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Watch This Lovely Profile of a TV Repairman Turned Artist

Bill Czappa is a TV repairman. But he’s no ordinary TV repairman: he creates sculptures from the discarded components and materials that he collects during his day job. This video tells his story. Czappa’s repair shop is also a studio and gallery, a space where he builds and displays his art as well as mending…

This Is Where Philae Phones Home

Earlier this week, the Philae lander finally woke up after seven months in hibernation on Comet 67P. And this is rather plain desk where the messages arrived. Well, what were you expecting? The European Space Agency released this wonderfully normal photograph yesterday, and it’s a lovely reminder that very normal people do very exciting science…

This Official Raspberry Pi Case Houses Your Mini PC for $8

If you love your little Raspberry Pi computer dearly, you can now provide it with a little more protection using this official case for the device. And the good news is that it only costs $8. While many people have already crafted their own cases for the devices—in particular using Lego—this one has been designed…

Watch Chris Pratt Be Unexpectedly Confronted By Robot Dinosaurs

SA Wardega, who was behind the Spider Dog, picked a new victim: Chris Pratt. Surprised by a pair of very real looking dinosaur robot puppets, Pratt does not channel his Jurassic World character. He does what we’d all do: have a near heart attack. The team didn’t use all that hard work on just one…

Left in the Brain: The Potentially Toxic Residue from MRI Drugs

Researchers raise alarms about unknown health risks of GE’s Omniscan and Bayer’s Magnevist, drugs injected to get better MRI pictures that contain the heavy metal gadolinium. With a family history of breast cancer, Marcie Jacobs decided in June 2001 that an MRI screening was her best preventive option. As is common with MRIs, Jacobs was…

Eli Roth May Direct Warner Bros.’ Giant Prehistoric Shark Movie

After being stuck in development purgatory for twenty years, Warner Bros. is finally moving forward with Meg, about a giant prehistoric shark terrorizing the coast. Variety reports that Warner Bros. is in talks to have Eli Roth direct the movie based on the 1997 book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten. Variety…

Could The Empire State Building Be Built With Wood?

High-rise buildings constructed from wood are having a bit of a moment. And that begs an important question: could the Empire State Building, the quintessential skyscraper, be built using wood? Finnish forestry company Metsä Wood teamed up with Canadian architect Michael Green to tackle that question, as part of Metsa’s Plan B project. The final…

Of Course Someone Hacked Flappy Bird Onto The Apple Watch

Given that Flappy Bird is basically the perfect smartwatch game (quick, easy to control, detrimental to your dignity), it was only a matter of time until someone hacked the world’s most maddening game onto the world’s most expensive digital timepiece. Since the release of watchOS 2 at WWDC, developers have had more of a chance…

Funny video turns the worst Game of Thrones character into a sweetheart

It takes a maesterful edit of Game of Thrones to turn Ramsay Bolton, the cruelest and most sadistic character on the show, into the kindest man in Westeros but man, they somehow did the impossible. Watch the hilarious video below to see how out of context Ramsay is actually a real sweetheart. He does so…

Short film: A late night phone call between exes brings back memories

Dan Woodliff’s Still is a powerful short film that shows the emotional roller coaster ride that can happen when you look back at your memories with someone you love. It’s a mix of tense feelings, a whole lot of regret, a dash of hopefulness and a bit of happiness. Anyone who’s been on the phone…

The ad-ification of the world continues unabated: starting today, most modern HTC smartphones will start displaying ads that HTC pushes to you through the Blinkfeed news aggregator. They look just like a ‘typical Blinkfeed post’, only with the benefit of also trying to schill you a new phone. Thankfully, HTC is promising the ability to…

Watch a giant excavator precisely put together a hot dog

Don’t ask me why there needs to be lettuce in a hot dog or what kind of dark red sauce they’re squirting (*gasp* if it’s ketchup), but it’s still cutely impressive to use a giant machine like an excavator to make something as silly as a hot dog. The dexterity of the giant claw puts…

Why Elon Musk Loves Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy‘s Heart Of Gold

Asked what his favorite fictional spaceship is, in this new interview, SpaceX founder Elon Musk responds with the Heart of Gold from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. “The one that’s powered by the Improbability Drive,” he says. “It does the most unexpected things.” Back in 2013, Musk told Fresh Dialogues that…

Where Do Dogs Really Come From? This Cartoon Has The Surprising Answer

We were drawn into Chris Yau’s short film A Space Dogyssey because of the charming animation featuring a sweet-faced dog aboard a spaceship. But it’s the end of the dog’s journey that really brought a smile to our faces. Inspired in part by animation artists like Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo, Yau made A Space…

Sneaky Nordstrom Tower Adds 71 Feet to Be the Actual Tallest US Building

Last time we checked in with the Nordstrom Tower, a superskinny supertall going up in Midtown Manhattan, a sneaky spire had been added to make it a hair taller than the US’s tallest spire at the World Trade Center. Now, new documents show another stealth move: The actual roof height will be taller than previously…

Moist Moist Moist Moist Moist Moist Moist

A surprising number of people really dislike the word “moist.” Oberlin College psychologist Paul Thibodeau and his colleagues ran a study to find out why. Contact the author at [email protected].

Video explains the origin and evolution of the word ‘dude’

What do you think of when you hear the word dude? The Big Lebowski? Surfers? Maybe even just one of your friends. Or maybe it’s yourself! But do you ever think about a man in a top hat wearing skinny pants pretending to be an Englishman from 1883? That’s how the term dude was first…

How Do You Keep Your Stuff Safe Online?

Hacks are writ large in the headlines, most recently the news that millions of U.S. government files with personal employee info were stolen, and LastPass’s embarrassing breach. So how do you secure yourself in the wilds of the internet? https://gizmodo.com/am-i-an-idiot-for-still-using-a-password-manager-1711673486 It seems like every week a world government or big company suffers a potentially disastrous…

Witness The Unbelievable Power Of Volcanic Eruptions Up Close

Most of us will never get to see a volcanic eruption in person, but thanks to these videos, we can not only see recent eruptions, we can journey into the mouths of volcanos without leaving the safety of our homes. You can almost feel the heat on your face. The eruption of Mount St. Helens,…

The NC French Teacher Who Was Maybe Also Napoleon’s Military Strategist

The story of Peter Stewart Ney isn’t necessarily tied to a crime, but it’s so fascinating that it begs a spot among the other mysteries here. In the 18th century, Ney was a well-liked teacher in the Carolinas; at one point, he designed the seal still used by Davidson College. But was he hiding a…