Grist List
-
![]()
![]()
This miniature city is made of 100,000 staples
This is significantly more creative than we've ever gotten with office supplies.
-
![]()
![]()
Sperm whales sleep standing up
Sperm whales spend most of their time sailing lazily through the deep, only occasionally stopping to have a terrifying penis. (The ones in the video are right whales, but I assume the sperm whale is much the same.) Basically, their normal activity looks not unlike you and me sleeping. But it turns out their sleeping […]
-
![]()
![]()
Kobe Bryant and LeBron James use public transit at the Olympics
If the American men's Olympic basketball team can use public transportation, so can everybody else.
-
![]()
![]()
This couple moved all their worldly possessions using only bikes
Moving is stressful, and most of us deal with it by renting a ginormo truck, dumping our stuff in it (or bribing our buddies to dump our stuff in it), and hoping that nothing in our newspaper-packed boxes breaks. But Anthony and Jess Reiss decided to take a chance on a potentially really, really stressful […]
-
![]()
![]()
Q&A with ‘Mohawk Guy’ Bobak Ferdowsi, the new face of science
I love the fact that NASA’s dishy mohawked flight director Bobak Ferdowsi is now basically a household name, putting a human (and handsome) face on the Curiosity mission and space exploration in general. If we’re going to survive as a civilization or a species, we need to get excited about science, and it helps when […]
-
![]()
![]()
São Paulo has been invaded by giant brains
Apparently São Paulo, Brazil still has public phone booths — or at least it did. Now, thanks to the Call Parade public art project, it has giant brains, disco balls, can-can dancers, and miniature cities. One hundred artists have transformed 100 phone booths to add some whimsy to the city, and/or attract zombies.
-
![]()
![]()
New NASA time-lapse video makes Earth look almost as cool as Mars
Mars is the star of the news cycle right now, but this new time-lapse video of Earth from the International Space Station kind of gives the Red Planet a run for its money.
-
![]()
![]()
For this cat, learning to surf is a survival skill
I’m really hoping this is a glimpse of evolution in action — like, over thousands of years, the cats that know how to work surfboards will be more likely to survive dog attacks and live long enough to breed, and in a few millennia we’ll have a race of semi-aquatic feline surfer dudes.
-
New walk-scoring tool finally acknowledges that walking in the suburbs sucks
At Atlantic Cities, Sarah Goodyear puts her finger on a truth universally acknowledged by everyone in the world except WalkScore: “A mile in an American suburb is a lot longer than a mile in Rome.” In other words, walking 10 city blocks is very different from walking a mile up the side of a highway […]
