Objects That Matter: Cartocontroversy
Imagine peeling an orange, then trying to lay the peel flat. Map-making is the art of manipulating the orange peel until it yields.
One Last Thing
Objects That Matter: The Prison Uniform
Women wore, and sometimes designed, their own clothes in California prisons until the 1990s, when the state began issuing uniforms to its female inmates.
Objects That Matter: Taxidermy
Arsenic was long a preservative in the taxidermic process, despite criticism of the method as unnecessarily dangerous. But at least one contemporary scholar has suggested that metabolized arsenic extended the lives of late 19th-century taxidermists by decades.
Objects That Matter: Bears Ears
No other president in the last 50 years has attempted to shrink the national monuments designated by his predecessors.
One Last Decade
How the world has—and hasn't—changed since Pacific Standard's first Issue.
Objects That Matter: Biodegradable Bullets
The Pentagon has paid more than $42 billion to clean up contaminated sites—mostly to private contractors—with little evidence of improvements, a ProPublica investigation found.
Objects That Matter: 'Get Out of Jail Free' Cards
In 1567, wealthy citizens who could afford to purchase tickets for England's first National Lottery were guaranteed indemnity from arrest for crimes (excepting murder, treason, piracy, and other felonies).
Objects That Matter: The Knockoff-Inspired Designer Good
Awareness that a brand is widely counterfeited can make shoppers more willing to pay for the real thing, a 2012 study found.
Objects That Matter: Vinyl
A 2016 survey found that 48 percent of record buyers don't actually play their purchases, suggesting that, for many, vinyl is more aesthetic collectible than functional art.
Objects That Matter: Concrete
More than 130 Berliners died trying to cross the "death strip," the no-man’s-land between two massive concrete walls that divided their city for nearly 30 years.
Objects That Matter: The Disposable Camera
Kodak embraced the ideals of the Progressive Era early on, aggressively marketing cameras to women from the outset with the launch of advertisements featuring the Kodak Girl—a pretty, camera-wielding woman—in 1893.
Objects That Matter: Party Plates
Public support for criminal registries has grown despite inconsistent evidence that they reduce crime, which social scientists attribute to a human need to feel a sense of control over threats.
Objects That Matter: The Bird-Saving Collar
Vigilantes who hunt down feral cats run up against animal-cruelty laws and social norms; one Texas veterinarian sparked outrage after she bragged on Facebook about killing what she thought was a feral tomcat with a bow and arrow.
Objects That Matter: White Picket Fence
In the 1940s, the mass-produced tract homes that formed Levittown, New York—one of America's first suburbs—specifically barred "any person other than members of the Caucasian race" in their leases.
