Adia Benton
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ethnography911.bsky.social
Adia Benton
@ethnography911.bsky.social
17K followers 650 following 4.8K posts
Quick! Somebody call an anthropologist! Assoc prof @ Northwestern. MedAnthro. African studies. Pop culture. Politics. She/her. book: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816692439/hiv-exceptionalism/
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ethnography911.bsky.social
This bit from the obit stood out to me
The Reagan administration had slashed the agency’s budget, he later recalled, and the C.D.C. did not have the laboratory capacity it needed to investigate, so the task of identifying the virus fell to outside researchers. Dr. Dowdle pushed for more funding, initially to no avail. Furthermore, the president refused to acknowledge the disease publicly for years. Dr. Dowdle recalled the period as “extremely difficult and discouraging.”
November 30, 2025 at 5:18 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
I don’t think the algo fully gets me but I totally saw this and went “yeah I dunno what this is about but I’ll watch it”
Landing page for Death By Lightning, Netflix limited series about James Garfield’s murder, image, actors shea wigham and nick offerman sporting old-timey mid-19th c facial hair.
November 7, 2025 at 12:35 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Seems like they’re jumping the gun… a whole issue?
RSTMH announces a new journal in AI and global health During the RSTMH Annual Meeting, we were pleased to announce that we have agreed terms with Oxford University Press to launch a new journal on the topic of Artificial Intelligence for global health, which we plan to launch in early 2026. We hope that introducing a dedicated forum to showcase the latest research and learnings in this area will help support the wider community with the long-term adoption of these technologies in LMICs. We are now actively looking for Editorial Board members and reviewers for this new journal. If you have experience in this area and would like to discuss one of these roles or would like to hear further updates about the journal, you can register your interest here.
October 29, 2025 at 12:53 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Huh
The catfishing scam putting L.P.G.A. golfers and fans in danger By the time a 72-year-old man realized he wasn’t in a relationship with Nelly Korda, the world’s No. 2 female golfer, his retirement fund was gone.
October 11, 2025 at 2:05 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
ran out of time with my mini-lecture on sports as ritual, performance, and spectacle ...so skipped ahead to my religion slide to tease for next time
photo of 20yo Lionel Messi holding infant Lamine Yamal in 2007. Photo by Joan Montfort. stained glass from the Notre dame du rugby chapel in southwestern France
September 29, 2025 at 6:12 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
from wikipedia, about a man Cheeto named as a person he might be interested in investigating for 'funding anarchists'. a 'journalist' in the room fed 'Soros' to him as an example, so of course he mentioned him...but this one was someone he named spontaneously
In 2016, Hoffman created a card game modeled after Cards Against Humanity intended to poke fun at US presidential candidate Donald Trump.[145] In December 2018, the New York Times broke a story alleging that Hoffman had "put $100,000 into an experiment that adopted Russia-inspired political disinformation tactics on Facebook" during the 2017 special Senate race in Alabama, which allegedly targeted Roy Moore voters. Hoffman did not immediately respond.[146] He apologized later that month, also stating he was unaware what the non-profit—Washington, D.C.–based American Engagement Technologies, or AET—had been doing.[147] Hoffman helped fund E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit for defamation and battery against Donald Trump.[148] On May 9, 2023 a jury found Trump liable and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.[149]
September 25, 2025 at 10:21 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
It's interesting to see people on here say that, despite disagreeing with Kirk's "politics," what happened to him is "sad." That his wife becoming a widow and his children becoming fatherless is a tragedy. But is it really? Because tragedies like this are the daily reality in Black, brown, and poor communities. So, why the need to perform "balanced" mourning for a man who even in death would spit on your moral posturing? This endless polishing of halos in the name of middle-of-the-road decency is exhausting. But you know what is decent? Not using violent spectacles as stages to prove you're a "good person." The need to seem above the fray isn't neutral-it's rooted in white supremacy. It's the same moral script that asks us to humanize white men who incite violence while staying silent about the people they target: immigrants, trans folk, black families, homeless neighbors. It rewards empathy for oppressors and demands "civility" toward power, and, yet, dismisses the grief, rage, and humanity of those on the receiving end. In rushing to perform sympathy for Kirk, you're reasserting the racial order that protects white racists, centers their pain, and sidelines the communities they harmed. That's not really compassion... that's... complicity. Meanwhile, the Right isn't wasting a single second mourning their enemies. They keep their eyes locked on their agenda. Maybe it's time you did the same. Put your energy where it matters-into countering the Right's consolidation of power.
September 21, 2025 at 4:34 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Oh
Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime NY Times headline Feb 4, 1939
September 21, 2025 at 4:14 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
bc the OP seemed to have gotten rid of this (probably worried about upsetting an access relationship or some such), but NO. the incorrect claim about immunity is precisely why the entire statement is wrong. the calculus, to my mind, has always been complicated! 'less necessary' is still necessary
Apoorva Mandavilli, in live updates on the NYT, writes: Kennedy said covid vaccines were much less necessary now because "the virus has mutated, it's much less dangerous, where there's a lot of natural immunity and herd immunity and so the calculus is different, and it's complicated." Setting aside the incorrect claim about herd immunity, Kennedy makes good points.
