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Etsy Built a Website-Making Tool For Its Sellers

Making handmade goods might be the easy part when you consider all the work that goes into selling those products online. Now Etsy is giving its sellers a new tool for building a standalone website that easily populates with data from Etsy’s own online marketplace, making launching and maintaining an e-commerce site a whole lot…

Turns Out Kylo Ren Was Way More Evil Than We Thought

Kylo Ren has a lot of… anger issues in The Force Awakens. But even then, his path to the Dark Side in the movie was tinged with the hope that he could resolve the conflict within him. But apparently, it seems like Kylo was much further along that path than anyone realized. Spoilers ahead, if…

Aspiring Artists Can Make Like a Dutch Master with the LUCY Drawing Tool 

Artist David Hockney once stirred up controversy by asserting that many of the great Dutch masters—folks like Vermeer and Ingres—had relied on optical drawing aids to create their masterpieces. Now everyone can channel their inner Dutch master with the LUCY drawing tool. It’s designed by Les Cookson, an artist and inventor who has been building,…

These Are the Foods Most Likely to Be Thrown Out as Unsafe 

Every year, a huge amount of foods are brought into the country for Americans to eat. But before we dine, an inspection unit checks the items. Here are the foods most likely to not make the cut—and why they get tossed. The USDA put out a new report from the results of almost two decades…

The Huntsman Sequel Isn’t the Only Weird-Ass Fairy Tale Movie Coming Out This Year

Thank your lucky stars, makers of The Huntsman: Winter’s War. You’re going to just barely beat your competition for a completely bizarre and highly overwrought adaptation of a Grimm fairy tale into theaters—specifically, The Curse of Sleeping Beauty, whose bonkers trailer is above. To be fair, I didn’t know The Curse of Sleeping Beauty existed…

Can You Really Fix an Election by Steaming Open Absentee Ballots?

Arizona’s been in the spotlight a lot this election year, with the Department of Justice announcing today it’s investigating the too-long voting lines during the state’s primary. Then there’s the accusations of straight-up election fraud: Apparently people are tampering with vote-by-mail ballots using microwaves. Last month, a state bill was proposed to stiffen the penalties…

This 30-Second Tribute to Ada Lovelace Is an Earworm for Great Justice

Yes, this vocodery song about Ada Lovelace, the pioneering computer programmer, will totally get stuck in your head. But it’s totally worth it, because everyone should think about Ada Lovelace more. We wrote here and here about how Ada Lovelace developed the first computer program, but in a nutshell, she became fascinated with Charles Babbage’s…

Crazy Airplane Flies In and Out and Through a Wind Farm

You know those basketball or soccer dribbling drills where you snake through a line of cones, dribbling in and out one way on a cone and then slithering through the opposite side of the next cone? That’s what pilot Hannes Arch is doing in this airplane at a wind farm in Tauern Wind Park in…

This Lamp Is the Offspring of R2-D2 and Pixar’s Luxo Jr.

Could a relationship between an astromech droid and an anthropomorphised articulated desk lamp ever really work? Debatable. But it’s worth a shot, because if it did, their offspring would be this fantastic R2-D2 Architectural Desk Lamp that ThinkGeek is now selling for $60. Featuring R2-D2’s dome head for the lamp’s shade, and other astromech detailing…

The gay subtext of the relationship between Batman and Robin has been the butt of jokes for decades. Over at Slate, Glen Weldon adapts an extract from his book,The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, that examines the history of Batman’s relationship with Dick Grayson and its homoerotic undertones.

This Person and Their BB-8 Car Just Won Star Wars Fandom 

Many people consider themselves big Star Wars fans. But how many of those people not only have a ton of creativity, but the guts to put it out there for the world to see? This California resident is all that and then some. The above image, found on Reddit, says it all. An awesome BB-8…

George R.R. Martin Just Helped Build the Craziest Funhouse in Santa Fe

To call Meow Wolf an artspace would be like calling Wheel of Time a short story. This ginormous facility in Santa Fe just opened on March 17 and has been having crazy events and art installations ever since. When you enter Meow Wolf, the first thing you see is a full-sized Victorian house—and then it…

LA Will Face Blackouts This Summer Due to Its Gigantic Natural Gas Leak

Though the catastrophic natural gas leak outside of Los Angeles has been contained, the repercussions are still far from over, according to a new report. For weeks leaders of the region’s utility companies have been warning customers about potential disruptions to their energy service. Today, they’re telling Los Angeles to brace for blackouts this summer.…

Sperm Whales Are the World’s Largest Battering Rams

In 1820, a sperm whale attacked and sank the Essex, a whaling ship from Massachusetts. The incident inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick, and marine biologists have been wondering ever since if the whales actually engage in ramming behavior. A fascinating new study suggests this may be the case. Sperm whales have the most…

LIGHTSPEED Presents: ‘Dragon Brides’ by Nghi Vo

io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we’ll be featuring a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Dragon Brides” by Nghi Vo. You can read the story below or you can listen to the podcast. Enjoy! Image © 2016 by Sam Schechter. Dragon brides are notoriously difficult…

Coolest Art Nerds Ever Taught a Computer to Create a Rembrandt

This painting below looks almost exactly like the work of the famous Dutch painter Rembrandt, and as far as science and mathematics is concerned, it is a Rembrandt. But instead of oils and brushes, researchers from Microsoft and other organizations used data points and 3D printing. To create this new Rembrandt, the team meticulously scrutinized…

Awesome Animation Shows How a Factory Makes Back to the Future Hoverboards

In my head, we screwed it all up. Our reality is an alternate timeline because our hoverboards don’t actually hover. There are people out there living in the real timeline where Back to the Future-style hoverboards actually do exist and do hover and are probably made in a factory that pumps ‘em out like in…

Google’s Parent Company (Probably) Wants to Build a City From Scratch

Rumors are swirling that Alphabet, the parent company formerly known as Google, wants to build its own techno-utopian town. But the size and feasibility of a town “built from the internet up” remains in question. Sidewalk Labs, a company under the Alphabet umbrella, is rumored to be spearheading the project. Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff hinted…

Watch the First Episode of 12 Monkeys Season Two Right Now

How on Earth can 12 Monkeys continue after that out-of-left-field ending to season one? Here’s your first glimpse. Syfy has posted the entire first episode of season two online, ahead of its April 18 premiere date. The episode is available to Syfy subscribers via Hulu, Syfy.com or the Syfy Now app. Or you can just…

This Is the Source of Those Mysterious Radio Bursts From Space

Two months ago, astronomers picked up and then pinpointed a location of a weird burst of radio waves from space, prompting heated debate about just what was sending them. Now, new data has finally revealed that source. “Part of the scientific process is investigating findings to see if they hold up. In this case, it…