The Mysterious Molecular Structures Found in City Layouts

Did you know that, from the air, the arrangement and structure of Boston’s buildings, and the positioning of those buildings relative to one another, looks a lot like the molecular structure of an “amorphous liquid”? Seattle and L.A. do, too. Chicago, with its rigid grid system, apparently looks like glass. Above: Boston, from above, two…

WB May Tap Oscar-Winning Argo Screenwriter For Justice League Script

Holy crap. This is just a rumor, but cross your fingers it’s true: Deadline reports that Warner Bros. may be considering Chris Terrio, writer of the Academy Award-winning movie Argo, to handle the script for the Justice League movie. That… that seems like a good thing. Terrio won the Best Adapted Screenplay award for Argo,…

Plastic Homes from the Days When Plastic Was the Future

In the mid-twentieth century, back when colonizing the solar system seemed imminent, people decided to save money by building homes out of plastic. You can see the results here. Some are mind-bogglingly awesome, and some are just mind-boggling. The Monsanto House of the Future, built in 1957, displayed at Disneyland until 1967 https://gizmodo.com/twentieth-century-futurism-looks-really-bizarre-now-1580541411 (via brunurb)…

New Trailer For Outlander Mixes Time Travel and Polite British Sex

Get a better look at Ron D. Moore’s TV adaptation of Outlander, the time travel novel that sends a World War 2 nurse back to 18th century Scotland. There she discovers more gorgeous British men in kilts. Behold!

High Levels of Insecticide Found in Iowa Streams

A study released today offers evidence that neonicotinoids, the same pesticides associated with honeybee deaths, are now flowing into our water supplies. Neonicotinoids are a kind of insecticide that some scientists say could be causing colony collapse disorder, which endangers bees and agricultural plants alike. https://gizmodo.com/we-may-have-solved-the-mystery-of-the-dying-bees-1576014549 The new study reveals that in regions throughout Iowa,…

Scientifically Accurate Sonic The Hedgehog Prefers Poop To Speed

Yes, it’s time for Fox’s Animation Domination HD and science to ruin another one of your childhood icons! This time, it’s beloved videogame mascot Sonic the Hedgehog, who it turns out would be much more interested in eating shit than collecting golden rings. Who knew? Catch ADHD Satuday nights on Fox at 11:00 pm.

This Conceptual Skyscraper Rises Like A Giant Coil

Called “The Endless City in Height,” this gorgeous design does away with traditional stacking floors, replacing them with two street-sized ramps that rise and coil vertically into the London skyline. SURE Architecture recently took top prize at the Skyscrapers and SuperSkyscrapers Competition with this design. The building’s pedestrian-friendly and intertwining ramps would be connected to…

Coolest Comic-Con Cosplay Day 2: The Reckoning

Another day of Comic-Con, another day of fantastic cosplayers wandering around the San Diego Convention Center. Not all of them are as high-flying as the fabulous Batgirl above, striking a pose on the Batman zipline, but that doesn’t make them any less awesome. Top photo by Hollywood Reporter’s Philiana Ng. Photo by Davann Srey. “Jokerine”…

​io9 Newsstand: Best Short Stories for the Week of July 21 – 26

Themes and synchronicities keep popping up in my short story reading. Many of this week’s stores are about witches and demons and dangerous feminine magical powers of awesome. Not all of them. The others are just about cruelty and theater and magic and desperation. Normal stuff. image credit: Rebecca Huston, “Grooming,” on Strange Horizons Belly…

We May Have Just Discovered the Most Common Virus in Humans

The most common viruses in your body are bacteria-infecting viruses called bacteriophages – and the most common bacteriophage of all might be the newly-discovered crAssphage. crAssphage! Above: An electron micrograph of bacteriophages (but not crAssphages, which have yet to be imaged beneath a microscope) attached to a bacterial cell | Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Researchers…

Meet The New Cast Members Of Game Of Thrones Season Five

Game of Thrones certainly lost a few cast members this season, but in return, the show will be picking up several new actors for the fifth season—including a few Sand Snakes and our High Sparrow. Here are the actors who were announced today at the Game of Thrones panel during San Diego Comic-Con. You can…

Creators of The Legend of Korra Explain the Show’s Not-Cancellation

The news came yesterday that Book 3 of The Legend of Korra was being pulled from Nickelodeon to air online. So of course the creators of the show had to address it at this morning’s Comic-Con panel — which they did, before moving on to celebrate the show. https://gizmodo.com/nickelodeon-yanks-legend-of-korra-off-tv-shoves-it-onl-1610340783 Co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino…

Walking Dead Season 5 Starts At Terminus, But Heads Back To The Comics

When we last left Rick and his fellow survivors at the end of Waking Dead season 4, they were locked in a train car by the mysterious residents of Terminus. At Comic-Con, the cast and crew explained what lies in store for them there — and how their journey forward will return to the story…

According to Two Nerdy History Girl’s Isabella Bradford, the truth about how women of the 1770s achieved their tall, voluminous hairstyles is even more interesting than the myths. Which is saying something, because the myths involve filling up big ol’ wigs with maggots. ht MeFi

Even White Walkers Screw Up In The Game Of Thrones Blooper Reel

The actors on Game of Thrones are brilliant, but even they have their off moments, and there is plenty of intentional and unintentional comedy on the set. Check out the Season 4 blooper reel that just screened at San Diego Comic-Con.

We’ve Seen The First Hunger Games: Mockingjay Footage

Lionsgate screened the first-ever trailer for Hunger Games: Mockingjay for fans from their wacky Comic-Con Capitol lounge (which also has a makeshift Peeta bakery on site). And this is what we saw! The teaser starts zooming over (what I’m assuming is) District 13. The industrial wasteland is made up of what appear to be abandoned…

Sam Raimi Announces He’s Working On An Evil Dead TV Series

Tucked away in the Last of Us movie panel, like a demon under the floorboard of a cabin in the woods, director Sam Raimi revealed he and his brother Ted are attempting to turn his iconic horror movie franchise Evil Dead into a TV series… with Bruce Campbell involved. There are no other details whatsoever.…

The Lunar Surface As You’ve Never Seen It Before

NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio has created this stunning, high-resolution portrait of the Moon’s south pole by combining, for the first time, gravity data from the GRAIL mission with topographic imagery taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. As NASA explains: If the Moon were a perfectly smooth sphere of uniform density, the gravity map would be…

This New Walking Dead Season 5 Trailer Goes Seriously Dark

The Walking Dead just premiered the Season 5 trailer and it starts off with a bang — a “lining the whole cast up to die” kind of bang. Wow. But that’s not all; looks this year will feature a lot of “on the road” traveling and a lot less staying in one place and dying…

Batman Gets Weird When Artists Redesign His Cape and Cowl

The Cape/Cowl/Create art show at SDCC celebrated the 75th anniversary of Batman by giving him a makeover. A collection of artists were tasked with remaking the iconic cowl and cape, and we kind of love what came out. If you’re at San Diego Comic-Con the “Cape/Cowl/Create” exhibition will be open for the rest of the…