Grist List
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Critical List: Canada will fall short of emissions goal; people hate smart meters
Props to Canada for setting an actual carbon emissions goal. Too bad there’s almost no way they’re going to meet it. The World Bank is pushing countries to put a monetary value on the resources their ecosystems provide. A new study shows that monkeys who were exposed to BPA in utero developed unusually dense mammary […]
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The most beautiful illegal treehouse you’ve ever seen
OK, I had always understood that Canadians build tree forts with little tiny fridges in them if, and only if, they have a million dollars. But Vancouver-area software developer Joel Allen built his insanely beautiful HemLoft when he went financially bust. And because he was broke, he built it by hand, illegally, on government-owned land.
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Brooklynites distribute handmade artisanal parking tickets
Woe betide you if you decide to drive your ironic vintage Yugo in Brooklyn instead of your fixed-gear bike with detachable mustache. Park Slope residents have had enough of those bullshit half-spaces that show up in front of cars when someone moves an SUV and it gets replaced by a compact. They’re so pissed off, […]
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City-dwellers’ allergies are so bad because they don’t have enough bacteria
This allergy season has been terrible. It seems like everyone I know has been running around with leaky eyes, even those of us who aren’t typically pollen-sensitive. Granted, there was an unusual amount of tree sperm in the air this year, but it seemed strange that everybody — really, everybody! — was afflicted. But a […]
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Dinosaur farts caused early global warming
More than a quarter of the world’s human-related methane emissions come from livestock burps and farts, which is bad enough — but imagine what the climate would look like if cows weighed 25 tons. Back in dinosaur days, we had some seriously outsize herbivores roaming the planet, making some seriously outsize butt music. A team […]
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Critical List: Peru’s mysterious animal deaths; wolf puppies
Pelicans and dolphins are dying in droves in Peru — 1,200 birds and 800 dolphins have washed up dead on the coast — and the government is warning people away from the beaches until it figures out why. Dinosaurs might have passed enough gas (i.e. methane) to match current levels of greenhouse-gas emissions. The Crawford […]
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Heartland Institute’s BS ad campaign is causing it all kinds of problems
OK, I’m working on a joke, tell me if you think this works: How is the Heartland Institute like a professional burlesque dancer? It just can’t stop showing its ass! Eh? Eh? All right, maybe not, but the point is it’s been a hard year for poor Heartland, which just can’t seem to not look […]
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Weird, adorable animal spotted for the first time in over a decade
The tiger quoll is an adorable, carnivorous marsupial, sort of like an extra-cute Tasmanian devil with spots. Like most of the other weird marsupials, they’re only found in Australia, and they’ve been increasingly hard to find in the wild. In the Otway Ranges in southwestern Victoria, there hadn’t been a confirmed quoll sighting in more […]
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Awesome cityscapes made from discarded textbooks
What do you do with unwanted textbooks? Chinese artist Liu Wei makes spectacular carved-book cityscapes.
