In this video for the Nature Conservancy, rapper Macklemore explains how municipal green space in his home city of Seattle influenced his career: He and his friends didn't want to kick it at their parents' houses, so they went and freestyled in parks. (Side note: Do people really still say "kick it," or is Macklemore even older than I am?) We knew, of course, that Macklemore was into creative reuse, but who knew he had so many ideas about urban infrastructure? 

A team of scientists at Harvard have discovered how to make crazy, beautiful, very tightly controlled shapes that are so tiny they're invisible to the naked eye. Just by making simple changes in the environment in which salt and silicon crystals grow, they've made gardens of flower-like structures. Wim Noorduin, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, grew a variety of these "flowers," recently featured in the journal Science.

Clothing retailers don't have it easy. It's very hard to keep up with what's in style. And what's in style now? Fracking! Which means flame-retardant clothing for when shit gets out of hand.

Don't freak out, but there's a problem with green roofs: They're not necessarily greener than ordinary roofs. Soooooo kind of a major problem. With a little extra effort, though, green roofs can be efficient AND locally sourced -- you just can’t take the easy way out.

Scientific American reports:

[R]ooftop vegetation has to be able to survive the high winds, prolonged UV radiation and unpredictable fluctuations in water availability. To resist these harsh environments, a majority of green roofs are planted with sedum, a non-native species that can survive wind and long periods without rainfall. A roof planted with sedum, however, is no greener, from the standpoint of sustainability, than is ordinary tar or asphalt.

Sedum, it turns out, absorbs sunlight, just like a tar roof would, and isn't particularly good at absorbing water. Planting your green roof with sedum is like hiring employees based on how long they can physically sit in an office chair instead of how good they are at doing the work.

OK, Holland, we get it! You have all the nice things! Organic food, cool little local shops, bikes, green energy. Way to rub it in.

Yes, we still drive cars! Yes, we are jealous! No, we don't have a minimum of $1,079 to spend on a round-trip ticket from New York to Amsterdam sometime in the next six months.

Texas had some absolutely bonkers weather yesterday, not just extreme but downright deadly and dangerous. At least six people were killed and dozens injured by a tornado that ripped through the town of Granbury. But maybe the most visually stunning evidence of the storm is this photo of giant hailstones, taken by Melissa Penny in Mineral Wells, Texas.

Back in 2012, 561,633 very nice people went out on beaches around the world and picked up the trash that other people had thrown there. They picked up an astounding 10 million pounds. That's the weight of 5,000 cars. It’s heavier than the Capitol dome.

What's even more astounding is that this isn't even the most trash the Ocean Conservancy has collected in the 27 years this challenge has been going. Twice before, volunteers collected more than this amount of trash, measured in weight, and once before, they collected more total items.

The volunteers found a lot of what you might expect: 2,117,931 cigarette butts, 1,140,222 food wrappers/containers, 1,065,171 plastic bottles, and 958,893 caps and lids.

Back in March we told you about a polar bear who had been orphaned in Alaska when its mother was shot by a hunter. We invited (well, ordered) you to watch it play which, even two months later, remains an experience of acute adorableness. Now we have some good news about this polar bear, little Kali: He has found a permanent home. That home will be at the Buffalo Zoo, where he'll share digs with another polar bear named Luna.

Italian architecture firm Act Romegialli designed this building to start as a little garden house, and then be gradually eaten by the garden.

Here's what it started as, an unused garage structure:

But the architects gave it a coat of plants: honeysuckle and mile-a-minute vine to start with, and then common hops and golden tiara as a flourish. Lower down, perennials (red valerian, Lindheimer's beeblossom, geraniums, and brown-eyed susans) sit by annuals (Mexican asters, marigolds, nasturtium, and red spider zinnias). In the end, you get this:

This is how powerfully good the fast food industry is at making people crave their food: A delivery service in Gaza will smuggle KFC across the Egyptian-Gaza border in order to satisfy cravings for fried chicken. So far, the delivery service, Yamama, has brought in 100 meals, according to The New York Times. Yamama waits for about 30 orders to pile up. And then, this four-hour process begins, which involves multiple cars, smuggling tunnels, and motorcycles:

[A]n Egyptian taxi driver picked up the food. On the other side of the border, meanwhile, Ramzi al-Nabih, a Palestinian cabdriver, arrived at the Hamas checkpoint in Rafah, where the guards recognized him as “the Kentucky guy.”

From the checkpoint, Mr. Nabih, 26, called his Egyptian counterpart and told him which of the scores of tunnels the Hamas official had cleared for the food delivery.