Especially when they’re compromised by the most appalling sex crime scandal in history.

When Gates had dinner at the White House, it was a win for Trump.

When he backtracked on climate change, it was a win for Trump.

Maybe appeasing the president and shifting on climate policy are just parts of his strategy, and that strategy is rooted entirely in helping humanity. Or, maybe, he was getting nervous about the blowup over the Epstein files.

For anyone implicated in Epstein’s crimes and sins, being on Trump’s good side could conceivably make all the difference in determining what secrets are released. It could be the difference between a redacted email address and a world-shattering revelation.

So, what do we know about Bill Gates and Epstein?

For starters, the documented relationship between the two men began in 2011. That was several years after Epstein’s initial wave of criminal issues related to sexual abuse and pedophilia.

Having limited contact with Epstein in the 2010s doesn’t necessarily mean much. He was everywhere. However, the more contact you had, the worse you look.

Disturbing Gates/Epstein revelations include:

• Gates said in 2019 that he “didn’t have any business relationship or friendship” with Epstein.

• In fact, Gates’ association with Epstein lasted for a period of years, although their interactions may have been sparse.

• There’s no evidence that Gates ever visited Epstein’s island, but he did ride on Epstein’s jet, at least once.

• He visited Epstein’s New York home at least three times. After one visit, he emailed a colleague that “A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.”

• In unsent email drafts, Epstein wrote about Gates getting an STD from a prostitute, spreading the disease to his wife, and planning to covertly provide her with medicine.

• Melinda French Gates has indicated that her divorce from Bill was at least in part due to his relationship with Epstein. She said she met Epstein once, because “I wanted to see who this man was… he was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards.”

Clearly, Epstein gave Gates at least a glimpse of his evildoings. And the way Gates carried on afterward was a major red flag for his wife.

Gates claims he only met with Epstein in the hopes of attracting philanthropic donations. It’s a bad excuse.

When you’re a billionaire, it’s pretty easy to make sure you’re vetting your philanthropic partners. And you don’t need to accept a pedophile’s gifts, let alone attend his late-night parties.

The story we’re expected to believe is that one of the richest men on earth pledged to give all his money away, kept getting richer anyway, and was also so desperate to raise even more money that he was compelled to pursue a years-long friendship with a human trafficker who gave off “evil personified” vibes.

Chasing money so recklessly— even if it’s for charity — well, it’s just trashy, Bill. Unless, of course, you’re lying. In which case, you’re something much worse than trashy.

Either way: you’re compromised. And it’s no longer fair to expect us to trust your vision for humanity.

If you really want to help, give away all your billions, like you said you would. Relinquish control over how that money is spent. Throw your full weight behind the movement to abolish billionaires by taxing 100% of wealth over $1 billion.

Get out before it’s too late. Because eventually, when the people have nothing else to eat, they will eat the rich. And the Epstein class should be the first course.

Get 80% off forever

In March of 2024, my partner and I spent a few days in La Paz, Bolivia. Honestly, it was a very messy trip. We had scary visa issues getting in and out, had to cancel the main event of our trip (the Uyuni salt flats) due to the country shutting down for a national event (census taking), and our bodies never fully adjusted to life at altitudes well over 3,000 m.

We did, however, enjoy exploring La Paz. The city is chaotic, crowded, beautiful, and historic. We didn’t spot a single McDonald’s, Starbucks, or KFC.

The highlight of experiencing La Paz was Mi Teleférico, the city’s incredible aerial cable car public transportation network. It functions like a subway system that floats above the city, rather than rumbles beneath it.

From ground level, we enjoyed looking up at the cable cars whisking passengers around the city. The system’s benefits are obvious: the cars are quiet, emissions-free (powered by hydroelectricity and equipped with solar panels), and provide tremendous traffic relief. The rides are affordable for the masses, too: most trips cost less than $1 USD.

Cruising around La Paz via cable car, we were amazed by the variety and breadth of the views. The city is enormous.

The current population estimate of the La Paz metro area is 2.2 million, but the city feels much bigger than that number suggests.

The city fills a sweeping canyon and much of the surrounding mountainsides. Some areas are built tall and dense, while the panoramic sprawl is incredibly vast.

The mountainside settlements are restricted by geology, but they fill as much space as possible. Homes are nearly stacked one on top of the other, roads are steep, and building foundations are right up against rock faces.

Aerial views provide glimpses of everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly. From above, one gets a thorough, honest look at a city, including its battered roofs, abused waterways, and informal dump sites.

In the image below, La Paz appears almost contorted. Sprawling neighborhoods tumble and swirl between the mountains and the high-rise buildings downtown.

Mi Teleférico is the world’s longest aerial cable car system, and it’s considered the first of its kind to function as the primary public transportation system for a major city.

This unique form of public transit is becoming more common around the world, especially in Latin America. Guayaquil, Ecuador; Medellín, Colombia; and Mexico City all have their own major cable car systems. In cities where it’s essentially “too late” to develop an extensive subway system, cable cars offer amazing opportunities to improve mobility and reduce motor vehicle dependency.

Here’s a time-lapse video we took during a cable car ride in La Paz. This is around 15 minutes of footage compressed into 48 seconds.

Get 80% off forever

In 2024, a clip from a 1978 Lucille Ball TV appearance began circulating on social media. In the 67-second video, Ball repeatedly tells a man named David to stop putting his hands on young women.

It’s a fascinating and satisfying bit of footage — and it deserves a closer look.

Here’s the clip:

The video is from an episode of the talk-variety TV show America Alive! Ball’s appearance was a 40-minute Q&A session with an adoring group of UCLA theatre arts students.

For some young people who come across this clip today, “Take your hands off her, David” may be the first line they ever hear the legendary actress deliver. In the brief, grainy video, they’ll get a good representation of who Lucille Ball was — a total badass.

To understand the clip, it’s also important to recognize what a mega-star Ball was in 1978. I Love Lucy (1951–57), which she co-created and starred in, had been the biggest show on TV during its run, and remained ubiquitous in reruns for the next five decades. Variety recently ranked it #1 in their list of the Greatest 100 TV Shows of All Time.

Ball’s zany comedic acting was iconic, but her legend is just as much about standing up for others, breaking down barriers, and reaching unprecedented heights as a businesswoman in the entertainment business.

To get I Love Lucy on the air, she had to overcome opposition from the CBS network to cast her real-life Cuban-American husband, Desi Arnaz, as her on-screen husband. When she was pregnant, she wrote that into the show too — even though the network wouldn’t let her say the word “pregnant.”

She was the first woman to head a major Hollywood studio. In that role, she helped make Star Trek happen, sticking with the show even after NBC rejected its first pilot episode.

She was a force. And, unsurprisingly for a woman who achieved such extraordinary success, she had a reputation for being “tough.”

According to her friend and collaborator Carol Burnett, Ball’s personality shifted after her divorce from Arnaz, when she had to take more control over her TV career.

According to Burnett, Ball told her:

“He would deal with the scripts… All I had to do was come in on Monday and be Lucy. I didn’t have to do anything but perform… then we got divorced. That’s when they put the S (“Balls”) on the end of my name.”

