Elaine Ayers

You can’t actually be serious.

Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong The pushback against ICE exposed a series of mistaken assumptions.

Stop what you’re doing and read this piece, which is as powerful as you’d expect from @adamserwer.bsky.social witnessing the events of last week on the ground in Minnesota. “The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone.”

Can American Children Point to America on a Map?

“In Ron DeSantis’s Florida…parents at one Miami school received a notice that their first graders would need a signed permission slip to “participate and listen to a book written by an African American.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/b...

It is so embarrassing and telling that so many of these people don't realize that, like, most of us actually care about each other, show up for each other, hold fundamental values about rights, and do things without money behind them.

If this is professional grade logistics Gunther should've seen the 7 year old's party set up in 10 minutes by a couple of wasted middle aged Connecticut mothers at brewery last Sunday. All of this shock around organizing, care work, and showing up for neighbors is so wildly alarmist + confused.

Jesus fucking christ.

Can everybody please chill about the GD storm

After the Trump administration removed signs and information about George Washington's slaves at the President's House in Philly, someone put up a sign that reads:

"Slavery is part of U.S. history. Learn from the past or repeat it!"

📸 - Tom Gralish, @inquirer.com

The Bark

I took my dog to the lake, he stood at the water's edge and barked, the echo of his bark came back and he barked at it, again and again he barked at his own echo thinking there was another dog on the other side of the lake. Welcome to poetry, I said.

Mary Ruefle

Shocking New Louvre Heist Footage Released to the Public The video shows how the thieves made it in and out of the museum's Apollo Gallery almost seamlessly with the nation's crown jewels.

The Louvre thieves didn't even bring a bag for their loot! They stuffed it into their pockets and it fell out! hyperallergic.com/shocking-new...

Alaska Art Student Arrested for Eating Another Student’s AI-Generated Art in Protest A University of Alaska student was charged with a misdemeanor for eating another student's AI-generated art in protest.

Look for the helpers

Joiri Minaya: Venus Flytrap Co-directed by Joiri and Xenia Matthews, the film follows the artist through the creation of a performance series and installation in North America's oldest surviving botanical garden.

"Curated by writer and editor Dessane Lopez Cassell and produced by Farrah Rahaman, the series reflected on the intertwined legacies of freedom, extraction, and ecology in North America's oldest surviving botanical garden [Bartram's Garden]."

hyperallergic.com/joiri-minaya...

Mushrooms Are Not a Metaphor | Los Angeles Review of Books Maria Pinto finds climate futures hidden among wild mushrooms.

"Western insistence on making inert matter from an animated world, a world built on process rather than progress, is a blip in history... At the same time, deciding that an organism only has value because it has “human” traits ain’t it either."

lareviewofbooks.org/article/mush...

Where The Prairie Still Remains | NOEMA Are pioneer cemeteries key to the Iowa prairie’s revival, or its final resting place?

Really interested in the idea of cemeteries as contested spaces where what's "natural" is carefully managed + deeply felt. Thought about this a bit re: Green-Wood, but I also love New Haven's 1797 Grove St Cemetery and would like to know more.

www.noemamag.com/where-the-pr...

Baby-Making on Mars | Broadcast In the depths of the Cold War, scientists from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. joined forces to answer a still-urgent question: Can mammals reproduce in space?

"The mother-fetus system, it would appear, was highly adaptable—capable of adjusting to an environment unlike any previously encountered on Earth."

A good day to write about acclimatization.

pioneerworks.org/broadcast/ba...

It feels so wild just working as normal right now (+ I feel like I've said this a million times?). Prepping lectures on early modern herbals, grading assignments, writing about plants, sending emails while the world burns. 🙃

goode folke... [subdued gesture of yntroductioun] the weeke ende

pencil drawing of a spiral: Robert Smithson, designs for Spiral Jetty, 1970

a storyboard of parts of the spiral, pencil on paper: Robert Smithson, designs for Spiral Jetty, 1970

"Texts from nature, from the universe, and they remind us that symmetry co-exists with chaos, that ingenuities outflank fatalities, that what is desired is more reassuring than what is promised."

-John Berger, "How to Resist A State of Forgetting"

[Robert Smithson, designs for Spiral Jetty, 1970]

A collaboration with time: beautifully decayed and damaged daguerreotypes from the studio of one of the most celebrated 19th-century photographers Mathew Brady, who died #onthisday in 1896: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/decayed-daguerreotypes

(Can't believe we have to use those qualifiers now, ughhh)

Visiting Assistant Professor in Medical History/History of Science - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:Academic StaffEmployment Type...

