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Feast Your Eyes on This Old-School Weather Model

Weather forecasting has come a long way, as the video below of a midcentury climate model illustrates. And if you’re into vintage computer graphics, it provides some pretty nice eye candy too. The footage, recently published by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, shows the first global general circulation model constructed by physicist Chuck Leith on…

Real Yelp Reviews About Terrible Food… And Such Small Portions

There’s an old joke, made famous in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, about customers complaining at a restaurant. One woman says that the food is terrible. The other replies, I know, and such small portions! It probably won’t surprise you to learn that this joke is often played out in earnest in Yelp reviews. In 1977…

What Was In This Mysterious “Cure” For Alcoholism?

The most famous medical man dedicated to treating alcoholism was Leslie Keeley, who operated the Keeley Institute and sold Keeley’s Gold Cure. When patients got the facility they were given a nice room, encouragement, and four shots of “gold bichloride” a day. There’s no such thing as gold bichloride. It’s natural that the rest of…

12 delicious and absolutely gorgeous ways to cook an egg

Add an egg to anything and your life instantly gets better. You can eat it on its own after its cooked however which way, you can add it to pasta to make a carbonara, you could make dessert with it and heck, even make drinks with it. It’s the perfect food. Here are 12 things…

Three Handy Uses for Chrome Beyond Web Browsing

You probably think of Chrome as a web browser—and so you should—but it has a few more tricks up its sleeve than you might have realized. Here are three of our favorite alternative uses for the software, which to a large extent work the same in Mozilla Firefox too. 1. Play music and video Chrome…

This GIF Party Is Here To Dance

Don’t just hang out there on the sidelines, because the GIF Party is waiting on you. You know what to do: Put your interpretive GIFs, digital mingling, and life updates into the comments, because the party starts now!

Cat Eyes and Other Radical Ideas to Re-Engineer Humans for the Future

If we don’t do something about climate change, humanity is screwed. But do what? Carbon emissions keep creeping up, geoengineering is potentially dangerous, and we continue to stew in endless political debates. One bioethicist has a radical idea: Re-engineer humans for a better planet. A few years ago, NYU bioethicist and philosopher Matthew Liao co-authored…

Deceptive Photo Makes This Eel Look Taller Than A Double Decker Bus

Fishermen working off the coast of Plymouth in Britain snagged a 7-foot-long (2.1 meters) conger eel by mistake after it got tangled in their nets. Weighing in at just over 133 pounds (59 kg), it’s a near-record catch — but this clever optical illusion makes it look much longer than it really is. As reported…

A Snowmobile That Works On Water Looks Way More Fun Than a Jet Ski

As the weather warms up it’s finally time to pack away those winter clothes and start figuring out how you’ll maximize the hot summer months. Any activity involving a lake is obviously a good choice, but before you spend thousands on a Jet Ski, you might want to wait until these engineering students perfect their…

DC Heroes Mixed With Thomas The Tank Engine Is A Most Delightful Horror

DC’s cadre of heroes and villains have been mashed up with a lot of things over the years. But transforming them into the wide-eyed, slightly creepy locomotives of Thomas the Tank Engine makes for a toy that is equal parts laden with animated nostalgia and sheer, nightmarish terror. Mattel’s latest exclusive merchandise for San Diego…

The Avengers reimagined as dark fantasy characters is scary great

Artist Daniel Kamarudin made these excellent illustrations that reimagines The Avengers characters as you know it. He took what we saw in the Marvel movies and turned them darker and added more of a fantasy flair to them. His depictions are great, I wouldn’t mind reading a story illustrated in this way. Here are a…

Could Michael Fassbender Stay On As Magneto After X-Men Apocalypse?

Marvel narrows down its new Spider-Man cast list, and the next Planet of the Apes has a title. Get another great look at Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool outfit. There’s still a chance the next season of Person of Interest may not be its last. Plus, Arrow teases a new villain, and clips from Tomorrowland. To me,…

Uber Accused of Ripping Off Ideas, and Everything Else You Missed

Technology is filled with all kinds of rumors, real and fabricated. It gives us a look at what might be and will be. BitStream gathers the whispers all in one place to divine what the future has in store. In the latest Uber controversy, there are new claims that the ride-sharing service stole trade secrets…

Look at This Shockwave Caught in Action

In this image, MATRA air-ground bombs hit a target during a close air support exercise on the military training area in Munster, Germany, on May 5th 2015. Captured the exact moment of explosion, the visible patterns of the following shock wave make for an impressive picture. [Jana Neumann/Bundeswehr]

This 8 Ball Predicts Your Future in Emojii

Will I ever find true love? How will I die? When will I get a raise? For some life’s biggest questions, the best answers must surely come from an 8-ball that predicts the future via the medium of emojii. Today’s XKCD is an interactive Emojic 8 Ball. Type you question and prepare for enlightenment—though warned…

Of Course Restaurants Are Designing Meals Just to Look Good on Instagram

It was only a matter of time. Though it’s not unusual for eateries to place plenty of importance on presentation (“we eat with our eyes first”, and all that), the rise of amateur food photographers means that one US restaurant chain has now admitted that it actively designs dishes based on how good they will…

Many have attempted to illustrate Middle Earth, Barnes and Noble’s blog asked artist Grant Lindahl to imagine seven more. Head over to see his take on how Al Hirschfeld, Dr. Seuss, Edward Gorey, and others would draw Tolkien’s characters.

Watch the Entire History of US County Boundaries Evolve in 30 Seconds

U.S. state and county boundaries have changed a lot since 1629. This wonderfully simple animation shows how they’ve been drawn and redrawn over almost 400 years. Flowing Data points out that you can actually grab the data used to make the full animation below from the Newberry Library site if you’re feeling creative. Or just…

Google’s Prototype Driverless Car Hits Public Roads This Summer

Google’s first consumer-focused prototype driverless cars will takes their first drive on public roads this summer, taking to the streets of Mountain View. In a blog post, Google’s self-driving car project director Chris Urmson explained that a handful of the cars will rolled out in Google’s neighborhood. The cars—which will be fitted with a removable…

Close Up Photos of Bird Plumage Look Like Alien Worlds

Photographer Thomas Lore, who is known for his fashion shoots, has a new project: close-up, abstract photos of birds. He’s gathered them all into a new book. What we see when we look at these? The topography of alien worlds. Lore’s put some “outtake” bird shots on Instagram. The above one looks like a a…