Articles by Jess Zimmerman

Jess Zimmerman was the editor of Grist List.

All Articles

  • Sorry, kids: Halloween candy is a human rights nightmare

    Here's a really scary story for your Halloween: The candy you're handing out might have been made by foreign students who were tricked into factory labor. Hershey's, which also distributes Cadbury candy in the U.S. and Nabisco candy in Canada, charged students up to $6,000 for a "summer work and travel" program, which actually consisted of drudgery at the packing plant.

    Jess Zimmerman Food

  • Quantum levitation: Probably not the secret to hover-trains, but still amazing

    A few places around the internet are calling this phenomenon — quantum levitation — the first step to magical hover-trains. This is probably not true, according to my physics source (it's my husband). Maglev trains use superconducting magnets, but that's just a type of electromagnet — it has nothing to do with the Meissner effect, […]

    Jess Zimmerman Technology

  • Is this outrageous climate denier secretly Borat?

    Well, no. He's not. But that's the beauty of this clip, where Australian comedian Craig Reucassel interviews completely over-the-top climate denier Lord Monckton as though he were a Sascha Baron Cohen creation. It's a masterpiece of layered irony — Reucassel gives a deadpan interview worthy of Ali G while pretending that Monckton is doing the same. […]

    Jess Zimmerman Accountability

  • Scientists are underplaying climate effects

    So, talking about global warming is "alarmism"? Hardly. In many cases, it now turns out, climate reality has been much worse than climate scientists predicted. The Arctic now has ice-free summers, 90 years in advance of predictions. Animals are fleeing to higher elevations twice as fast as models said. Extinction rates are double what was expected, […]

    Jess Zimmerman Science