Grist List

Introducing the world's first compostable bikini

Women hate swimsuit shopping, am I right? And we all know why: Because swimsuits do not disintegrate when buried underground for 180 days. Luckily, designer Linda Loudermilk has come out with the world's first line of compostable swimwear.

Conservative pundits deny existence of record-breaking heat wave

Rush Limbaugh says "almost no temperature records were broken" during the recent heat wave, and Newsbusters writer Noel Sheppard says there were "only 34 new all-time daily temperature records set." Only 34? Why, that's barely a record-breaking heat wave at all! Except for the fact that a) 34 records is nothing to sneeze at and b) by "34," Sheppard means "somewhere between 70 and 7,612."

Toyota concept bike has psychic gear shift

Parlee Cycles and tech company Deeplocal are working together on a bike inspired by the Toyota Prius. It's a reasonably slick-looking machine, but the really weird and bizarre part is the "neuron shifting." The bike uses a gaming neuroheadset, which detects the brain's electrical activity like an EEG, to let riders shift between gears using only their minds.

NYC cyclist gets doored by clueless cops

If you're riding a bike and get doored, it sucks no matter what. But what if, like Stephen Mann, you get doored by a cop?

Judging from Mann's account, it's even worse than getting hit by your run-of-the-mill inconsiderate driver.

Critical List: How to support Tim DeChristopher; white dudes think they're smarter than science

Want to support Tim DeChristopher? Go to Washington in August to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. "Consider this your call to action," said Peaceful Uprising, the group DeChristopher founded.

BREAKING: Conservative white dudes (aka the Jim Inhofe Fan Club) are most likely to think they're smarter than science, i.e. doubt the existence of climate change.

In California, though, everyone -- even conservatives -- supports cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.

GOP: Why can't we mine for uranium in the Grand Canyon?

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has extended the moratorium on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon through the end of the year, and House Republicans are grumpy. I mean, there's uranium there ... the hole is already mostly dug ... it's basically a perfect mining opportunity! So they're sticking a rider onto an Interior Department appropriations bill that would open the land back up.

Attack of the evil killer algae!

Sickening amounts of green algae, fed by nitrous waste from French farms, have been growing on the Brittany coast, where French and British people go for vacation. When the algae decomposes, it gives off hydrogen sulphide, a poisonous gas. Two years ago, a man died from inhaling the gas. The next victim: a horse. This year more than 30 wild boars have died mysteriously on the beach, and the evil algae is the prime suspect.

Could you use the internet to heat your house?

Servers generate so much heat that they have to be kept in super-cooled rooms, lest the entire Cloud collapse. People's houses need heat, at least in the winter months. Two great tastes that go great together?

A dress with a built-in air purifier

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion's "catalytic clothing" strips pollutants out of the air and breaks them down harmlessly. Here's an atmospheric (ha) video of an air-purifying dress, but they've also got jeans, which significantly improves the chances of getting enough people wearing catalytic clothing to actually make a difference in air quality. (None of this is available for purchase or anything crazy like that, but in theory, if it were, you'd probably want the jeans.)