Leta McCollough Seletzky
@letaseletzky.com
Director, Low Res MFA in Creative Writing at U. of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe | 2022 NEA Literature Fellow | Author | Lawyer | Strictly my opinions
Whether we’re talking about references to Michelle Obama or Dr. King, there are some lines of discourse that don’t merit engagement. Instead, I turn my attention to Juneteenth, the first and only federal holiday that specifically commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. 1/
I can’t believe a sharpie didn’t fix the weather forecast and save the UFC event!
As a Black woman from the South and former Assistant Federal Public Defender As a Black woman and former Assistant Federal Public Defender As a Black woman As a woman As a human being My heart breaks for Karmelo Anthony and rages against a system that wrought this
I have so much security and required authentication on my apps that my accounts can be reliably accessed by hackers ONLY
The only thing Idiocracy got completely wrong is that it would take 500 years
I’m deeply honored to join the Black Staff and Faculty Organization of @uofcalifornia.bsky.social Office of the President for their Juneteenth 2026 Celebration Series on June 16 at 12:00 pm PT. I hope you can take part in this special event!
Not above throwing a blazer on this and calling it business extremely casual
Was hanging up laundry to dry after airing out the house when it occurred to me that pretty much every household in generations past regularly used solar and wind power
America prepares to go FULLY under the big top. “So it would seem that a robust and nuanced understanding of human nature, especially in times like these, requires an understanding of the clown.” -Seletzky, “The Clownishness of Evil”
CNN@cnn.com · 2mo agoPreparations are underway at the White House for a UFC match on the South Lawn. President Trump is set to host the match next month to celebrate 250 years of American independence. Construction cranes could be seen Tuesday hoisting elements in place.
Friends, the time has come to share a piece on a topic I’ve been thinking about for some time—since at least 2016, at any rate—THE CLOWNISHNESS OF EVIL. I won’t bore you with preliminaries. But this is only the beginning of a conversation that must be had. 1/ www.letaseletzky.com/post/the-clo...
The Clownishness of Evil
Rosemary’s Baby as a Meditation on Aesthetics, Authoritarianism, and the False Selfby Leta McCollough SeletzkyPresented to the Chit Chat ClubSan Francisco, CaliforniaFebruary 10, 2026By Paramount Pict...
letaseletzky.com
That a Tennessee school district has banned ROOTS speaks to the book’s power. They can’t ban ideas, so they try this instead. I was a student in Tennessee when I first encountered ROOTS and the great Alex Haley. Like many others, I carry the power of this work with me. No book ban will stop us
Quick question: how useful will data centers be once they’ve depleted our resources, human and otherwise?
Once again, the people most likely to hide a zombie bite are guiding our infectious disease response
It’s always sobering to share memories of growing up in Memphis in the ‘80s and ‘90s, because some of the things that were normalized for us sound bonkers when I tell people about them. Like how in high school in the 1990s, they did a race-based roll call in homeroom every year 1/
Every now and then, I Google my name to see what’s out there, and you know what? This ”People also search for” box raises a very good question: WHERE IS MY WIKIPEDIA PAGE? 🗣️🔊
After engaging with the news of Richard Dawkins’ interactions with Claude, I have concluded that Dawkins is not conscious
We should make people confirm they are humans before they’re allowed to hold elected office or sit on the bench
On voting rights: One of the little (yet big) things I’ll never forget is the time my little brother and I were rifling through our grandparents’ stuff one boring afternoon in Memphis when my brother found one of Granddaddy’s old voter registration cards. It had a space for the voter’s race. 1/
Still wrestling with the fact that we have selfies from a purported episode of gun violence
Even if you assume for the sake of argument that the attack at that dinner was authentic, that the reflexive response was to seek a ballroom rather than do something about gun violence speaks extremely loudly
(I would add that I see Memphis as the US writ small.) Many thanks to @theintellectualist.bsky.social’s History of the Present and @lincolnsquare.media for this crucial conversation 🙏🏽
Like MLK JR, patterns of surveillance & intimidation are being used against ordinary people today. https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/the-mlk-assassination-revisited-history Subscribe to watch @theintellectualist.bsky.social’s History of the Present with Author of The Kneeling Man, @letaseletzky.com!
Satire is like a double espresso for the central nervous system
I keep thinking about how, not too long ago, a lot of eggs were put in the basket of “learn how to code.” Now we see that humans are becoming progressively less central to that work. It’s one of many reasons why my eggs will always be in the basket of “learn how to do more human stuff”
Palantir presents a great example of how corporations pose at least as much threat of tyranny as any government
Me when I do something remotely challenging: I’M BABYSTEPPING!
When the thing you make that matters the most is MONEY, I just don’t think it’s sustainable. (This is about Allbirds, but so much more)
It’s one of those perennial problems: all too often, the people who seek the most power should least be entrusted with it
I mean, he’s a little too ham-handed to pull off the whole Antichrist thing, but we do see how it COULD be done