I smoked a cigar today. I cried a little. And then I laid back down.

That's my Saturday, February 28, 2026.

I don't usually write about politics here. This blog has been about technology, accessibility, AI, the things I'm building. But today felt different. Today I couldn't look away. And since it's my blog, I'm going to talk about it.

I spent the morning catching up on what happened while I had my cousin over. In one 24-hour window: the Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic for refusing to remove AI safety guardrails. Trump ordered every federal agency to stop using Claude. And then, somewhere around 3 AM, the US and Israel started bombing Iran.

Same 24 hours. All of it.

I have complicated feelings about Iran. The Iranian regime has been killing its own people in the streets. Sixty percent inflation. Protesters massacred. A government that has been genuinely brutal to the people it's supposed to serve. If regime change actually leads to something better for ordinary Iranians, I can hold space for that hope. The Iranian people didn't choose this government. They've been living under it and dying under it for decades.

And here's the thing I don't say enough: I don't completely disagree with what the United States is doing. I am so tired of watching the world's problems get debated endlessly while nothing happens. There is something to be said for action. For actually doing something instead of holding another committee hearing and issuing another strongly worded statement. I can respect that impulse even when I'm terrified of how it's being executed.

But when people are dying, debates still have to happen. That's not weakness. That's accountability. Congress exists for a reason. Authorization exists for a reason. You don't get to skip that part just because you're impatient. And the same goes for artificial intelligence. The decisions being made right now about how AI gets used — in war, in surveillance, in government — those debates need to happen too. Loudly. In public. With oversight. We are making choices right now that are going to shape everything that comes after, and we are making them at a speed that doesn't allow for the conversation we need to be having.

Then I think about Ukraine. A democracy. Being invaded. And we cut them off.

I cannot reconcile those two things. I have tried. I cannot do it.

And then there's the Nobel Peace Prize obsession. The man just launched a war — no congressional authorization, nothing — while apparently still believing he deserves a peace prize. Because Obama got one. That's it. That's the whole thing. He can't stand anything a Democrat did, anything Biden supported, anything that doesn't have his name on it. He cancels it, rebrands it, slaps Trump on the front, and calls it new.

What scares me most isn't any single decision. It's how fast the norms changed. His first term — and I never thought I'd say this — was practically harmless in comparison. There were guardrails. People pushed back and it meant something. Courts pushed back and it meant something. Now we are bombing sovereign nations without a congressional vote, blacklisting American AI companies like they're Huawei, and the speed of all of it makes my head spin. The thing about norms is you don't notice how much they were holding everything together until they're gone.

I deleted the Facebook app from all my devices today. Not my profile — I have 6,700 followers and I've built that over years. But the app is gone. I can't sit in comment sections right now watching people defend all of this. It's bad for me in a way that goes beyond frustration. Since my strokes, there are things I just can't process the way I used to. The crying comes in waves. I don't always see them coming. I'll be fine, and then I won't be, and then I will be again. Today a few of those waves hit me. The cigar helped. Laying down helped.

What gives me hope — and I'm holding onto this — is that Democrats have been winning elections since inauguration. People are paying attention. People are showing up. The checks that are supposed to exist are being tested, and some of them are holding.

But I'm scared. I'll say it plainly. I'm scared he finds a way to make the midterms not happen, or not matter. I'm scared about what happens if he decides he's not leaving. And I'm scared about the mess that whoever comes next is going to inherit. Because he will leave eventually. And when he does, we are going to have all of this to deal with. The wars. The broken institutions. The AI decisions made without debate. The norms that got shredded and will not simply grow back.

That cleanup is going to take a generation.

So I'm going heads down for a while. The blog. Claude's blog. Blind Markets. The things I can actually build and control. The online discourse is going to do what it's going to do without me in it, and my nervous system will thank me for stepping back.

I started writing here because I wanted to talk about technology and accessibility and what it means to build things as a blind developer. That's still what this is. But today the world broke open a little, and I needed to say something about it.

Tomorrow I'll get back to building.

Today I smoked a cigar and cried a little and laid back down.

That was enough.