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Do “Eyespots” On Butterflies Really Mimic Eyes?

The big black and gold symmetrical spots on butterfly wings deter predators because they resemble eyes in the darkness, right? Not necessarily. Here’s an experiment that indicates that we see eyes, but animals don’t. We all learned that the big black spots on the wings of butterflies are “eyespots.” They seem to turn the small,…

Our First Look At Ryan Reynolds As Deadpool‘s Alter Ego, Wade Wilson!

Check out some new Age of Ultron footage. Jeff Bell talks Fitz and Simmon’s rocky relationship in Agents of SHIELD. Oliver Queen faces some tough times in Arrow. Plus, Tom Hardy talks about his future in Mad Max, and teasers for what’s to come in Outlander, Orphan Black and Game of Thrones. To Me, My…

Fatal Familial Insomnia: The Brain Disease That Stops You Sleeping

Sometimes the worst nightmares are the ones you don’t have. There are numerous conditions, disorders, and illnesses that either limit or prevents the amount of sleep an individual is able to get. Many of them are quite dangerous, but none of them are as frightening or rare as fatal familial insomnia. Prion diseases are a…

A Drug-Resistant Form of Dysentery Is Appearing in the U.S.

A drug-resistant form of dysentery known as Shigellosis has begun to appear in the U.S, prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend that doctors stop providing antibiotics to treat mild forms of the illness. In a report issued yesterday, the CDC explained that 243 people across 32 US states and Puerto Rico…

Short film: A strange hole in the ground that duplicates organic life

This great short film—written and directed by Ray Wong—tells the story of a young couple that one day finds out there is a hole in their backyard with awesome powers: It duplicates any organic life that falls into it. That uncanny discovery ends up affecting their life and, of course, their relationship. Ray Wong is…

For Easter This Year, Why Not a Set of Guardians of the Galaxy Eggs?

From artist Barak Hardley comes this bevy of pop culture painted Easter eggs. The Guardians are the obvious new heavy hitters, but I will always have a place in my soul for infamous interstellar criminal Pizza the Hutt. See the rest of the eggshere. [via Tastefully Offensive] Contact the author at [email protected].

The World Lost 18 Million Hectares of Forest in 2013

New high-resolution maps of international woodland reveal that the world lost 18 million hectares of forest—the same area as that covered by Oklahoma—to wildfires, deforestation, and development in 2013 The maps, such as the one shown above, were created by Global Forest Watch in a collaboration between University of Maryland an Google, bringing together more…

Censorship Order That Threatened Websites and Message Boards Overturned

Our right to express opinions online—for instance, to criticize copyright trolls and their demands for money in hopes of scaring them away—are protected by the First Amendment. The Georgia Supreme Court correctly underscored these protections in a ruling late last week about the state’s anti-stalking law. The panel overturned a trial judge’s astonishing order directing…

David Bowie’s Turning The Man Who Fell to Earth Into a Play

This winter, Lazarus, based on The Man Who Fell to Earth, will premiere off-Broadway. It’ll have new songs by David Bowie as well as new arrangements of the original songs. Sadly, though, Bowie himself will not be reprising his role as alien-inventor Thomas Jerome Newton. Adapting the script for the stage is Irish playwright Enda…

Take a Look at a 1948 Scientist’s Fish Drawings 

Donald Erdman was a scientific aide in the Division of Fishes, United States National Museum (later the National Museum of Natural History) from 1947 to 1950. In 1948, Erdman was part of a fisheries survey of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea under the Arabian American Oil Company. The Smithsonian has digitized his notes from…

NASA Has Some Scary Images Of Super Typhoon Maysak

Maysak, a charmingly-named Cat-5 super typhoon that only sounds a bit like the Norse god of destruction, is churning its way through the Pacific at the moment. And, as always, mankind is keeping a very careful eye on things from space. We’d already seen the fantastic images captured by astronauts on the ISS, like something…

This San Francisco sunset makes it look like the apocalypse is here

Welcome to our post-apocalyptic world. You can find the last remaining civilization in San Francisco. Or something like that. It’s startling how much this simple time lapse of a San Francisco sunset makes it look like nuclear bombs have gone off and destroyed everything we know. But nope, just a normal sunset in the bay.…

This Space Invaders Typing Challenge Is Driving Me Insane

I had a to-do list a mile long that I was meant to tackle this afternoon. Instead, I spent the entire thing being driven increasingly crazy by this Space Invaders typing game. Goddamn internet. I stumbled acrossZ-Type on Twitter earlier today. It’s a game built by Dominic Szablewski, a developer and game-maker with a site…

Oh For the Love of … Disney’s Making a Live-Action Winnie the Pooh

We know. We double-checked that we hadn’t all made a mistake and it was April Fool’s Day again. But, no, this seems legitimate: Disney’s planing on making a live-action Winnie the Pooh. In its quest to turn everything that was animated and charming into live-action monsterpieces, Disney has mined Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and…

You’re looking at an unpowered “ankle exoskeleton” that researcher report can improve walking efficiency by 7 percent. Carnegie Mellon engineers Gregory Sawicki and Steve Collins describe the lightweight, spring actuated prototype in Wednesday’s issue of Nature. Rachel Feltman has more info – and video – at WaPo.

Of Course Japan Has An Island Where Cats Outnumber People

Thisshort film documents life on Tashirojima, a tiny island off the Oshika Peninsula in Japan. It’s home to 800 cat overlords, and the 100 or so humans who slavishly feed their feral masters. Cats were originally brought onto the island to control the mouse population, who fed on silkworms and threatened the fishing industry that…

What It’s Like to Work For Putin’s Internet Troll Army 

The Guardian has a doozy of a report on Russia’s secret troll army: hundreds of bloggers and commentators paid to flood the internet with pro-Kremlin posts. Two former employees gave the paper a rare glimpse inside the troll army’s headquarters. The bloggers and commentators work in 12-hour shifts inside a St. Petersburg office building, where…

So Here’s The Trailer For That Naughty Guardians Of The Galaxy Spoof

How do you turn Guardians of the Galaxy into an adult parody? Mostly just by ramping the existing insanity up and adding some sex scenes, judging from this brand new trailer. It’s mostly work-safe, except for a few of the jokes — and what they turned Groot into. The best part? Probably the way Rocket…

A Dude Made Fake VHS Covers for New Shows And They’re So Good

Remember when you missed the season finale of Breaking Bad and you had to wait like a year until the series finally came out on VHS so you could watch it? No, but now you could imagine what that might have been like. Here are some recent movies and popular shows reimagined as 1980s-era VHS…

Would You Hack Your Body For a Superpower?

Today, we rediscovered that people are willing to go to extreme lengths to gain mutant-like abilities. Are you one of them? I’m going to guess that most of us wouldn’t turn down strange powers, no matter how many cautionary X-Men comics we’ve read. And while we’re a long way from getting our hands on the…