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The BBC Wants to Harness Fan Power for Doctor Who

This could go very well or very poorly: the BBC has launched “Mission Dalek,” a competition where fans create their own stories about the Doctor and the Daleks. The only restrictions on Mission Dalek is that the work you make has to be digital: video, animation, art. The springboard should be the “The Doctor’s Year…

Go See How Depressingly Non-Green Your City Is

No-one lives in a city because they enjoy being surrounded by hulking concrete monoliths. Thanks to this mapping tool from Portland State University, you can now see exactly how lacking your city in the tree department. As part of a project funded by the U.S. Forest Service, researchers overlaid information about air pollution, tree coverage,…

After Humanity Colonizes Space, Those Colonists Resent Working for Earth

Once humans live on other planets, what allegiance will those human colonists to people back home and their space research? That’s the question explored in the meditative short film The Earth We Forgot, where a woman expresses her frustration to her robot companion. Olof Storm wrote, directed, and animated The Earth We Forgot. It feels…

Here’s The Box That Can Turn a Puny Laptop Into a Graphical Powerhouse

USB Type-C is shaping up to be the holy grail of ports. It can charge your laptop, deliver 4K video, and transfer loads of USB data all over a single cable—all at the same time. What could be better? You’re looking at the answer. What you see in these pictures is a hub that uses…

How you see color may change with the seasons. Researchers reporting in this week’s issue ofCurrent Biology found people surveyed in summer tended to perceive shorter, greener wavelengths of yellow as “purer” (i.e. none more yellow) than they did in winter, when they favored longer, redder wavelengths of yellow. [Current Biology via Discover] Contact the…

This Mouse Can Be Wirelessly Controlled With LED Light

This is surely a sign that we’re living in the future: Researchers have just invented a remote-controlled LED chip that can make a mouse walk in circles by using light to activate motor neurons in the animal’s brain—or peripheral nerves throughout its body. The device, published this week in Nature Methods, is being hailed a…

The Unlikely Quest to Build a Tower Tall Enough to Take Astronauts to Space

The space elevator is a glorious science fiction idea that’s never gotten past the concept stage, mostly because it’s impossible to build one right now. Recognizing this, a Canadian space firm is hoping to test the waters with a slightly scaled-down version — a space tower, if you will, that only rises into the stratosphere.…

Jeb! Bush Thinks We Haven’t Given the NSA Enough Power to Spy on Us 

He’s trailing an openly misogynistic troll doll in the polls, but Jeb Bush has outdone his opponents in the “slavish praise for the government’s surveillance apparatus” department. Bush thinks we need more NSA surveillance, not less. “There’s a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and NSA doing its job,” Jeb! said at…

This Video Will Show You Three Creatures You Never Knew Existed In Three Minutes

These creatures, found around the Galapagos, are so weird that the scientists filming them don’t even know what some of them are. This is film from the Exploration Vessel Nautilus, a vessel dedicated primarily to exploration, and incidentally to showing us footage of some of the strangest creatures on the planet. This video was taken…

No, These Aren’t Each State’s Favorite Emoji

The blogosphere is freaking out about about the above infographic, elegantly constructed by the marketing team at SwiftKey. The interactive map supposed shows the most popular emoji in each state. However, when you take the interactive part away, it’s just confusing. Does Tennessee really love horses that much? The answer is, almost certainly, no. SwiftKey…

Look How Massive This Eiffel Tower Shape on the Sun Is

A Swedish photographer recently pointed his telescope and spotted something extraordinary: a solar prominence the size of seven Earth diameters. Oh yeah and it was also shaped like the Eiffel Tower. Göran Strand, the Swede in question, switched telescopes after he spotted that unique feature. Through his larger Lunt 80mm hydrogen alpha pressure-tuned solar telescope,…

Mad Max: Fury Road perfectly recreated with go karts is so much bad ass fun

Knowing the humble production roots of the original Mad Max, I could totally imagine this version of Mad Max: Fury Road with just go karts being made. The car chase and the action effects in the go kart version are not as blockbuster big as the one that hit the theaters and made our eyeballs…

If You Could Take a Pill to Improve Your Creativity, Would You?

Sure, who wouldn’t want to be more creative? But what about a pill to improve your self-control, or sociability? What if you enjoy being impulsive, or revel in your alone time? If a pharmacological enhancement changed a defining aspect of your personality, how would it change your perception of that enhancement? Researchers at the National…

This is How US Challengers Plan to Wreck Japan’s Giant Robot in a Duel

America’s first giant combat robot needs funds to ready it for a hand-to-hand melee with Japan’s own battle mecha. And the funds—and big name support—are rolling in. In June, Oakland-based MegaBots and its battle bot Mk.II (pronounced “Mark 2”) challenged Japanese robotics company Suidobashi Heavy Industries in a brawl to robot death. A week later,…

This Artist Is Redrawing a Tintin Book With Tintin Buck Naked

This isn’t the first anti-colonialist reworking of Tintin, but it certainly has the most penises. Hergé’s Tintin series is one of the most beloved comics in Europe, but the 1930s-era racial stereotypes and colonialist attitudes make a lot of modern readers uncomfortable. No Tintin book brings the squick like Tintin in the Congo, wherein our…

Help! I Put A Placeholder In My Story—And It Became Permanent!

Writing is a messy business for most of us—even if you’re one of those people who outlines everything in advance, there’s always going to be some parts that you make up as you go. And sometimes, a first draft will include stuff that you know you’re going to have to change later. But what happens…

Are You Still Using Apple Music?

We just passed the halfway mark for Apple Music’s three-month free trial period, and guess what: A whole bunch of people have stopped using the service already. A new report from MusicWatch claims that a whopping 48-percent of users have jumped ship. Are you one of them? (I am.) Apple, predictably, disagrees with MusicWatch’s conclusion,…

In This Week’s Comics, Howard the Duck Becomes Howard the Human

It’s quiet end-of-summer week for new comics—but hey! Look at the sweet mustache on Howard the Human (née Duck), the latest wacky addition to Marvel’s Secret Wars event. But that’s not all this week—there’s near future political thrills, secret love, super-powered murder, and much, much more. https://gizmodo.com/americans-rebel-against-their-surveillance-state-in-pre-1724854441 Dark Horse Trade Paperbacks Resurrectionists: Near Death Experienced…

Who (or What) Is the Scariest Horror-Movie Villain Ever?

A really good horror movie will scare the crap out of you while you’re watching it. But a really great horror movie will haunt you for days, weeks, even years after … especially if it has a particularly potent villain whose terrible actions and leering face you just can’t shake. And really, the movie itself…

Stop Refrigerating Your Butter

Do you keep your butter in the refrigerator? You do? Stop it. Stop it right this second. You’re ruining your butter experience and making your toast taste like failure. Let me tell you why. Butter is a wonderful substance. Made by churning cream until it separates into buttermilk and fat globules, butter is not only…