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Gorgeous BAFTA Posters Hide Plot Twists In the Shadows

For its awards held over the weekend, the BAFTAs commissioned posters for each of the best film nominees. In each one, designed by artist Malika Favre, character and plot development is hidden in the shadows. Above is part of the Birdman poster from the “Big Reveal” campaign. The full one is below. Here are Birdman,…

Spectacular video shows the beautiful and epic explosions on the Sun

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA put out this video of all the coolest, jaw dropping explosions that happened on our Sun over the past five years. You basically watch the Sun dances with shooting flares and solar loops. It’s unreal. This video from NASA is just fantastic. NASA writes:…

Watch The Wonderfully Odd Trailer For Post-Apocalyptic Romance Crumbs

Here’s hoping Crumbs, a scifi romance shot in an Ethiopian ghost town by Spanish writer-director Miguel Llanso, gets wider exposure after its Rotterdam Film Festival debut last week. Check out the trailer; there’s a UFO, a haunted bowling alley, a crazy Santa Claus, and space junk. For starters. The Hollywood Reporter review gave Crumbs some…

Watching dumplings get made is deliciously therapeutic 

I didn’t wake up craving dumplings today. But after reading about this epic dumpling crawl in Lucky Peach and seeing Momofuku’s David Chang post videos about dumplings and then learning a brief history about dumplings and watching them get made in the video above, well, damn. I’m really craving dumplings now. SPLOID is delicious brain…

First Trailer For Guy Ritchie’s Man From UNCLE Is Stylish As Hell

As you might have expected, when Guy Ritchie takes on the iconic 1960s spy-fi series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the result is cool-looking, self-mocking, and full of funny action. At least, this first trailer makes the U.N.C.L.E. movie look like a total blast. In this new version of U.N.C.L.E., Henry Cavill (aka Superman) is Napoleon…

This Vintage Science Fiction Magazine Art Is Worth Geeking Out Over

We’ve drooled over vintage pulp science fiction art from the likes of Virgil Finlay, Frank R. Paul, and Ed Emshwiller before. But this mostly black and white interior artwork, scanned and posted to Flickr by user Frederick Barr, is just astonishing. https://gizmodo.com/this-gallery-proves-frank-r-paul-still-rules-science-f-5980171 https://gizmodo.com/the-cover-artist-who-combined-sense-of-humor-and-sen-1633721159 https://gizmodo.com/the-most-vibrant-pulp-science-fiction-art-youll-see-th-1510132620 https://gizmodo.com/how-pulp-science-fiction-cover-art-got-its-sense-of-won-5832671 Frederick Barr, who posts on Flickr as Modern Fred, has…

This Camera Is Going to Hell, and Will Send Us Pictures

European Space Agency engineers are going where no human will ever go. They’ve put a camera inside an automated spacecraft full of garbage (including sewage) to see what will happen during its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere this weekend. The two objects in the photo above are a special infrared camera (in the middle, bolted onto…

Someone Is Writing The Ultimate Generic Dystopian YA Novel On Twitter

We love young adult science fiction, but even we have to admit that sometimes, it can feel like dystopian novels are following a bit script. The new Twitter account @DystopianYA is poking a bit of fun at some of the more common conventions of the genre. Writer and comedian Dana Schwartz is behind the @DystopianYA…

Original Copy of the Magna Carta Found in Forgotten Old Scrapbook 

An unassuming scrapbook buried inside the archives of Sandwich, England turned out to hold quite a treasure: an original copy of the Magna Carta from 1300, one of just several that have survived all these centuries. The Magna Carta Project announced the discovery this week, after verifying the tattered page found in December was indeed…

Physics Valentines (And Anti-Valentines), For Those You Love (And Hate)

The staff of symmetry has created a fun set of physics-themed Valentines to share with the people you love. And because ours is a universe that contains both matter and antimatter, they’ve created a complementary set of anti-Valentines, for the people you love to hate. My favorite Valentine/anti-Valentine pair appears above. The cards are designed…

Shooting Challenge: Love

Valentine’s Day is this weekend. And whether or not you believe in spending $5.95 on Hallmark greetings, hopefully, you still believe in love. So for this week’s Shooting Challenge, that’s what we’re celebrating: Love. The Challenge Take a photo that features love as the subject. (It doesn’t have to be pro love if you prefer…

That Time A Bankrupt Businessman Declared Himself Emperor Of America

For many years, Joshua Norton was a successful 19th-century businessman. Then he lost his entire fortune trying to take over San Francisco’s rice market. Here’s the story of how his fortunes flipped around one final time and made him Emperor of America. In response to this call for your take on history’s most fascinating figures,…

NASA Spots A Huge Gash Across The Surface Of The Sun

Scientists working at the Solar Dynamics Observatory have spotted a massive solar filament that stretches across a good portion of the sun’s visible surface. It’s about 533,000 miles long (857,780 km) – equivalent to 67 Earths lined up in a row. NASA says this solar filament — one of the longest ever recorded — is…

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? According to Jinzi Huang, co-author of a recently published study that examines how “hard candy bodies dissolve in laminar high-speed water flows,” approximately 2,500.

Apple JUST Got Around to Banning ‘Bonded Servitude’ In Its Factories 

Apple has banned ‘bonded servitude,’ which means it won’t let its supplier factories make their new hires work for free to pay for the costs of hiring them. Good!!! And also: Why the hell is this just happening now? When Apple gears up to make a new product, its supplier factories go on hiring sprees.…

Finch Learns A Very Different Way To Hack Reality On Person Of Interest

Here’s the funniest scene from last night’s Person of Interest, in which Harold Finch gets a crash course in swaying a jury from the inside. It’s a very different kind of hacking than Finch is used to, and it requires him to be sort of a blowhard. But it’s all part of an episode that…

Peter Dinklage May Or May Not Being Playing A Leprechaun In New Comedy

Peter Dinklage is one of those actors whose roles of ranged from the sublime (Game of Thrones, The Station Agent) to the bizarre (Underdog), and one of his upcoming projects sounds pretty crazy. In the comedy film O’Lucky Day, Dinklage is set to play a con man who may be a Leprechaun. Deadline is reporting…

An Air Conditioner That Follows You Around

In the future, our air conditioners will look like giant clouds of mist — and they’ll follow us around. When we last checked in with MIT’s Senseable City Lab, they were debuting a prototype heater that targets the exact space where you’re standing. Now, the lab has created a system that does the same thing—for…

These Penguins In Sweaters Are Fake

You may have recently seen the heartwarming story of Australia’s oldest man (109 years young!) who knits sweaters for penguins. The story is currently making the rounds with an adorable photo purporting to show the grateful penguins of Australia’s Phillip Island. The only problem? Those penguins in that particular photo are totally fake. The photo…

Pole vaulting from a pole vaulter’s point of view

You probably have to be a little crazy to be a pole vaulter. I mean, what normal person wants to catapult their bodies as high as possible? This GoPro footage of pole vaulter Allison Stokke filmed from her point of view confirms the crazy and shows the violent movements and perfect grace necessary to make…