Robbie Gonzalez

Why don’t the Simpsons live in a base 8 world?

The latest episode of Numberphile delves into a particularly interesting reference to pi from the Simpsons episode “Marge in Chains,” while raising the very valid question as to why the Simpsons – who have eight fingers apiece – don’t live in a base eight world. https://gizmodo.com/the-first-4-000-000-digits-of-pi-visualized-in-a-singl-5904812 The Simpsons’ writers, like Futurama’s, have a certain fondness…

New Mexico kids wait for the bus inside “kid cages” because… wolves?

In Reserve, New Mexico, children huddle together inside “kid cages” while waiting for the school bus. The wood and mesh structures, pictured below, were ostensibly built to protect young ones from being preyed upon by local wolf populations. Sound ridiculous? That’s because it is. Above: A captive Mexican wolf at New Mexico’s Sevilleta National Wildlife…

Will somebody please buy me this gorgeous, $1,650 anatomy text?

16th Century anatomist Andreas Vesalius’s seven-volume opus on the human form, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, secured his status as the founder of modern human anatomy. Now, the foundational text has been translated and annotated in a beautiful (and exorbitantly priced) two-volume set. The world’s first annotated English translation of Fabrica will set you back $1,650…

“Dark Matter Experiment Has Detected Nothing, Researchers Say Proudly” sounds like something you’d see at the top of an Onion article. But it’s not. It’s from The New York Times’s coverage of the Large Underground Xenon dark matter experiment (a.k.a. “LUX”). Which, unless you’re familiar with null signals, reads like the most trollish headline ever.

David Attenborough Narrates Miley Cyrus’s VMA Twerk-formance

Shut it down, folks – this is the best thing you’ll see on the Internet today. Seriously, this here is fantastic. I’ll admit: As someone who is woefully out of touch with those spheres of pop culture that encompass Miley Cyrus, this is actually the first time I’ve watched the footage of her infamous performance…

The Los Angeles Aqueduct sure gave rise to some beautiful Earth porn

Algae blooms verdant along the shallow shoreline of Crowley Lake – a lake that didn’t exist at all prior to 1941. Brian Van Der Brug / Los Angeles Times That was the year construction of the Long Valley Dam began on the Upper Owens River, the barrier being just one of the many projects spawned…

You can’t tell if someone is lying by reading their facial expressions

So you’ve watched every single episode of Lie to Me and read every article from here to Mars on how to spot a fake smile and gotten pretty damn fantastic at spotting these fleeting, involuntary facial movements called microexpressions. You’re pretty much ready to bet the farm that you could spot a liar just by…

Guess how much this EOD 9 Bomb Tech Suit Costs

No, seriously, guess. Guess higher. Higher. It’s $27,811.00. Via EOD (short for Explosive Ordnance Disposal) suit supplier Ideal Blasting: The EOD 9 bomb suit and helmet ensemble has been designed with direct input from bomb disposal technicians to provide the highest degree of modular protection and operational flexibility for EOD and CBRN missions. The Med-Eng…

Let’s just debunk every flu-vaccine myth in one fell swoop, shall we?

Here for sharing far and wide is a collection of the most common myths and misconceptions surrounding flu vaccines, debunked point-by-point with lucid, thoroughly referenced explanations. Remember: if you’re going to argue with an anti-vaxxer, it’s important to know your stuff. https://gizmodo.com/dont-forget-to-get-your-flu-shot-1402004133 Top photo by Karoly Arvai via Reuters “I could be wrong,” writes science…

NASA to Launch Next Mars Mission November 18th

Earlier this month, the government shutdown threatened to postpone the launch of NASA’s Mars MAVEN spacecraft until 2016, at the expense of tens of millions of dollars to the Agency’s already cash-strapped Planetary Science Division. Now, NASA says the orbiter is prepared to lift off on its originally scheduled launch date of November 18th. https://gizmodo.com/how-is-the-government-shutdown-affecting-nasa-1434152709…

Dear god. This triceratops is made of pumpkins.

Attention overly ambitious pumpkin carvers of the Internet: Can you top this ceratopsid? No. No you cannot. This three-horned installation is one of the many incredible pumpkin arrangements featured at 2013’s Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze. This year’s epic jack-o-lantern festival (it’s held annually in upstate New York) features over five-thousand hand-carved pumpkins arranged into sea…

Big, 100-Million-Year-Old Bird Tracks Discovered in Australia

The oldest bird footprints ever discovered in Australia suggest there were birds – big ones – soaring over the continent as long ago as the Early Cretaceous Period. How do researchers know these birds were flying, and not just walking? Science! Above: Drawing of bird and prints by researcher Anthony Martin. The prints were found…

Slate launched an animal blog today, and to kick things off they’ve got a post from Brian Switek that outs some of nature’s most adorable creatures as total dickheads. Equally important news re: animal behavior: Last Word on Nothing’s Whitney Robles reveals many of the Internet’s most squee-worthy videos actually depict animals in lust, anger,…

Lil’ Hadfield should win all the costume contests

Former ISS Commander and perennial blower-of-minds Chris Hadfield announced last week that he’d be conducting a Halloween contest for best astronaut costume. I THINK WE HAVE OUR WINNER, PEOPLE. https://gizmodo.com/so-long-commander-hadfield-and-thanks-for-all-the-aw-504656863 Nowhere does Hadfield state that the astronaut costume must be of him, though his iconic mustache has, understandably, made him an attractive option: One costumer…

Scientists Discover a Substance that Appears Cold When You Heat it Up

The hotter an object gets, the more heat it radiates. Simple, right? It’s a fundamental physical principle that makes instruments like infrared goggles possible. But now researchers at Harvard have identified a material that defies this principle by actually appearing colder as it warms up. Above: IR readings of vanadium dioxide at increasing temperatures via…

Psychologists Propose Horrifying Solution to PTSD in Drone Operators

Drone operators often kill their targets from a continent away, but studies suggest that even thousands of miles of distance cannot mitigate war’s devastating psychological effects. But just wait until you hear how researchers propose preventing PTSD, alcohol abuse and thoughts of suicide in drone operators. Above: Flying a drone can feel like a deadly…

The ocean’s most horrifying monster is a parasite you’ve never heard of

Over at Deep Sea News, RR Helm has dished out all the grisly details on rhizocephala, a class of barnacle that looks NOTHING like the barnacle you’re imagining in your head and spends its days parasitizing crabs, in a way that outstrips the imagination of even the most sadistic horror writers. Writes Helm: Imagine you’re…

Time travel is possible – but where will it take us?

We know that time travel is possible, at least in the forward direction. In this recently released TEDEd video, educator Colin Stuart imagines where and when it might take us, while exploring the science behind time travel and time dilation. Stuart teamed up with director Franz Palomares and animation artist Godfrey Hibbert to provide this…

SMBC reveals the Large Hadron Collider’s true purpose

What – you didn’t really think the LHC was designed to seek out answers to the most confounding questions in all of physics, did you? https://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-visit-cern-including-the-lhc-on-google-stre-1416946522 https://gizmodo.com/a-brief-history-of-physics-whimsically-animated-1153486465 You ignorant fool. As the latest strip from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weinersmith reveals, the collider’s true purpose has nothing to do with subatomic particles at all!…

Seriously, though – does sex count as exercise?

Somewhere near the top of every single one of the the roughly forty-kajillion internet listicles dedicated to the “surprising,” “hidden,” and “unexpected” health benefits of sex is the not-all-that-surprising-sounding factoid that bumping fuzzies basically doubles as exercise. In reality, however, there has been very little research done to support this claim. Above: Olivia Newton John…