Grist List

‘Water cafe’ sells filtered bottled tap water and nothing else

Bottled water is often just tap water in a bottle. A new store is basing their entire business plan on that concept: They sell nothing but bottled tap water.

Sarah Laskow Culture

Here is a very, very gross picture of mayflies

My first thought when looking at this photo (posted by Reddit user ILikeWhereThisIsGoin, who probably doesn’t) was “oh, a lawnmower must have exploded! Look at all those grass clippings. All those perfectly innocuous, not-alive grass clippings.” But no, that’s just thousands and thousands of mayflies. Still perfectly innocuous, in the sense that they won’t hurt […]

Jess Zimmerman Science

City officials are waging a war on gardens

We've heard one too many stories in which people decide to use their yards to grow some fresh vegetables, only to have city officials come down hard on them, forcing them to tear out their food or bulldozing the gardens themselves.

Sarah Laskow Cities

Farmer spends $100,000 on waterbeds for cows

[protected-iframe id=”fd779d2d5dfa2bc178edb19793ecb62a-5104299-30166106″ info=”http://swfs.bimvid.com/bimvid_player-3_2_7.swf?x-bim-callletters=KGW” width=”470″ height=”264″] Even on a small, family-owned dairy farm, life as a milk cow looks not so great. I mean, you do spend a lot of time standing around in a stall with devices attached to your nipples. That’s cool if it’s your thing, and if there are enough of you who […]

Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

How to make a tiny car: Just cut a regular car in half

Look, it still totally works!

Jess Zimmerman Technology

Map shows where the biggest couch potatoes live (and it’s NOT the U.S.!)

A group of researchers looked at health surveys covering 89 percent of the world’s population and came to a surprising conclusion — Americans are not the least active people on the planet. Six in 10 of us get “30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week,” “20 minutes of vigorous exercise three days a […]

Sarah Laskow Culture

Tiny squid may be killing themselves by having too much sex

Marathon three-hour sex sessions may SOUND like a good idea, but if you’re a 2.8-inch long southern dumpling squid, it may tire you out so much that you can’t feed or protect yourself, says a new study.

Sarah Laskow Science

19th-century London had a train line just for dead people

Back in mid-19th century England, public transportation was popular enough that even dead people had their own railway. P. D. Smith writes: The London Necropolis Railway station was constructed by the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company, specifically to serve their Brookwood Cemetery, 25 miles away in Woking, Surrey. The Company’s logo was, somewhat ghoulishly, […]