Search Results for: scale

Beyond Delivering Food: Networks, Risk, and the Hidden Infrastructure of Gig Work

Ambar Reyes September 16, 2026
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I was picking up an order on 67th st and Columbus Ave when I saw the guy get on my bike and start to ride away. I got out of the shop and grabbed him; he said, “Sorry, I thought it was my bike.” A friend helped me hold onto him so we could call the police. The guy tried to break free and reached into a DoorDash bag he was carrying… Suddenly, he pulled out a syringe and started threatening us with it. I let go of his shirt but kept holding onto a backpack he was wearing; eventually, he slipped out of the backpack and ran away. I called the police to hand over the backpack and the DoorDash bag (which contained multiple syringes and a knife), but they never showed up.   (read more...)

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Strategies and Tools for Knowledge Generation in Art-Science

Emmanuel Anguiano-Hernández September 14, 2026
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To what extent do measurements from an electroencephalography headset provide evidence of the aesthetic contemplation state of the person wearing it? In the 2015 neuroaesthetic research project Action Potential, the art and science Interspecifics collective monitors the brain electrical activity of a group of visitors to an exhibition about Octavio Paz, the famous Mexican poet,   and uses these measurements as material for sound composition. What is discovered in this experiment is not exactly a scientific result, since the EEG readings neither validate nor refute any hypothesis about aesthetic experience, but it is also not art in a conventional sense, as it depends entirely on clinical measurement protocols. This ambiguity is the point because by submitting aesthetic encounter to empirical instrumentation, Interspecifics lays bare the assumptions that usually keep the two domains apart with science requiring falsifiable propositions and art resisting reduction to data. What emerges at their contact surface is a productive friction instead of a synthesis, a mode of inquiry that measures and composes without limiting expression, taking us to reconsider what counts as knowledge and what counts as form. (read more...)

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Reclaiming the Future of Work: Series Introduction

Lucy Pei, Joy Ming, Kim Fernandes, Rosemary Steup September 7, 2026
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Debates about the future of work often center around adapting the workforce to fit capitalist proposals of what work should look like. Pre-digital examples include scientific management, just-in-time production, and de-skilling of industrial labor in favor of more mechanized and automated processes. Recently, capitalist proposals of arrangements of work have centered on digital platforms, algorithmic management, pervasive surveillance, and the deskilling of white-collar work through aggressive adoption of large language models (generative AI). In the face of these changes, workers are expected to accept their new, typically more controlled, unstable, exploitative work arrangements, re-train and re-skill to find employment in different or new types of work or face un- and under-employment with whatever safety net might be available. Underlying these changes to work arrangements is a drive for efficiency and profit. (read more...)

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A Horse in the Archive: Notes on Incompleteness in Biometric Infrastructures

kayah August 31, 2026
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A few months ago, I underwent four surgeries to remove two wisdom teeth. Long and painful, they took from me solid parts with strange shapes — a friend, on seeing one of the pieces, said it looked like a shark’s tooth! It was a slow, drawn-out experience: after each surgery, I had to recover before starting the next stage of the same process. During each one, I heard the dentist and her assistants discussing how stubbornly that tooth was attached to my skull. (read more...)

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Dispatch from Seoul: Reflections on the Science, Technology & Human Values Science and Technology Studies School, June 2026

Lachlan Hensey August 24, 2026
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It is the third of our four days at the 2026 ST&HV Science and Technology Studies (STS) School. We file past laboratories populated by white-coated researchers and take our seats in a classroom in Seoul National University’s (SNU) College of Natural Sciences. “Look – real scientists!” someone jokes as we sit down. (read more...)

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From Candle to Dilator: Treating Vaginismus in Turkey

Neslihan Sen August 18, 2026
Bu içeriğe türkçe’de de erişilebilir.
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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...)

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Mumdan Dildoya: Türkiye’de Vajinismusu Tedavi Etmek

Neslihan Sen August 18, 2026
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Röportajımızın ortasında, ben daha çayımı yudumlarken Aysel, streç filme sarılmış mumlarını getirip sehpanın üzerine bıraktı. Tedavi sürecindeki ilerlemesini bana göstermek için o kadar heyecanlanmıştı ki, benim için pişirdiği keki bitirmemi bile bekleyememişti. Şimdi yarım kalmış kek dilimim ve çayım, mumlarının yanında sehpanın üzerinde duruyordu. Aysel bu mumları eltisiyle birlikte yapmıştı. Mutfağında, elindeki mutfak araç gereçlerini kullanarak her bir mumu farklı kalınlıklarda inceltmiş, şekil vermiş ve birbirine ekleyerek vajinismus tedavisinde kullanacağı aparatlar haline getirmişti. Aysel dört aydır evliydi ve kocasıyla henüz cinsel ilişkiye girememişti. Kendisine vajinismus, yani vajinal kasların istemsiz kasılması nedeniyle cinsel birleşmenin gerçekleşememesi durumu, teşhisi konulmuştu. (read more...)

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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...)

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