This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Shanel Khaliq can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/05/violence-freedom-gender-and-the-politics-of-surveillance-in-public-parks/. About the post: Cities all over the world have witnessed a surge in the use of surveillance technologies, such as data-gathering phone apps, facial recognition software, and closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras among others, to address crime and safety in public spaces. While it may appear that these technologies unequivocally create a safe environment regardless of social identities, unresolved incidents of violence against women and transgender bodies in public spaces suggest otherwise.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jaime Landinez can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/birding-in-ruins-multispecies-encounters-and-the-ecologies-of-evidence/. About the post: This piece explores the life forms that emerge in the ruins of capitalist dreams and the production of modest forms of evidence that seek to render them visible. It sees the sensorial practices prevalent among birdwatchers, such as long walks, careful listening and observation, and close attention to seemingly trivial acts (feeding, nesting, mating) as forms of evidence-making in the ruins of a once prosperous aquaculture farm.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Claudio Benzecry can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/the-perfect-fit/. About the post: In my new book, The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry, I study the work of repair and maintenance necessary to keep the global scale going. I do so by studying the work and lives of experts in charge of design and development of shoes for the US market.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Yulany Foster-Valencia can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/the-illness-experience-of-a-forty-year-old-hispanic-woman/. About the post: Different cultural upbringings can determine a person’s illness experience. The relationship between the experience of a patient, and in turn, a course of treatment is inherently valuable to document.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Debora Machado can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/the-use-of-patent-information-to-investigate-algorithmic-systems/. About the post: Patents are delicate documents to study. As a technological-legal text, the patent is not written in a manner that aims to ensure easy understanding for everyone. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

On the morning of Friday, March 10, 2023 Nick Seaver and Ana Carolina met over Zoom to talk about his new book Computing Taste: Algorithms and Makers of Music Recommendation, which was published in 2022 by the University of Chicago Press. Transcript available at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/an-anthropology-of-algorithmic-recommendation-systems/ (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 Cydney Seigerman can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/making-forecasts-work-the-evolution-of-seasonal-forecasting-by-funceme-in-ceara-northeast-brazil/. About the post: For agricultural families in the sertão, or hinterlands, of Ceará, a forecast is wrong when it rains less (or more) in their community or municipality than what was “promised” by the forecast, and the highest probability becomes deterministic at a very fine scale. (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 Nicole Taylor and Mimi Nichter can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/03/digital-multiples-and-social-media/. About the post: Filtering the self is about every aspect of self-presentation, from the aesthetic of a person’s feed and their physical appearance to the personality characteristics and lifestyle they want to convey. Yet, all of this is bounded by a generational desire to remain authentic, meaning that there are limits to strategic self-expression online.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rebecca Carlson can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/03/transpositioning-a-hypertext-ethnography/. About the post: This is a work of hypertext-ethnography. It is based on my research of a small genetics laboratory in Tokyo, Japan where I am studying the impact of the transnational circulation of scientific materials and practices (including programming) on the production of knowledge.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/03/dining-with-the-diaspora-khmerican-digital-gastrodiplomacy/. About the post: What people are eating, how they are eating it, and why they are eating it have been debated throughout time and space. With increased engagements with food with different types and layers of technologies, online food discourse has expanded rapidly. Yet people have been forming and joining online communities to share their ideas, experiences, and perspectives around food in multi-modal ways for decades. In this post, the author develops the idea of digital food spaces (DFS) to refer to these communities, defining digital food spaces as online communities and platforms dedicated to the sharing of food-centered ideas and media.