Hornets and McDonald's

Two Million Hornets

Tom Smith | Dark Mountain | 23rd October 2026

"I fish out the dead queens with a fork, counting them one by one. Easier said than done. What follows is a string of corpses, each entangled with the one beside it, creating a sticky, decomposing mess. In the last eight weeks, I have counted 361 queens... A mature hornet nest can have 6,000 individuals, so potentially over two million fewer hornets will be patrolling our local landscape come autumn" (2,000 words)

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The Sixth-Worst McDonald’s In America

Sylvie McNamara | Washingtonian | 19th October 2026

The reviews for this establishment in the exurbs of Stafford County, Virginia, are universally "atrocious", speaking of teenage staff who hide from customers rather than dishing out the fries. When the reporter visits, though, she finds a clean, well-run location and gets her still-hot food in a timely fashion. Let young people be young, she concludes: "Haven’t you ever goofed off at a job while making minimum wage?" (1,900 words)