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Falling Skies Deserves Some Credit For This One Super-Effective Moment

There was a lot wrong with last night’s Falling Skies episode—including an over-reliance on plot hammers and zany twists—but the show at least tried to do real character development. And this moment shows when they absolutely succeeded. In a nutshell, last night’s Falling Skies had the Second Mass up against it, with swarms of brand…

Los Angeles Is Redesigning the Voting Experience To Be Not Awful

The last time I voted in LA, I used a fat marker to place a black splotch on a Scantron-like form inserted between the pages of a plastic booklet. The form never lined up exactly, and the design of the booklet was so confusing, I’m pretty sure I voted for the wrong person. Now (thankfully)…

Here’s Today’s Horrific Subreddit That Will Make Your Soul Shrivel

Now that Reddit has purged itself of interim CEO Ellen Pao, the site can get back to what it’s known for. Namely, subreddits like /r/rapingwomen, which boasts about 2,300 users. Sure, it goes against the anti-harassment policy that Pao created, but we don’t have to worry about that anymore! This is what you might call…

A modern over-the-counter pregnancy test is a tiny engineering marvel, combining a sensitive antibody-based detection system with enzyme-activated dyes to pick up minute amounts of hormone from the developing placenta. Check out the new video that describes how it works at Ted-Ed! Contact the author at [email protected].

Join io9 on Tuesday to Watch the New Horizons Pluto Flyby LIVE!

Are you ready for the New Horizons Pluto flyby? io9 is hosting live blogs to celebrate the probe’s closest approach starting at 7:30am ET/4:30am PT on Tuesday morning. We’ll be back at 8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT on Tuesday night to wait with baited breath for New Horizon’s first call home to Earth after the flyby. Outside…

Our Spoiler-Free First Impressions of Campy Slasher Comedy Scream Queens

Scream Queens’ Jamie Lee Curtis is perfection. On the gory new campus comedy from Glee’s Ryan Murphy, the horror legend plays a deliciously arch, newly-promoted Dean of Students who haaates sororities. We saw the first episode, and wondered: can the rest of the show keep up with Curtis? We’re cautiously optimistic. The show, described at…

Women in Oregon Can Soon Buy Birth Control Pills Over the Counter

This week, Oregon passed a new law that allows women to buy hormonal contraceptives from a pharmacy without a doctor’s prescription. After the law goes into effect in 2016, women in Oregon will be able to get birth control pills without having to first visit a doctor for permission. Oregon is the second state in…

Making a katana the old traditional Japanese way is so impressive

I think this is the most impressive video that Man At Arms has ever done, and that’s saying a lot since they’ve recreated all the coolest weapons from TV shows and movies in real life. But there’s something ridiculous impressive about making a katana (stylized like the one from Kill Bill) the traditional old school…

There’s A Way to Make Big Earthquakes Safer. The US Won’t Pay For It.

Everyone’s fretting about a terrifying article on the terrifying Cascadia Subduction Zone, which will almost certainly deliver the deadliest earthquake in US history. That earthquake would almost certainly be made less deadly with an early warning system that’s ready to be implemented—if only the US would decide to make it a priority. Certainly it is…

What’s The Worst Online Scam You’ve Seen?

Today our own Kate Knibbs documented how she discovered her good name was being used to publish clickbait content on Elite Daily. While Kate was able to reclaim her identity in this instance, the Internet is full of ridiculous scams. I always wonder who falls for spam emails—promises of untold riches, if you’ll only send…

US Presidential Candidates’ Internet Policies, Ranked

With 20-odd US presidential candidates in the mix, everyone’s trying to pick the winning position on the issues that matter most to Americans. The future of the internet is obviously a big one. Here’s what’s been proposed so far — the good, the bad, and the utterly insane. With the Federal Communication Commission’s new open…

It’s Official: Gays Can Now Lead Boy Scouts

After much controversy, the Boy Scouts of America executive committee just voted unanimously to allow gay adult leaders. The move brings to an end decades of discrimination by one of the country’s most popular youth organizations. The BSA clarified the proceedings that led to this vote: “As a result of the rapid changes in society…

“Mocha” Was a Place, Is a Flavor, and May Be a Scientific Innovation

Have you ordered a mocha lately? Do you realize that “mocha” shouldn’t actually mean “chocolate-flavored-coffee,” and instead should mean really, really expensive coffee? And that someday, it could mean the best decaffeinated coffee in the world? For me, mocha always meant a combination of chocolate and coffee. That’s what most of the world thinks of…

A Visual Explainer of How Boeing Wrecked the Plot of Black Hawk Down

Patentsare often interesting, fanciful things, illustrating inventions that may or may not ever be built. However, when you turn a patent idea into a somewhat animated and slightly offensive explainer video linking the inventions to popular Hollywood war movies, the result is nothing short of art. YouTube user PatentYogi did just that with a descriptively…

It’s an El Niño year! Kindasorta. At Wired, Nick Stockton gauges the state of 2015’s El Niño, which NOAA has thus far described as “weak,” reminding us that “the storm has stood everyone up the last two times it promised to come knocking.” (He also limits himself to two Chris Farley references, which is commendable.)…

Tomorrow Night’s Episode of Zoo Will Be a Total Game-Changer

We talked to Zoo executive producers Jeff Pinkner and Josh Appelbaum in the CBS pressroom at Comic-Con. And while they were coy about revealing any specifics, they did hint that episode three—which airs tomorrow—will offer insight into why OMG ANIMALS ARE ATTACKING. Here’s what they told us: At the end of the third episode, it’s…

People In Australia Can’t Stop Emailing Trees

After the city of Melbourne assigned its trees email addresses so residents could report anyissues, people began emailing the trees a wide range of correspondence. And sometimes, the trees write back. A lovely story in The Atlantic, “If You Give A Tree An Email Address,” documents Australia’s tree-emailing phenomenon. Melbourne officials probably weren’t expecting an…

Watch The Supernatural Panel Fail To Answer A Question About THAT Death

You might have thought that the cast and crew of Supernatural would be prepared to answer a question about the somewhat gratuitous and unpleasant death of a fan-favorite character last season. But watch this video of their Comic-Con panel, and see for yourself. (The relevant portion starts at 35:00.) Spoilers ahead… A fan asked, “Considering…

Pluto Is Bigger Than We Thought

Pluto, our solar system’s lovably puny outlier and everyone’s favorite demoted planet, is less puny than scientists predicted. NASA’s nuclear-powered New Horizons probe traveled over 3 billion miles in a decade to bring us this new info. Apparently, Pluto’s diameter is closer to around 1,473 miles (2,370 km), which is about 50 miles (80 km)…

It’s the Tiny Tourists That Make This Lego Eiffel Tower So Perfect

It took three master builders two months and over 67,000 pieces of Lego to build this seven foot tall replica of Paris’ Eiffel Tower. But what’s more impressive than how Sean Kenney was able to recreate the structure’s recognizable architecture and lattice-like detailing is how his team managed to bring the model to life with…