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Friday music blogging: The Avett Brothers, yet again
There’s no band I have gushed over more than The Avett Brothers. I even wrote a cover story about them for another magazine, which you can check out here. So, yeah, there’s not much left to say. They’re awesome! And they have a new album out, called The Carpenter. It is also awesome.
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Guam is entirely infested with spiders, and it’s all the fault of invasive snakes
The island of Guam has up to 40 times the normal number of spiders — on average, about one spiderweb every two feet during the rainy season. And if that’s not enough, it’s also infested with brown tree snakes. That’s not a coincidence. According to a study published in PLoS, Guam’s spider explosion comes from […]
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Heat and Drought Ravage U.S. Crop Prospects—Global Stocks Suffer
By Janet Larsen September estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) show 2012 U.S. corn yields at 123 bushels per acre, down by a fourth from the 2009 high of 165 bushels per acre. Yields are the lowest since 1995 and well below the average of the last 30 years. The summer heat and […]
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Scientists are using new technology to identify zombie bees
Some of the scientists investigating the mysterious honeybee die-offs suspect zombie bees, bees that are being mind-controlled by parasitic scuttle fly maggots. Unlike human zombies, bee zombies (or, inevitably, “zombees”) do not have telltale tattered clothes or dark eye makeup. So in order to tell whether they’re dealing with bees or zombees, researchers are affixing […]
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Artist slices delicate, beautiful nature scenes out of leaves
Lorenzo Durán's cut-away leaf art is both mindblowing and a thoughtful meditation on ecology.
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An open letter to people who don’t like cheeseburgers, by a cheeseburger
Cheeseburgers have a lot of feelings, and those feelings are LIES.
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New startup measures your home’s efficiency just by taking a picture
Forty percent of energy in the United States is used to heat buildings and homes. Only some of that goes to actually sparing your whiny ass from getting up and putting on a sweater, though. The rest — billions of dollars worth — just leaks out your windows and doors. But a new company could […]
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Gaza’s first electric car is made of recycled materials and cost less than $1,000
It’s always heartwarming when someone who lives somewhere completely fucked manages to do something useful to improve their circumstances, and, in turn, to make the place they live slightly less fucked. Gaza resident and taxi driver Munthar al-Qassas was tired of waiting in the hot sun to buy gas during the region’s ongoing gas shortage. […]
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These tiny plants can live for 300 years with the help of their friends the ants
The herb Borderea chouardii is like the Disney heroine of plants
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Chinese McDonald’s selling a very chic, weird, possibly political black/white burger combo
These black and white burgers might have a political message, which seems like a really cumbersome way to communicate.
