Eleanor Glewwe

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

We bombed Iran?! | I need to pay that bill | Kansas antitrans ID law!! | Don’t forget Hugo noms | do we still have Venezuela’s president? | *an email re: book promotion* | I can’t pay this bill | cutting funds to MN?? | I need to check on my friends | timeline fights about doomerism | taxes | REPEAT

Had been thinking of you. Happy milestone anniversary!

Thank you to @authorsabb.bsky.social heroes @beccacoffindaffer.bsky.social and Ed Underhill, we have some slides that can be shared by anyone about this, with particular reps to target. Let's kill this bill in committee.

Oh, no, that sounds rough. I hope you get some answers soon!

A square image consisting of white text on a solid, midnight teal background. The text reads: 2025 Awards Eligibility Eleanor Glewwe Novelette "Limue's Alphabet" (10,000 words) The Future Fire - Sept. 2025 Short Story "The Otter Woman's Daughter" (5,000 words) Cast of Wonders - Feb. 2025 "A Cup of Forgetting" (4,960 words) Fantasy Magazine Dec. 2025

And now that my last story of the year is out, I can post my first ever awards eligibility post!

Story links are on my blog: eleanorglewwe.com/2025/12/19/2...

Avoiding unintended consequences: science of reading policies may harm deaf children Abstract. Many U.S. policies inspired by the Science of Reading rest on two assumptions: (1) skilled reading always involves automatic mapping between writ

The title of this new article by >30 deaf and hearing authors says it all "Avoiding unintended consequences: Science of reading policies have potential to harm deaf children" doi.org/10.1093/jdsa...

Also me 😂

Keep Minnesota Housed! Much of the medía has left, but ICE is still in Minnesota and hundreds of families need help with rent in order to avoid eviction. Visit keepMNhoused.com to adopt a rent or donate to rent funds! #keepMNhoused

Today we are launching a new intitative of Stand With Minnesota—KeepMNHoused.com, a rent-relief campaign backed with a $1.5 matching fund from the Wilson Foundation.

Thousands of MN families are at risk of eviction because of the ICE occupation’s lasting impacts. We can keep them housed.

Oh, I missed this! Congratulations!

an aerial shot of a frozen lake with luminary that spells out MN is greater than ice with a heart that has spirals which is a hmong symbol! The words are surrounded by a circle of people

Lake Phalen last night. East Side Pride!!! Including a Hmong heart. 💛

Minnesotans on Lake Bde Maka Ska (formerly Lake Calhoun) in Minneapolis. Jan. 30, 2026.

📷: WCCO-TV

"ICE OUT" on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, as seen from my flight leaving MSP airport

A group, one of many, holding candles in honor of a community member executed by an unaccountable paramilitary invasion force

This is Minneapolis.

Literally every corner along Lake St. packed with people holding candles, many singing, honoring a person who by all accounts was an absolute gem of a human, whose life was tragically stolen by a fascist, paramilitary occupation force.

A photo of the 1/23 protest in downtown Minneapolis, including a sign showing Renee Good's last known words, "That's fine dude, I'm not mad at you."

🧵ICE has been in my state for over a month. Yesterday, my family and folks from all over the Twin Cities gathered by the thousands in sub-zero conditions to march and to say in no uncertain terms that we don't want ICE here, that we want ICE to leave. 1/5

Oh, I love that one!

Wow. He really spoke in front of the *old* Minnesota flag.

How To Help if You are Outside Minnesota I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you more or less understand the situation in Minnesota and I don’t have to explain it to you! That said, I do have a section of lo…

ARE YOU A NON-MINNESOTAN WHO WANTS IDEAS OF STUFF TO DO TO HELP MINNESOTA RESIST FASCIST TYRANNY? Have I got a blog post for you! With additional advice for how to get ready in case tyranny shows up at YOUR doorstep next!

naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/h...

I just read about this in Le Monde, complete with video, and then I come over to Bluesky and it's like the second thing I see 😂

Argh! Glad you got some of your afternoon back, but sorry for the aggravation and expense.

Oh, nooo, so sorry!

Oh, wow, this sounds *amazing*!

Ooh, thank you! I also loved A Sorceress Comes to Call. I recognize lots of other authors and titles. But I hadn't heard of the Mary Bennet book, which sounds intriguing!

Books you read and loved in 2025?

Things are to the point where my favorite Chinese-English online dictionary is appealing directly to American users on its homepage to speak up against threats to Greenland and NATO.

2025 Awards Eligibility I’ve never done one of these before, and to be perfectly honest, I think it’s highly unlikely anyone is going to nominate one of my works for an SFF award, but hey, 2025 was kind of a b…

Thank you for doing this! Here's my post:

eleanorglewwe.com/2025/12/19/2...

I have no words.

I Stopped Students Using AI This Semester The results—and the reactions—were startling.

Best semester ever, thanks to going fully analog katemanne.substack.com/p/i-prevente...

Last book of 2025 was Witch King and first book of 2026 is Katabasis.

we're here — neon hemlock

REMINDER to send your 2025 original publications of queer speculative short stories (science fiction, fantasy, horror, anything odd and unusual) to We're Here 2025 for consideration - I am the guest editor this year, with the always awesome @cypayseur.bsky.social!!

www.neonhemlock.com/were-here