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This Seven-and-a-Half-Feet Long Baymax Bed Is All We’ve Ever Wanted

Well, this is almost as comforting as an actual Baymax would be. You can get this Bedmax from DeNA Shopping for 49,800 yen (US$398). Which is somehow a lot of money and less expensive than I’d expect. The Big Hero Six giant plushie will take about two weeks to arrive. Which is fine, I really…

New Study Shows How Deeply Awful Those ‘Get the App’ Web Pages Are

Those web pages that stop you getting to the information you really want in favor of asking you to Download An App are deeply annoying. But now a study by Google shows just how counter-productive they actually are for the people that put them there in the first place. If any company was to test…

Antibiotic Resistance Actually Makes Some Bacteria Stronger

We used to think that antibiotic resistance came at a cost for bacteria, making them weaker. It turns out that for some bacteria, resistance can make them stronger and more virulent. Antibiotics are wonderful drugs for treating bacterial infections. Unfortunately, disease-causing bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics that are meant to kill them. This is…

The Subway Stop to the Underworld

The Subway is a slot canyon at Zion National Park in Utah. It’s the kind of natural phenomena that looks so beautiful it’s almost otherworldly. You can imagine catching a supernatural train to the underworld here. The Subway was formed by water rushing through the rock, creating not just the the tunnel-shaped but the shallow…

A Monitor With Built-In Wireless Charging Actually Makes A Lot of Sense

In the ‘interesting new technology’ stakes, new PC monitors normally rank just above updated versions of power strips. But when a monitor includes a built-in Qi wireless charging pad? Now we’re talking. Samsung’s latest monitor, the catchily-named SE370, is a pretty run-of-the-mill desktop monitor: 24” or 27”, and 1080p PLS panel are not exciting specs.…

A Disney Channel Show Used The Dark Knight Returns As a Major Plot Point

On July 17th, Girl Meets World aired an episode called “Girl Meets the New Teacher.” The themes were literature, comics, and good versus evil. None of that would have been remarkable if they hadn’t used The Dark Knight Returns as the centerpiece. On a Disney Channel show. In burst of double-timeliness, “Girl Meets the New…

Apple Watch: Now Coming To A Best Buy Near You

When the Apple Watch first debuted, we were promised a premium retail experience — specially trained staff, swanky new stores, watches that were ‘fitted’ rather than just tried on. Well, according to the WSJ, all that is about to change. https://gizmodo.com/the-apple-store-fitted-me-for-a-15-000-watch-i-could-n-1697098543 Starting in August, the Apple Watch will be available in 100 Best Buy locations…

So You Want To Join The Empire: Measure Twice, Cut Once

Last week, I started a series that will look at how one goes about building a set of stormtrooper armor. At that point, I hadn’t actually gotten around to doing anything: I had a box full of rough-cast plastic parts. This week, we’re doing something with that box of plastic: cutting and trimming. https://gizmodo.com/so-you-want-to-join-the-empire-building-stormtrooper-a-1718805318 When…

Dutch Has Mentor Issues In The Latest Episode Of Killjoys

In the latest episode of Killjoys, One Blood, Dutch gets caught between two mentors, testing her loyalties and putting those around her in danger. Killjoys had been pretty good about dropping a lot of information about the Quad throughout its run so far, and now, we’re starting to get some answers, or at least a…

Svetlana Savitskaya Became The First Woman To Walk In Space In 1984

On July 25th, 1984, Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space when she conducted an EVA outside the Soviet Union’s Salyut 7 space station. A test pilot and engineer, Savitskaya became a cosmonaut in 1980, she flew two missions: flying onboard Soyuz T-7 to the Salyut 7 Space station on August…

Sea Otters Use Tools, and Archaeologists Are On the Case

For a long time, we thought of tool use as the thing that made us human, but we actually share the ability with many other primates, as well as surprising animals like crows and sea otters. Some archaeologists are interested in studying sea otters’ tools. Archaeologists have studied the history of human tool use, through…

I’ve Ignored 1,383 Emails in the Last Three Weeks and Haven’t Missed a Thing

I had a sort of epiphany a few weeks ago when I was sitting in the sun looking at my phone one afternoon; How much nicer would my life be if I didn’t spend half of it deleting the emails of no consequence that appear on my phone every 15 minutes? So, just like that,…

French Design Firms Imagine An Arcology In The Sahara

French architectural design firms Nicholas Laisné Associés and OXO Architectes have put together a concept for a massive arcology for the Saharan desert. The La Tour des Sables would be a self contained city that rises 1,400 feet above the ground, and would be contain living, agricultural and working units. Sculpted to look like a…

How Thomas The Tank Engine Appeared In Ant-Man

In the trailers for Ant-Man, Marvel played up a funny gag: one of the fights featured a battle on a Thomas the Train Engine play set. Over on FilmSchoolRejects, director Peyton Reed talks about how that scene made it into the film. “I believe in Edgar [Wright] and Joe Cornish’s original drafts it was a…

A Fox Needs A Lift Home In Fly Me To The Moon

Miklós Felvidéki is a college student in Hungary, where he’s studying animation. The short film is a surrealistic story of a fox who wakes up on the moon. According to Felvidéki, this is his first film, and it’s something that he’s been working on for a while now: The story an the design itself was…

Tour This Gorgeous Hubble Photo of the Sombrero Galaxy

The Sombrero Galaxy is 50 million light years away, but it looks much closer in this detailed image from the Hubble Space Telescope. We see the flattened disc of the Sombrero Galaxy nearly edge-on, and it’s ringed with dark lanes of dust and young, bright stars. The galaxy’s large central bulge is home to older…

Can You Solve Isaac Newton’s Tree Puzzle?

This week’s puzzle is not about gravity, though you’d be excused for suspecting as much. After all, when most people read “Isaac Newton” and “tree” in the same sentence, they think also of falling apples. But this week’s puzzle, which is widely attributed to Newton, is actually an exercise in orderly arboriculture. Sunday Puzzles #42:…

Portland Monthly Magazine has an excellent profile of Ursula K. Le Guin, examining her career and legacy as a speculative fiction author. In it, they focus on her fierceness and activism for literature and the arts.

New Zealander’s Self-Built ‘Skysphere’ Is The Retreat Of Your Dreams

Being able to escape to your own personal haven, complete with beautiful views and peaceful seclusion, is one of many dreams many of us have. Enterprising Kiwi Jono Williams decided to make his perfect retreat a reality and three years and $NZ75,000 later, he’s ended up with the above creation, dubbed the “Skysphere”. According to…

On Dark Matter, The Past Is a Minefield

For both the characters and for episode seven. There were two main plots this week, each with good bits. One was touching and the other funny. But these were not two tastes that tasted great together. Spoilers… So you know how last week, I was all about how we didn’t spend a ton of time…