General | Platypus

From Candle to Dilator: Treating Vaginismus in Turkey

 Neslihan Sen  August 18, 2026

Aysel brought out her candles wrapped in stretch wrap and put them on the coffee table in the middle of our interview. She was very proud of showing her progress to me through these home-made candle dildos. When she brought them out to the living room, I was still sipping my tea and my half-eaten piece of cake she baked for me was now sitting next to her candles on the coffee table. She made these dildos herself with the help of her sister-in-law, her elti, in her kitchen by shaping them, melting them thinner, and combining them together for different sizes so she could use them as apparatuses to treat her vaginismus, the inability to engage in penile-vaginal intercourse. (read more...)

Microbiome Monitoring: Smart Toilets, Precision Medicine, and the Post-Genomic Bowel

 Megan MacGregor  August 11, 2026

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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). It recommends that you eat extra polyphenol- and fiber-rich foods today, and asks if you want a recipe for a berry- and seed-laden oatmeal for breakfast. The vision I describe here is a technoscientific imaginary: a shared vision of a future, mediated by science and technology (Marcus 1995). Technoscientific imaginaries are always embedded in historic and cultural contexts and narratives, which shape what future visions we find possible, desirable, and relevant. In this post, I examine how this technoscientific imaginary draws on narratives about promise and precision medicine inherited from genomics, as well as newer ones based in new understandings of the human microbiome and its powerful associations with many aspects of human health. (read more...)

Can a Data Center Sweat?

 Miriam Fahimi  August 7, 2026

Dieser Inhalt ist auch auf deutsch verfügbar.

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Small drops form on my forehead. Slowly, they make their way down along my temples. The weather app on my phone shows a red alert. For days, I have been caught in the so-called heat wave that swept across Europe in June of this year. Unfortunately, what slowly drips from the edge of my chin is neither refreshing rain nor cool water – it’s my own sweat. Yet, I am not the only one struggling under the weight of the heat. The servers and chips inside the data centers are suffering, too. (read more...)

Fragile Followings: Leaving and Returning to the Ecological Field

 Mayline Strouk  August 5, 2026

Ce contenu est également disponible en français.

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Elliðaey Island, in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago off the coast of Iceland, hosts one of the world’s largest populations of Leach’s storm-petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous), a small seabird species. Nearly 90% of the individuals breeding in Iceland nest there, yet knowledge about this species, listed as globally vulnerable on The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List since 2016, remains largely limited (Hurling, 2021). (read more...)

Charting the (Dis)course of Nature Restoration: The EU Nature Restoration Law in the Public Sphere in Czechia

 Abhigya  July 20, 2026

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The EU Nature Restoration Legislation was finally adopted in 2024, after going through the rounds of the EU parliament since 2022. The passing of the law marks a key moment in the EU’s pursuit of the European Green Deal, adopted in 2019. The European Green Deal is the EU’s growth strategy aimed at putting EU on the path to a green transition, with the ultimate goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. The ambitious Nature Restoration Legislation is expected to provide legal instruments to facilitate the restoration of declining ecosystems across the European Union. It supports some of the key goals of the biodiversity pillar of the Green Deal (the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030), akin to how the European Climate Law (Regulation (EU) 2021/1119) sets legally binding climate neutrality targets for the member states. Some of the measures outlined in the regulation include supporting sustainable agriculture, greening cities and towns, protecting pollinators, and restoring wetlands and rivers. (read more...)

Digital Porosity and Value in Suspension: Informal Economies and Video Games

 Iván Flores  July 16, 2026

Este contenido también está disponible en español.

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When a video game development company creates a skin, a character, or a bundle of digital items, it is not merely producing aesthetics or playable experiences—it is also building an entire economic system: it defines a virtual currency, sets an exchange rate, and organizes a circuit of value. Riot Games, the creator of League of Legends (LoL), does not sell items directly; instead, it offers Riot Points (RP) as an intermediary currency. This move—currency and rate—drives the formal economy. (read more...)

The Monsters We Buried: Plastics, Swamp Men, and the Unquiet Ground of Deonar

 Adwaita Banerjee  July 14, 2026

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It is a winter day. Workers at the dump are busy emptying trucks, sweating profusely as the sun beats down on all of us. The smell of the freshly arrived waste grows worse in the heat. I have come to the dumping ground to meet Shivam, a municipal officer deputed there to supervise the workers. (read more...)

Searching for Microbes with No Name: The Labour of Sampling and the Making of Scientific Value

 Victor Secco  July 7, 2026

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It was an early crisp morning in late April 2023, I climbed into the back seat of the Hilux with the other field scientists, heading to the day’s sampling site on the north coast of Belgium. We sat in silence in the car, part of the early-morning mood and a sign of how tired and overworked we felt most days for the last month. Outside the car’s window urban and green fields landscapes alternate on our way. As we reached closer to our destination the song “A horse with no name” by George Martin started playing on the radio. Slowly the lead-scientist in the field started humming the song and then singing along quietly, as we all followed her humming, the mood inside the car completely changed. We were ready for another long day out in the elements—thorny bushes, light rain, cold wind—collecting soil, sand, water and air in search of microbes with no name. (read more...)