Burnett elaborated:

“She had to get tough. No one would listen to crazy little Lucy, so she had to be truthful. And it was unheard of for the women to do that… she never censored herself from here to here (pointing from head to mouth). Whatever she said, she was thinking. And sometimes it came out like, whew!”

Burnett’s description matches what we see in the viral America Alive! clip.

At the time, Ball was 67 years old, but still very much a massive celebrity. In any room full of stars, she was likely to be the most famous and accomplished person there. And she wasn’t the type of woman you wanted to misbehave in front of.

Would you take your hands off her, David?

The clip of Lucille Ball on America Alive! shows confrontational moments between Ball and one of the show’s hosts, David Sheehan.

In the 67-second cut, we get just a brief glimpse of what went on that day. However, footage of the entire episode is also available. In the full recording, we get a more complex look at a woman who could flawlessly play the part of a feminist hero, even if it wasn’t her preferred role.

The show begins with Sheehan giving Ball this glowing introduction:

“…The situation comedy format that Lucy perfected is the dominant kind of program style on today’s primetime television, and Lucy’s show itself is still very much on today’s television. Nearly a half-billion people watch the show in more than 70 countries… all of which makes Lucy the most visible celebrity in the history of entertainment… we are in the company of a genuine superstar.”

Apparently, the admiration was not mutual, as Ball seemed poised to correct Sheehan the moment he stepped out of line. Perhaps, as many viewers of the clip have speculated, he had a reputation of misconduct.

Throughout the show, Sheehan and several other (male) hosts move throughout the crowd to take questions from the students. Sheehan is the only one with wandering hands.

On the first question he takes, Sheehan announces:

“We have a young lady here with an I Love Lucy t-shirt on!”

As he mentions the shirt, he reaches out and touches it. Lucy immediately interjects:

“Take your hands off her, David. I can see the shirt.”

The audience laughs loudly, but Ball isn’t smiling.

Sheehan stammers: “Oh! Excuse me. I thought I’d try to…” and Ball cuts him off to address the student directly: “What’s your name?”

Moments later, Sheehan introduces another student, and he’s handsy again. With his right hand presenting the mic, his left hand moves to the woman’s lower back.

He attempts an introduction: “Hi there, we’re here — ” and Ball immediately interrupts, in an exasperated voice: “David, will you take your hands away?”

David lifts the offending hand over his head and waves it around, as if it’s some foreign object he can’t control. Nonsensically, he mumbles: “It’s early in the morning…” as if inappropriate touching simply can’t be helped before that second cup of coffee.

Ball bulldozes her way through the awkwardness: “What’s your name, dear? Give her the mic!”

Later in the show, the sequence plays out two more times, with Sheehan sidling up to young women in the crowd and touching them needlessly. Each time, Ball immediately calls him out, and he sheepishly withdraws.

The audience laughs. Ball does not.

You might think that Sheehan could have self-corrected after the first few rounds of shaming. But, his handsiness was probably a deep-seated habit, one that was normalized in Hollywood culture. Richard Dawson, host of Family Feud in the 70s and 80s, used to kiss all of the show’s female contestants, on the mouth. Bob Barker, host of The Price Is Right, would make women reach into his pocket to fish out their cash prizes.

What went on off-camera, of course, was often much worse.

Lucille Ball had surely seen it all, and she was ready to intervene without hesitation.

I’ve been so liberated, I have nothing to squawk about

For what it’s worth, there’s no record of David Sheehan doing anything worse than putting his arm around audience members. It’s also worth noting that in her America Alive! appearance, Ball was sharp-tongued with everyone, not just Sheehan.

As nervous students start asking their questions, Ball shouts “Go!” and “Speak up!”

One student opens with “Hollywood’s changed a lot over the years, and — ” and Ball cuts in: “How would YOU know?”

However, while her tone was coarse at times, Ball was kind and encouraging. And, her tenacious defense against the overconfident man in the room was remarkable. It’s a beautiful display of a woman extending her power to protect younger, more vulnerable women.

Yet, Ball never considered herself a feminist.

In a 1980 interview, she said:

“They can use my name for equal rights, but I don’t get out there and raise hell because I’ve been so liberated, I have nothing to squawk about.”

It’s not uncommon to hear extremely successful women talk this way. Jane Goodall said that while others viewed her as a feminist role model, she didn’t see herself that way. Outspoken entertainers like Madonna, Lady Gaga, Susan Sarandon, and many others have all declared at some point that they’re not feminists. Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, wrote an entire op-ed exploring the question: Am I a Bad Feminist?

If we take Ball’s words at face value, she felt that the exceptional success she’d enjoyed separated her from a movement that protested mistreatment. Perhaps she felt that her success itself was the most powerful message for equality that she could ever hope to deliver. I would also guess that she considered her more productive skill to be defeating sexism directly, rather than discussing it.

As a younger woman, if her assertiveness had sounded too much like disruptive activism, she could have easily derailed her unlikely ascent to the top of the entertainment industry.

In perhaps the most interesting exchange of Ball’s America Alive! appearance, a student asks a still-common question: how can I be successful in my career, while also balancing a marriage and motherhood?

Ball audibly sighs — it’s almost a groan — and responds:

“That’s not even a good question. I don’t believe that you really need an answer to that… Having children is the same no matter who you are… you can be any kind of woman, you can work in a department store, you can dig ditches, drive a truck, do anything, and be a success.”

It’s an imperfect answer, but for Lucille Ball, it was an honest one.

There’s an irony here: she’s uncomfortable answering a “feminist question,” when moments earlier she had commanded a man to take his hands off of the woman who asked that very question.

After spending a lot of time with this seemingly trivial, nearly 50-year-old video clip, here’s what I find so special about it:

The crowd is full of women, most of them aged 18–22, who want to follow in Ball’s footsteps. They want to be actors, writers, or executives. And they’ll soon face the same systemic sexism and harassment that Ball had dealt with for decades, and was still dealing with.

Imagine listening to your idol answer your question about “how to make it in show biz,” while a strange man presses his hand against your back. What lesson would you take away from that experience?

The young women wouldn’t have blamed Ball if she hadn’t intervened. It might not have even occurred to them that it was possible to intervene in that sort of situation. Fortunately, Lucille Ball was the right person for the moment. She didn’t miss a beat.

She may have felt she had “nothing to squawk about.” But she knew how to use her power.

Get 80% off forever

This post is Part 3 of a three-part series I’m generously calling “Permaculture in the City.” Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

If you’re used to composting, then throwing a banana peel into a garbage can just feels wrong. If you let it, the peel will decompose rapidly, turning back into soil and continuing nature’s cycle. That’s a much better outcome than intermingling with trash, getting sealed up in a plastic bag, weighing down a garbage truck, and filling up a landfill.

In the home I grew up in, composting was as second-nature as recycling.

Our low-effort heap in the backyard was held in place by a hard plastic enclosure and four wooden stakes. Every evening, a fresh pailful of kitchen scraps was dropped in, yet the heap never overflowed. Once or twice a year, we’d turn up the bottom with a pitchfork and remove some material to use in the garden.

