This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Zhou Zhou can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/04/powerpoint-karaoke-a-ph-d-version/. About the post: The only way to “lose” the game, we decided, would be to remain trapped in grad school forever — on every campus, there are stories of ghosts of former students or professors haunting certain buildings.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ritwik Banerji can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/04/people-are-not-fixed-media/. About the post: Fixed media are the dominant media form social scientists and humanists use to depict human practice. If the goal is to portray human beings as they are, the dominant media form used to do this in the humanities and social sciences is incommensurate with the basic indeterminacy and reactivity of the subject they attempt to represent: the human being.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Tayeba Batool can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/04/climatic-futures-and-tree-response-ability-can-urban-forests-restore-human-tree-relations/. About the post: The consequences of afforestation projects such as the Miyawaki urban forests are larger than just a failure of scaling up or over-emphasizing effectiveness. The consequences lie at the heart of what we take for granted in environmental projects to encounter climate.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by P V can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/03/traveling-but-not-arriving-hieroglyphics-of-caste-in-computing/. About the post: If arrival is a trope to be appropriated in ethnographic writing, I want to underscore the value of traveling over arriving – more so for studying intangible things that “don’t exist” than those that do. In my fieldwork I am traveling the terrains of computing collecting traces across sites, spaces, places, corners, platforms, never entirely sure if what I am observing is about caste but trying to read for it against the grain of castelessness. While my interlocutors who are Dalit continue to travel through computing cultures seldom arriving at a resolution of the question of caste.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam and Antonio Oraldi can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/03/netlicks-and-chill-digitalization-and-food-politics-in-taste-the-tv-tttv-technology/. About the post: TTTV allows the user to taste the flavors of a particular food depicted on it, thus giving a whole new level of possibilities to those interested in elevated multi-sensory experiences. Using preset chemical recipe mixtures distributed by ten flavor canisters onto a hygienic film, users simply lick the screen to taste the food of their choice — from chocolate to more elaborate local dishes. Like other technological innovations, this invention presents both potential as well as problems: How does one define and construct a standardized taste? Who decides which recipes (and thus tastes) are included or featured on TTTV and how do different forms of power manifest in these choices?

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Maxime Polleri can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/03/ethnographies-of-nuclear-life-from-victimhood-to-post-victimization/. About the post: Many ethnographies of nuclear life are increasingly producing scholarships that precisely move beyond tropes of victimization and damaged biologies. This “post-victimization” approach is gaining a lot of momentum in anthropology. (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 Annie Arulraj can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/02/from-amusement-to-conscientization-the-purpose-of-media-literacy-in-the-age-of-misinformation/. About the post: Annie Sadhana writes about media literacy as a tool to promote critical action as well as communication technology and points out that learning this difference can bring about a change in the way people receive, consume and share information.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Tomoki Fukui can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/02/queered-ruptures-the-politics-of-anti-irradiation-maternalism-in-the-tepco-nuclear-disaster-kokutai-and-hentai/. About the post: This essay reflects on the significance of Chiharu’s description of herself and other women active in anti-irradiation efforts as hentai. It reflects on the sense that Japanese mothers who take issue with nuclear reconstruction in late capitalist Japan are perverse and aberrant. (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 Timothy Neale and Catherine Trundle can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/02/reactions-and-ruptures-ethnographies-of-nuclear-life/. About the post: This upcoming series brings together three scholars—Tomoki Fukui, Maxime Polleri, and Kirsty Howey—whose ethnographic research focuses on life as it is entangled with the ruptures and reactions of nuclear materials, events, and places. In the series, they discuss how their work brings into question common understandings of nuclear events. Against common representations of such events as breaks or ruptures, these scholars show they are instead continuous within longer-term histories of race, science, gender, and labor. (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 Svetlana Borodina can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/01/platypus-in-2022/. About the post: As the new year and the new semester have been off to (hopefully) a good start, Platypus is coming back to work too. Building on a decade of work (this year Platypus turns 10!), in 2022, we will continue our commitment to providing a platform for diverse voices and critical scholarship at the intersection of anthropology and STS.