Ben Madeska

The edge of the world - Chicago Reader Belt Publishing’s anthology On an Inland Sea collects 33 stories on the Great Lakes, with a focus on what the lakes mean to people now.

Getting my name in the @chicagoreader.com is a pretty major Chicago bucket list item for me: review of On an Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes

chicagoreader.com/books/book-r...

@beltpublishing.bsky.social
@mbwwelch.bsky.social

Kansas just invalidated the drivers licenses of every trans person in the state. They’re being told to surrender their current licenses and get new ones listing their birth sex. No grace period. Get caught driving with your now-invalid license and you’re looking at jail and a fine.

Nurul Amin Shah Alam, Blind Rohingya refugee dumped by CBP, dies in cold "They just left him."

Nurul Amin Shah Alam's violent arrest, by police who saw his walking stick as a weapon—and who, like the Border Patrol officers who dumped him, apparently made no attempt to reckon with his disability or his mental state—set off events that ended in his death. www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/20...

The reason you can’t give a single inch on anything be it trans rights or dignity for unhoused people is that they, democrats and republicans alike, will take it and say thanks what else is in your pockets? They won’t say thanks actually.

Boy did that drunk customer loudly berating me for a perceived mistake change his tune when he found out I had a fancy master's degree

A green bud on a Ginkgo tree branch

Our potted Ginkgo tree has begun budding, my personal sign of Spring approaching

"But he made the trains run on time" has always been a myth based on propaganda, things just get worse and less efficient

I was lucky enough to see Ibrahim Ferrer once, just an incredible performance

During my driving test I did almost all the little things wrong but didn't screw up any of the major things. Afterwards, sitting in the car, my instructor tallied it all up, sighed heavily, and said "Ok, we'll say you passed"

‘He gave me my wings’: Jesse Jackson opened doors for Black women in politics Jackson, who died Tuesday, worked to diversify the electorate and brought Black women into Democratic politics who ascended to positions of power.

Spent today talking to just a few of the Black women who credit Jesse Jackson with their start in national politics. By inviting them in, he ensured they would help shape democracy for years to come. My latest on the coalition he built as part of his towering legacy: 19thnews.org/2026/02/jess...

Box from Roeser's Bakery in Chicago

Box filled with five paczki

Oil painting of a powdered sugar paczki with red fruit filling on a white background

Oil painting of a powdered sugar paczki with red fruit filling on a white background

Oil painting of a chocolate frosted paczki on a white background

Oil painting of two paczki on a blue background, one chocolate frosted and one covered in powdered sugar

Happy Paczki Day, Chicago. A selection of my annual paczki oil paintings

With Latest Rollback, the U.S. Essentially Has No Clean-Car Rules

“The U.S. no longer has emission standards of any meaning,” said Margo T. Oge, who served as the E.P.A.’s top vehicle emissions regulator under three presidents and has since advised both automakers and environmental groups…

“Nothing. Zero,” she added. “Not many countries have zero.”

Watching a fish crawl out of the ocean, picking it up and turning it around so it goes right back in

Just three great excerpts from the upcoming ON AN INLAND SEA collection!

1: @gabrielbump.bsky.social
2: Christina Olson
3: @benmadeska.bsky.social

It was nearly impossible to pick just three, but these felt right together. The preorder is on sale until release (March 10th)!

Rectangular oil painting of Lake Michigan partially frozen. The sky is light blue with gray and white clouds along the horizon. A thin line of deep, dark blue lake is visible at the horizon, white a large sheet of white ice and snow beneath this. Then there is a section of greenish water with more ice and snow at the bottom of the painting

Lake Michigan, oil on panel, 9"x12", 2026

#art #painting #lakemichigan

On an Inland Sea Writing the Great LakesEdited by Michael Welch March 10, 2026 “As a man who long convinced himself that he lived on the edge of the world, here’s my wish for you: Embrace the awe. Allow yourself to fe...

So excited to be a part of this essay collection about the Great Lakes edited by @mbwelch.bsky.social & forthcoming on March 10th from @beltpublishing.bsky.social! beltpublishing.com/products/on-...

"On An Inland Sea" (@beltpublishing.bsky.social) comes out in a month, so we're hosting a release party @roscoebooks.bsky.social on March 10!

Join us for a discussion & reading from contributors including @rsdeeren.bsky.social, Lina Tran, & Kristin Idaszak!

RSVP here: forms.gle/34RkG1WWprCa...

you also need to unmute this for the perfect song / visual combo

it's like our entire sense of morality has been filtered through the act of consumption, and the highest good we can imagine is feeling good and clean and pure as individuals, unpolluted by the obvious evil are around us

meanwhile, real change requires the kind of work you need a drink after

Read this in college in one of my first anthropology classes. It opened up a lot to me and genuinely changed how understood the world. One of those "Wow, I really don't know ANYTHING" moments

Screenshot of Elon Musk post on Ex: “Elon Musk y X @elonmusk For those unaware, Space has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years. The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars. It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city. That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”

BREAKING: “in my 24th year of my quest to settle the planet Mars, I have just been informed of a basic fact of celestial mechanics.”

I've been to some countries where people live under military rule or autocracy. And without fail, one of the questions I get when they ask about life in the U.S. is whether it's true that Americans just let homeless people die on the street.

Photo of mostly frozen and snow covered Lake Michigan

Listening to the ice move and crack on Lake Michigan

The Kids Trump Sent to ICE’s Dilley Detention Center ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of...

www.propublica.org/article/life...

Joy fills Humboldt Park during ‘Benito Bowl’ halftime show watch party: 'It’s a good day to be Puerto Rican'

In Humboldt Park, there was no doubt the highlight of Super Bowl Sunday was Bad Bunny's halftime show: “Despite all of the negativity, he’s brought communities together.”

It was transforming the biggest NFL stage in the world into a sugar cane plantation that did it for me.

Like, the multiple layers of turning an American icon into a plantation and highlighting the history of exploitation of Black and Brown bodies by the NFL and American colonialism simultaneously?

Pop star Bad Bunny needed a Puerto Rican history scholar. UW–Madison had just the one. Bad Bunny collaborated with UW–Madison history professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo on Puerto Rican narratives that accompany the new album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.”

Pretty sure one was consulted, definitely was for the album

news.wisc.edu/pop-star-bad...

Absolutely outstanding

Somehow I never realized until watching it yesterday that they reached speeds over 90 mph. I don't even like doing that in a car