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Announcing the Sploid Short Film Festival

Welcome to the first edition of the Sploid Short Film Festival, a celebration of great storytelling and awesome eye candy. We will select the best short films of 2015 in the next five months leading to a November award ceremony at Gawker Media’s theater on Fifth Avenue in New York. What is the Sploid Short…

Should We Terraform a New Planet Or Fix Our Own?

Before we talk about terraforming another planet like Mars, we have to talk about Earth—and whether we should be spending our resources trying to save it, or moving on to another pale blue dot. It’s a grim debate that some scientists say it’s time to have. Terraform This We’ve been imagining how to create a…

Watch As Waves Of Glowing Genes Build A Spine

Not only do you need all of your organs, you need them all in the proper proportion. How does one segment of the vertebra know how big to get compared to another? Now we can see the spine growing in incredible glowing waves. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) took a look at…

The 6 Craziest Kidnapping Schemes Of All Time

Being held for ransom sounds terrifying and grim — especially in this day and age, when terrorist groups often kidnap people to achieve political goals. But once upon a time, most kidnappers simply wanted to get rich. Stupidly, bizarrely rich. Here are the 6 craziest and most overcomplicated kidnap schemes. 1. The Lindbergh baby On…

I Used The Final Oculus Rift. Here Are The Games Worth Playing.

I don’t know what the final Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will cost. The fact that it won’t come with its amazing motion controller makes me want to wait. But even with just an Xbox One gamepad, there are already mindblowing experiences to be had. Here are all of them. First, a note on the…

This Massive Batman Figure Looks Absolutely Amazing

Now that Batman: Arkham Knight, the latest Batman game from Rocksteady, is nearly here, everyone is showing off their gaming-inspired merchandise. Leading the charge is this fantastic 1/4 scale Batman from NECA, who looks immensely detailed, right down to his delicately sculpted Bat-butt. Wait, what? Coming in at 18” tall, the Arkham Knight Batman is…

It’s Friday. You’re A GIF. And This Is A Party. 

Eat, drink, and be merry GIFs, for someday, you shall pixelate. Today, though, you shall only party. What tales and tricks have you to share with us this week? Settle in among our electronic punch bowls and tell us about it in the way that only you can: Through interpretive GIFing. GIF: Zack Dougherty (riffing…

40 Years of Bad Science: How Jaws Got Everything Wrong About Sharks

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of its original release, Jaws will be shown on the big screen once more on June 21st. Few other movies have cast such a long shadow into the “real” world as the first summer blockbuster. As a marine biologist whose research focuses on shark conservation, I’ve been living in that…

How to See Public Instagram Photos From Any Part of the World

Interested in seeing what Instagrammers are sharing in your local town or city? Or a famous landmark? With the help of a simple IFTTT recipe you can collect up snaps from a specific geographical region and have them delivered to your inbox. Here’s how to get it set up and tweak it where required. It’s…

Sony and Paramount will join Marvel in skipping Comic Con’s Hall H this year. It seems to be an issue of timing, with neither studio having anything appropriate to promote. A spokesperson told Variety, “It wasn’t a knock against Comic-Con, the film cycles just didn’t allow it.”

How We Discovered The Dark Side Of Wearable Fitness Trackers

Wearable technologies like fitness trackers are becoming hugely popular, leading many to speculate about the potential for implantable technologies to augment human biology. The question that is often not asked however is: “How do we feel about living with technology on (or in) our bodies 24/7?” You no longer have to look to science fiction…

After a Preset Time This SSD Drive Destroys Data for Maximum Privacy

A new type of SSD drive that works like a ticking time bomb for your data. But instead of blowing up, the drive automatically corrupts and destroys stored data after a preset time, ensuring maximum privacy and added security. What’s especially neat about the new technology, developed by researchers at Chuo University in Japan, led…

One Major Game Of Thrones Character May Not Be As Dead As We Thought

Channing Tatum gives a definitive answer about Gambit appearing in X-Men: Apocalypse. Ron Perlman talks Hellboy 3. Rosario Dawson teases her most anticipated part of Daredevil season 2. Plus, Gillian Anderson on returning to X-Files, Paul Rudd on Civil War, and new clips from Star Wars Rebels. To me, my Spoilers! X-Men: Apocalypse During a…

Start Your Day With These Great Cartoony Science Explainers

If you want to learn more about science but shudder at the thought of cracking open another text book, how does watching colorful animations about the length of a pop song sound? Better? Head over to YouTube channel Kurz Gesagt, which has beautiful educational videos in spades. German for “in a nutshell,” the channel has…

This Book Got The Author Sentenced to Three Months Hard Labor

Charles Knowlton didn’t think much of the laws of Massachusetts, at least when they interfered with his medical practice. By the time he opened a practice in the town of Ashfield, he had already been arrested in Amherst, MA for selling “infidel” books and had spent two months in the Worcester County Jail for grave…

A QR Code on Heinz Ketchup Linked Straight to German Porn

When Daniel Korell scanned a QR code on a bottle of Heinz Ketchup, he got more than he bargained for. Rather than bring up the competition page he was expecting to see, it instead linked to a German porn site called Fundorado. Oops. According to The Local, the reason it happened isn’t because of hijinks…

Stunning Image of Saturn’s Moon Captured from Just 300 Miles Above It

The pock-marked surface of this spherical chunk of rock looks a lot like images of our own Moon—but in fact, this is much, much further away. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft buzzed by Saturn’s moon Dione on June 16th, passing just 321 miles from its surface. As it soared through space, it also captured this amazing image…

An Awesome Modern Take on the Statistical Atlas of the United States

The Statistical Atlas of the United States is a treasure trove for data lovers produced by the Census Bureau—but the last one to made dates back all the way to 2000. So Nathan Yau decided to make his own, using just publicly available data. It’s amazing. “With more data than ever, it seems like there…

View of the galaxy? Check. Earth’s moody atmosphere? Check. Sci-fi-like view of the International Space Station? Check. Yep, that’s a damn fine picture from astronaut Scott Kelly. [Scott Kelly]

There Are Now Over 12,000 Marvel Comics on the Kindle Store

Amazon has announced a new deal with Marvel that will see over 12,000 back-issue comic books available directly from Amazon’s Kindle store. Amazon acquired the comics download platform Comixology back in 2014, but the new initiative makes the Comixology app pretty much redundant if you use the Kindle Store. Now, you can download single issues—be…