In my friends’ homes, I learned that the “normal” thing to do after dinner was to scrape what was left on your plate into the garbage can. This bothered me.

At my parents’ dinner table, I learned never to put more on my plate than I knew I would finish. (It blows my mind that not every child is raised this way.) Because we rarely ate meat, any inedible scraps that were left on our plates were compostable. Plates were never scraped into the garbage can.

This was the 1990s. In those days, outside of the home, I don’t remember hearing too much about reducing waste or controlling one’s carbon footprint. But, for my parents, filling up less than one garbage bag per week for our family of four was a matter of values, and a point of pride.

That preachy prologue is just to say: I really dislike not composting.

These days, I live in an apartment in a big city. Compared to outdoor composting, the process is more challenging when working with limited space and no access to the ground. Here’s how we make it work.

My partner and I compost in an 11-gallon bin on our apartment’s tiny balcony. This is close to the smallest feasible bin size that could make composting worthwhile. A smaller container would fill up too quickly to serve as a meaningful long-term destination for food scraps.

Here’s a quick rundown on our container composting method:

• Do you keep the bin covered or uncovered? Uncovered, always.

• Does the bin have worms? Nope. Worms are great, but you can compost without them. Our process is 100% performed by microorganisms.

• Does the bin smell bad? No, never.

• Does the bin attract bugs? Yes, small flies. We keep the patio door closed next to the bin.

• What do you put in? Fruit and veggie scraps, coffee filters, coffee grounds, egg shells, and an occasional cardboard toilet paper tube.

• What do you avoid putting in? No paper with ink and no plant-based scraps that are too large or dense (avocado seeds, corn cobs, melon rinds).

• Do you balance greens (nitrogen-rich) and browns (carbon-rich)? We don’t think much about this. Most of the material we add is green, but a daily paper coffee filter seems to provide sufficient nitrogen/carbon balance.

• Do you stir? Yes, a few times per week. For container composting, stirring is essential for speeding up decomposition and preventing the container from quickly filling up.

Making compost is easy. Decomposition is a natural process you can facilitate without much effort.

For me, the most amazing aspect of composting is how dramatically the inputs are reduced in mass. When we first started this bin, we were able to add material on a daily basis for almost a year before the container was full.

Although a compost container fills up at an unbelievably slow rate, eventually, running out of space is inevitable. Sooner or later, you have to start taking stuff out so you can keep putting stuff in.

Fortunately, a successful compost bin is full of useful carbon-rich soil. The problem is, the finished product is mixed together with the recently added materials.

To remove soil from the compost, we sift it. Like all aspects of composting, it would be preferable to do this outdoors. But, we make it work.

To sift our soil, we use a colander.

We scoop small amounts of compost onto the colander, shimmy and press the soil through, and then set aside the leftover bits and pieces. We repeat this process dozens of times.

The bits and pieces that were separated during sifting are returned to the bin. The soil we collect becomes part of our houseplant potting mix.

Our finished product is seriously beautiful.

After collecting and storing compost over the past few years, we no longer need any other soil inputs for our plants. When we pot plants now, the mix contains just two elements: our compost and perlite.

Although we don’t have much room for gardening, we have a lovely collection of snake plants and a jasmine plant indoors, along with some veggies outside. We even get bird visitors who pick through our seeds. A few months ago, a tomato plant started growing in one of our unoccupied pots, and we’re fairly sure the seed was put there by one of our blackbird visitors. So, our food becomes scraps, the scraps become soil, the soil grows new food, a bird helps out… we’ve got a nice little cycle of life going, here in the big city.

Making soil from food scraps is a satisfying experience. Doing so without access to the ground outdoors is challenging, but it’s a wonderful way to stay connected to nature in a concrete jungle that often feels overwhelming and stifling.

Get 50% off forever

This post is Part 2 of a three-part series I’m generously calling “Permaculture in the City.” Read Part 1 here.

In 2016, I moved to California. The state was in its sixth year of a brutal drought that killed over 100 million trees, led to devastating wildfires, and necessitated water use restrictions.

The first time I ate in a California restaurant, instead of being greeted with the obligatory tall glass of ice water, I found a little placard on the table. It read:

“Water is precious on California’s Central Coast. Limited water supplies make it necessary to serve water only when you request it. If you would like a glass of water, please ask.”

Who knew that not being served a drink could be so refreshing?

I was coming from New Jersey suburbia, where a common sight is a sprinkler system dousing the ecological disaster that is a front lawn. While it’s raining. Or, poorly aiming its spray, soaking the sidewalk and the street.

New Jersey is water-rich, so the “water is precious” concept hasn’t really caught on there yet. Human nature: we’ll react to crises, but won’t do much to prevent them.

Now, I live in Lima, Peru — a megacity in the desert, where annual rainfall is less than one inch per year.

The H2O that runs through Lima’s taps comes mainly from rivers, along with groundwater and some small desalination operations. The rivers flow from the Andes mountains, where climate change has already eliminated half of the country’s tropical glaciers.

Lima’s water future is scary. But is the city already in a water crisis? In poor settlements around the outskirts of the city, over 1 million people live without access to the drinking water network. They might say, yes, we’re in a crisis.

Meanwhile, in the wealthier interior of the city, agua is cheap and, seemingly, abundant. And while restaurants don’t hand out free glasses of ice water, nor do I see a “water is precious” culture among Lima’s residents. There should be signs everywhere, all sorts of public outreach, encouraging water conservation. I don’t see it.

In California, water conservation was a shared experience. Here in Lima, it feels a bit more solitary. Nevertheless, at home, my wife and I choose to get kinda weird with it.

If you want to reduce water use at home, there are all sorts of steps you can take. But you’ll find the most attainable, impactful gains… in the toilet.

On average, people urinate 7.5 times per 24 hours. Modern toilets use around 1.6 gallons (6 liters) of water per flush.

Flushing 7.5 times per day comes to 2,737 flushes per year. At 1.6 gallons per flush, that’s 4,380 gallons of annual water use, per person, devoted strictly to removing “number 1.” Hence, the recommended practice, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow.”

In the privacy of your home, why not do this? Skipping just two flushes per day will reduce your annual water use by over 1,000 gallons (3,785 liters) per year.

“If it’s yellow, let it mellow” is a standard practice in any water-friendly household. If you want to take your in-home conservation efforts even further, there’s graywater recycling.

Domestic graywater is the relatively clean wastewater that runs through washing machines, tubs, and bathroom sinks. Graywater recycling involves capturing some of this water, then using it again.

Graywater is typically reused for one of two purposes: irrigation or toilet flushing.

A laundry-to-landscape (L2L) system uses washing-machine graywater (from the rinse cycle) for irrigating grass, trees, and landscaping plants. The washer hose connects to a 3-way valve that diverts some of the graywater and sends the rest to the sewer. The collected water runs through a filter that screens out solid waste. Then it’s piped into a storage tank or directly into mulch basins (trenches filled with mulch) in the ground.

Managing an L2L system has its challenges. You have to consider the chemical load that’s flowing into the soil, avoid overwatering, and effectively use either gravity or pumping to get the water to its exit points.

