Ryan Claycomb

Pittsburgh is the Paris of Appalachia, and the northern panhandle of WV is due west. Pittsburgh is not the Midwest.

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

Ordering now! Congratulations and I'm looking forward to reading where the conversation is going next!

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week."

--Willa Cather, 1925 and timeless

Crise en Abyme | Colin Vanderburg Anyone who has ever emerged from a multiday academic conference will recognize this truth: as the sun sets on the jetsam of crumpled programs and the custodians vacuum the carpet, you set out for the ...

This, Guillory says, is the defining “deformation” of literary scholarship: when the English department is your world, the world starts to look like an English department. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-50/rev...

That feeling when, in a double-blind review, you think you know who your reader is, and you're pretty sure they know who you are. Anyway, thanks for the great feedback.

Not only did I first see Rick Cluchey in KRAPP’S LAST TAPE on one of these, but I screened ENDGAME for my own students on one.

Good lord I got a case nearly every summer when I lived in Morgantown. Upside: the z-pack of steroids was great for writing productivity.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, giant of African literature, dies aged 87 Kenyan writer’s death announced by his daughter, who wrote: ‘He lived a full life, fought a good fight’

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Who Owns These Tools?: Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde “The desire for that sort of purist kind of connection that one might call communion, is something that I'm interested in in all of my work.”

Who owns tools like ChatGPT, and what does that mean? Can such AI tools be reappropriated by writers?

Such questions are at the heart of @vauhinivara.bsky.social‬’s new book “Searches.”

Hear her in conversation with @aarthivadde.bsky.social‬, new at PB:

Opinion | I wanted to make flood risk visible. So I painted a mural. With climate science under attack, artists and others must engage the public on these issues.

When institutions and policies fail us, the arts stand in the gap.
wapo.st/3ZzDwKJ

Four happy people in academic regalia

Putting the “party” in “platform party.”

When the DOGE Kids Came to Play How one federal employee witnessed the destruction of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

How one federal employee witnessed the destruction of the National Endowment for the Humanities. bit.ly/4jXdvgD

You know it’s a philosophy graduation ceremony when your post-Enlightenment joke brings down the house.

I’d try that dish, but I’d avoid Pie-tus Andronicus.

Congrats on the new directions. I hope you'll thrive in the new environs!

Observe that the one that complied and the one that didn't comply are treated exactly the same way.

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

"On Tyranny" is a #1 NYT bestseller again. I wish the moment were different. But I’m glad the book is useful. And grateful for all the kind words about putting the 20 lessons to work.
snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

1/ I need to say something a little more personal about the NEH. A 🧵

We were at our local theatre last night & cheered when they announced the production was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. NEA, NEH, IMLS & so many other sources of positive government support permeate our lives. The loss of these agencies is a travesty.

What's most exciting about this review is that Cox, appointed in a Communication Studies department, pulls out different patterns and questions than other reviews have, foregrounding political communication more than theatre studies framing future questions in super-productive ways.

Sometimes academic publishing's glacial timelines can be a feature and not just a bug, as when a good review appears two years after a book's publication.

Thanks to Jordana Cox and Theatre History Studies for the good notice.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/181/arti...

The Red Arrow by William Brewer: 9780593314432 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books When a once-promising young writer agrees to ghostwrite a famous physicist’s memoir, his livelihood is already in jeopardy: Plagued by debt, he’s grown distant from his wife and is haunted...

Currently reading and enjoying William Brewer's *The Red Arrow* not just because it's a really good read, but also because even after 6 years away, a story with well-drawn scenes from Morgantown still warms the cockles of my heart.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675640...

In the midst of the chaos, I find great solace that there are still high school theatre kids to email you asking your expert opinion on why musicals are so amazing.

What I told the Democracy Summit audience last week I gave a keynote talk. I called it: "Building Back a Better Democracy"

"We are not sleepwalkers, fated for disaster. We stand fully awake. We know the status quo is unacceptable.

So enough with the doom and gloom. The time demands action.

Let's reimagine. Let's rebuild. Let's turn this mess around." leedrutman.substack.com/p/what-i-tol...

This Sunday, the whole country needs to spring forward from 1939.

Colorado State University Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America, delivers a keynote talk on “Building Back a Better Democracy-Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop” as part of Colorado State University’s 2025 Democracy Summit. ...

Thought-provoking talk by Lee Drutman, (senior fellow at New America) from CSU’s 2025 Democracy Summit - on multi-party electoral politics, proportional voting, and the neighborhood-level work that (more than two) political parties could be doing.

flic.kr/p/2qQsaAU

Our play, COWBOYS AND EAST INDIANS will have its world premiere at @denvercenter.bsky.social in January 2026! so excited and proud! Then on to Atlanta!

**Go read Lauren Berlant's final chapter from Cruel Optimism (2011), "On the Desire for the Political." It is very of-the-moment.

www.dukeupress.edu/cruel-optimism

Empathy Doesn't Make You Less Racist Saidiya Hartman argues that erasing difference can be an act of aggression.

4) find intimate publics when you can and build trust to shore up the networks to do the hard work, 5) READ UP!

* Go read @nberlat.bsky.social on Saidiya Hartman on empathy's dangers: www.everythingishorrible.net/p/empathy-do... 7/