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Alan

@alanallanallen.bsky.social
166 followers 139 following 546 posts

Beloved Literary Institution

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Reposted by Alan
Erin Keane @erinkeane.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I was raised by a nurse with an associates degree and a steel mill electrician. I am not denigrating the value and dignity of blue collar work when I ask how many elite national media staffers are raising future bricklayers themselves. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...
theatlantic.com
Time to Consider Becoming a Bricklayer
College degrees hold less value, while jobs in the trades are booming.
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Christopher Stevenson @chrisstevenson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
New Podcast! I interview the amazing @ambersparks.bsky.social about her debut novel, childhood and adulthood, magic, and Halloween. Donna Arrendell interviews the participants of the short horror films workshop. Best podcast ever! dcplpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/com...
dcplpodcast.simplecast.com
Coming Into Spooky Season | DC Public Library Podcast
In this episode, we’re coming into spooky season. In Get Lit Chris Stevenson interviews Amber Sparks about her debut novel “Happy People Don’t Live Here” which is now in paperback. After that we’ll br...
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Eric Williams @geoliminal.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
if you want to support human-made independent literature AND you want some of the best weird fiction you'll ever read for this spooky season, might i suggest: asterismbooks.com/product/toad...
asterismbooks.com
Toadstones | Asterism Books
Bloody haruspicy as an archeological technique. The violent premier of a film star’s lost noir masterpiece. A housekeeper’s final job for her late employer. An exhumation to retrieve a poetry manuscri...
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 01/10/2026
Tomorrow night at @eveninghouse.bsky.social, 7PM in Buffalo, NY, I’m really excited to be hosting @adamvoith.bsky.social of @littleengines.bsky.social AND @ljabouttown.bsky.social. All three of us will be reading as part of Adam’s book tour. gonna be a really fun night of literature. Come out!
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I thought I was busy when I was building a house but teaching high school is more work.
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jon christian @jonchristian.net · 30/09/2026
NEW: People who chug their own piss have emerged as MAJOR supporters of AI futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
People Who Drink Their Own Pee Are Obsessed With AI, Using It to Reassure Themselves That It's a Miraculous Cure-All
Urine therapy devotees are sharing ways to break past AI guardrails in order to brainstorm ways to use pee as medicine.
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Melissa Johnson, PhD @ladyhistorian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I am tired of having to pretend that the value of studying my discipline solely rests on the "marketable skills" we teach. Sometimes things are just worth knowing and doing because they make your life bigger and richer.
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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
One reason to learn about things outside your major is so that you have something to talk about with people at parties and on dates. No amount of money will make up for you being a crushing bore. History majors learn this early but I guess it takes other people longer.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
My most nuanced opinion about AI is I hope everyone involved in foisting this shit on us burns in hell.
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Malarkey @malarkeybooks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Exactly 10 signed copies of Submarines, a fantastic novel by @mikeandrelczyk.bsky.social and the title we get the most AI scam emails about, left. Get one! malarkeybooks.com/store/submar...
malarkeybooks.com
Submarines, a novel by Mike Andrelczyk — Malarkey
July 2026 Preorders will be signed by the author and shipped out in June/July 2026, accompanied by a bookmark and a bonus micro-chapbook of the author’s poetry. I loved  Submarines  fo...
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Been watching BOY safety videos for six+ hours—not my ideal Sunday, no offense to vector solutions.
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Jennifer Wortman @wrefinnej.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I have a new book coming into the world! Many thanks to Thirty West and Josh. I’m thrilled to be in the company of so many great writers.
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Chris Kluwe @chriswarcraft.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Weird coincidence that all this is happening the same day as the AI air control rollout. “You’re absolutely right - a forty five degree angle of approach is entirely too steep for landings, and that’s on me. Would you like me to call some local mortuaries?”
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Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
AI Guy Asks AI To Help Him Read Difficult Books
4 panel comic

Panel 1: Orange Guy holds up book and says “I’m gonna read a book”

Panel 2: Orange Guy looks at book cover and says “hmmmmm”

Panel 3: Orange Guy types a query into his phone

Panel 4: Close up on phone screen reveals AI responding with “a chocolate factory is a factory made of chocolate”
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Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
been thinkin about how robots are gonna kill us
Scratchy drawing of a two panel comic.
Panel 1: 
Titled:“How we thought robots would kill us”
A robot shoots a human to death with a gun. It screams “Die flesh sack”