On the plus side, the plumbing component of an L2L system is quite simple, requiring only minor rerouting. For handy homeowners, this is an inexpensive DIY job.

The other reuse destination for graywater is the toilet.

There are systems that capture graywater from sinks or washing machines, then run that water into the toilet tank. There, it supplements the potable water that flows into the tank and is used for flushing.

Graywater-to-toilet is a very cool concept, but these systems are complicated and expensive. The system needs to provide some form of water treatment, because only clean water should move through a toilet tank.

While untreated graywater isn’t safe for a toilet tank, it is safe for a toilet bowl. Thus, graywater recycling can be as simple as capturing water in a bucket and flushing it directly through the bowl, skipping the tank.

That’s our system: buckets.

Our washing machine doesn’t send its used water directly into the sewer pipe. Instead, the graywater flows into a sink.

This arrangement makes it very easy to collect graywater. Whenever we run the washing machine, we fill up two buckets of water.

The washing machine is our main graywater source, along with dirty mop water and dehumidifier water.

That’s part 1 of our system: collecting the graywater. Part 2 is using it.

Flushing a toilet with a bucket of water is as simple as rapidly pouring the water into the bowl. If you pour slowly, the bowl will simply fill up. But if you pour a lot of water all at once, you apply the necessary pressure that creates a flush.

This video shows the bucket-flush in action and describes the mechanics.

That’s all there is to it. Washer to bucket, bucket to toilet.

We first started doing this soon after we moved into our apartment, three years ago. It didn’t occur to me at the time that we were creating a daily habit that would endure for years. Now, I estimate we’ve flushed our toilet this way more than 2,000 times, saving over 3,000 gallons of water.

If you care about your water footprint, the most significant change you can make (if you haven’t done so already) is to reduce your meat and dairy consumption. You can also conserve brain cells and water simultaneously by avoiding interactions with artificial intelligence. Every short “conversation” with ChatGPT uses around 500 milliliters of precious water. Sigh.

Obsessed? Need to save a few more gallons? Grab a bucket.

Dumping buckets of water into the toilet isn’t for everybody. It’s weird. But in our home, it’s become a meaningful practice. A small bit of effort, repeated over and over, that adds up to make a significant difference.

Get 50% off forever

In January 2017, I set off on a memorable road trip after completing my first semester of grad school. After spending my first few decades of life on the East Coast, California offered exciting travel opportunities. Compared to the mid-Atlantic traffic grid I grew up in, western highways were so much more inviting.

I traveled down the California coast, along the Mexico border, and into Southeast Arizona, where I spent a week volunteering on a little farm, planting garlic, and sleeping in this camper:

At night, I could hear coyotes howling.

Woefully unprepared, I learned how cold desert nights can be. I slept fully clothed, twisted up as tightly as possible in my sleeping bag. Whenever my body would hit REM sleep and my muscles relaxed, I would shiver awake again.

A few workers joined me during the afternoons, but I had ample time alone to enjoy the beautiful, remote surroundings.

On my way back to California, I stopped to spend a night in Western Arizona with some new friends I had met through couchsurfing.com.

They invited me to camp with them in the desert on the night of a unique local tradition: a massive Christmas tree bonfire.

I arrived before sunset and watched the pile of trees grow larger and larger. Lots of families came with their single trees, while occasionally someone would unload an entire trailer-full.

Whoever was keeping track reported that the final tally was 430 trees. Considering that quantity, the pre-lit pile looked less mountainous than I would have expected. Many of the trees were bundled, which compacted the space.

However, once the pile was set ablaze, the sight was impressive. Glorious, even.

Standing anywhere near the fire, the heat was palpable.

Personally, I’ve never bought a Christmas tree, and if I did, I would find a more eco-friendly way to dispose of it. That said, hundreds of flaming Christmas trees ablaze on a desert night was a memorable sight.

Some travelers carry high-quality camera gear and take “serious” photos. Others snap an endless stream of grinning iPhone selfies in front of every mildly interesting site they pass by. Either way, most of us consider some form of photography to be a vital part of travel.

High-quality phone cameras are ubiquitous today, but they’re a fairly recent development. The first phone with a built-in camera wasn’t released until the year 2000. For quite a few years after that, phone photography was low-quality and inconvenient.

For me, not too many years have passed since I bought my first smartphone, which also served as my first camera. I’ve always been intentionally slow to adopt new technologies.

The first time I embarked on a major solo travel adventure was in 2013, in Peru and Ecuador. Back then, I was still using a basic flip phone. It was worthless in a foreign country, so I didn’t even bring it. Nor did I own a digital camera. Instead, I bought a disposable camera that could take around 30 low-resolution photos. No zooming, no editing.

Those photos looked like this:

Just 30 blurry photos for a 70-day stay in Peru and Ecuador. That’s all I permitted myself. At the time, I didn’t think of it as an act of restriction. I simply didn’t own the expensive devices that would make it possible to more easily take photos.

Traveling without a phone or a camera was marvelous. I’ll probably never experience anything quite like that trip again.

For my next solo travel adventure, in Colombia, I finally had a smartphone. It resulted in an entirely different way of interacting with the world around me. I wanted Wi-Fi, I wanted to keep up with my email. And I wanted to photograph everything.

After I returned from Colombia, I did my first cross-country USA road trip in the summer of 2016, moving from New Jersey to California to start grad school. I spent a month on the road, camping and exploring — and continuing to snap countless photos.

A return to unplugged travel

As I completed my first year of grad school, I knew that I’d have the chance to do another long road trip that summer. After experiencing a few trips with a photo-snapping smartphone, an idea developed: to complete a major trip without taking a single photograph.

The idea was to rediscover some of what I had felt in South America back in 2013. The ability to experience a moment without trying to “capture” it. To do this, I knew I had to go all the way. The goal would not be to merely take fewer photos. It had to be all or nothing: zero photos.

The travel was a solo road trip up the California coast, then the Oregon coast, and into Washington state, where I visited an old friend. Then, I headed east into Glacier National Park in Montana, one of North America’s most magnificent places. From there, I went south through Idaho and Nevada and back into California.

A special event was central to the planning of my route: the total solar eclipse that occurred on August 21, 2017.

The trip was as incredible as it sounds. I did tent camping in each state and saw magnificent beauty. But no matter what was in front of me, I never reached for my phone.

With no photos, no one would ever see images of the moments I was experiencing. Those moments were mine and mine alone.

For my solar eclipse experience, I enjoyed an amazing stroke of luck. I connected with a friend who could host me where she was staying in Idaho in the exact location of what’s called the “path of totality.” That’s the thin strip of space in which the moon’s shadow entirely covers the sun. For this eclipse, the path of totality was 71 miles wide and ran from Oregon to South Carolina.

Outside of the totality path, an eclipse can be viewed with special glasses. You can see the moon sliding across the sun, but never entirely covering it. Thus, the sky doesn’t go dark, because the sun is never fully eclipsed.

Putting yourself in that thin sliver of totality makes all the difference. For a minute or two, while the moon is completely blocking the sun, the sky goes dark. It happens in an instant. Suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, you see twinkling stars.

