Ritual Is the Cult Movie You Need on Halloween

In Mickey Keating’s 2013 meta-horror thriller extravaganza Ritual, the awesomely-named Lisa Marie Summerscales plays Lovely, resident of South Texas, whose turn ons include smoking at the beach, cruising dive bars and picking up guys with more prison tats than teeth. Spoilers ahead… The film opens with Lovely meeting a mysterious stranger named Tom after which…

A Sexually Charged Turing Test Gets Creepy In Trailer For Ex Machina

28 Days Later and Sunshine writer Alex Garland is back with a new science fiction thriller, this one about the line between human and AI. In Ex Machina, a programmer is tasked with evaluating the consciousness of a female-bodied AI, and things quickly take a turn for the very weird. Here’s the official description for…

Ex Machina Trailer: Sexy Lady Robots Can Love, Too

Here’s the trailer for Ex Machina, a sci-fi thriller about a young programmer selected to serve as the human component in a Turing Test on a robot. A really hot lady robot. Spoiler: the robot, Ava turns out to be more smart and clever than anyone could have expected, throwing everyone for a loop. (She’s…

What Is The Most Terrifying Problem We Face Today?

It’s that time of year again, when people attempt to spook us with stories about ghosts and monsters, but let’s face it: With global warming cooking the planet, melting glaciers, and the build-up of nuclear arsenals, the real stories are much, much scarier. What is the problem today that scares you the most? Tell us…

Reservoirs and hydropower are often thought of as climate friendly, but new research suggests that we may have underestimated the amount of methane they produce. The methane—which is 35 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 over the span of a century—is produced by bacteria eating nutrient-rich agricultural runoff.

What Are The Most Cited Research Papers Of All Time?

The writers at Nature News recently put together a list of the 100 most highly cited papers of all time. There are a few surprises in here, including the fact that it takes no fewer than 12,119 citations to rank in the top 100. The list, which was created by pulling data from the Science…

What’s Neil Patrick Harris’ Weird American Horror Story Character?

Meet some new characters for Agent Carter and Star Wars, and learn more about a Star Wars villain’s confrontation with a hero. Kevin Feige shoots down the Avengers/Spider-Man crossover rumors. Plus a sneak peek at Doctor Who’s intense next episode. Spoilers now! Top image: American Horror Story Star Wars Take this for the bit of…

Please Explain How This Squirrel Made a Jack O’ Lantern

No, seriously, tell me how they did this. Not to get all squirrel truther on you, but there was clearly something put on the pumpkin to make the squirrel do this, right? Is there a catnip equivalent for squirrels? Did they smear a nut scent on the pumpkin? Are the squirrels trained? I DEMAND ANSWERS!…

Drunk Museum Review: The Mütter Museum Will Give Me Nightmares Forever

I had a ball getting drunk at the American Museum of Natural History. But my most recent drunken outing was much less fun than that. I cannot stress enough that having a series of existential crises while drunk and alone in the Mütter Museum is a horrible idea. Just horrible. Top Image: Gif by Jim…

Here’s Clothing Advice for the Modern Supernatural Woman

Not only is this a tumblr curated with excellent taste. Not only are the situations it addresses complicated to the extreme. But the reasoning? Extremely detailed. What to Wear When, which is a project of tumblr Rave Sashayed and includes Polyvore boards, is a tumblr that answers the important questions like “WHAT TO WEAR WHEN:…

Everyone Go Home, the Robot Comedians Are Here

Well, fuck. Once robots have senses of humor, we officially have nothing to offer this world. This is not how I expected to witness our obsolescence. Meet Ginger, the project of Marilyn Monrobot‘s Heather Knight. And while the jokes aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, what Ginger lacks in delivery she makes up…

What will future historians say about the 21st century? A new book, written by a historian in 2393, looks at the 21st century and the “Great Collapse of 2093” due to climate change. Co-author Naomi Oreskes says writing science fiction “gave us the freedom to extrapolate and show what’s at stake.”

Google X Labs is developing a pill that could one day detect cancer and heart disease. The pill would contain 2,000 nanoparticles coated with antibodies and molecules capable of detecting other molecules, and travel through the patient’s bloodstream in search of malignant cells. The findings would be transmitted to a sensor on a wearable device.…

You’ll Never Not Know What To Watch On Netflix Again

For everyone out there who’s spent a feature-length-film amount of time trying to find something good to watch: What Is On Netflix is about to seriously streamline your selection process. The site lists streamables, ranked in descending order based on their respective Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB scores. Yay! How cool is this?? Reddit user BelgianMyWaffle…

The Earth And The Moon, In A Single Frame

China’s Chang’e 5 test vehicle captured this rare glimpse of the Moon’s far side yesterday, from just past the halfway point on its lunar-looping test flight. Incredibly, the spacecraft managed to include Earth in the frame as well, producing what is destined to become an iconic image of our planet and its natural satellite. https://gizmodo.com/beautiful-astrogeological-maps-reveal-the-moons-mysteri-5866790…

At Last, It’s Time to Light the Sun

Once we’d completed geoengineering on the inside of the habitat, it was time to build a permanent light source. The tower’s illumination would generate enough energy to keep the plants and animals growing for millennia. We couldn’t wait to watch the ignition ceremony. There’s nothing like seeing first light. Andrey Maximov is a senior environmental…

Amy Poehler Quizzes George R.R. Martin On Game Of Thrones Trivia

How well does George R.R. Martin know his own characters? On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers asked Martin to match lines from A Song of Ice and Fire with their appropriate characters—and the results are pretty damn adorable. The one-time Weekend Update cohosts had a bit of fun with Martin,…

A Field Guide To The Imaginary Beasts, Cryptids And Monsters Of America

Just in time for Halloween, here’s a guide to the lesser-known imaginary creatures that plague the small towns, cities, and wilds of America, ranging from a haunted truck that travels the backroads to Maryland’s own dragon, drawn from your submissions. https://gizmodo.com/tell-us-about-your-areas-local-legendary-monsters-1652201322 Did you know that local lore places a dragon right square in the hills…

Fan Service and Failed States on Person of Interest

Even though last night’s Person of Interest was a slightly goofy meta episode, with one character clearly intended to be a stand-in for fans of the show, it was also pretty intense. We now understand what the stakes are for the crime bosses of New York. Plus, Finch did something seriously out of character. This…

What The Heck Is Going On With Dean On Supernatural?

Last night’s episode of Supernatural was basically a standard issue “can monsters stop being evil” episode, something the show has done several times now. But this time around, there was an added subtext, because of everything that Dean just went through. Spoilers ahead… Basically, this was Dean’s first episode back as a human (tempted to…