Panel 2:
Titled “How robots will actually kill us”
A MediBot is injecting something into a humans arm. The bot says “Whooops. I injected you with cancer instead of insulin. That’s on me”
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 16/09/2026
Fun update!!! Reading with Adam Voith for the October 2nd event is gonna be myself & fellow Malarkey writer & general superstar @ljabouttown.bsky.social
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Gonna make a class zine for Things Fall Apart. Each section will have its own zine, with students able to submit more creative work of their choosing. On Friday we’re doing “This Is Just to Say” poems from the perspectives of characters in the book and the best ones will end up in the zine.
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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This would be a difficult story to report, because nobody would want to go on the record about it, but the actually important story about American schools is the persistence of thousands of teachers who give their kids what we know they need despite the barrage of mandates, standards, tests, etc—
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Just one more reason to ❤️ Hacks
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Sheldon Birnie @badguybirnie.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Wrote about generative AI and gig posters for the paper today. Check it out ❌ 🤖 🖼️ www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-lif...
winnipegfreepress.com
Winnipeg venues saying no to AI-made advertisements
Although the days when telephone poles and notice boards across the city were thick with gig posters, either slopped up with wheat paste or wrapped tight with packing tape, are behind us, the art of m...
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Identity Theory @identitytheory.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Come edit with us! We're accepting staff applications for late 2026-27.
identitytheory.submittable.com
Identity Theory - Volunteer Staff Application
Established in 2000, Identity Theory is an online magazine of literature and culture that has published hundreds of writers and thousands of creative works, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, revi...
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Straight talk time: Doomerism is BORING. It's the same fantasties rehashed over and over again, just louder each time. And with each iteration it seems that new audiences are being reached, and a new group of people needs to be talked down from unnecessary fear. >>
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
💨
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
“The Second Coming” is a doomer poem. Have to admit “Blood-dimmed tide” is good but otherwise I hate this poem.
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Mike Andrelczyk @mikeandrelczyk.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Nice review of Submarines from God’s Cruel Joke: www.godscrueljokelit.com/blanton-gamb...
godscrueljokelit.com
Hugh Blanton - The Hallucinating Gambler — God's Cruel Joke
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Will Musgrove @willmusgrove.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Yesterday I got my first blurb for my book, After Last Call, which is coming out from @malarkeybooks.bsky.social next April. If you haven't already, you can preorder my book here: malarkeybooks.com/store/afterl...
malarkeybooks.com
After Last Call by Will Musgrove — Malarkey
April 2027 Preorders will be signed by the author. After Last Call is about those who linger long past closing time, who bum around the bar’s parking lot to trade stories about a time when t...
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Took this poem from the new issue of Poetry magazine into class and we read it (wrecked me, personally) and then made our own poems about things AI can’t do www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...
Sentence strips taped onto construction paper making a poem, on the topic of things AI can’t do, that reads:
Fall in love
Escape a cult 
Accidentally call your girlfriend “mom”
 Drink all of the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone cause it’s dripping on your hand
AI cannot
Replace
The
Human
Experience
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O F SCARY @ossuary.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
BACKMASK is a sapphic Satanic Panic book about girls, sex, drugs, rock n roll and subliminal message. Available in audio, e-book and paperback formats. @malarkeybooks.bsky.social @haruspex-audio.bsky.social
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
“Sticks” is a story about a guy with a hobby.
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Girish M. Duvvuri @gmduvvuri.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The open secret to pedagogy research is that small class sizes/maximizing educator attention per pupil is the simplest, most effective, and unfortunately the least attractive to administration thing you can do to improve learning outcomes.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
People idealize rural life but no one really talks about how often it stinks too bad to go outside because your neighbors two miles down the road bought fertilizer.
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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 06/09/2026
Got 'em: The @thebulwark.com added an editor's note to the review, acknowledging that the author's direct affiliation with the Foundation for American Innovation ("the foundation shaping the tech right," according to Inc.) created a conflict that should have been forthrightly disclosed.
Editor's note from Bulwark: 1
