Daniel Rourke /stream

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In the Southern Ocean, surrounding Antarctica, blue whales were nearly wiped out by industrial whaling from the 1920s to 1940s. But now, with whaling curtailed, the whales are surging back: their…

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A strawberry Christmas cake, sexy pants, a pool table, three red jet planes, a hippy bandana, a dog sled, a jetpack, a pair of Adidas trainers, a Tudor throne, a bullet…

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Would you want to inherit your friends' stuff? Your valuables might mean just as little Look around the homes of loved ones whose objects you might at some future date have…

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They found him in the living room, crumpled up on the mottled carpet. The police did. Sniffing a fetid odor, a neighbor had called 911. The apartment was in north-central Queens,…

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One person, a self-described “lone wolf,” admitted that dying alone was his greatest fear. Another urged readers to consider the things that give life heft and depth, the things that keep…

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DOUGLAS LAIN’S latest novel depicts an alien invasion set in an alternate near-past where people have been dehumanized by the worn-out specter of consumer-capitalism and electronic media.

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As long as she can remember, Annabelle Charbit has loathed “stuff.” She hated birthdays because birthdays meant gifts. And gifts meant finding a way to toss them. At 5 years old,…

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The ultimate fate of waste plastic is hazy – but we know future geologists will find traces of a fleeting era written in the stones. Welcome to the Plasticene ONE million…

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Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) presents a dystopian vision of a near-future world in which most organic vegetation has died and human life is becoming increasingly rare.

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A lot has changed since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first scaled the freezing peaks of Mount Everest in 1953. For one thing, attempting to summit Everest, though still perilous, has…

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We have a strange, sad way of leaving things behind. Not just regular old things—spent notebooks, obsolete consumer electronics, whatever—but big things that happen to be old.

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In space exploration, there is the Google Lunar X Prize for placing a rover on the lunar surface. In medicine, there is the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize for developing a Star…

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Corinna Kern: George’s World

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The United States has a trash problem. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than 4 pounds of garbage per day. That’s more than double the…

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The United States has a trash problem. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than 4 pounds of garbage per day. That’s more than double the…

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From the neo-gothic follies of 18th-century aristocrats to the blasted cityscapes of contemporary Detroit, ruins have long obsessed artists Jane and Louise Wilson’s photograph of a ruined German gun emplacement in Normandy,…

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Trash in the Pacific Ocean. Image: Kevin Krejci/Flickr It’s been almost exactly a month since Malaysia flight MH370 went missing. In that time, search and rescue teams have found trash, trash,…

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City officials in Dallas, Texas were forced to hire a contractor to help remove piles of debris from the home and locate the 67-year-old man, who had been missing for two…

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Polish company Better Reality, who do effects work for advertisers and Hollywood, have developed a piece of technology called Thorskan. It's designed to scan real environments then recreate them in 3D.…

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Flip-Flopping - Or, how do we cope with a future filled with crapjects? (The following is a blogified version of a talk I gave at the Bits 2 Blogs 2013 conference…

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In the Southern Ocean, surrounding Antarctica, blue whales were nearly wiped out by industrial whaling from the 1920s to 1940s. But now, with whaling curtailed, the whales are surging back: their…

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A strawberry Christmas cake, sexy pants, a pool table, three red jet planes, a hippy bandana, a dog sled, a jetpack, a pair of Adidas trainers, a Tudor throne, a bullet…

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They found him in the living room, crumpled up on the mottled carpet. The police did. Sniffing a fetid odor, a neighbor had called 911. The apartment was in north-central Queens,…

Bookmark

DOUGLAS LAIN’S latest novel depicts an alien invasion set in an alternate near-past where people have been dehumanized by the worn-out specter of consumer-capitalism and electronic media.

Bookmark

The 10 Commandments. The 95 Theses. The 127 Hours and the 27 Dresses and the 10 Things I Hate About You. The mix tape. The menu. The card catalog. The grocery…

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The ultimate fate of waste plastic is hazy – but we know future geologists will find traces of a fleeting era written in the stones. Welcome to the Plasticene ONE million…

Bookmark

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) presents a dystopian vision of a near-future world in which most organic vegetation has died and human life is becoming increasingly rare.

Bookmark

A lot has changed since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first scaled the freezing peaks of Mount Everest in 1953. For one thing, attempting to summit Everest, though still perilous, has…

Bookmark

We have a strange, sad way of leaving things behind. Not just regular old things—spent notebooks, obsolete consumer electronics, whatever—but big things that happen to be old.

Bookmark

Corinna Kern documented the life of George Fowler, a compulsive hoarder. In her photographs is "a closeness between the young woman behind the camera and the old man in front of…

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The United States has a trash problem. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than 4 pounds of garbage per day. That’s more than double the…

Bookmark

The United States has a trash problem. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than 4 pounds of garbage per day. That’s more than double the…

Bookmark

From the neo-gothic follies of 18th-century aristocrats to the blasted cityscapes of contemporary Detroit, ruins have long obsessed artists Jane and Louise Wilson’s photograph of a ruined German gun emplacement in Normandy,…

Bookmark

Trash in the Pacific Ocean. Image: Kevin Krejci/Flickr It’s been almost exactly a month since Malaysia flight MH370 went missing. In that time, search and rescue teams have found trash, trash,…

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Animals like to hoard. Christopher E. Overtree, director of the Psychological Services Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a specialist in treating hoarding, says that “the mechanisms triggering this…

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Flip-Flopping - Or, how do we cope with a future filled with crapjects? (The following is a blogified version of a talk I gave at the Bits 2 Blogs 2013 conference…

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Everyday on the Internet, a GIF is born. And everyday, a GIF dies a sad, not-reblogged death. GIFs were once an integral aspect of the Web 1.0 culture, actualized in novel…