V. Joshua Adams

Didn’t think I could feel worse than when we invaded Iraq for transparently bullshit reasons 23 years ago. But I do. We have learned nothing.

Annulet returns with Issue (9) and (10), a double decker that features the first iteration of our open folio "American Poetry & Poetics, 2008–2025." So much is here for you to read. We're so happy to be back.

CBP didn’t exist until the creation of DHS in 2002 as part of post 9-11 right wing fever dream. It became operational in 2003 and effectively has been a bastion of misconduct and human rights abuses every sense.

Throw the whole thing out and start over.

Sunday

High School English and the Making of American Readers Abstract. The high school English classroom is the most influential literary institution in the United States, and the most overlooked by literary scholars

A barn-burner essay from @manshel.bsky.social in the recent issue of ALH!!! “High School English and the Making of American Readers.” academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

Thank you. What I really want is for Gorbachev to have slowed his roll

Saturday

Mom turned up an end-of-term comment from my freshman year of high school 😬😬😬

Bro almost had it

seeing conservatives admit alex pretti was disarmed and need to change their message to “well you know where you won’t get shot? at home” is just an impressive level of pathetic allegiance to their dictator

St. Paul woman, a U.S. citizen, recounts her two days in detention Nasra Ahmed, 23, said she was taken to the hospital for an MRI with hands and legs shackled

Nasra Ahmed, 23, was walking through the parking lot of her aunt’s St. Paul apartment complex when she found herself surrounded by 12 agents. Ahmed, born in the USA, says she showed them her I.D. She was forcefully detained and jailed anyway for more than 2 days. www.twincities.com/2026/01/18/s...

Jesus.

www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He really is doing all of it.

At least Obama's hypothetical Death Panels would have decided who deserved to die based on a rubric more complicated than "did they just piss off a high school dropout armed by the state"

They keep saying this “didn’t you learn your lesson?” bit like murdering Renee Good was a flex and we’re all supposed to bow to their dominance.

Naming a police officer is not doxxing. We aren’t supposed to have secret police in America.

The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.

Demonstrators at the January 7, 2026, evening vigil for Renee Nicole Good. A tall flag reads "Fuck ICE."

Minneapolis.

AOC: This has now become what we feared most about ICE for a long time—that it would be used as an anti-civilian force with no accountability. At the end of the day, what we saw today was a murder, and murders in cold blood need to be prosecuted.

It’s genuinely wild that the United States spent decades building an elaborate rules-based international order which de facto cemented its permanent status as the dominant global hegemon, sustained by ideology rather than might, and now is just blowing it all up for literally no reason

The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing. All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.

This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.

Don’t miss it.

Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte

Time to start this one

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” - Mark Twain

Liza Hudock:

Went to the woods

Stephen Miller • @St... • 13m Ø Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.

Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti

Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta

Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers

So for your big tree. No use? Then plant it in the wasteland In emptiness. Walk idly around, Rest under its shadow; No axe or bill prepares its end. No one will ever cut it down. Useless? You should worry!

Thomas Merton, translating Chuang Tzu

I find it funny that Bari Weiss's new initiative is all about bringing SERIOUS DEBATE about IDEAS THAT MATTER back to television news, but the combatants are all podcasters or dudes like Stephen Pinker, who is being asked to weigh in on a subject very far outside his actual lane.

a cream colored book with a circle and square design on the cover: Darkroom by Ange Mlinko

Gorgeous new handmade book from Ange Mlinko and Foolscap Poetry

www.foolscap-poetry.com

Sign at the Weiners Circle: "F k T mp we can redact too."

Chicago is having none of this administration's BS.