The friend I was with snapped these photos:

As I watched the sky in awe, my phone stayed in my pocket. I didn’t miss an instant of the incredible experience — yet, I’m grateful to have these images that my friend captured.

And that’s the catch, isn’t it? Photos are amazing keepsakes. I want to be “in the moment”, whatever that means, but I also want photos.

My goal during that road trip wasn’t to permanently quit photography. It was to remember what it feels like to not have the option. To explore that end of the spectrum, so that on future trips I could find a middle ground.

The trip served its purpose, helping me remember what it’s like to pass up on a good photo. These days, since my photos accompany my writing, I probably reach for my phone too often—but I also know that sometimes the photo not taken is just as special.

I moved to Peru just over three years ago. In that time, three different presidents have held office. And there hasn’t even been an election.

The most recent change occurred on October 10, when Congress removed President Dina Boluarte from office after charging her with “permanent moral incapacity.”

Across from my apartment in Lima, a sloppy bit of graffiti appeared in the first days of Boluarte’s presidency. After three years, it’s still there. It says, “Dina Asesina” — Dina the Murderer. This unfortunate moniker stems from the use of force early in Boluarte’s term that resulted in the deaths of dozens of protestors.

Now, Boluarte has been replaced by José Jerí, who automatically moved into the presidency from his former role as President of Congress. Jerí is the second consecutive president who wasn’t voted in by the public. Boluarte, who previously served as vice president, had also inherited the position following the prior president’s impeachment.

Like Boluarte, Jerí started his term amidst intense unrest.

The protest movement that greeted Jerí had started during the last days of Boluarte’s presidency and occurred mainly in Lima. The primary complaint was the government’s failure to effectively address the city’s problem with violent crime. In particular, the transportation industry, essential to everyday life here, has been plagued by mafia-like extortion and violence, spreading fear and instability throughout the city.

Protestors wanted Boluarte out of office. But when that happened, the demonstrations continued, reflecting a broader dissatisfaction with the government. Additionally, many Peruvians have fresh criticisms for their new president.

What does the local graffiti have to say?

Within a stone’s throw of my apartment, two separate markings call him a violador — a rapist. This refers to a complaint filed in December 2024, in which Jerí and another man were accused of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. The charges were eventually dropped, but the story has reemerged since Jerí became president.

Anti-Jerí graffiti will likely endure longer than his presidency, which is set to end after the July 2026 election. Finally, Peruvians will get the chance to vote for a new president, rather than simply “getting” one who slides in after an impeachment. Jerí has indicated that he won’t be a candidate.

The extraordinary presidential turnover in Peru has been ongoing since the start of the century. A presidential term is supposed to last five years, but 12 presidents have held office since 2000. The turnover is partly due to how easily the Constitution of Peru makes it for presidents to be ousted on grounds of “permanent moral incapacity.” This vague charge can be used to quickly bring about an impeachment vote.

The last president to serve more than five years was Alberto Fujimori, who won three straight elections in 1990, 1995, and 2000. He was a Peruvian version of the Latin American “strongman” — an authoritarian, buoyed by a cult of personality. A strongman “gets things done” and establishes a degree of stability, often achieving those gains at the expense of democracy and civil liberties.

After his third win, Fujimori’s support crumbled, thanks to a bribery scandal and widespread distrust in the election result. Less than one year into his final term, he fled to Japan, where he famously resigned from the presidency via fax. Ever since, Peru’s presidency has mostly been stuck on the pole opposite to strongmen: uninspiring leaders who maintain weak, fleeting grips on power.

Fujimori also kicked off an incredible run of presidents who have failed to complete their terms and/or ended up in prison.

In 2005, Fujimori was arrested while visiting Chile. He was eventually found guilty of a sobering list of offenses: kidnapping and murder, the embezzlement of over $600 million, and crimes against humanity. He spent most of his final years, before his death in 2024, in Barbadillo Prison. This prison, unlike any other in the world, was built for the special circumstances of holding a former president. It’s now known as the “presidential prison,” having held an unbelievable tally of five incarcerated former presidents.

Presidential futility since Fujimori’s resignation includes:

• Alejandro Toledo (President 2001–06), arrested in 2019 in the US and extradited to Peru in 2023.

• Allan Garcia (President 2006–11) would have been jailed in 2019, but committed suicide by gunshot in his bedroom as police closed in around him.

• Ollanta Humala (President 2011–16), jailed in 2017.

• Pedro Kuczynski (President 2016–18), impeached in 2018 and arrested in 2019; spent several years under house arrest and has an ongoing criminal investigation.

• Martin Vizcarra (President 2018–20), impeached in 2020; arrested last August and had a brief stay in Barbadillo Prison. He was recently released from prison but faces an ongoing criminal trial.

• Manuel Merino inherited the presidency when Vizcarra was impeached (2020), but resigned after just five days in office.

• Pedro Castillo (President 2021–22) was jailed immediately after his impeachment in 2022.

And now, Dina Boluarte is the latest president to serve an incomplete term. Many believe she’ll also be the next one to end up in prison.

In every instance of presidential removal, the charges involved corruption. Presidents and their allies cheated in elections, accepted bribes, and misused government funds. More recently, Congress has been accused of not only failing to combat crime but also actively protecting criminal elements.

In 2024, Congress passed a law that redefined “organized crime” to exclude many of the sorts of white-collar crimes that members of Congress themselves are often accused of. More laws have followed that weaken criminal investigations and shield political parties from such processes.

According to Human Rights Watch, more than half of Peru’s Congress representatives are under criminal investigations. There’s a widespread public perception that many elected officials are more aligned with organized crime or self-interest than with the public good.

When I moved to Peru in 2022, Pedro Castillo was president. On paper, he was the sort of leader I could get behind — a leftist former elementary school teacher and union leader who campaigned on expanding services for the rural poor. Alas, I learned that when you move to a new country, you can’t expect your political views to easily transfer over. “Left” and “right” might carry different connotations than you’re used to.

Castillo was considered a socialist, but he was socially conservative. He opposed abortion rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, and sex education. As president, he accomplished little to help the poor who voted for him. He also faced the usual serious corruption charges. Namely, he was accused of accepting bribes for public works contracts and funneling government funds to allies. It should also be noted that his opponents undermined his presidency from the beginning, initiating the first of several impeachment proceedings just four months into his term.

Castillo’s presidency went up in flames in December of 2022, when he attempted to dissolve Congress before they could vote on his removal. Congress didn’t cooperate, opting instead to immediately impeach and imprison him.

Castillo’s move to dissolve Congress was considered a self-coup, a form of coup d’état in which a legally elected leader takes illegal steps to hold onto power. It was a strongman’s power play. Yet, as he addressed the nation, the papers he clutched were shaking, betraying a fearful tremble in his hands. It was quite a metaphor for the man’s shaky “grip” on power. He’d been in over his head since Day 1, and that realization was finally hitting home.

