Richard Pendavingh
Photographer, designer and weekend historian. Editor of The Unravel. Writes about design, tech, history and anthropology.
Prompted by a weak rebuttal of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs we look at the history of life insurance and the role played by 'actuarial science' in our understanding of human mortality.
Nothing has done more to highlight the moral vacuum that Australia's corporate media inhabit than their coverage of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
In the second part of this essay we look at some of the ways that public denial and public hysteria around homosexuality has influenced the military history of Britain, Germany and Australia.
A brief history of military masculinity from the Sacred Band to Frederick the Great.
Today on The Unravel we ask the question; Did 19th century sealers suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome?
Given this litany of disastrous invasions and bloody occupations, why do politicians continue to insist that their armies will be welcomed with open arms?
Despite the long history of ‘humanitarian interventions’ the idea that nations have an obligation to defend the rights of those beyond their own borders has only recently begun to gain acceptance.
The fallacy of liberation played a major part in inciting conflicts during the Cold War but realism's hindsight makes it hard to appreciate the initial idealism that accompanied these conflicts.
Case studies in strategic optimism from the Greco-Turkish War to the end of the World War II.
A brief history of the fallacy of liberation from the wars of the French Revolution to the end of the long 19th century.
The public release of ChatGPT has permanently contaminated the Web. Welcome to the world of Average Garbage Forever.
Putin's disastrous invasion of Ukraine has revealed the indiscriminate nature of Russian propaganda.
Tracing the origins of 'life admin' from sacrificial servants, to human computers, chatbots and Potemkin AI.
How our metaphors for the internet determine success and failure in the messy world of software design.
In this edition of ‘do as Richard says, not as Richard does’ we look at Morocco’s traditional leather industry and I’ll explain why you shouldn’t accept invites to medieval sweatshops.
One of the first things I did after finishing my undergraduate degree in media studies was watch the whole industry of journalism collapse in on itself like a rotting shack held together by ivy.
When Amy and I visited Hawaii we discovered that, even on an island, surf is never guaranteed.
As the Covid infections have ticked upwards and lockdowns have dragged on there’s been plenty of time to dwell on our current situation.
Wherein I draw tenuous connections between the current Coronavirus shemozzle and the great pandemics of the ancient world.
The police were the first Georgians I met. Arriving in the capital, Tbilisi, at ten to midnight there were police officers waiting on the tarmac.