Matt Seybold
@MEASeybold
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Rez Scholar, Mark Twain Center | Associate Professor of American Lit & Twain Studies + Director, Media Studies @ElmiraCollege | American Vandal Pod | Lit & Econ
Elmira, NY
Joined September 2011
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The font size will keep getting smaller until I force myself to stop booking guests. Sorry.
Premieres next month.
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Elon is a creative accountant who rebranded himself as an engineer. Like any fintech grifter, he lives in perpetual fear of liquidity crises, like the one he now faces.
Most prognosticators I'm seeing predict one of two things.
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Just for “fun,” colleague & I did some back-of-napkin calculations. The energy used to make this video could heat my home for one full day in January.
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Mark Twain hated the Fourth of July.
He was often invited to speak at Independence Day festivities. His audiences assumed that his reliably unpatriotic remarks were tongue-in-cheek jests.
But he meant that shit.
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I followed my curiosity about Walz’s teaching career down a wormhole this morning. This thread just scratches the surface.
But I have two more pressing things to say about what I learned.
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Maybe we have underrated Coach Walz.
Tag yourself. I'm "quiet girl always reading some book about Queen Elizabeth."
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They laughed in 1907 when he said, "The Declaration of Independence was written by a British subject…there was not an American in the country on that day except the Indians out on the plains."
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The cash needs to come from Twitter itself. As Musk gets desperate, he will turn the platform into a grotesque amalgam of PornHub, 8chan, Full Tilt Poker, & The Daily Wire, an account-draining pleasure island for his incel army
MySpace is not the cautionary tale. AM radio is
4/8
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They filled the channels with Prosperity Gospel, Anti-Abortion Evangelicals, Rush Limbaugh, & his clones.
This transfiguration of public utility to perpetual propaganda laid groundwork for christian fascism
6/8
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A weaponized far-right Twitter is like something out of Bannon's dream journal. And all that's holding back the horde is Musk's (the alleged richest man on earth) relative liquidity, about which, who knows?
8/8
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“Patriotism I s a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn’t a foot of land in the world which doesn’t represent the ousting & re-ousting of a long line of successive ‘owners,’ who each in turn, as ‘patriots,’ with proud swelling hearts defended it…
8/9
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She also coached the cheerleading team, co-directed the annual musical, & gave piano lessons.
The Walzes are so my people. I can hardly bear it.
I’M ALL THE WAY IN!
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They laughed heartily when he said, in Keokuk in 1886, that the best thing a speaker could do on such an occasion was sit down, which he then did.
They laughed in 1899 when he suggested the holiday was "only sacred" to "the surgeon, the undertaker, & the insurance offices."
2/9
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…not because it is not American, but merely because this nation goes insane, & by the help of noise & fire turns into an odious pandemonium. The nation calls it by all sorts of pet names, but if I had the naming of it I would throw poetry aside & call it Hell's Delight."
5/9
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1.) He reverses course & Twitter returns to something resembling what it looked like in Summer 2022.
or
2.) Infrastructure decay & active user flight spiral the company towards bankruptcy & obsolescence.
Unfortunately, I think there is a door
#3
.
2/8
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When the 70-yr status quo of US radio started unraveling in the late 90s, station owners, many of them media conglomerates, turned over this robust infrastructure, with almost unprecedented reach, to networks like American Family Radio & Excellence in Broadcasting.
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…against the next gang of ‘robbers’ who came to steal it & DID - & became swollen-hearted patriots in THEIR turn.”
END
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But in an 1908 entry of his Autobiography, which he knew would not be published until a century after his death, he reveals that his disdain was always deadly serious:
"I detest that English holiday with all my heart;…
4/9
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AFR & EIB were, predictably, funded by the GOP donor class.
They understood that the AM dial, was, like Twitter, often derided, but gave them access to an audience who they could not reach any other way, at least not at such a tremendous scale.
7/8
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Musk's behavior reminds me of Ponzi schemers facing down a torrent of withdrawals. He needs cash fast & he's already tapped out his venture partners without "open kimono," which he won't do.
3/8
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Widespread public drunkenness & fireworks were a reliably deadly combination. "We lose more fools on this day than on all the other days of the year put together," Twain wrote, "We destroy more property every Fourth of July night than the whole of the United States is worth”
6/9
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He co-curated (with his future wife) the local history museum. All while serving on that National Guard & getting additional teaching certificates from nearby colleges.
