Dr. Amanda Fields

there are so many open layups and somehow dems can’t make them. republicans are literally pulling cancer treatment from children and they can’t message on that??? like what the fuck are we doing here

Like a Deer in the Dark Rural Illinois, March 13, 9:36 p.m. I do not want to be here. The flight from Lisbon to Chicago was 10 hours, then the chaos of passport control and luggage retrieval. The line at the Budget car re...

"Would I have come all this way if my mother weren’t disappearing?"

- from "Like a Deer in the Dark," @wordsbyladonna.bsky.social's essay about visiting aging parents in rural Illinois in our July/August issue:

"You are loved. Goodbye." A review of Sidework The unnamed narrator of Sasha Hom's novella Sidework is a waitress who lives in a van with her four children (three water births), two wolf dogs, and one husband. She's the toughest protagonist I've r...

"She’s the toughest protagonist I’ve read in a long time."

Brianna Avenia-Tapper reviews Sasha Hom's novella, Sidework, in our July/August issue:

We're working on revising our submission form, contracts, etc. (yeah, we're late to the game - we're a volunteer organization, OK?), but we'll say here that the use of Gen AI to compose creative work isn't welcome in our journal. Mostly bc using Gen AI in this way doesn't make a lick of sense.

Anyway, they’re all playing in your face about AI. As soon as it deprofessionalizes everybody that the market hates because their credentials give them wage power, you’ll be able to buy a LLM tamagotchi at the Family Dollar and we will all vaguely remember when these toys were a fix for everything

Never Silent: A Conversation with Nicole Graev Lipson In Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays (Chronicle Prism, 2025), Nicole Graev Lipson shares stories about the complexities of motherhood. As she adjusts to this new identity, Lip...

"I’ve always seen the world through a feminist lens, but [becoming a mother] did intensify all of these concerns. Suddenly, they weren’t just theoretical or academic."

Isabella Fusani interviews @nglipson.bsky.social about Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays:

A Chrome browser error page displays the familiar “Aw, Snap!” message, indicating that something went wrong while loading a webpage. A pixelated frowning file icon with Xs for eyes appears at the top left. Below, the error code reads “Out of Memory,” suggesting the browser ran out of system resources. The page includes a “Reload” button in blue on the bottom right

behold the "HTML bomb"

It's a counterattack for AI companies that persistently scrape and rescrape your web site, even when you tell them not to

when a scraper grabs it, it becomes a 10-gig HTML page and 💣 goes the scraper

Item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

Calling AI a copilot is so ridiculous. They want you to believe that you and AI are working together as a team but copiloting a plane is just a computer program that flies the plane.

With Grant Cuts, Trump Pressures UCLA to Make Deal Like it did for prestigious private universities, the administration has cut off federal grants for UCLA, alleging it failed to address antisemitism. The UC system must tell the DOJ by today whether i...

The government is “using levers of power that are completely unrelated to the underlying allegations…Cutting off research for diabetes, cancer, heart disease will not improve the safety of Jewish faculty & students on campus & will not address antisemitism.”

—Mia McIver, AAUP Executive Director

Emma Pattee: Chained to a Dream Eva and Amanda chat with Emma Pattee, author of Tilt, about parsing capitalism and creative pursuits, powering large-scale climate activism, and questioning how to love something you know will die.

"The things that capitalism deems valuable are not inherently valuable."

Don't miss the latest episode of This Mama Is Lit!

@emmapattee.bsky.social, author of Tilt, talks w @evalangston.bsky.social & @ajfields.bsky.social about capitalism, climate activism, and parenthood:

Dinner with My Daughters Feigning ordinary hunger,I take them to Lalo’s for enchiladas. Reflected in the window,my face wavers, streakedwith rain and headlights. I check the pane for signs, my mindroiled by revelations of sp...

Read Lailah Shima's heart-wrenching poem in our July/August issue:

Back from no internet or cell reception at my parents’ & thrilled to report that satellite TV never says anything about AI. Give me teeth whitening and drug commercials listing 30 side effects all day forever if I never have to hear about AI again.

Woman A Leading Authority On What Shouldn’t Be In Poor People’s Grocery Carts

Woman A Leading Authority On What Shouldn’t Be In Poor People’s Grocery Carts theonion.com/woman-a...

Watchdog Group Downgrades U.S. From Democracy To Whatever Political System Lobsters Have

Watchdog Group Downgrades U.S. From Democracy To Whatever Political System Lobsters Have theonion.com/watchdo...

RFK JR Announces He Will Just Go Door-To-Door Killing People To Save Time

Washington Post: “Is fascism bad? The answer may surprise you”

Teen Vogue: “Here are three fun tips you can use this summer to disable an armored personnel carrier”

[trains AI on a mountain of racist and sexist materials]

"jeepers, I wonder why this AI is so racist and sexist"

If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages

Rhetoric of Science and Sustainability Inquiry: Ecology, Economics, and Political Sciences This article examines the rhetoric of science at work in the interdisciplinary inquiry of sustainability science, which includes ecological, economic, and political sciences. Sustainability is argu...

New article: We have the knowledge to see that we are in a moment of crisis for human well-being on Earth and we also live in an age that makes communicating this crisis feasible, but the complexity of ecological, economic, and political discourses constrain us.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Why I'm Saying No to Generative AI There is no value-add to using generative AI for historical work

Saying No to Generative AI

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

They LITERALLY want dead women to have to carry fetuses to term but live babies to die of preventable illnesses. That’s a GOAL of theirs, not a side effect.

I think we need a new DSM category for multi-generational racist sexist sadistic sociopaths

The idea that President can negotiate/dictate bilateral “deals” by using the full force of the federal government to punish and humiliate his perceived enemies goes against the whole idea of the rule of law. That should be the story, rather than normalizing this authoritarian behavior.

It’s very strange that the Times is normalizing the fact that the whims of the president and the far-right ideologues who staff his “crusade against top schools” have become a predicate for “deals.” This is authoritarian behavior and should be covered as such.

America is my myth.

—Natalie Diaz

Emma Pattee: Chained to a Dream Eva and Amanda chat with Emma Pattee, author of Tilt, about parsing capitalism and creative pursuits, powering large-scale climate activism, and questioning how to love something you know will die.

Don't miss this fantastic episode w/ @emmapattee.bsky.social, author of TILT as we chat capitalism vs creativity.

literarymama.substack.com/p/emma-patte...

THIS MAMA IS LIT is found wherever you get podcasts!
@ajfields.bsky.social @literarymama.bsky.social @hollyrizzutopal.bsky.social

Donate to Support a Pregnant Asylum-Seeking Mom in Central Kentucky, organized by Lauren Cagle Hi, I’m Cagle! I’m fundraising for an asylum-seeking mother… Lauren Cagle needs your support for Support a Pregnant Asylum-Seeking Mom in Central Kentucky

Y'all, I'm asking for your help with a GoFundMe I'm sponsoring.

Along with other members of my local community, I'm fundraising to support a pregnant asylum-seeking Mom and her family here in central Kentucky.

Every dollar helps, as does every share. Thank you thank you!

gofund.me/afcd1f1a

The time is long overdue for Congress to stop funding Israel’s illegal and horrific war against the Palestinian people.

The U.S. must not support a government which is starving children.

Tomorrow, I will force votes in the Senate to block the sale of weapons to Netanyahu.

I’m a lawyer who’s worked with unhoused clients; acquiring a govt ID is by far, the most common task/obstacle unhoused clients face, usually at the outset.

So of course, ICE is raiding homeless shelters. They hit the Women’s’ Shelter across the street from our bldg, yesterday. Cruelty is the point.