Editor’s note (September 3, 2026, 1:10 p.m. EDT): In a response to this review posted to social media, Gil Durán, author of The Nerd Reich, has highlighted that the reviewer, Jacob Bruggeman, is affiliated with the Foundation for American Innovation (FAI). Durán mentions FAI in his book, once, in a sentence that reads as follows: “This merging of tech and far-right networks—hosted by the Foundation for American Innovation, which Inc. later described as ‘the foundation shaping the tech right’—seemed like a live test of [Balaji] Srinivasan’s theory.” Bruggeman’s affiliation with FAI is an unpaid, nonresident fellowship (in other words, it is not his day job), and while it was mentioned in his byline beneath this review, we should have made a point of additionally disclosing it in a footnote like this.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Got approval for in-school slow read book club—excited to read Les Miserables over the course of a school year with a handful of high schoolers and teachers!
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
This man converted to Catholicism purely for the bit. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
JD Vance says he’s doing ‘God’s work – and if that leads to the end times, OK’
Vice-president says on evangelical podcast he would feel ‘not shocked if the antichrist was walking among us’
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Hell Gate *subscribe today!* @hellgatenyc.com · 02/09/2026
The work of New York City native and street poet @7SoulsDeep is nothing if not polarizing. It cleaves its audience into two camps: People who have clapped when their plane landed, and everyone else. We know where we stand. hellgatenyc.com/7soulsdeep-s...
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
school vandalism, you can ban it www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/n...
nytimes.com
A.I. Is to Be Banned in N.Y.C. Elementary and Middle Schools (Gift Article)
A new policy to be announced by the Department of Education bars younger students from using A.I., but stops short of a moratorium.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Wrote a decent close reading of “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” this evening, in between making dinner, feeding the dog, answering 300 questions from my kids—curious to see what students think of it tomorrow.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I am tired!
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Mike Drucker @mikedrucker.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Look, are we the laughing stock of the world? Yes. Are we losing a war we should’ve never started? Yes. Is all our food poison now? Yes. Are all the jobs going away? Yes. But the important thing is a blue-haired college student I made up in my head feels bad about memes.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I have so much to do still but I am genuinely excited to start the new school year. The switch from community college to high school was A LOT but I’m grateful to be able to be able to talk with young people about books and poems for a living!
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Dependency is the goal.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
"The liberal arts isn’t cultural enrichment alone. It is preparation for a future in which human judgment becomes increasingly important. Interpret the macro environment. Critical thinking, communication, ethical reasoning, creativity." solutionsreview.com/edtech/2026/...
solutionsreview.com
Liberal Arts & AI: The Most Criticized Degree is Now Most Relevant
Liberal arts and AI are reshaping the future of education. Tim King explains why what's old is new again amidst the AI revolution.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I had to put a quote on my staff bio so I used a James Baldwin quote (about you think you’re alone in your suffering—until you read books), but here’s my real one: “Jesus Christ, I’m so blue all the time / And that’s just how I feel. / Always have and I always will.” —Phoebe Bridgers
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O F SCARY @ossuary.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Be more like Bluesky user Joyce Feral Oates. Buy books and perfume
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the Jarvis Cocker of the Chicago lit scene @yoadrianididit.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Tonight tonight tonight!
Avondalia Night Out at Rosa's Lounge (3420 W. Armitage) - 7pm, doors at 6:30, August 20th, readings by Rocio Franco, Kathy O'Neill, Adrian Sobol, Sierra Kruse, Ben Niespodziany, visit rosaslounge.com to RSVP
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Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
NEW in Porch Party: What is the opposite of enshittification? It's this exhibit of constantly renewed, individually labeled fresh wildflowers, meticulously run by volunteers at a small museum for more than a century www.porchpartynews.com/p/the-wildfl...
porchpartynews.com
The wildflower table holds summer's last days
In a time of strategic and pointless degradation, a museum exhibit cultivates respect even for roadside weeds
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I once worked at a university that gutted an entire (very popular and useful) learning center and replaced it with two guys who would teach you how to host blogs. every student had to have a blog. Every single one. Our syllabus had to mention blogs. We had to teach WITH blogs.
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amulya.bsky.social @amulya.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
My husband Drew wrote this at breakneck speed while moving cross-country and caring for an 8 month old, bc he felt it was necessary, ethically and politically, to correct the record. If you read Tyler Austin Harper's piece, I hope you'll read this.
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Alan @alanallanallen.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I picked up Land by Maggie O’Farrell. Such a baller move to title your book Land.
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Suzy Eynon @suzyeynon.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
New story in the Pets issue of @farewelltransmiss.bsky.social farewelltransmission.net/2026/08/lost...
farewelltransmission.net
LOST AND FOUND - Farewell Transmission
by Suzy Eynon My cat escaped in Colorado. We lived in three different states together, Kyle the cat and I. Colorado was the pit-stop between two other places that felt more like home. We stayed with m...
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