Using Airbnb or VRBO to find and stay in a friendly stranger’s home is cheaper and often more fun than getting a hotel room somewhere. After Hurricane Sandy -- back when Airbnb was still legal in New York -- it also turned out to be an easy ad hoc way to match up displaced people with homes that had room to host them. Now, inspired by that experience, Airbnb is using its peer-to-peer housing platform to prepare for future disasters.
I would like to fly first class someday, because I’ve heard they serve you a crème brulee milkshake, give you a Swedish massage, and then cover your body in chocolate. But apparently such luxuries have a planetary price tag. Reports The Washington Post:
[F]irst-class air travel is ... ruining the environment.
New York is finally building another subway line on the East Side, and if these photos by Metropolitan Transit Authority staff photographer Patrick Cashin are to be believed, it will be a magical cave of wonders. Well, OK, once it's done it will probably just be a regular old subway, but Cashin's pictures (click to embiggen) make it seem way cooler.
Cashin has been documenting the Second Avenue Subway since 2009, shortly after construction finally began on a project 90 years in the making.
Rosemary Mosco's comics prove that she cares about nature, though they're not always scrupulously scientifically accurate (I am particularly fond of "Parts of the Bird"). In "Climate Change Dude," Mosco asks (with correct subjunctive tense, no less! Always appreciated) what it would look like if climate change were just some douch-bearded jerkbutt surfing on your couch. Answer: We would never stand for it!
Everything that ends up in our waste stream messes with fish, from the estrogen in birth control to synthetic fertilizer. That isn’t news. The new part is that seemingly inconsequential amounts of Prozac and Zoloft can interfere with fish brain development -- and instead of cheering them up, it has the effect of a Cure album on a 14-year-old. (Slipknot? Whatever the kids listen to these days.) Scientific American reports:
When fish swim in waters tainted with antidepressant drugs, they become anxious, anti-social and sometimes even homicidal ...
Male minnows exposed to a small dose of the drug in laboratories ignored females. They spent more time under a tile, so their reproduction decreased and they took more time capturing prey... [T]he doses of Prozac added to the fishes’ water were “very low concentrations,” 1 part per billion, which is found in some wastewater discharged into streams.
It came out in April that the Koch brothers, those devious, climate-denying bros who made their billions on oil and gas, were considering buying the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, and the other six regional newspapers owned by the Tribune Company. Because it’s not enough to try to get wind energy labeled toxic, tell their employees to vote for Romney, fund Tea Party groups, and create a staggering 300 million tons of CO2 pollution annually. Nope! They would also like to control what you think.
Hilarious yet terrifying new site Kochify the News attempts to simulate what a Koch-owned L.A. Times might look like, complete with evil cackling. The results are amazing. Here’s one story before you Kochify the news:
And here’s after:
From bee-killing companies pretending to love bees to researchers frantically trying to create a disease-resistant superbee, it’s been kind of a rough week for bees, who have already been having a rough couple of years due to dying off left and right. But why should you care? It’s not like bees are delivering your mail or making you dinner or sewing your clothes, Cinderella-style.
But bees DO pollinate a bunch of shit that you probably like to eat. Need a visual? Check out these before and after pics from Whole Foods that illustrate the amount of produce that would vanish if all the bees died off:
Feeling anxious today? Take a trip with us under the sea, and watch divers follow a whalesong to a mysterious and awe-inspiring close-up brush with a humpback whale.
Who says solar and wind can't provide enough energy for a modern lifestyle? This giant, terrifying robot with a geodesic dome shell and 12 crustaceanesque legs derives its power from a wind turbine and a roof-mounted solar panel. And if wind and solar can power your unsettling crab robot, what else do you really need?
Last week, Jezebel’s Doug Barry was all, “AAA! Throwing away clothes is shockingly bad for the environment! And 45 percent of your donated clothes are shipped overseas and sold unscrupulously. Welp, guess we better become hoarders or use Earth911!” It was very well-intentioned, but Jezebel commenters were way ahead of him (as, I'm guessing, are you, dear reader). Here are 10 of their suggestions that put Barry to shame. (For a drinking game, count how many times you say "duh.")
1. Donate to Dress for Success, a nonprofit that outfits low-income women for job interviews