Job at my beloved undergrad alma mater: VAP in #histsci #histmed at UW-Madison, due Jan 28.

jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/visitin...

Today is the Smithsonian's deadline to give thousands of documents to the White House The White House says the Smithsonian Institution must submit materials about current and upcoming exhibitions and events for a review that will determine whether they express "improper ideology."

The White House says the Smithsonian Institution must submit materials about current and upcoming exhibitions and events for a review that will determine whether they express "improper ideology." n.pr/4583d8f

“We’ll Smash the Fucking Window Out and Drag Him Out” We’ve documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office. ICE claims its officers use a “mini...

Officers who shatter car windows aren’t being disciplined — they’re being promoted.

One officer who smashed a window in front of a local TV reporter got a senior ICE position overseeing operations on the East Coast.

(Published July 2025)

I curate the history series at public media's trade journal Current. We're looking for pieces on the history of NPR, PBS and its affiliates, with some space to imagine public media's future. We accept academic articles repurposed for wide readership. Plus, we pay. Please circulate!

he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings

Welp another winter break is over and I did not get anything done that I needed to get done, nor did I get any rest. Why are this university's breaks so short??

Stop taking away our good things. I want a vast underground ocean on Europa that's teeming with life. I want some moon cryptogams. A microbe or two. Some shit we've never comprehended.

January 9, 2026 THE HONORABLE TIM WALZ Governor of Minesota 130 State Capitol 75 Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Bivd. St. Paul, MN 55155 THE HONORABLE JACOB FREY Mayor of the City of Minneapolis City Hail 350S. Fifth St., Room 330 Minneapolis, MN 55415 Dear Governor Walz and Mayor Frey, It is my responsibility as Secretary of Agriculture to ensure sound stewardship of taxpayer dollars by climinating fraud, waste and abuse in all programs funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The widespread and systemic fraud associated with federal benefit programs in the State of Minnesota and the City of Minneapolis demonstrate an inability to handle federal resources without additional oversight and accountability measures in place. During your tenures as Governor of Minnesota and Mayor of Minneapolis, numerous non-profits and businesses have defrauded the federal government in what a federal prosecutor in Minnesota called "a staggering, industrial-scale fraud".! Most notably, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit— Feeding Our Future defrauded U.S. taxpayers of nearly $250 million in federal funds given to them by the Minnesota Department of Education.? This fraud scheme involved USDA funding provided to the State of Minnesota to feed hungry children under the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). As of late November, 78 defendants had been charged in what the Department of Justice characterized as the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country? Other recent examples of'alleged fraud in Minnesota include exploitation of the Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program", a scheme to defraud the Housing Stabilization 1-Whut te know about Minnesoca' "industrial-scale fraad" scandal, as more charges are fled and Trump weighs in, "CES Nows (Dic. 19, 3025) available at ht:/www.cbsnews.com/news/atas-do-know-alonesota-frawf-candal were-changes-fled- tump-water. /Federal Jury Finds Feeding Our Future Masternind and Co-D…

Services Program", and alleged fraud in daycare centers*, Your Administrations have refused additional accountability and oversight, claiming that criticism of rampant fraud and abuse is "racist." While the full extent of fraud in Minnesota is not yet known, it is clear that, under your leadership- or lack thereof fraudsters can take advantage of federal funds and the American taxpayer with impunity. This necessitates federal action to protect taxpayer dollars until adequate safeguards can be established. Despite a staggering, wide-reaching fraud scandal, your Administrations refuse to provide basic information or take common sense mcasures to stop fraud. In fact, rather than conlin your SNAP rolls are accurate to prevent continuing fraud, you asked the courts to block USDA's directive to recertify the State's SNAP recipients. Recent news reports also emerged that the Minnesota Department of Human Services repeatedly reported incorrect information about SNAP to the federal government.? The Trump administration refuses to allow such fraud to continuc. Therefore, because of your failed Icadership and abysmal financial management oversight, 1 am notifying you that, effective immediately, I am suspending payments on all active awards and any future awards from USDA to the State of Minnesota and the City of Minneapolis, currently totaling over $129.18 million. Within 30 days, you shall provide USDA with payment justifications for all federal dollar expenditures from January 20, 2025, to the present. Going forward, all transactions on awards to the State of Minnesota or the City of Minneapolis will require such payment justification. If those payment justifications are not received, awards will remain suspended. While your Administrations have turned a blind eye to documented fraud, the Trump Administration has made clear that fraud, waste, and abuse are unacceptable. The American people deserve to know that their taxpayer dollars are helping those in need-not criminals. …

The US Department of Agriculture suspends all federal funding to Minnesota, effective immediately.