PSA's Sunday Sound-Off: February 22nd, 2026

what is being unearthed in the epstein files and beyond should make us mad, sad, and act.

From The Beauty of Grief on Substack

I spent the first week of February in Miami.

As it was my first time there, I had lots of time to override former assumptions and many humbling preconceptions reality-checked. My company for this? Well, a planned debut experience at LoveBurn Miami, the largest (~7-8,000 attendees) regional Burning Man Miami event for the first weekend in February. I was escorted in an RV with 3 Dutch men who I had met at Burning Man. I flew in from Boston and they all flew in from Amsterdam.

Let me back up as to how I got there.

One of my first five posts on Substack recollected my Burning Man experience in romantic detail after opening my heart (as the passage of time sometimes goes, the French fling I had was not my person so I just had to nudge my heart closed again in therapy). One of the red flags of this was an undeniably peculiar night out at this French camp that my fling took me to: Camp Bisous (Kiss). Now, this was definitely the most fabulous camp I had ever encountered: gorgeous, gothic fire dancers rivalling the sirens of Sin City fanned torches in leather elegantly as though they were pouring tea. Long hair gracefully shifted over their shoulders as they danced and sang with vivacious, deep, and expressive rancor.

I suddenly felt… alone. I was abandoned. Remarkably quickly. A childhood pang of familiarity stuck in my heart like an arrow and, in my efforts to psychologically dodge more intrusive thoughts, I focused on my breathing to stay present. You see, Lucy was with me tonight.

My fling surprisingly ghosted and as he went around the party, anonymously exploring, and I couldn’t find him anywhere, I befriended a shirtless cowboy, danced with a friendly Latin man, and eventually made eye contact with three gorgeous, tanned, and muscular men. They lifted me onto the stage, took note of the nymphlike fairy near me (an acquaintance from Vancouver that had decided to flirt with me), and we immediately found our places.

The first one in the hat, we’ll call him Thing 1, gave me endless sips of his water while my throat dried up quicker than sand but he was on the prowl for more and more women.

The second one, similarly looking in a hat, we’ll call him Thing 2, got me anything I wanted. Resourceful, he applied a temporary tattoo that I wanted. I liked a man’s accessory on his vest? He went over there and got it for me, pridefully holding a golden spoon in his hand. I wanted his necklace? He took it off and gave it right to me.

The third one, the Gentle one, took care of me all night. I was tired? He found a spot for me to nap while he watched my backpack. Bikeless? He drove me home, without so much as expecting a kiss. He was diplomatic, safe, and the peacekeeper between his party-roving friends, rivalling the humorous interplay between the Wedding Crashers.

I made out with each one and danced with them all night. Onlookers looked at me with amazement and I remember the quizzical looks from my fling and his friends; I had transformed the sudden abandonment into abundance and pleasure within 30 minutes.

The Gentle one asked for my contact info, I declined with a smile. My Instagram? Nope. An email address? Sure. We started emailing when he reached out to me after the festival, in September. What a surprise and delight. We moved over to WhatsApp and made romantic plans for LoveBurn.

The hardest thing about returning home has been the cold but also the shift to harsh reality. It feels more unhinged than usual, like watching an icicle slowly crack off while you stand directly below it. Watching the news will tell you that Iran is being cut off from communicating corruption due to Iranian authorities imposing nationwide internet and telecom blackouts. I open social media and millions of pages is coming out on the Epstein files (even when I watched the docuseries and learned all about Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew years ago). I open my news app and ICE is expanding into my neighbourhood.

Lately, my nights have not been like they were in Miami for that brief sunny reprieve: I have been scaring myself with the odd nightmares and only melatonin and magnesium with a kava mint safely tranquilizes me into peaceful sleep. One night it’s unfortunately doomscrolling reports of Ghislaine Maxwell and another is AI slop propagating even worse depictions of what happened with Deepak Chopra, Peter Attia, and more shocking names in the emails.

What I want to address is the truth. For the purpose of this particular post, I’m going to address the biggest blow-up with international implications right now and that is the Epstein files. There’s so much information there going after many people’s entire livelihoods and it’s giving a lot of V For Vendetta and The Matrix type Zeitgeist overhaul. Tens of thousands of people are upvoting comments for people’s heads on sticks. Keyboard warriors are in full force. However, there’s political agendas sickeningly at play, lies also distorting things, and redactions across the board.

So let’s get into it.

The Gentle one had said that he would book the RV, book a hotel for us afterwards, and then he told me about a month or so ago: “hey, my two friends want to come with me” and I was thinking of his two friends being a couple or something. I agreed, so when I met him at the airport, our meeting is romantic, but when we go to the RV, his two friends are those same two guys.

