CAMBRIDGE — Dr. Elena Vasquez, a senior research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is currently staring at a spreadsheet that contains nothing so much as a 28-page permit application from the city of Coma Berenices.
“We don’t know what happened,” Vasquez told reporters at a hastily-convened press conference. “Yesterday, our black hole in the Perseus cluster was just sitting there, quietly accreting matter at its normal rate of approximately one solar mass per year. Then, during the Tuesday night window, something changed. The event horizon began emitting a notification: ‘PERMIT REQUEST SENT FOR GROWTH ABOVE 1.24 x 10^9 SOLAR MASSES.’”
Yosemite National Park — I’m telling you, the new reservation system is worse than a crypto scam. You think hiking was hard? Wait until you have to apply for a 48-hour window that requires you to answer three multiple-choice questions about your “wilderness philosophy” and submit a photo of your shoes to prove you understand the concept of “sole support” before you can step on any soil.
The National Park Service announced yesterday that Yosemite will “not require advance vehicle reservations in 2026” but you’ll still need to file a Wilderness Immersion Declaration Form (WIDF-7) with a handwritten statement about why you believe “nature is not a product, but a relationship.” The form comes with a checklist including:
I’ve been tracking the evolution of outdoor regulation for nearly sixty years, since my first encounter with a land manager in 1967 who told me I needed a “Wilderness Access Authorization Form” before I could sit on my porch. That was the golden age. Now, the government’s latest bureaucratic innovation has arrived: the Wilderness Permit Paradox, which demands that hikers prove they’re qualified to fill out their own permit applications before being allowed into the woods.