Tastes like superbugs: A rising number of bladder infections, which affect 60 percent of all women, are getting harder to treat with antibiotics because they’ve evolved resistance to the drugs. And now there’s growing evidence that these drug-resistant infections (a.k.a. “superbugs”) got their start in chickens that were fed antibiotics by industrial agriculture -- not because they were sick, but in order to make them grow faster (a practice we’ve previously reported about and that our publisher is suing to stop). The Food and Environmental Reporting Network investigated the new studies in a joint report with ABC News and The Atlantic. Colonel Sanders had no comment. OnEarth
Noise pollution is just the start: So seriously, this billionaire industrialist guy named Ira Rennert owns a mining company that in the past has been labeled the nation’s worst polluter, helped make the high-emissions Humvee popular on U.S. roads (until gas prices caught up with him), and operates lead smelters that poison children -- and it’s the helicopter noise that has his wealthy Hamptons neighbors in a snit? Mother Jones
Drought count: More than 1,000 counties in 26 states -- about a third of the country -- have now been declared federal disaster areas (the largest declaration by the U.S. Agriculture Department ever) due to lack of rain and searing summer temperatures. George Will tells them to man up and go buy a fan or something. Salt Lake Tribune
Crustacean eradication: Catching crayfish in Lake Tahoe -- where commercial fishing had been banned since the 1930s after local trout went extinct due to overfishing -- is now A-OK. Why target the crustaceans? They aren’t native, and their … um … excretions contribute to algae growth and cloud the water. Eat crayfish, keep Tahoe blue. Sounds like a winning slogan to us. New York Times
In my mind I’m swimming to Carolina: Mike Lemonick reports on a new analysis released Thursday in the journal Science which “implies that the seas could rise dramatically higher over the next few centuries than scientists previously thought -- somewhere between 18-to-29 feet above current levels, rather than the 13-to-20 feet they were talking about just a few years ago.” That higher number would put coastal cities around the world entirely underwater, displacing millions. But it won’t happen overnight, and there’s time to both slow it down and adapt -- assuming we don’t just bury our heads in the sand and deny the problem like some states we know. Climate Central
Mo’ Better Buses: This wide-ranging Q&A with director Spike Lee is interesting on a lot of levels, but we particularly liked his thoughts on gentrification, public transit, and Mayor Bloomberg’s New York City Supergulp ban. Spoiler: Spike’s in favor. New York
Biking Brits: And speaking of urban transit nerds (which we do often around the OnEarth offices -- seriously): meet London Mayor Boris Johnson, whose city is about to get a little more attention due to that completely understated, low-profile sporting event that happens every four years (we think it’s called the Olympics or something). Slate
Are those things real?: Look no further for your daily distraction than this amazing photo gallery of strange (and strangely beautiful) Arctic sea creatures. Wired
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Image: Red bull (Amphipoda Acanthonotozoma inflatum)/Alexander Semenov
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