Despite his low approval rating at the end of his term, Castillo’s removal sparked intense protests by his supporters. Thus, Boluarte’s term began in chaos. Protestors were met with force, and she was widely blamed for the deaths that occurred. In the years that followed, she never overcame the “Dina Asesina” label. And, predictably, she had her own corruption scandals.

Boluarte’s flavor of corruption was rather absurd.

There was “Rolexgate” — when she kept wearing different Rolex watches at public appearances, eventually leading to reports that she’d amassed $500,000 worth of jewelry on her monthly salary of less than $4,000. Then came allegations of a “secret nose job.” Without informing Congress beforehand, she had taken a two-week absence to recover from surgeries. She claimed they were essential healthcare procedures. However, the surgeon himself revealed that he’d provided a whole series of operations on Boluarte’s face, most of which were cosmetic in nature.

Prior to her impeachment, Boluarte was described as “the world’s most unpopular head of state,” with an approval rating as low as two percent. She’d been elected VP alongside a leftist president, but to his supporters, she was a usurper and a killer. Meanwhile, as president, she shifted right to maintain power. She gained allies in Congress, but the public viewed her as a crooked opportunist.

Boluarte has some “strongwoman” energy to her. Her speech is loud and aggressive, full of insults, and devoid of humility. The problem is, nobody likes her. She came to power without ever convincing any portion of the public that she was on their side. She had never cleared a path.

What’s remarkable is that Boluarte stayed in power as long as she did with nonexistent public support. It’s a clear sign that, among the groups a Peruvian president is beholden to, the public is not at the top of the list.

Peru’s next president will likely bring their own flavor of strongman bravado and policy. When the public senses chaos and out-of-control corruption, they look for someone to restore order. And so, that’s one path forward — tough leadership, more opponents arrested, more protests squashed. But the presidency has proven to be an incredibly difficult horse to tame. One would-be champion after another has been violently bucked off.

In an October guest essay for the New York Times, Dr. Will Freeman made the compelling case, regarding Peru, that “you can kill a democracy without a dictator.” As corruption permeates the system, power can be leached away from the presidency to serve the wills of a larger network of individuals. Meanwhile, freedoms disappear, but there’s no single bad actor to blame.

“For those used to associating democratic erosion with strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, this might sound strange. Western liberalism has long held that the main threat to political and personal freedom comes from unconstrained rulers. As long as there are constraints on state power — working checks and balances — freedom is supposed to flourish. How does freedom disappear without one ruler or ruling party taking it away?” — Dr. Will Freeman, New York Times

When it comes to checks and balances, Peru has its remarkably easy process for removing presidents. This constraint on power has successfully prevented too much power from concentrating in one set of hands. Yet, the weakened presidency may have simultaneously contributed to the culture of corruption and political maneuverings that affect the entire government.

In a way, this diffuse deterioration of democracy is a greater challenge than the rise of a single dictator. There’s no boogeyman, no one individual to rise up against.

Thus, the rallying cry of many protestors: que se vayan todos — throw them all out.

Time will tell if this extreme disillusionment leads to further democratic decline, or, somehow, opens the door for a better set of leaders to emerge.

Get 50% off forever

In September, Peru’s 10th annual PerúFlora event took place in Lima. Fittingly, this fair is held at Parque Kennedy in the Miraflores district—Miraflores means look at the flowers.

Parque Kennedy is home to many fairs and craft shows throughout the year, but PerúFlora is the grandest of them all. The event is a five-day showcase and sales opportunity for ornamental horticulturists from all over Peru.

“Here we showcase the creativity, innovation, and enormous potential of Peruvian floriculture as an engine of sustainable development and a generator of employment, especially for rural women… More than 7,000 producing families are currently dedicated to ornamental horticulture in Peru.”

—opening remarks (translated) at PerúFlora 2025, by Vice Minister of Family Farming Orlando Hernán Chirinos Trujillo

Around 90 producers had stands at the fair, providing quite a visual feast.

Don’t you just love the way succulents look when lots and lots of them are packed close together?

Before we get to the orchids, here are a few more non-orchid highlights.

I believe these (below) are Geraldton waxflowers (Chamelaucium uncinatum):

Not sure, but these guys might be Barberton daisies (Gerbera jamesonii):

The main attraction at PerúFlora are the orchids.

If you think of an orchid as an exotic, precious creation, then it’s stunning to see thousands of them in one place.

Orchids are among the world’s most evolved and treasured flowers. There are over 25,000 species and they grow all over the planet, but they’re most abundant in the tropics (near the equator). Peru is one of the nations with the most variety — an estimated 2,500 species, many of which have not yet been formally identified.

Bilateral symmetry is part of what makes orchids so beautiful.

Most common flowers exhibit radial symmetry, with petals distributed evenly around a central axis (like a starfish). Bilateral symmetry indicates a single line of division — you can only create two equal sides. Visually, it’s a more complex, face-like configuration.

In the wild, orchids are affected by habitat destruction. Many species have very small native ranges and can be wiped out if the area is impacted by deforestation or other human activity.

Orchids are also severely impacted by poaching and illegal trafficking. The spectacular beauty and limited supply of some species drives up their prices. Vulnerable varieties can be harvested to extinction.

The tale of one orchid species, Phragmipedium kovachii, highlights the vulnerability of precious plants, along with one way that conservationists resist poaching:

In 2001, Phragmipedium kovachii was discovered in Northern Peru’s cloud forests. The species was unique, with extra-large petals in gorgeous fuchsia hues. Given its beauty and morphological uniqueness, specimens of this species were immediately of very high value. When the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) placed heavy fines on exporting these orchids, the move backfired, driving up their black market value to over $25,000. Poachers were highly motivated to rip every last one out of the ground.

Eventually, CITES permitted a handful of Peruvian growers to collect Phragmipedium kovachii seeds for mass reproduction. Now, the plant’s resale value has fallen back to reasonable levels, relieving pressure on the precious wild specimens that remain.

Note: Don’t buy rare plants. If you do buy rare or exotic plants, make sure you can verify that they were sourced ethically and sustainably. Learn more here.

And now, back to our trivia question…

Which human body part are orchids named for?

The Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees in the United States from engaging in certain political activities, has been in the news recently, thanks to messages like this one on government websites:

The Hatch Act helps separate government work and workers from politics. This is an essential division that protects both federal government employees and the public they serve from discrimination and coercion.

A few years ago, I had a consulting assignment with a California city, running a committee of five representatives from various city government departments. The purpose of the committee was to review permit applications from groups that wanted to open cannabis businesses in the city. My task was complicated by the fact that the police department’s representative was needlessly outspoken about his “moral and religious” opposition to the legalization of cannabis. Worse, he would spontaneously voice opinions on national politics, with random quips about the Biden family and the Democratic Party. The comments were out of place, and jarring. Surely, everyone in the room had political opinions, but only one of us felt the need to inject them into our discussions.

Those comments weren’t just socially awkward; they were hazardous. He was suggesting that his private politics had a place in our public service, and that his views might affect the fulfillment of his duties.

Aside from my experiences with that one individual, in the years I spent working alongside government employees, I found political talk to be quite rare.