Wedding Crasher Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. Beavis and Butthead party animals.

I’m thinking, this is hilarious. Turns out, they’re all dads. One of them is married, the other two have girlfriends, and they all have about two or three kids each. None of this bothered me.

My work is with children. In order to work with kids and work in schools, etc, in the USA and beyond are many screening procedures thankfully:

This is why I care about the Epstein files. But even if I didn’t, what’s circulating online is a mix of real documents, spun narratives, and outright AI fakery which is why it all feels gross and confusing. Most of us are not directly connected to the Epstein files but what’s coming out is shocking and disturbing to most of our fundamental values as a human race:

So under court orders and a federal transparency law, authorities have thankfully released large batches of real records. The catch is, a lot of it is redacted. These include civil-case filings from Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell, Justice Department investigative files, flight logs, photos, and internal emails. Oh, don’t forget Epstein’s camera roll. Of course, he had his own email server.

One release alone runs millions of pages. Early unsealings ordered 1000 pages but this lackluster reveal named roughly 150-180 John/Jane Doe figures. What is conclusive is that Epstein ran a long-running sex-trafficking operation that abused underage girls with the FBI and DOJ documenting extensive evidence.

In the hotel room, after a weekend in an RV with all three of them, I struggle to understand Dutch.

However, I have nothing to complain about. I’m in the sun, I’m by the beach, and none of the gators or bugs I have been fearing have bothered me besides a few relatively harmless mosquito bites.

We check in after multiple nights of the Gentle one begging nervously, like a puppy, for my affection. I shoo him away, pry him off me, and seek boundaries. I stay busy. I want to be busy. I have other things on my mind. I don’t think about anything physical with him.

He asks about my fantasies. I tie my robe tighter and roll away.

From mainstream legal and investigative reviews, there are conclusive truths from the documents of the Epstein files, from what I’ve found. What’s true will blow your mind more than the Spotlight investigation into the Catholic church back in the early 2000s.

Epstein was a convicted sex offender who abused minors over many years. He used money, power, and a network of enablers spearheaded by Ghislaine Maxwell to traffic and exploit girls. The unsealed materials and DOJ files confirm multiple victim accounts, patterns at his properties including his plane and island, and the involvement of many facilitators past Ghislaine. I bet his girlfriend was involved.

His files reveal, at the core, systemic exploitation, institutional failures, and a powerful man shielded for years. This is not just a neat list of celebrity villains, this is a horrific real story only to be understood by the most insane of us locked up in maximum security prisons (which is where all of them belong). This is industrial-scale abuse of girls covered by money, influence, and institutional turning away on a level we famously haven’t seen since WWII.

The current wave of AI slop includes fakes, unfortunately.

Fact-checkers have already debunked “new photos.” This includes images of him alive in Israel which traces back to AI-art subreddits and detections of invisible AI watermarks with tell-tale image glitches by posters lacking in reputability or middlemen who have been fooled and promptly debunked.

Old, unrelated photos are being reposted as newly released with faces swapped to include Zohran Mamdani and Obama just to take off heat from Republicans. Context has been stripped and there are so-called fresh implications of explosive revelations that don’t exist in the actual record.

Virginia Giuffre took her own life not so long ago which leaves me stunned and curious as to… why? She was a fighter ever since 2010 when she, long before this whole blow-up with Netflix in 2019, she went after Epstein and Maxwell.

Republicans are doing everything they can to avoid hellfire. Different media ecosystems are cherry-picking one email, one redaction, or one name at a time and using it as proof of a broader narrative to try and exonerate their side. This is an old and immature tactic but taking one flimsy accusation and saying it proves this whole thing is a cover-up ignores thousands of pages that complicate or contradict that line.

Yes, it’s disturbing. And it’s true.

Researchers are looking at media patterns around 2025-2026 releases and show how partisan outlets often seize on limited elements of the files to deflect, minimize or weaponize the scandal so that our eyes aren’t burned. But it’s time to grapple with institutional responsibility and systemic abuse just like the Pope did.

We’ve manufactured this exhausting dichotomy: either you’re posting black squares and signing every petition that crosses your feed (while secretly knowing you’ll forget about it by Thursday), or you’re a selfish monster who cares more about your latte than human suffering.

Here's the thing that no one wants to say out loud at the hotel pool on my Miami vacation: performative activism isn't fooling anyone, but paralysis isn't noble either.

And there you are, phone in hand, doom-scrolling at 2 AM with that familiar knot in your stomach asking: Should I post something? Should I say something? Am I a terrible person if I just... don't?

PR Fundraising Stunt or Substantive Pathway to Federal Psychedelic Policy Reform?

Source: The Friday News Roundup.

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