Airbnb’s Location Ratings as Anti-Black Spatial Disinvestment in Washington D.C.
In 2016, Airbnb host Synta Keeling appeared on NPR’s Hidden Brain to share her story of hosting as a Black woman living east of the Anacostia River. She…
Tag: General
The Ugliness of Multispecies Intersubjectivity: Pandemic Racism and the Love of Animals in the U.K.
Content and Trigger Warning: This post contains profanity and strong references to violence against Black Lives Matter protesters, but more specifically, protesters who are Black, Indigenous, and peop…
Data Swarms Revisited – New Modes of Being
Editor’s Note: The new Platypus Thematic Series entitled “Data Swarms Revisited” will feature posts form computer science, philosophy and anthropology and connect to the Thematic Series Anthropos Tomo…
Human as the Ultimate Authority in Control
Illustration of algorithmically simulated flocking behavior (2021, created by Anna Lukina) With the growing size of historical data available to researchers and industrial practitioners, developing al…
GameStop, the Platform-Democracy-Complex and the Promise of Crypto
The trading platform Robinhood tried to wiggle itself back into the heart of the masses with a prime-time ad during the Super Bowl break the first weekend of…
How Plants Become Bits: The Politics of Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation in Lake Erie
The Power of One While seated at my kitchen table in my apartment in Columbus, OH, the site of my dissertation fieldwork, I attended an Ohio Agribusiness conference…
Urban Acupuncture Design Theory: Researching New Development Practices in South Africa
Sometimes it only takes a “spark,” a “simple, focused intervention,” a “single stroke of genius,” or “the single prick of a needle” to release the flows and create…
Fugitive Science: Beer Brewing & Experiments with Pharmaceuticals in Tanzania
When I originally arrived to start fieldwork in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, I set out to observe the scientific practices through which counterfeit drugs were identified at…
Envisioning a Different Park: Border Walls, Transborder Ties, and Militarized Ecologies
When news broke out on January 20th, 2021, that newly inaugurated President Joe Biden signed a proclamation ending Trump’s Executive Order 9844, which declared a national emergency at…
Burnout
Introduction: Why a zine? Clara del Junco and Mathilde Gerbelli-Gauthier In this post, we’re sharing some excerpts from Burnout: a zine about academia, travel, and climate change that…
Indian Food Delivery Networks During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Over the past decade, the concept of the gig economy has gained momentum in academic discourse. Often linked to temporary employment created by multinational technological corporations through digital…
Living in a Time When “Death Feels Closer”
“I know I’m young, and dying isn’t something I’m ‘supposed’ to think about yet, but how can I not? Death feels like it is everywhere,” earnestly intoned Autumn,…
2021 at Platypus
Pixabay The first weeks of 2021 brought no relief, even though so many hoped otherwise. Instead, the first twelve days clearly demonstrated that exclusion, inequity, violence, and multiply…
Connection, Inc.: Fast Times for Online Dating in the Age of Quarantine
Online Dating Goes Back to the Future Have you noticed an uptick in move-ins or engagements in your social circles lately? How about divorces? While everyone seemingly dreads…
Mobilizing Cemeteries, Representing Ancestors: The Infrastructure of Protest and the Anti-Petroleum Complex Movement in Pengerang, Malaysia
Resisting the “Rotterdam Port of the East” In 2011, the prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, and the CEO of the national oil company Petronas, Shamsul Azhar Abbas,…
The Silence before the Silent Spring: Narratives of Modernity and the Silences around the Toxicity of Pesticide Use
Pesticide-use and the control of pest populations with synthetic chemicals are a subset of the history of the “modernization” of agricultural practices. This narrative positions pesticides as an…
International Day of Persons with Disabilities: What Happens the Day After?
Twenty-eight years ago, in 1992, the United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/3 proclaimed December 3 as International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Immediately following the International Da…
When You Can’t Look Away: Seeing and Difference in American Medicine
Juliet When I interviewed her, Juliet was a third-year medical student and a dedicated member of her medical school’s interest groups on social justice. I interviewed her because…
The ICT Poverty Trap: How Technology Disparities Exacerbate the Spread of Disease and Division in Jamaica
A view of the street side in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. A leaning telecommunications tower, symbolic of the island’s deficient ICT infrastructure, separates the stalls of informal street vendors…
The Work it Takes to Stop Working: Productivity in Labs and Sugarcane
In spring of 2020, thousands of scientific labs across several continents shut down. What was deemed “non-essential” research was ramped down and/or paused in an effort to stop…
A Technology of Empowerment and Governance: The IUD/IUS and Sexual Health Care in Toronto, Canada
The intrauterine device (IUD) and the intrauterine system (IUS) have a long and complicated history. The IUD is a contraceptive device inserted into the uterus, which serves as…
“Doing Being a Latina,” or Performing Identities Through a Computer Voice
The ability to communicate is often taken-for-granted and imperceptible, despite being vital to everyday life. It defines our social performances as family members, professionals, and neighbors. Moreo…
Connectedness in a Time of Pandemic
Right now, many of us are reevaluating what it means to be connected. In the United States, we often think of connectivity as having wireless broadband service, or…
Manipulating student evaluations: the Downey Sales School method
Student evaluations are biased? Yes, yes, they are. Research has repeatedly shown that students’ evaluations of teaching quality show a range of biases. For example, Anne Boring, Kellie Ottoboni…