Public servants uphold laws and policies and follow detailed procedures to a tee. Rules that restrict their political activity are beneficial for everyone; they protect the public from corrupted services, and they guard government workers from the whims of politicians. For example, when a new mayor is elected, she doesn’t replace all the city planners with ones who share her views on development projects. Rather, she may push for changes in the zoning code or the city’s general plan — the documents that dictate the planners’ decision-making.

Local government employees are free to be politically active on their own time, but they’re usually prohibited from engaging in political activity while on duty. They can’t use their position, workplace, or government resources to do things like volunteer for an election campaign or participate in a political protest.

When a government employee disagrees with a law they’re bound to, their options are limited. They can’t pick and choose which laws they’ll uphold.

Take the case of Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky. In 2015, gay marriage was legalized nationwide. Citing “God’s authority,” Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. She defied court orders, disrupted lives in her district, and eventually went to jail — all because she couldn’t separate her personal beliefs from the commitment she made to serve the public and uphold the law.

Federal employees are also required to avoid partisan activity. One law that’s key to maintaining this division is the Hatch Act of 1939, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, known as the Hatch Act.

The Hatch Act applies to civil service employees of the executive branch of the US government. This includes workers for the cabinet departments (the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, etc.).

The Hatch Act applies differently to different types of workers, but generally prohibits federal employees from running for office, engaging in political activities while on duty, and using government resources for political activities. Political activity is interpreted as “activity directed at the success or failure of a political party.”

In every recent presidency, there have been accusations of Hatch Act violations. These are investigated by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC).

In 2016, the OSC found that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julian Castro violated the Hatch Act during an interview with Katie Couric when he voiced his support for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. He prefaced his comments with “Now, taking off my HUD hat for a second and just speaking individually…”

Castro later stated that he thought this disclaimer was sufficient for avoiding a Hatch Act violation. He wasn’t using agency resources, he specified that he was speaking as a private citizen, and his statements were quite mild. Nevertheless, the OSC found him in violation of the law.

Castro’s case shows how strictly the Hatch Act can be interpreted, and how seriously it’s traditionally been handled by government employees and watchdogs.

In Donald Trump’s first presidential term (2016–20), the OSC was kept busy with frequent Hatch Act incidents. Most of these involved social media activity, such as partisan Twitter posts from official government accounts.

The highest-profile Hatch Act violations in Trump’s first term came from Kellyanne Conway, who served as Senior Counselor to the President from 2017–20. In numerous TV interviews, Conway endorsed Republican candidates, mocked Democrats, and advocated for Trump’s reelection.

A review by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found that Conway violated the Hatch Act over 50 times. In 2018, the OSC sent a report to President Trump, describing multiple violations and recommending “appropriate disciplinary action.”

In an interview, shortly after, Conway said, “Blah, blah, blah… If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work… Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”

In 2019, the OSC produced a second, scathing report regarding Conway’s ongoing infractions. They noted: “Never has OSC had to issue multiple reports to the president concerning Hatch Act violations by the same individual.”

The OSC’s 2019 report bluntly advised the President to fire Conway. Trump dismissed the recommendation, incorrectly characterizing the findings as an attack on Conway’s free speech.

Trump has said, “I value loyalty above everything else, more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy.” Arguably, the unspoken continuation of that declaration might be, “…more than performance, more than service to the public, and more than the law.”

For a president obsessed with loyalty and personal power, a quaint little ethics law like the Hatch Act doesn’t carry much weight. Kellyanne Conway was one of the worst offenders in the law’s history, but Trump simply didn’t see the problem because she was breaking the law for him. And if the commander-in-chief doesn’t buy in, then the Hatch Act is fairly toothless. The OSC makes its determinations, but it’s the president who decides whether or not to discipline the offenders.

The Hatch Act was disregarded in Trump’s first term, but it’s being openly mocked in his second.

The recent violations have stemmed from the fallout over the government shutdown that began on October 1, after Congress failed to pass a funding bill to keep the government open.

During crises such as shutdowns, we expect blame-laying spin from politicians. But the normal communications from federal agencies are entirely non-political. Agencies should simply inform the public about which services are paused.

Here’s an example of an appropriate communication during a government shutdown. This is the banner that was added to the Department of Education’s website:

Just the facts.

Other agencies, like the Department of Justice, made dramatic departures from protocol, informing citizens that “Democrats have shut down the government.”

In the first few days of October, banners blaming Democrats for the shutdown appeared on at least seven federal agency websites. Watchdog groups, Democratic politicians, and legal experts quickly pointed out these communications as likely Hatch Act violations.

The agency websites are government resources, funded by taxpayer dollars and operated by federal employees who are subject to the Hatch Act. The partisan messaging appears to violate the law’s intent to prohibit “activity directed at the success or failure of a political party.”

If the OSC were to investigate these incidents, the potential violators would likely be the department heads or the individuals responsible for managing the websites. However, junior staffers have also been dragged into the politics of the shutdown.

At the Department of Education (ED), furloughed employees discovered that their automated email replies were modified, without their consent or notice. Against their will, they were stuck sending out emails that blamed their out-of-office status on “Democratic Senators.”

In their reply to an inquiry from Education Week, an ED spokesperson didn’t deny the tampering, countering with “Where’s the lie?”

The American Federation of Government Employees has filed a lawsuit on behalf of ED workers. Their complaint states that “Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration’s talking points with emails sent out in their names.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia has called for an investigation, and the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has filed seven Hatch Act complaints with the OSC, one for each agency that posted partisan messages.

Lawsuits and formal complaints are appropriate responses to Hatch Act incidents, but it’s hard to imagine them leading to much. The violators weren’t rogue actors; they were carrying out a coordinated, multi-agency communications campaign. It’s highly unlikely that Trump didn’t approve of (or directly order) the partisan messaging, and it’s almost unimaginable that he would consider disciplinary action for the offenders.

Does it matter? Is the Hatch Act a relic of stuffier eras, an unreasonable muzzle on free speech?

Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, once said that “Nobody outside the beltway (the Washington DC area) really cares” about Hatch Act violations.

In a sense, that’s true. The Hatch Act is not a well-known law, and most Americans might not be aware of the line it draws between government and politics. But, you don’t need to be an expert in federal law to notice a dramatic partisan shift taking place, coinciding with an alarming consolidation of power in the presidency. Following the blueprint laid out in Project 2025, Trump’s first year back in office has transformed the federal workforce through mass firings and shifting missions. The federal government increasingly seems to work for the president and his party, and against his perceived enemies.

On October 2, the Trump administration canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants in 16 states, each of which voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Immigration raids and intimidating National Guard deployments have disproportionately affected blue states. Meanwhile, on October 5, the president told a crowd of Navy sailors that “We have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats.”

Amidst this aggression and division, the Hatch Act represents just one set of norms that no longer apply. Most Americans might not know what the Hatch Act stipulates, but we all know that the bar has been lowered. And the fact that there’s no reasonable expectation that violating this sort of law means anything anymore says a lot about how much things have changed.

Get 50% off forever

This is the start of a three-part series on what I’m generously calling “permaculture in the city.” Parts 2 and 3 will cover two ways my partner and I practice environmental stewardship as city-dwellers: DIY graywater recycling and container composting.

