Category: 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.
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?
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.
The public release of ChatGPT has permanently contaminated the Web. Welcome to the world of Average Garbage Forever.
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.
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.
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.
Back in 2015 Amazon unveiled a promotional campaign for their TV adaptation of Philip K. Dick's famous novel The Man in the High Castle.
On a rocky stretch of coastline on Hawaii’s Big Island a group of marine biologists are studying the lifecycle of the octopus - a creature that lives fast and dies young.
In the closing act of Blade Runner it’s a game of chess that allows the replicant Roy Batty to finally meet his maker.
Studying Australian history often feels more like uncovering some sprawling conspiracy. Buried underneath all the accounts of white explorers, convicts, bushrangers, miners and diggers is a vast bedrock of black history. The more you dig the more connections you find but the full story always seems to remain hidden.
As a nation with a large reserve of uranium but no nuclear energy industry Australia is periodically subject to op-ed pieces designed to drum up support for a domestic nuclear power industry.
Our first day on the bikes took us up the west coast from Negombo to Puttallam. It was a busy stretch of road and we were still a few days away from getting comfortable with the traffic so progress was slow.