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This Week’s TV: True Blood is back. Plus who wanted a Pac-Man cartoon?

Betty White is playing God, the actual supreme being, on TV this week. Plus our favorite supernatural drama, Zero Hour, is back! So is True Blood! And most of all, we’re wondering who on Earth thought a cartoon based on the Pac-Man video game was a good plan. Top image: True Blood. Today: Adventure Time…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Meet the passengers of Snowpiercer‘s last train on Earth

Director Bong June-Ho has been pretty quiet about his post-apocalyptic train movie Snowpiercer, but here’s nine posters that reveal the movie’s extremely talented cast — and those lucky(?) remaining humans who travel the frozen planet on the movie’s titular locomotive. Clearly, whatever the train has in “keeping humans alive” it lacks in soap. [Via Twitch]

Movies Rob Bricken

What is wind?

And where the hell does it come from, anyway? As Joe Hanson points out in the latest episode of “It’s Okay to Be Smart,” wind can be as destructive as it is beautiful – but it’s not often we stop to think about the origins of this powerful, planet-shaping force. https://gizmodo.com/six-decades-of-u-s-tornadoes-visualized-in-one-stunnin-5915324 https://gizmodo.com/a-mesmerizing-real-time-map-of-us-wind-patterns-5897402 https://gizmodo.com/high-resolution-images-of-mars-reveal-a-stunning-wind-5879398

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

No, this is not what our stupid faces will look like in 100,000 years

An artist has partnered with a computational geneticist to illustrate what our faces might look like in the far future. Apparently we’re all going to become anime characters. All images Nickolay Lamm. This picture is starting to create a bit of a stir on the internet — and not in a good way. The duo…

io9 George Dvorsky

Extreme close-up of the Winter Solider gives good crazy eyes

We’ve seen distant pictures of the Winter Soldier running around in a gas mask on the set of Captain America 2, but nothing like this. Behold the bizarro eyes of Captain America’s brand new baddie. Spoiler! https://gizmodo.com/its-the-first-look-at-captain-america-2s-winter-soldi-510652630 Discovered by Redditor Rongxin here is your first up close and crazy amazing look at Sebastion Stan’s eventual…

Movies Meredith Woerner

What does a heart’s sine function look like?

In high school, you probably learned that trigonometric functions – like sine, cosine and tangent –can be derived, geometrically, from a circle (hence why trig functions are also known as “circular” functions). But what happens if you use a square to derive these functions, instead? Or a triangle? Or a heart? The animation featured here…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

This Game of Thrones cover features Jon Snow on the bongos

Honestly, this wonderful cover of the Game of Thrones theme song, performed by the talented Cosplay Piano crew, is a lovely interpretation of the music with a lot more time and effort put into the video than most. But I’d be lying if I said I posted this for any other reason than that I…

io9 Rob Bricken

Watch the first-ever footage of a live 8-foot long oarfish

Scientists working in the Gulf of Mexico have finally managed to capture footage of a rare and mysterious serpentine-like creature called the oarfish. It’s our first glimpse of this camera-shy fish in its natural habitat. The oarfish (Regalecus glesne), which can reach upwards of 56 feet (17m) in length, has previously only been seen washed…

io9 George Dvorsky

How stereotypes really do cloud your mind

We think that getting more information about a situation helps us make more accurate predictions. There are times, though, when some well-chosen information can wreck our rationality. All we need is a good stereotype. This phenomenon was first explored in Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Heuristics are mental rules of thumb, little tricks and…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

J.J. Abrams confirms likely Star Wars: Episode VII filming plans!

Joss Whedon may have found a kick-ass Quicksilver for The Avengers 2. A new rumor suggests Spider-Man will be fighting a whole crew of villains in Amazing Spider-Man 3. TV spots show off Pacific Rim and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Plus more videos and interviews for Man of Steel! Spoilers are on the way! Top image…

Television Alasdair Wilkins

A hacker blows up the government in Roland Emmerich’s latest trailer

We’ve been keeping our fingers crossed that Roland Emmerich’s new movie White House Down would contain some science-fictional insanity, given his over-the-top track record. And now, this new four-minute trailer reveals all. Basically, a hacker blows up the United States Capitol and Air Force One, using the power of computers. Look at how many screens…

Trailers Charlie Jane Anders

This “comet factory” reveals first secrets of planetary formation

Planets have to start out somewhere, and the leading theory is that they begin as dust particles clumping together to form larger and larger building blocks, before finally emerging eons later as full-blown planets. But the exact physics that would allow such clumps to form has long been frustratingly unclear. That’s why new research of…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Edward Snowden, the NSA Whistleblower, Explains Why He Did It

In an interview from Hong Kong with journalist Glenn Greenwald, 29-year-old NSA technologist Ed Snowden says that he leaked documents revealing that the NSA was wiretapping millions of innocent US citizens. If you want to understand the future of government, you must watch this video. Articulate and thoughtful, but obviously scared for his life, Snowden…

io9 Annalee Newitz

So wait, why don’t birds have penises?

Although all birds rely on internal fertilization for reproduction, the males of just 3% of bird species actually possess penises —instead, males and females alike invert and bring together their cloacas, a basic opening through which all the birds’ various bodily emissions pass. That’s particularly strange, because male birds do have the genetic coding necessary…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

I ate fried caterpillars—and so can you

This past week, I decided to try my hand at cooking a new meat: caterpillar. To my surprise, I found the caterpillars in question, waxworms, easy to cook and quite tasty. If you’ve been thinking about trying bug-eating yourself, this is a project you can try at home. I was inspired to give this a…

io9 Lauren Davis

Behold the first poster for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Warner Bros. has released the first poster for Peter Jackson’s second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug. We’re definitely getting the desolation, but Smaug himself is still hidden back in the warm glow. The official word from the Hobbit movie site is that the new teaser trailer will premiere on Tuesday morning, and several sources…

Movies Lauren Davis

Stunning Behind-the-Scenes Photos Show Iconic Movies in a New Light

We love the magic of the movies, that trickery that lets us believe in beautiful robots, time-traveling scientists, wolf men, and flying superheroes. But sometimes it’s fun to peek behind the curtain, and see the secrets and candid faces behind our favorite films. Photos from the set of Metropolis (1927, dir: Fritz Lang), taken by…

Movies Vincze Miklós

Crowdfund a quest to put a TARDIS in orbit and more

Ever wondered what it would be like if the crew aboard the ISS saw a TARDIS floating by the window? So does the team behind one current crowdfunding project. Also on the crowdfunding block are a supernatural courtroom drama, a prop space gun kit, a rain shelter that doubles as a rain collector, and an…

io9 Lauren Davis

Maurice Sendak gets an animated Google Doodle for his 85th birthday

Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak passed away last year, but tomorrow would have been his 85th birthday. In his honor, Google has posted an animated Doodle running through some of Sendak’s classic books. The Doodle has already appeared on New Zealand’s Google, and I expect the rest of us will be seeing it on our…

Books & Comics Lauren Davis

The Doctor is the Cheshire Cat to Amy Pond’s Alice in Wonderland

James Hance is a master at blending bits of popular culture; consider his Up-meets-Star Wars portrait and painting of the Muppets as the cast of Firefly. Here, he casts the Eleventh Doctor in the role he was born to play: the Cheshire Cat. https://gizmodo.com/ups-little-old-couple-have-created-the-most-adorable-st-5887992 https://gizmodo.com/muppets-and-fraggles-climb-aboard-serenity-5808204 Hance is selling prints of the piece, titled “Like a…

io9 Lauren Davis

This Week’s TV: True Blood is back. Plus who wanted a Pac-Man cartoon?