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Sandman Slim Excerpt, part 2

This is my Fort Knox, my office, and my panic room. I’ve laid the heaviest protective hoodoo I know around this place. Of all the hideouts I ever thought of running to when things got weird, a library was right behind a leper colony and a burning garbage truck. But here I am. I haven’t…

First 40 pages of Richard Kadrey’s new Sandman Slim novel are a Hell of a good time

The great thing about Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim novels is, there’s no foot-dragging. Each book in the series pushes the story forward — usually with a punch in the gut. Case in point: the fourth Sandman Slim Book, Devil Said Bang, starts out with Stark in a very different position than the previous novels. (If…

The Single Most Awesome Photographer at the Olympics

Sports photography is usually home to the highest-of-high tech camera technologies, because its subjects move so swiftly, and in such limited bursts. It’s not the place you’d expect to find, say, a gigantic old 4×5 large format view camera. And yet! The photog in question (so many questions) is David Burnett. He’s actually been going…

Breakdown of Avengers title sequence reveals Nick Fury’s holster and Black Widow’s stinger

What sort of cool Marvel shout-outs are hiding inside The Avengers’ opening and closing titles? What weapons and character staples did we missed as they flashed by the big screen? An excellent recap of the entire sequence reveals a few new glances at some iconic S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent toys, plus Avengers costume close ups. Art of…

Russian synchronized swimmers win Olympic gold with the theme to Suspiria

Dario Argento’s classic horror flick Suspiria — which was about supernatural evil looming over a ballet academy — featured an iconic score by Italian prog-rockers Goblin. https://gizmodo.com/100-albums-every-science-fiction-and-fantasy-fan-should-5904551 So it tickles us to no end that Russian synchronized swimming duet Natalia Ishchenko and Svetlana Romashina dressed up like creepy puppets, blasted Goblin on the Olympic Aquatics…

Witness claims there were actually two UFO crashes at Roswell in 1947

A former UFO debunker, Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French, has gone public with a story that the US government knows there are extraterrestrials and has been covering it up since the notorious Roswell crash. In fact, French claims that the Roswell incident actually involved two UFO crashes. He also explained why he spent so…

This Is How the iPhone 5 Might Look in Your Hand

We have published mockups of Apple’s next iPhone—before. But these are the definitive ones, showing what the iPhone 5 or whatever it is called would look like in your hand. https://gizmodo.com/apples-next-iphone-home-page-will-probably-look-like-th-5920479 And, as it turns out, it looks pretty damn good. My favorite is now the black one. I can’t really decide. In black, the…

Why Do the Mars Rover’s Images Look So Bad?

A lot of people are wondering why the first color image from the Mars Curiosity Rover looks so murky. Or why the black and white pictures look so low-resolution and out of focus in some areas. Calm yourselves. They will look absolutely amazing soon, perfect and in high-def. https://gizmodo.com/the-first-color-photo-of-martian-landscape-from-the-mar-5932445 There’s many good reasons why they…

Carl Sagan’s message to future explorers of Mars will cold-cock you right in the touchy feelies

A few months before he died, Carl Sagan recorded a moving message which he dedicated to future explorers and settlers of Mars. A brief excerpt of that recording has been making the rounds on the internet since early Monday morning, in the form of the quote featured up top — but Sagan’s entire message is…

Holy heck, this skee-ball machine made entirely out of K’Nex actually works

Oh, this is frighteningly cool. Over the course of a year, Instructables user Shadowman39 built a live-size, functional skee-ball machine using oodles of the interlocking plastic construction toy K’Nex. As he explains of its specs: This machine is full-size, coin-operated (takes quarters), turns itself off automatically, and counts points using a mechanical counter. And, all…

Is This Inductive Stand Worth Twice What an iPad Costs?

The convenience of being able to charge a device without having to hunt down a power cord is certainly appealing. But convenience isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you gaze upon Strut’s new LaunchPort iPad charging system. The triple-chromed steel base secures your iPad through a set of neodymium magnets, ensuring it’s…

10 Surprising Uses for WD-40 (and 5 Places It Should Never Be Sprayed)

Everybody knows WD-40 is the go-to product for silencing squeaks, displacing moisture, preventing rust, and loosening stuck parts. You probably have a can sitting in your garage right now. It has a ton of uses, but it’s no panacea. In fact, there are a some jobs that the lube will absolutely ruin. Your house is…

Guillermo del Toro teases “big name” writer for his Incredible Hulk TV show

The post-Avengers Marvel project we’re perhaps most excited about — sorry, Thor 2 and Captain America 2 — is the promise of a Hulk TV series produced by Guillermo del Toro. But the Pan’s Labyrinth director is often followed with a list of forever-in-development projects, so imagine our surprise when he announced that the show…

10 Best Spy-Fi Movies of All Time

Spies are like the better dressed version of superheroes. They stop supervillains from destroying the world, and they do incredible superhuman feats, with the help of insane gadgets and vehicles. With a new Bourne movie in theaters on Friday, it’s a great time to celebrate the “spy-fi” genre, that combines spies and science fiction. Here…

Facebook fights for your right to “Like” without getting fired. [GigaOm]

Ejector Seat Bar Stools Are the Most Efficient Way To Get Rid Of Creeps

If you completely avoid the bar scene because you’re tired of spending your nights dealing with creeps, you’ll sincerely wish this bar stool—crafted from an F-4 Phantom ejector seat—were fully functional. Because instead of having to jot down a fake phone number to escape an awkward situation, you could simply send the jerk blasting through…

Methane-exhaling microbes found in undersea volcanoes reset the limits of life

As unbelievable as it sounds, it’s thought that up to a third of all the Earth’s organisms by mass live in rocks and sediments. Suffice to say, we know excruciatingly little about the lives and ecology of these highly inaccessible creatures. But a new study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is offering an unprecedented…

This is how sperm whales sleep. Yes, really.

Ever fallen asleep standing up? Then you know what it’s like to snooze like a sperm whale. This image, captured by photographer Magnus Lundgren for Wild Wonders of Europe, is actually a few years old, but it highlights an interesting bit of cetacean neuroscience that’s definitely worth sharing, and explaining in greater detail. Until just…

Report: iOS 6 May Confirm Taller, 4-Inch iPhone

Well this is interesting. iOS 6, pictured above on the left, is now able to scale to show five full lines of apps when displayed at 640×1136—the resolution a reported 4-inch iPhone would have. https://gizmodo.com/iphone-5-the-complete-rumor-roundup-5930100 iOS 5.1, which is on the right, only shows four app rows when run in the same iOS simulator app.…

Remember when Superman smoked a dozen cigars at the same time?

Superman comics in the 1950s and 1960s were the apotheosis of the comic narrative, thanks to DC Comics’ willingness to throw any damn idea at the wall, no matter how stupid, offensive, or offensively stupid. https://gizmodo.com/remember-when-superman-turned-into-satan-5830713 http://io9.com/5819900/the-wrongest-scenes-from-the-time-lois-lane-got-zapped-with-a-weight+gain-ray https://gizmodo.com/the-10-most-baffling-moments-in-lois-lane-and-supermans-5897128 These comics offer the impression that the Silver Age DC Comics editorial office was an episode of…