Inside a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting "small town America"

https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/01/inside-a-network-of-ai-generated-newsletters-targeting-small-town-america/

209. May 2, 2025 – Just days after joking that he would “like to be pope,” President Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself dressed in papal attire.

Good morning.

Today is the 80th day that the U.S. President is running a backdoor bribery scheme in which any CEO or foreign oligarch can send him money secretly through his crypto coin scam in exchange for favors.

It's the biggest scandal in the history of the Presidency.

Latest 📗 "Anthropology of Reproduction: The Basics" with @salliehananthro.bsky.social is finally in my hands & the second edition of my first 📘 "Nighttime Breastfeeding" is highlighted for World Health Day by @berghahnbooks.bsky.social It's 📚 day 🥳

One of my favorite weird signs at the rally

The #HandsOff rally in Chicago is packed!

New parents: If you have questions about our baby formula investigation, our reporter @heathervogell.bsky.social is taking questions in r/FormulaFeeders here:

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century."
snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

TODAY @ NOON ET in NYC:

COLUMBIA PROFESSORS TO HOLD EMERGENCY VIGIL AGAINST ADMIN CONCESSIONS TO TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

Columbia gates at 116th & Amsterdam Ave (Not Broadway)

• Hands Off Our Students, Faculty, & Research

• Defend Science

• Defend Academic Freedom

• Defend Freedom of Speech

"We urge policymakers, educators, & the public to recognize that gender justice is not a privilege but a fundamental human right" - statement by Assoc for Feminist Anthro, Assoc for Political & Legal Anthro Board, Assoc for Queer Anthro, & Council on Anthro & Repro afa.americananthro.org

"Other countries have social safety nets. The US has women."

That was true in 2020, and it'll be even more true now.

Cool so what happens if GOP attach a national abortion ban to a CR? You'll vote for that too?

🚮

For colleagues teaching med or repro anthro: It's why we wrote our new Basics book! Pair it with your fave ethnography and /or chapters from The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Reproduction www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

Chapter 2: “Practices and policies that shape how individuals can or cannot take care of themselves while menstruating—such as ... clean water or safe and private spaces—as well as what access they have to contraception and abortion are significant assertions of power ...” (Han and Tomori 2025, 24)

Our new book is out!! So excited to share this with the world. We hope you find it useful! Labor of love with the best co-author one could imagine.

Why we wrote this book (2/2): “Anthropologists of reproduction undertake the project of documenting and describing what people do and explaining how and why.” From Chapter 1 - Why reproduction matters and what the anthropology of reproduction offers (Han and Tomori 2025, 1).

Why we wrote this book (1/2): “People who do not wish to have children may be forced to do so while others who desire them are discouraged or even actively blocked from doing so and parents struggle for the resources they need and want to raise their children as well as they can.

Now available for those of us teaching and learning #anthropology and #reproduction. By @drtomori.bsky.social and me
www.routledge.com/The-Anthropo...

"Burnout has been an issue in academe ... But recently, the stress of working in a sector battling for its very existence in the face of declining student enrollment, political attacks, & public skepticism about the value of a college degree has also taken a toll."
www.chronicle.com/article/high...

"...funding for the military, which is abs. not profitable, remained 👍. But funding for the arts, education, + care work — easily ✂️. Why fund schools if you don’t have kids in them? Why fund art you, personally, wouldn’t choose? Or a park you don’t visit? Or rsch to cure a disease you don’t have?"

So grateful to Oregon State Anthropology for a wonderful visit! Nourishing connections and conversations 🌻

It's also not true. White maternal death rates are also not great when compared to other countries. The downside of using the people you systematically opress as your benchmark is you fail to recognize how your own policies are killing you.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of biomedical research, yesterday killed a $60 million program aimed at making universities’ STEM education more inclusive. scim.ag/3EtS0US