Dear Google Hangouts: Please Fix How Notetaker Bots Join Our Calls!
Notetaker bots in a Google Hangouts meeting Have you ever been on a work call which looks like this? You’re there to see one individual, but multiple chatbot notetakers…
Notetaker bots in a Google Hangouts meeting Have you ever been on a work call which looks like this? You’re there to see one individual, but multiple chatbot notetakers…
Sambusas, Somali restaurant, Minneapolis, 12/25. Photo: David Beriss SAFN is once again organizing a food/nutrition photo contest in celebration of Anthropology Day. If you have food ant…
Stuck in the Turing Matrix: Inauthenticity, Deception and the Social Life of AI Samuel Gerald Collins The Turing test may or may not be a valid test…
Welcome to Platypus in 2026! Last year, we published over 65 posts, almost a quarter of which were also in a second language, and maintained a readership from 175…
This is a (hopefully) weekly update about events in Porgera. A few caveats: I’m not in Porgera and I’m only relying on my own knowledge of the valley…
Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we…
Preventing Violence by Keir Irwin-Rogers, Luke Billingham, Alistair Fraser, Fern Gillon, Susan McVie and Tim Newburn examines the UK’s public‑health approach to reducing violence and challenges to imp…
Page 99 of my dissertation, titled “Hearing Voices as Social Agents,” involves the observation that sparked my interest in auditory verbal hallucinations in the first place: those who…
By Elena Liberati – Debates on the commons have become increasingly central to analyses of grassroots struggles around mobility and borders in Europe. In the context of the…
The Cultural Role of Cities: From Civilizational Lighthouses to Engines of Change When we think about cities, we often default to the “bricks and mortar” view—the skyscrapers,…
Introduction: Contextualizing the Theory The “Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption” is a foundational concept in Indian anthropology, primarily attributed to Nirmal Kumar Bose (1901–1972). First pre…
The Theoretical Foundations of Indian Sociology: A Comprehensive Analysis of Cultural Traditions, Power Dynamics, and Sacred Structures The study of Indian civilization underwent a seismic shift in the…
Ubusuna Shrine, Shirogaki-cho, Kadoma-shi, Osaka-fu, Japan One of two small hand-made signs at our neighborhood shrine. The Tondo Festival (とんど祭り) is conducted annually on January 15 to coincide…
ByAlessandro PatelBSc Anthropology Waterloo Station at 6pm on a Friday. The departures board flickers in that slightly impatient way station boards do, the crowd breathes in and out,…
At lunchtime on university campus one thing stands out: the boterham (sandwich). Coming from Japan’s elaborate bento culture, I was puzzled that so many students eat the same…
https://www.plutobooks.com/product/audit-culture/ Ilana: Reading about audit culture as a professor feels so much like a fish being told “notice this water.” What inspired you to compare…
Anyone who knows Venezuela knows that things happen fast there. It is a function of the hectic pace of urban life in a society that is highly subject…
Ching Kwan Lee’s Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Decolonization Struggle combines history, ethnography and sociological analysis. According to Lucas Tse, the author’s account of political tra…
A best yet marston mat helicopter landing pad from the stranded bunnies section of Apocalypse Now Redux (2001 edition). Not in any of the other editions, for reasons…
This is a (hopefully) weekly update about events in Porgera. A few caveats: I’m not in Porgera and I’m only relying on my own knowledge of the valley…
This year I used StoryGraph to track my reading daily, and then I went back to LibraryThing to track my reading over time. LibraryThing is great: fully featured…
Joshua Farrell-Molloy elucidates how masculinity helps explain performances of militant republican aesthetics by Irish far-right actors, who bind a revolutionary past to conte…
by Sophie Leegwater – A few minutes before 4:30 pm on a Monday afternoon in early January 2024, I hop into the yellow cab that takes me to…
Essays written in preparation for my Comprehensive exams, nearly 20 years ago. Anthropology and Government Policy Part of the government’s role regarding Indian people was to figure out…