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The Time That Britain Wanted To Empty The Nile

In the 1950s, Egypt and Britain played an old version of tit-for-tat. Egypt took the Suez Canal. The British decided to pay them back by stealing the river Nile itself. Yes, the whole Nile. The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, saving boats that go through it a considerable length of…

The Sparkle Guns that Keep Military Air Transports Safe

Commercial airlines aren’t the only planes under attack from shoulder-fired rockets and missiles these days, a number of slow-moving vehicles in the US Air Force have come under increased threat of being shot down. That’s why the USAF is outfitting many of them with sparkling laser blasters to confound inbound threats. MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defense…

Genderqueer Fisher Accidentally Steals A Selkie’s Skin In This Webcomic

If you’ve been looking for a webcomic that features gender nonbinary characters and relationships outside of the heteronormative while telling a rich fantasy story, look no further than Sfé R. Monster’s Eth’s Skin, set in a world of floating townships, pesky fairies, and selkies with magical skin. In a magical version of British Columbia, Eth…

A Last-Minute Gift Guide of Items Currently in My Bedroom

Oh no. Your Big Holiday Event is just a day/hour/30 minutes ago away, and you have yet to pick up an appropriate gift. One option is to try to find a 24-hour drug store. Another is murder-suicide. Don’t bother! I’m sure I have something. A book Don’t take any of the ones I haven’t read…

12,500 Photos From Space Create A Timelapse That Leaves Me Speachless

Astronaut Alex Gerst was a delight to have on the International Space Station, teaming up with NASA’s Reid Wiseman to bring us snippets of life in orbit from the mundane to silly to the awe-inspiring. ESA has collected 12,500 of his snapshots into an epic timelapse video to celebrate the holiday season. https://gizmodo.com/life-on-the-space-station-is-a-surreal-astronaut-buddy-1640220588 https://gizmodo.com/in-space-even-changing-a-lightbulb-is-awesome-1643712823 https://gizmodo.com/an-empty-spacesuit-is-full-of-possibilities-1623620850…

Happy Christmas!

Image: 1924 Christmas Party via Getty

Meet the Sony Hack Truthers

The Sony hack is a terrible, awful thing that’s going to leave thousands of everyday employees dealing with the repercussions for years to come. But! At least there’s a crazy, ranting, sheeple-slaying silver lining. Friends, allow us to introduce you to the Sony hack truthers. There are a lot of them. Their theories inhabit a…

Chinese Food On Christmas Is No Longer Solely A Jewish Tradition

This is the time of year when, for American Jews such as myself, visions of Chinese plum sauce dance in my head. It’s a trend that dates back decades—the Chinese food Christmas meal has been whimsically described as a sacred Jewish tradition. But, recent research reveals that it’s become popular among non-Jews as well. The…

Look at All This Beautiful Nerd Stuff You Can Make with Gingerbread 

Gingerbread houses are pretty, but if you’re making a biscuity homage to a structure, might as well choose something that more specifically suits your interest. Unless your pop culture interest is the Gingerbread Man from Shrek, taking a liberal approach to the idea of a gingerbread house is more fun for constructing a meaningful edible…

Watch a Drone Fly Through California Christmas Fireworks

Fireworks make every holiday better. And drone footage makes every fireworks display better. So when you combine all three , the results are the best. This year, one spectator took a DJI Phantom 2 with a GoPro Hero III Silver to the annual Christmas fireworks display in Manhattan Beach, California. The video starts kind of…

The Robocop Reboot’s ED-209 Is Now An Excellent Figure

ThreeZero are continuing their line of figures based on this year’s Robocop reboot, and the Robocop 2.0 design will soon be joined by the shiny new ED-209 from the movie. Regardless of how you felt about Robocop, hooray for pretty robot toys! https://gizmodo.com/the-robocop-redesign-that-freaked-everyone-out-will-soo-1668746675 ThreeZero’s ED-209 comes in two flavours, Black and Tan (exclusive to orders…

Into The Woods Sounds Bewitching, But It’s Missing That Dark Magic

Rob Marshall’s Disney adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s Into The Woods succeeds in so many things, but fails in the most important part: the heart. Full disclosure: I’m a massive fan of the original Broadway musical. So I can only speak from that experience alone. So let’s get to it. For those of you unaware, Into…

PS Now—Sony’s service that lets you stream Playstation games to your TV (for a price)—is branching out. It’s coming to Samsung TVs (instead of just Sonys) in 2015. Merry Christmas!

The Interview Is Coming to YouTube, Google Play, and Xbox Video Today

In addition to allowing theaters around the country to view the now infamous The Interview, Sony will also be releasing Seth Rogen and James Franco’s latest via YouTube, according to a report from CNN. Update: The Wall Street Journal also says that Sony will stream on YouTube, Google Play, and Xbox Video for $5.99. You…

The Origin of the Candy Cane

First, let’s start by dispelling a somewhat popular myth that more or less goes like this: The white base color of the candy cane symbolizes Jesus’ purity; the red stripes symbolize Jesus’ blood when he died on the cross; and the J shape was chosen to represent the J in Jesus. While that makes a…

An Epic One-Kilometer Cliff On The Surface Of Rosetta’s Comet

While sifting through images taken by the Rosetta spacecraft of Comet 67P, an amateur British astronomer has uncovered a previously unknown vertical cliff that looks like something right out of Mordor. The original image was captured by Rosetta’s NavCam at a distance of 20.1 km from the center of the comet on December 10. But…

It Took 25 Hours of Continuous Concrete Pouring To Build This Aquarium

When the Miami’s Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science opens in 2016, it’s going to have an absolutely bonkers aquarium—imagine a giant camera lens, tilted on its side, that lets visitors walk below the tank and look up into it. Building it, as you might expect, entailed a feat of perfectly-timed engineering. Skanska recently…

Christmas decorating sends 15,000 Americans to the E.R. every year

Santa Claus, bless his magical heart, somehow makes it safely onto millions of icy roofs every Christmas. But us mortal humans are not so lucky. Every year, 15,000 Americans end up in the emergency room thanks to Christmas decorating accidents—a decidedly unhappy start to the holidays. Over at the New Yorker, Ben Wellington of I…

The 1982 Sears Wish Book Featured Some of the Best Toys From the ’80s

The holidays are one of the best times to meander down memory lane. After all, many of us are probably even sleeping in our old childhood bedrooms while visiting our parents this Christmas. And because so many of you enjoyed Dinosaur Dracula’s look at a 1985 JCPenney Christmas catalog yesterday, we wanted to point you…

Spectacular New Space Station Video Is The Ultimate Holiday Lighting

The ESA has just released this stunning ultra high definition timelapse video, combining 12,500 images taken by astronaut Alexander Gerst during his six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. The views of sparkling cities, glowing aurorae and flashes of lightning are breathtaking. Watch it. Now.