September 5, 2025 at 1:08 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
This list ranking active ATP players’ (by number of titles) is illuminating/sobering
Leading active ATP title winners 1 djokovic 100 2 Zverev 24 3 Alcaraz 22 4 Cilic 21 5 Sinner 20 5 Medvedev 20 7 Rublev 17 8 Wawrinka 16 9 Monfils 13 9 Ruud 13
August 18, 2025 at 8:06 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Bored trying to make an updated version of Rockwell’s Rosie
August 16, 2025 at 6:49 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
just been informed they’ve written this story again
Chris Allred, who has lived in Arkansas all his life, says immigrants who enter the United States illegally are “parasites.” But something has challenged his view: He met, and married, the love of his life. And his wife is in the country illegally.
July 10, 2025 at 9:43 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
I was thinking more about the passages on spectacular displays of state power and the aesthetics of vulgarity
In Cameroon, spectacular displays of state power were introduced under President Ahidjo, who relied on mass arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings to remain in power. Politics was replaced by an endless series of spectacles: public holidays, sports events, concerts – bread and circuses for the 20th century. These practices were inherited and refined by Cameroon’s second president, Paul Biya, who came to power in 1982 and continues to rule today. Biya encouraged Cameroonians to hang his portrait in their homes, churches and places of work and to wear clothes bearing the party logo. The posts and palaces and public places have been filled with buffoons, fools and clowns at various levels, offering a variety of services,’ he writes in De la postcolonie. ‘Their function is to preach before the fetish the fiction of its perfection.’ In Bakhtin, the people’s celebration of the body (and especially its orifices and excrements) was a way to debase the ‘spiritual’ or ‘higher’ values of church and state. But in the postcolony, the mouth, the belly or the phallus became part of an ‘aesthetics of vulgarity’ shared between the people and their autocratic leader. (The autocrat is always a man. He represents ‘the unconditional subordination of women to the principle of male pleasure’, which is inscribed in the social fabric of the postcolony.) The carnivalesque was no longer an escape from authority, but the mode of official parades or ceremonies, where the public gathered to enjoy themselves and affirm the power of the state.
July 5, 2025 at 6:20 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Scene from Oakland’s No Kings rally
June 15, 2025 at 3:41 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Bunty is at it again
Father Brown looks at Bunty, who is addressing Inspector Marshall: “you know, inspector, I can’t help but notice She continues, “you always seem to arrest the brown-skinned people.”
June 12, 2025 at 1:04 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
absolute chaos
Sarah Huckabee Sanders @SarahHuckabee ... What's happening in California would never happen here in Arkansas because we value order over chaos. Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom Your homicide rate is literally DOUBLE California's.
June 11, 2025 at 7:51 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
This foolishness. A director of contracting in DoD (DARPA) is begging them not to cut biosecurity threat research at Harvard, and these absolute fools have this to say:
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/02/m...
Given what’s happening at Harvard, especially under this leadership team, we are making the decision to get out of business with them for now. Harvard can’t seem to comprehend or acknowledge the severe and alarming civil rights issues on its campus,” Josh Gruenbaum, a member of the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force, told the Globe last week.
June 3, 2025 at 3:41 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Soundtrack to Pizza Friday
10 anos de bossa nova album, featuring man surfing
May 24, 2025 at 12:57 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Okay Bee
May 23, 2025 at 5:35 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Laughs in anthropologist
NYT Bee puzzle with the letters POTCLHA
May 22, 2025 at 3:18 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
That wasn’t so hard, now, was it? (But maybe their options for watering it down were limited).
NYT newsletter headline reads “Noem Incorrectly Defines Habeas Corpus as the President’s Right to Deport People”
May 21, 2025 at 1:44 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Conleth Hill in The Cleaner 😝
Still of Conleth Hill with longish hair and bushy beard, portraying a lighthouse keeper
May 20, 2025 at 9:27 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
White South Africans Granted Refugee Status by Trump Leave for U.S. Dozens of Afrikaners who claim discrimination in their home country flew out of Johannesburg on Sunday. Their departure for the U.S. came as the Trump administration was halting virtually all refugee admissions. Img: white people with lots of luggage at airport
May 12, 2025 at 11:23 PM
ethnography911.bsky.social
She never hits

“We have so little power; let’s side with genocide”
Chronicle of Higher Education headline. Why we need nonpartisan scholarly associations. They have limited political muscle and so must use it wisely.
April 24, 2025 at 11:51 AM
ethnography911.bsky.social
Was deleting brown alumni email and saw this gem. What exactly is the “dialogue across difference” here?
State of America: Join Watson Institute Interim Director Wendy J. Schiller for a wide ranging conversation on the State of 2025 with Professors John McWhorter and Glenn Loury. This conversation is the final event in Watson’s Dialogue Across Difference series this semester.
April 20, 2025 at 3:35 PM