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These Are the Coolest New Art Posters From This Year’s MondoCon

At 4:30am Saturday morning, I walked into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn hotel in Austin, Texas and sat down behind a line of 150 other people. By 10am, triple that amount would be in line. Why the crowd? We were waiting to buy the latest posters from Mondo. This past weekend was the…

China has some of the most insane traffic jams on this planet

Hell. Pain. Agony. Anger. Madness. To the point where you just start punching your steering wheel and try to rip off your car’s roof and scream until your forehead and neck veins burst and then cry like a crazy person. That’s what it must feel like going through this insane traffic jam just outside of…

9 Gorgeous Pieces of Hand-Lettered Art You’ll Find On Shelves Near You

Stroll your supermarket’s aisles and you’ll surely notice the onslaught of locally sourced, small-batch, artisanal goods. The packaging of those products is seeing its own old-time resurgence, with carefully-considered branding that includes a revival of hand-lettered graphics. Outside the Box: Hand-Drawn Packaging from Around the World, a new book by graphic designer Gail Anderson, shows…

io9 Book Club Is In Session: Let’s Talk About The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard!

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. This month, we’ve read The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard. Jump into comments to get started talking about it! What is this io9 Book Club all about? We meet once a month to discuss a book we’ve all read together, and then…

In the Boston area tomorrow night (10/8) from 5-7 PM? Come to MIT see io9 founder Annalee Newitz in conversation with Charles C. Mann, author of the amazing book 1491. Moderated by history author Thomas Levenson, the discussion will focus on how studying the past can help us plan for the future. [MIT Communications Forum]…

Scream Queens Heralds the Coming of “Chanel-O-Ween” By Driving a Cleaver Into Your Skull

We get two semi-big revelations (and one admittedly funny Matthew McConaughey impression) on this week’s Scream Queens; the rest is a whole lotta filler studded with handy reminders that one could actually be watching a real campy horror flick (Leprechaun FTW!) instead. OMG spoilers! The episode’s title, “Haunted House,” refers of course to Kappa house,…

Forty Years Ago, America’s Farms Completely Changed Their Shape—And No One Noticed

Do you think you know what a cornfield looks like? You don’t know what a cornfield looks like. Top image: San Luis Valley aerial view / SUNYUniversity NASA released a series of pictures showing the rather odd-transformation of this large tract of Kansan farms, changing their shape from rectangles to circles between 1972 and 2015…

How To Climb Mt. Whitney

As the highest point in the contiguous United States, Mt. Whitney stands at 14,505 feet tall. Easy accessibility makes it a prime destination for hikers and climbers from around the world. We’ve hiked it, mountaineered it and rock climbed it, and here’s how you can do any of that too. Why Go? As the highest…

LIGHTSPEED Presents: “Solder and Seam” by Maria Dahvana Headley

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 “Solder and Seam” by Maria Dahvana Headley. You can read the story below or you can listen to the podcast. Enjoy! Image © 2015 by Reiko Murakami. Solder and Seam…

Excellent News: Steven Universe Is Finally Getting The Toy Line It Deserves

Here at io9, we’ve already clearly established that Steven Universe is pretty damn fantastic. But if you’re a fan of all things Crystal Gem, it’s been surprisingly hard to find merchandise based on the show—but thankfully, that won’t be the case for much longer. Animation Magazine has revealed that Cartoon Network is teaming up with…

Watch the Moment a 14-Year-Old Girl Finds Out She’s the Newest Disney Princess

For many girls, there’s no greater wish than to become a Disney princess. That dream is about to come true for Auli’i Cravalho of Oahu, Hawaii. She was just cast as the voice of Moana, the star of Disney Animation’s upcoming musical folk adventure. What’s cooler than that? Disney released the video of the moment…

How 80s Computers Create 8-Bit Music

You’ve got to love that 8-bit sound. Blips and bloops and beeps magically merge together to create choppy, nostalgic melodies that remind us how far we’ve come since the first personal computers. But how did those big beige boxes actually make music? True to his nickname, the 8-Bit Guy and his guest, the Obsolete Guy,…

What’s Inside a Cheap Vibrator? We Took This One Apart to Find Out.

Electromechanical vibrators actually have a long history—consumer versions have been around for more than 100 years. But how do they actually work? To find out, we did a teardown on a nice cheap vibe: the Platinum Edition Butterfly Kiss from California Exotics Novelties, pictured here in all its garish pink glory. This is definitely not…

Adorable Minifig Versions of Pixar’s WALL•E and EVE

A couple of months ago Lego officially revealed its beautiful WALL•E set, but its larger scale wasn’t exactly designed to fit in with all of your existing Minifig playsets. So Minifig.me has stepped up to the plate with a couple of custom and suitably tiny WALL•E figures for your collection. The only catch is that…

See Jessica Jones Enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe in This Free New Comic

In just over a month you’ll be able to binge Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix to your heart’s content—but do you want to get to know this new take on one of Marvel’s finest detectives right now? Well, Marvel have released a brand new digital comic that lets you do that, for free. Marvel’s Jessica…

If Your Chipotle Burrito Looks Smaller Soon, Blame 3D Printing (Updated: Chipotle Says Portion Sizes Won’t Change)

Chipotle isn’t known for stingy serving sizes, but people have been coming up with tricks to maximize the size of their burritos for years. But our days of gloriously unhealthy oversized heaps of Tex-Mex fast food may be numbered: Chipotle has enlisted a 3D printing company to fight the scourge of overstuffed tortillas. Update 3:52…

The Next Terminator Movie Is Going to Have Its Story Crowdsourced

Despite a box office of $90 million in the United States, Terminator: Genysis has only caused the studio to reevaluate the direction of the franchise. You know, instead of taking the perfectly logical step of stopping the reboot madness. At a conference, Skydance Media Chief Creative Officer Dana Goldberg said of future Terminator projects, “I…

The New Beats Pill+ Looks Like a Rip-Off

Beats products are a trick. The combination of slick marketing and deceptive design is effective! But it’s still a trick. The latest addition to the Beats lineup, the Pill+ Bluetooth speaker looks no different. As tech blogs breathlessly reporton the brand’s first speaker since it was acquired by Apple, it seems immediately apparent that Beats…

A NASA Experiment Is Going to Light Up the Sky With Beautifully Colored Clouds Tonight

If you’re on the east coast tonight, keep an eye on the sky between 7pm and 9pm: NASA is launching a testof some new tech that will include releasing colorful vapor tracers 130 miles above the Earth. It sounds like it’s going to be beautiful. The vapors will be ejected from a sounding rocket launched…

The Flash Season 2 Premiere Wasn’t Good. Don’t Worry About It.

If I had to describe the first episode of The Flash’s second season in a single word, it would be this: “Slow.” Yes, the Fastest Man Alive did seem to inexplicably take two giant steps back in his first episode back, or stumbled out of the gate, or whatever moving/running/racing metaphor you want to use.…