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Astronauts fixed the space station with a toothbrush
Most of us postpone tossing our old toothbrushes in the landfill by putting them to work as cleaning tools. But very few of us postpone tossing our old toothbrushes in the landfill by putting them to work as cleaning tools on the International Space Station. Astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide did that yesterday, though, when […]
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Frustrated Russians get rid of potholes by stuffing them into politicians’ mouths
The writers for Russian blog URA.RU got fed up with unfixed potholes in the city of Yekaterinburg, so they decided to force-feed them to politicians. Or, anyway, giant cartoons of politicians’ heads. They enlisted ad agency Voskhod to draw cartoons of local pols around potholes and other road imperfections, in order to draw attention to […]
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New stingray species has amazingly cool-looking skeleton
This looks like a candidate for the newest energy-efficient lightbulb, but it’s actually an x-ray of a recently-discovered freshwater stingray species.
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Suicidal caterpillar is really dumb or really wants to get eaten
Is there a caterpillar equivalent of the Darwin Awards? Because this guy is a shoo-in. The Redditors who found this video have speculated that the caterpillar is infected with a mind-control parasite that needs to get inside the toad to thrive. Sounds crazy, yes, but there’s a parasite that’s been doing something similar to carpenter […]
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After not seeing one for 33 years, Japanese government finally declares river otters extinct
When you truly love somebody that’s gone missing, you never admit that she’s gone, even if you’ve seen neither hide nor hair of her for 33 years. So now we know how the Japanese government feels about the Japanese river otter. Because the Ministry of the Environment just declared the river otter, last spotted in […]
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Vladimir Putin dressed as a bird to save endangered cranes
There are 20 white cranes left in the world. But for one special day, there were 21. OK, the extra crane wasn’t really a crane. It was Russian President Vladimir Putin on a hang-glider, wearing a white jumpsuit and a crane nose.
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Good news: The nuclear apocalypse will kill everything but beer
Imagine there’s a huge nuclear explosion and almost everyone you know is dead. Sure, things are bad. But you can still get a beer. Alex Wellerstein at the Nuclear Secrecy blog has looked into some of the weird shit that the United State’s Nuclear Defense Agency did during the Cold War to better understand the […]
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New documentary lets you watch glaciers disappear
Anyone who is not a raging moron knows that glaciers are melting really fast. We should probably be constantly consumed by worrying about our waterlogged future, yet we somehow manage to sit around having conversations about, like, cheese. The reason is pretty simple: We can’t see glaciers. They are Far. Which is why National Geographic […]
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Moving the Kentucky Wildcats Beyond Coal
This week, I spoke at the University of Kentucky, home to a polluting coal plant, lots of coal industry money, and a student body hungry to move beyond coal and embrace a clean energy future. Many of us look to colleges and universities as pioneers of new technology and innovation, where a new generation learns […]
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Stop what you’re doing and look at this disco dancing polar bear
The newest threat to polar bear health and well-being: Saturday Night Fever. And the boogie-woogie flu. We can probably live with that.
