Grist List
-
![]()
![]()
Detroit is building the world’s longest hopscotch course (4.2 miles!)
Two Detroit organizations, Wedge Detroit and Imagine Detroit Together, are planning the World’s Longest Hopscotch Course — 4.2 miles of chalky, colorful joy. As part of the Detroit Design Festival, they’re going to break out the paint, chalk, and knee pads on September 19, draw until September 22, and then recruit 30 volunteers to add […]
-
![]()
![]()
Middle schoolers convince L.A. school district to ban styrofoam
Anyone who thinks that kids don’t care about anything but eating uncooked ramen and playing video games clearly underestimated the kids of Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Angeles. Their interests include uncooked ramen, playing video games, building a tower of styrofoam, and getting so grossed out by it that they launch a letter-writing […]
-
The Amazon rainforest’s clouds may come from mushrooms
I have not ever visited the Amazon, but in my imagination, it is populated by some serious, colorful, amazing fungi, all of which will either kill you or get you extremely high. But a new paper in Science found that the rainforest’s mushroom could have another vital purpose: producing a motherlode of potassium that helps […]
-
![]()
![]()
The creepiest earthworm you have ever seen is 19 inches long
Forestry worker Li Zhiwei found this gigantic earthworm in his backyard and is keeping it as a pet. If you think that screenshot is vaguely disturbing, wait ’til you see this guy move:
-
![]()
![]()
Earth’s most beautiful fractal patterns have to be seen to be believed
Computer science professor Paul Bourke has an exhaustive amount of information about fractals on his website, but for my money the coolest part is his collection of naturally occurring fractal images from Google Earth. If I hadn’t looked them up, I’d suspect some of these were computer-generated — but no, they’re real rivers, lakes, and […]
-
![]()
![]()
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 […]
-
![]()
![]()
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 […]
-
![]()
![]()
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.
-
![]()
![]()
Climate change could lead to a rise in brain-eating parasites
Maybe nothing is weird about the rise in cases of primary amebic meningoencephalitis. Or maybe climate change is making conditions more hospitable for this warm-water-loving parasite and we're all gonna dieeeeeeeeee.