Tim Walz was that kind of indefatigable teacher. We all know & love one. Many of you are ones.
3/6
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Year after year long lists of casualties were published during the week that followed.
Twain didn't think the "odious pandemonium" stood for anything. It was an imitation of Guy Fawkes Day, an excuse to fire pistols in the air & set things ablaze, crying patriotism.
7/9
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Tim Walz was by all indications a teaching All-Star. He was doing experiential, curational pedagogy before there was such a thing.
That said…
2.) If Tim was an All-Star, Gwen Walz (Whipple) was MVP. Holy Shit. She started winning state teaching awards like instantly.
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She launch a speech & debate team her first year. By year three it was top in the state, winning every category. Her team had 40+ students. The school board had special meetings just to approve her budget!
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1.) Tim Walz taught in the Alliance School District for only 4 years, but somehow in that short time he coached three football teams, men’s & women’s basketball, & middle school girls track. He also launched foreign exchange & summer abroad programs, & a scholarship…
2/6
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Where are all the conservative professors?!?
Who knows? Maybe economics, business, finance, law school, criminal justice, computer science, engineering, marketing, nursing, political science, accounting, theology, communications, speech & audiology, math, med school, dean’s off
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Maybe we have underrated Coach Walz.
Tag yourself. I'm "quiet girl always reading some book about Queen Elizabeth."
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What role can global celebrities play in responding to genocide? Does it matter what Beyonce or Taylor Swift says about Gaza?
In the aftermath of his 1905 world tour, Mark Twain was likely the most famous cultural figure on Earth.
What did he do with it?
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The crisis in the humanities is the crisismongering of the humanities.
This is what happens when strategic decision-makers in admin are uniformly recruited from places (business schools, econ depts, executive suites, etc.) where economic rationality reigns without rival.
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Private equity will, once again, make a bundle of money gigifying an entire professional class, but this time they’ll go further by compromising the literacy of an entire generation. But maybe that’s the point. Literacy is only for the rich again.
Listening to Sal Kahn
@StanfordHAI
and he confirms Khan Academy is building a “process oriented” AI writing tool that will “write with” students from conception to submission and monitor and report on all steps. I know Google is working on tools like this too
@AnnaRMills
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This, but for Mark Twain inventing the bra clasp.
one of my top 5 repeatable life experiences is telling people that TS Eliot wrote CATS
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Of course I found the yearbook from which the NYT stole that photo.
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If there's one thing I've learned from 20 years of attending, organizing, & giving academic talks, it's that audiences love it when you read aloud a long block quote.
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This is every midwestern small town secondary school faculty in 1994. I swear at least three of these people taught me STEM subjects.
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Did he ever share some experiences from all over the world. That year he took students on "a return visit to Fosham
#1
Middle School, where he previously taught."
Accompanying him, "Miss Gwen Whipple," who later that year would become Gwen Walz.
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In the midst of planning a wedding & a visit to China, Coach Walz led the freshmen Bulldogs to a 5-3 record during "a very challenging season."
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Not sure what to promote. Last week we celebrated an important sesquicentennial in Twain Studies.
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Counterpoint: The simplest way to create a competitive advantage for yourself as an enterprising young adult right now is to monastically resist using ChatGPT & other AI tools for schoolwork.
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But he knew immediately that he could amplify an activist cause he sympathized with, & that his media power could keep it before the public, even when governments & capitalists were wishing it would go away.
END
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My ChatGPT policy is very permissive. You can use it. You just have to show me your prompt. And your prompt needs to be at least 500 words. And use at least three quotes from the readings.
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We all know that Moby-Dick is just a “simple tale about a man who hates an animal,” but my student stunned me this week with a completely impromptu presentation on the question of whether “it is possible for a whale to hate a man.” Her answer: Yes.
Deftly argued, as follows…
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Twain wrote "King Leopold's Soliloquy" gratis & published it initially through the Congo Reform Association, raising money for their anti-colonial activism.
"King Leopold's Soliloquy" was circulated & reviewed on at least five continents, in more than a dozen languages...
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It's annoying how good this is.
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Friends. It's the anniversary of Moby-Dick's publication. If you see cool, zany, cute, interesting whale tweets, memes, etc., will you please draw my attention to them?
I'm teaching the novel right now & in tomorrow's class we are specifically analyzing its pop culture legacy.
