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June 15, 2015 Liam Mathews

The surveillance state is weird. One of the weirdest parts is how same issues that apply in the large scale, like NSA wiretapping, also apply on a small scale, like the guy who caught somebody digging up hostas from a tree pit in front of his house in Fort Greene. He caught someone doing something […]

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December 15, 2014 Rhett Jones

Since the release of The Secret Life Of Plants more than 40 years ago, various new age-rs, crack pots, empathetic people and occasional scientists have made a case for plants having their own form of consciousness. One of the best things about being a conscious living being is having sex, so some intrepid designers have a […]

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October 17, 2014 Backdoor Pharmacist

The world is filled with wonders, and out of God’s laziness that we encounter so many of these wonders and find out their insides get us fucked up. That’s the case with Gawker’s find of toxic Jimsonweed in a patch of weeds on a concrete median at the corner of Lafayette and Prince in Nolita. […]

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July 21, 2014 Sophie Weiner

Japanese artist Azuma Makoto has strapped six GoPro cameras to balloons carrying plants — like a a fifty-year-old bonsai tree — and launched them into space for his project Exobiotica. The resulting documentation is stunning and surreal, with photos of earthly organisms suspended above our atmosphere. The artist, who works in interweaving biological and human design, encountered a few technical difficulties […]

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June 28, 2013 Andy Cush

Near the ANIMAL office alone, there are purpleleaf plums, honeylocust, and swamp white oak. Near my apartment, black locust, small-leaved linden, and chokecherry. All of them are edible in some way–honey locusts’ pods can be eaten, as can black locust’s flowers, and the seeds of swamp white oak can be used as a thickening agent. […]

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June 21, 2013 Andy Cush

If you’re already over that billion pixel image of Mars we showed you yesterday, here’s your latest high-res space photo fix: NASA and NOAA created this  image of the Earth using something called a “VIIRS sensor,” which works kind of like an infrared camera for trees, highlighting any vegetation in lush green and rendering everything else […]

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June 5, 2013 Backdoor Pharmacist

Kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) is a tree native to Southeast Asia. The leaves are filled with dozens of alkaloids and quite a few are psychoactive. Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are the most important alkaloids in Kratom. They’re both opioids. Ethnobotanicals aren’t in the same category as MDPV or phenazepam but I’m starting to see too much false […]

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