Daniel Rourke /stream

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Below is a shortened version of Annie Culver’s essay that won Honorable Mention in the 2017 Greene Prize for Environmental Writing. Annie is a PhD student in English at Rice University.

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The death of a woman hit by a self-driving car highlights an unfolding technological crisis, as code piled on code creates ‘a universe no one fully understands’ by The 18th of March 2018, was the day tech insiders…

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The eerie possibility of robots manipulating humans crops up in science fiction tales like Ex Machina or Battlestar Galactica.

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The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers. Mr. Hyman is an economic historian.

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A sliver of bone from a cave in Russia is at the centre of what may be the biggest archaeological story of the year. The bone belonged to an ancient human who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan…

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RISING Dispatches from the New American Shore By Elizabeth Rush Illustrated. 299 pp. Milkweed Editions. $26. A drowned world: It’s an ancient fear and a very old story.

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When I heard about the tragic murder of 18-year-old Nia Wilson, who was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack in Oakland last month, I could feel my heart begin to bleed. My community of black women were…

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I recently created a thread that on Twitter regarding the lower-bound estimates for how much electricity the Bitcoin blockchain consumed using publicly available numbers. The first part of this post is a slightly modified version of that thread.

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Society’s winners can seem so generous, until you consider what they’re really selling. “Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful.

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On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence, head of the National Space Council, outlined plans for creating the “Space Force” that President Donald Trump envisions as a space-dedicated military branch, complete with space warfighters and weapons, by the year…

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A friend of mine flew from northern California, to North Carolina on Saturday night and was immediately surprised by what she encountered when she landed. “Why is it so hot here?” she texted before she was even out…

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Let’s face it: reading stories about the ongoing destruction of planet Earth, the life-sustaining blue marble that all of us – aside from maybe Elon Musk – are permanently trapped on, has got to be one of the…

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Although he worked on a farm as a teenager and has a romantic attachment to the soil, ­Lippman isn’t a farmer. He’s a plant biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York with an expertise in genetics…

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Over the past few years, I’ve heard dozens of scientists talk about solar geo-engineering, the once-outlandish idea that humanity should counteract climate change by releasing special gases into the stratosphere to reflect away sunlight and cool the planet.

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As the country’s population ages and shrinks, there’s increasing demand for services that clean out and dispose of the property of the dead.

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Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk has a vision for colonising Mars, based on a big rocket, nuclear explosions and an infrastructure to transport millions of people there. This was seen as highly ambitious but technically challenging…

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We should never have called it Earth. Three quarters of the planet’s surface is saltwater, and most of it does not lap at tranquil beaches for our amusement. The ocean is deep; things are lost at sea.

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is a historian, writer, award winning filmmaker and the Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University.  He was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009, he won the Max Planck Prize in 1999, and…

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Conspiracy theories are popular and there is no doubt that the internet has fuelled them on. From the theory that 9/11 was an inside job to the idea that reptilian humanoids rule the world, conspiracy theories have found a natural home online.

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We have entered a post-truth, post-authenticity era, in which dichotomies like true/false or real/fake no longer serve us very well, especially on social media platforms.

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If you live in a major metropolitan area, the odds are good you’re being watched and listened to at all times. And even if you don’t, that surveillance technology is still there—in stores, on cop cars, in schools…

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In the 35 years since John Carpenter‘s first big studio movie, 1982’s The Thing, which he made for Universal, was released, it’s metamorphosed from flop to underground classic in the horror genre.

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Netflix believes, algorithmically at least, that I am the kind of person who likes to watch “Dark TV Shows Featuring a Strong Female Lead.” This picksome genre is never one that I that seek out intentionally, and I’m…

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Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been…

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Below is a shortened version of Annie Culver’s essay that won Honorable Mention in the 2017 Greene Prize for Environmental Writing. Annie is a PhD student in English at Rice University.

Bookmark

The death of a woman hit by a self-driving car highlights an unfolding technological crisis, as code piled on code creates ‘a universe no one fully understands’ by The 18th of March 2018, was the day tech insiders…

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To say that Marshall McLuhan was incidentally a Christian, or that his Catholicism was just part of his private life, is a little like saying that Karl Marx was only incidentally a Marxist.

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The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers. Mr. Hyman is an economic historian.

Bookmark

RISING Dispatches from the New American Shore By Elizabeth Rush Illustrated. 299 pp. Milkweed Editions. $26. A drowned world: It’s an ancient fear and a very old story.

Bookmark

A barista gets burned at work, buys first-aid cream at Target, and later that day sees a Facebook ad for the same product. In another Target, someone shouts down the aisle to a companion to pick up some…

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I recently created a thread that on Twitter regarding the lower-bound estimates for how much electricity the Bitcoin blockchain consumed using publicly available numbers. The first part of this post is a slightly modified version of that thread.

Bookmark

Society’s winners can seem so generous, until you consider what they’re really selling. “Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful.

Bookmark

On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence, head of the National Space Council, outlined plans for creating the “Space Force” that President Donald Trump envisions as a space-dedicated military branch, complete with space warfighters and weapons, by the year…

Bookmark

A friend of mine flew from northern California, to North Carolina on Saturday night and was immediately surprised by what she encountered when she landed. “Why is it so hot here?” she texted before she was even out…

Bookmark

The world of academia is starting to pick up on the concept that humanity is unknowingly cruising on a train ride to doomsday, a surefire encounter with collapse of society based upon climate crises brought on by exponential…

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Although he worked on a farm as a teenager and has a romantic attachment to the soil, ­Lippman isn’t a farmer. He’s a plant biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York with an expertise in genetics…

Bookmark

As the country’s population ages and shrinks, there’s increasing demand for services that clean out and dispose of the property of the dead.

Bookmark

The novella-length piece represents the kind of media commitment that the climate crisis has long deserved but almost never received.

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We should never have called it Earth. Three quarters of the planet’s surface is saltwater, and most of it does not lap at tranquil beaches for our amusement. The ocean is deep; things are lost at sea.

Bookmark

is a historian, writer, award winning filmmaker and the Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University.  He was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009, he won the Max Planck Prize in 1999, and…

Bookmark

Conspiracy theories are popular and there is no doubt that the internet has fuelled them on. From the theory that 9/11 was an inside job to the idea that reptilian humanoids rule the world, conspiracy theories have found a natural home online.

Bookmark

We have entered a post-truth, post-authenticity era, in which dichotomies like true/false or real/fake no longer serve us very well, especially on social media platforms.

Bookmark

 THE BAD NEWS is waiting for us on the first page of the first chapter of Octavia E. Butler’s 1998 science fiction novel Parable of the Talents.

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In the 35 years since John Carpenter‘s first big studio movie, 1982’s The Thing, which he made for Universal, was released, it’s metamorphosed from flop to underground classic in the horror genre.

Bookmark

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been…

Bookmark

Researchers in Sweden examined the possible steps that people can take to help tackle the climate crisis. Although a lot of resulting news coverage focused on the most effective action (having one fewer kid), the real takeaway is…