When you think of permaculture, what imagery comes to mind?

Maybe you picture a dense garden, with small plots of many different crops packed close together. There are bees everywhere. Maybe there’s some sort of novel, aesthetically pleasing feature, like garden beds arranged in a spiral, plants growing vertically on trellises, or irrigation ditches running between rows of crops.

The piece of land you imagine is probably small, like a family garden or community garden. However, the first writers and scientists who discussed permaculture were thinking of big farms, not backyard gardens.

In 1911, the American agricultural scientist Franklin Hiram King introduced the term “permanent agriculture” in his writings about East Asian farming practices that we would now call “organic farming” or “sustainable agriculture.” In 1929, Joseph Russell Smith reused the term in his book Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture. Smith was worried about increasingly large farms causing deforestation, soil depletion, and water contamination. He believed strategic tree plantings could help address these concerns.

Permanent agriculture became permaculture in 1978 in the book Permaculture One, by Australian researchers Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.

Mollison and Holmgren described permaculture as:

“...a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system.”

This definition expanded permanent agriculture from a set of pragmatic suggestions for farmers to a philosophical, almost spiritual way of thinking about how we pull food from the earth. And permaculture was an ideal for all of us, not just for commercial food producers.

Today, the permaculture movement speaks largely to small farmers, homesteaders, and suburban gardeners. The idea is: even on a very small piece of land, you can achieve harmony with nature.

…But what about those of us with no land at all—the city dwellers?

Before I moved to Lima, Peru, I’d always lived in small towns, where I could enjoy gardening and easy access to nature. Now, I’m one of the 4 billion humans living in urban areas. And, ecologically, it’s a particularly bleak urban area—Lima is a crowded desert city that receives no meaningful rainfall.

In a big city, it’s hard to feel connected to nature. On the other hand, I believe that my 7th-floor apartment is the “greenest” housing I’ve ever lived in.

Most nature lovers and environmentalists might dream of caring for a few acres (or more) of their own land, but the reality is that billions of us must live in cities, where, per capita, we take up less space and produce fewer carbon emissions. In cities, we pool resources and access goods and services with greater efficiency, while minimizing encroachment into wild spaces.

The suburban home I grew up in had a wonderful garden, but we still needed to consume groceries that were shipped from all over the world. And we couldn’t go anywhere without a car. These days, I often go entire weeks without getting into any sort of motor vehicle.

Someday, I’d love to get out of the city again, to practice the sort of earthy permaculture that’s idealized. But I’ll be doing it for me, for my own gratification. Here in the city, I’m living my “best life” for the environment… it just doesn’t feel like it, because I breathe polluted air and my feet never touch grass.

The permaculture homesteading fantasy, as I see it, says: I can’t change the big picture all by myself, but I can build something beautiful and healthy in my own tiny little corner of the world.

I say: we need to encourage more of that sort of thinking among city dwellers.

Capturing graywater in buckets isn’t as glamorous as, say, beekeeping, and our living room floor isn’t the ideal setting for sorting compost. But, for me, these are beautiful, affirming acts. In parts 2 and 3 of this series, I’ll explain how we use these simple practices to save thousands of gallons of water, drastically reduce our food waste, and produce beautiful soil for our plants.

Get 50% off forever

Our 2024 trip to southern Peru and Bolivia began with a flight from Lima to Juliaca. From my window seat, we enjoyed impressive views of the Andes Mountains.

From Juliaca, we caught a one-hour van ride to Puno, the largest city bordering Lake Titicaca. Altitude sickness quickly struck us both: headaches, breathlessness, nausea, and migraines.

Before arriving, I didn’t grasp how high up we would be and how intensely it would affect our bodies. Puno’s altitude is 3,827 m (12,555 ft.). That’s over twice as high as Denver, Colorado. It’s higher than other notably skyscraping South American cities like Cusco (3,399 m) and Quito (2,850). It’s even higher than La Paz, Bolivia (3,640 m), the world’s highest capital city.

Despite feeling weakened and sick, we loved our visit to Puno. This city of 128,000 has a calm, rustic feel. Every building we entered was full of handmade furniture, old paintings, and woven blankets.

We were lucky to be in town for an enormous parade. Hundreds of participants blared trumpets, banged drums, and danced in elaborate costumes.

From a lookout point above the city, here’s a look at Lake Titicaca. It’s a deceiving view because Puno borders a small, rounded nub of the lake. The portion of Titicaca shown here represents only around two percent of the lake’s total surface area.

Titicaca is unlike any other lake in the world. Bordering both Peru and Bolivia, it’s known as the world’s “highest navigable lake.” It’s the largest lake in South America and the 18th largest in the world, with a surface area of 3,232 square miles (8,372 km²).

Although it’s hard to imagine humans trekking to such an outrageous elevation in search of a place to live, Titicaca has a long history of indigenous settlements. Several indigenous populations still live around — and on — the lake.

The most famous residents of Lake Titicaca are the Uros People. The type of settlements they populate exist nowhere else — the Uros live on floating islands that they construct from totora, a sedge plant that grows in the lake’s shallows.

Most of the islands have arrangements with boat operators that bring tourists in for brief visits. My partner and I took one of these tours, which included a fascinating talk by the island’s president. He described how they build and maintain the floating islands.

Pardon me while I turn off my first-person travel writing mode to tell you a bit more about the Uros.

Hundreds of years ago, Lake Titicaca was within the Inca empire. Compared to the mighty Incas, the Uros were small and vulnerable. So, they conceived of floating islands as a unique form of isolation. They gathered totora reeds in the shallows, constructed islands, and floated them out to the center of the lake. This same strategy may have also protected them from Spanish conquistadors who forced Incas from the Titicaca region to work in Bolivian mines.

Island construction involves harvesting reeds, drying them, and then laying them in alternating directions. Eucalyptus rods run through the surface and into the lakebed to serve as anchors.

Until the 1980s, the Uros maintained a mostly isolated existence on the lake, living on fish, fowl, and eggs. In 1986, a storm badly damaged the islands, causing the Uros to resettle closer to the shore and request assistance from the mainland. Gradually, they became more connected with outsiders. In the 1990s, Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori gifted each island with two solar panels. By the early 2000s, tourism had become a major revenue source for the Uros.

Today, around 1,200 Uros (most of the population) live on around 120 floating islands. A few families live on each island.

The islands are in a constant state of flux. Every two weeks, a new layer of reeds must be added to the surface to cover up the wet, degrading layer underneath. Eventually, the bottom layers lose stability. Each island has a lifespan of around 25 years.

It’s possible that the magical world the Uros have built won’t last for many more decades. Their relationship with the totora plant is precarious, as they must constantly harvest huge quantities of reeds to maintain the islands. Additionally, Lake Titicaca is shrinking, like many lakes around the world. Meanwhile, increased contact with mainlanders and tourists may eventually erode the traditional way of life and result in the abandonment of the floating islands.

I’ll close this account of our visit with one of my favorite photos — a group of girls and women in traditional attire playing volleyball. This was on one of the natural, solid-ground islands where the Uros gather for shared activities.