This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Manar Naser can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/the-kids-are-ai-right/. About the post: My students were actively evaluating AI's role and utility rather than absorbing it uncritically. This complicates the assumption that children are passive recipients of a technological future being built for them. Education policy is actively being shaped by the potential of an education in and conducted by AI rather than considering the students they are pushing this upon

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Lachlan Hensey can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/dispatch-from-seoul-reflections-on-the-science-technology-human-values-science-and-technology-studies-school-june-2026/. About the post: In June, emerging STS scholars gathered in Seoul to workshop draft manuscripts, encountering charismatic objects and a “concrete fish tank”. In this post, Lachlan Hensey reflects on the 2026 ST&HV STS School: It seems many of us happened upon STS quite unexpectedly, but also gratefully, hesitantly or far later than we now wish. Whatever the case, misfits or meanderers, there we were—in Seoul, ‘doing STS’—evolving a shared language to articulate that which is obscured, tacit, or might be otherwise. And although there is often a hint of deviance, mischief or even alienation that colours the way STS scholars describe and relate to their research contexts—as “tricksters”, perhaps—there are few punchlines or ‘gotcha’ moments among these manuscripts. Instead, the conversations we cultivated throughout the School were characterised by epistemic humility, reflexivity and care.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Tanu Biswas can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/in-the-pensive-pause-of-supervision-a-footnote-on-citing-santos/. About the post: Overcoming the separation of ethics, metaphysics (including ontology), epistemology, and aesthetics that is possible in Western philosophical traditions, but not in non-Western traditions, lies at the heart of scientific work aimed at cultivating decolonial methodologies.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Neslihan Sen can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/from-candle-to-dilator-treating-vaginismus-in-turkey/. About the post: Vaginismus as a medical diagnosis, and its associated therapy, give women the legitimacy to experience their bodies and sexualities in a way that was not acceptable before the diagnosis. Sexuality becomes central in these women’s lives. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jennifer Foley can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/networks-of-knowledge-sharing-becoming-with-mushrooms-in-academia/. About the post: The experience of becoming with mushrooms and being a part of the Mushy Collective changed how I understand and engage with knowledge production. Knowledge is not a finite product waiting to be harvested for display or consumption.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Megan MacGregor can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/microbiome-monitoring-smart-toilets-precision-medicine-and-the-post-genomic-bowel/. About the post: Imagine that every time you poop, your hygiene routine involves depositing your used toilet paper into a toilet-side receptacle. As you wash your hands, the device mixes, processes, and extracts microbial DNA from your stool. It sequences the microbial DNA for a real-time readout of your microbiome (the microbial genomes from within your gut, or at least the ones that made it to your stool), automatically sending the information to a large-scale microbiome database that integrates it into its data, algorithms, and analytic programs. The program connects to an app on your phone, telling you that based on your personal version of a healthy microbiome, today your microbiome is looking a little low in the bacterial species Akkermansia municiphila and high in some risky metabolites (the molecular outputs of some of your gut microbes).

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Miriam Fahimi can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/can-a-data-center-sweat/. About the post: Heatwaves push data centers to their thermal limits. The continuous operation of their servers depends on energy- and water-intensive artificial cooling, with far-reaching yet still insufficiently understood consequences for both societal and environmental well-being. This contribution examines the meanings and implications of artificial cooling in data centers and asks whether a data center can, in its own way, learn how to sweat. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mayline Strouk can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/fragile-followings-leaving-and-returning-to-the-ecological-field/. About the post: This piece calls for renewed attention to returning to ecological field sites to conduct long-term monitoring studies. In marine ornithology, seabird colony monitoring – often carried out over the course of a career – shapes scientific trajectories, but financial support for such work remains largely limited and confined in short-term projects. In the social sciences, researchers are also expected to spend extended periods in the field to truly know and “own” it – until they move on to other projects and sites, following new positions and funding schemes. Taking the case of a petrel monitoring program in Iceland and an STS PhD thesis following it, I draw attention to the fragility of fieldwork, caught between the expectations and needs to stay and return to the field, and the realities of the precariousness faced by both researchers and the seabird populations they study. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Javed Siddiqui, Abdul Nayeem, Ambika Tandon, Anushree Gupta, Eesha Kunduri, Isha Bhallamudi and Manju Goel can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/platform-workers-organizing-diaries-messages-from-union-organizers-to-researchers/. About the post: Researchers are increasingly applying collaborative and participatory approaches to work with and not on gig workers, union organizers, and platform cooperatives. In the last post of our series, we aim to contribute to these practices of actively building alternatives and strengthening movements, by speaking to three gig worker-organizers from India - Manju Goel, Abdul Nayeem, and Javed. We ask them, how do they view the role of researchers in the gig worker organizing landscape? How can researchers best support gig worker unions? What should we keep in mind when embarking on such collaborations? (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mpho Primus and Siri Lamoureaux can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/07/automating-language-losing-relationality-feminist-reflections-on-african-language-ai/. About the post: A grandmother pauses before answering a child. The meaning of her response lies not only in the words she chooses, but in tone, shared history, relationships, context, and even silence. Yet these are precisely the elements that today's Large Language Models struggle to capture. As AI expands into African languages, the focus has largely been on datasets, benchmarks, and model performance. But what happens when language is transformed into decontextualised text for computational processing? Drawing on perspectives from computational linguistics and linguistic anthropology, this article argues that language is not simply a collection of words - it is a relational, embodied social practice. We examine how current approaches to African language AI risk reproducing older assumptions about language while overlooking the cultural and social worlds that give it meaning.