Grist List

New wave of revelations about Koch Industries' unethical, illegal behavior

Koch Industries, the privately held petrochemical giant whose corporate personality can best be described as obsessive-compulsively evil, is at it again!

These hairy crazy ants are invading America and they do not screw around

Start playing the video above, and after you're suitably grossed out by the close-ups, skip to about 0:45. These are insects called hairy crazy ants -- that is what they’re really called -- and they are terrifying. How do they move that fast? 

These guys are invading the American South. They are called hairy, because their bellies are hairy. They are called crazy, because they move crazy fast, and also they are crazy with nothing to lose. And they're hard to kill.

Now we have two giant holes in the ozone layer

I hear New Zealand is beautiful, but I'm never going there, because the ozone is thin and I'll die of skin cancer. I hear Norway is beautiful, too, but it looks like I can't go there either, because now there's an unprecedentedly big ozone hole over the Arctic.

Winter often thins the ozone layer over the Arctic, but this year, for the first time, scientists are saying the hole is comparable to the one of over Antarctica. It's twice as bad as the two biggest holes scientists had previously observed over the Arctic, and in some sections, 80 percent of the ozone is gone.

Critical List: Perry not afraid to sound like an idiot; Koch Industries trading with Iran

"I'm not afraid to say I'm a skeptic about [climate change]." -- Rick Perry, ladies and gentlemen. So fearless.

A Bloomberg investigation found that Koch Industries has paid bribes to obtain contracts and sold Iran petrochemical equipment, in violation of the U.S. trade ban.

Trees are nice. Probably not a great idea to destroy them all.

If you have an electric toothbrush, extra-large fridge, laptop, iPad, iPhone, multiple flat screen TVs, a flat screen monitor, and god knows what else -- you're killing us here!

Buy a $150,000 bag of onions to save a family farm

Oh man, you're probably wishing you hadn't spent that $4,500 on a Rick Perry head planter yesterday. If you'd saved it, you could have put it towards ... well, a bag of onions, but also they'll throw in some dirt!

As if they haven't done enough for you, trees also increase property values

Trees, man! They produce oxygen, they cool the planet, they make you smarter, and it turns out they also make your house worth more. It's like a Shel Silverstein book or something.

Try out these 50 hilarious no-handed bike moves

If you have ever thought to yourself "self, I wonder what are the 50 most hipsterish bike tricks," wonder no more. Not sure how I feel about "the Hitler" — guys, that one is historically not really funny? — but you gotta love the "Def Leppard drummer," the "nasty internet commenter," and the "fall the […]

Reenact global warming in your cocktail

This Japanese site sells ice cube molds depicting penguins and polar bears sitting on ice floes. As the ice melts, both the floes and the critters are destroyed, making this a pretty good simulation of the effects of global warming. Finally, a product that combines climate education with all the drinking you need to do […]

Here’s a win-win: Geothermal power can make lithium for electric vehicles

Existing geothermal power plants are powered by a hot brine from deep within the earth's crust, which is just lousy with dissolved minerals -- literally "half the periodic table," reports Scientific American. One of those elements is lithium, which can be extracted from the geothermal fluid that existing power plants in California's Salton Sea are already pulling out of the ground.

This is remarkable on many levels at once.