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The latter was a reference to his then work in progress, "King Leopold's Solilquy," a satire of Belgian occupation & extraction in the Congo, narrated in the Belgian King's voice, both admitting to many atrocities & whining about the publicizing of them in Anglophone press.
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“Real Women” by Joyce Carol Oates
no one particularly wants to be naked
in a locker room or anywhere
with strangers
or possibly with anyone
anywhere
at any time
naked
or not
[Fucking masterpiece. 👏🏻]
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The response to "King Leopold's Soliloquy" inside & outside Belgium was so great that the monarchy was forced to produce a propaganda pamphlet against it.
(One of my all time favorite pieces of Twain ephemera.)
6/9
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This book is so good I can no longer remember how the contemporary looked to me without it.
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Never engage Twain in a flame war.
"Answer To Mark Twain" increased the circulation of "King Leopold's Soliloquy."
By responding, Leopold had legitimated Twain.
As far away as Australia, one commentator marveled, "Never has irony been used with more effect."
7/9
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A year after his “Answer To Mark Twain," Leopold yielded sovereignty over the Congo.
It was the result of decades of agitation & was just the beginning of the slow unraveling of Belgian empire.
I don't want to suggest that Twain swooped it & solved imperialism.
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If you like this thread, you'll probably like my podcast.
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While this was not true for the entirety of his career, from 1905 forward Twain understood celebrity as intrinsically political. What was the point if not to leverage it against other forms of power?
In Jan. of 1906, he wrote, "Czars and Leopolds are my quarry these days."
2/9
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Began teaching Moby-Dick today. Instantly evident that my students will have no patience for the book except as a queer romance & collection of phallic puns. Please send me your favorite gay whaling scholarship, pronto.
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Earlier this Summer, I asked Anna Kornbluh what Fredric Jameson meant to literary criticism.
On the occasion of his passing, we'd like to share her answer.
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It is all too easy to conflate “public scholarship” or “public humanities” with the cringey “public intellectual”
A lot of people clearly think “public” work is mainly comprised of writing OpEds & going on talk shows…& are thus justly skeptical.
But that’s not it at all…
1/8
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...including Dutch.
Members of the Belgian Press were shocked by the accusations coming from Twain.
One reporter, suddenly doubting his government, wrote,
"Each day we wait to put an end to this wretchedness is an affront to any nation that calls itself civilized."
5/9
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Well. Fuck it. I can't resist. We're gonna do a podcast series about Twitter. Confirmed guests include
@ubiquity75
,
@ibogost
, &
@RColesworthy
. First episode drops tomorrow.
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Percival Everett has given a gift to Twain Studies. I’ll never be able to read Huck Finn quite the same way.
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The entire infrastructure of knowledge production, inside & outside academia, is being compressed to the point of collapse under the tripartite pressures of austerity, extraction, & labor intensification.
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Academia would be healthier if all academic journals were open access instead of paywalled for the purpose of diverting education revenues to multinational corporations & their investors.
Academia would be healthier if more professors were empowered to focus on teaching, rather than producing work they don't care about for journals nobody reads. We are incentivized to prioritize the part of our jobs that matter least, cutting corners on the part that matters most.
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Women & people of color did not take your jobs, talented young white men. Mediocre white men did.
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What every AI integration your school purchased last year looks like right now.
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This is really hard for me to talk about, but it’s the reason why I’ve waded into this discourse, so I’m going to put it out there & thereafter I’ll have nothing more to say on the subject.
In his early 80s, my grandfather started showing early signs of Alzheimer’s…
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“Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone.”
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The default position towards new faculty is approval
You will be very popular until you take a stand on something.
But taking a stand has the potential to make you persona non grata forever.
Long & lucrative academic careers have been made by never exiting the default position
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Shiv: But, you know Twitter has NEVER really been a profitable enterprise right?
Kendall: Sure sure sure. But what if there were, like, seven of them.
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The bipartisan assault on HigherEd has no capacity, nor intention, to close schools with multibillion dollar endowments or D1 football teams.
The goal is to close institutions that serve first-generation, Pell Grant eligible, etc.:
Institutions that are levers of labor power.
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I believe both our presidential candidates are in the early stages of age-related dementia. Maybe my trauma deludes me. But that’s what I see.
And I see their parties treating them as familiar political brands rather than geopolitical decision-makers.
It terrifies me.
END
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