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Why is slime, specifically snot-like green slime of the “I’ve-been-slimed!” variety, so endlessly fascinating? This impressively detailed article traces the history and lasting appeal of the gloriously gross substance, from Dr. Seuss to the Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles to Nickelodeon, and beyond.

Behold the unfilmed Star Wars scenes you always wanted to see

I always wanted to see the actual infantry attacks on the Hoth’s Rebel Base. Not just a couple scenes but a full Saving Private Ryan’s Normandy invasion battle with a ton of imperial storm troopers led by Darth Vader. Apparently illustrator Dave Dorman had the same idea in mind. Here’s his vision. Imperial troops disguised…

Why Slow Zombies Are Still More Frightening Than Fast Ones

Something is going on with the zombies that populate our stories. Not only are there more of them, but they are also noticeably faster, almost acrobatic, capable of running full tilt and even leaping over the tops of walls after prey. And yet, for all that, their plodding predecessors had one thing they don’t. In…

13 Gorgeous Panoramic Maps Drawn Long Before Satellites Even Existed 

It’s hard for us Google Earth-dependent modern-day humans to conceive of, but there was once a time when we had to imagine what our towns and cities looked like from the sky. In fact, there were famous artists who specialized in creating these panoramic views of Earth, though today, it’s a lost art. They were…

And now a dancing owl and his cool owl friend because, owls

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This Enormous Car-Boat Probably Needed Oceans of Oil to Run

Life for Americans after World War II was supposed to be filled with open roads and open waters. The roads, more often than not, were for getting to work. And the water? That was pure leisure time. This “water-mobile” of 1947 was imagined to provide the best of both, with an enormous (and, one imagines,…

Take A Virtual Trip Through The Amphipolis Tomb In Its Original State

Discovered only three years ago, the Amphipolis Tomb is the largest burial monument ever discovered in Greece. A new 3D representation of the tomb reveals just how gorgeous this ancient structure really was. The video, which was put together by AncientAthens3D using data published by the Greek Ministry of Culture, was created “in order to…

“Spot” Is a Smaller (More Kickable) Version of Boston Dynamic’s Big Dog

We haven’t seen much of Boston Dynamic’s four-legged self-balancing Big Dog robot since it was last spotted hurling cinder blocks in a lab. And that’s maybe because the company’s robotic geniuses have been hard at work building a smaller more agile version called Spot that weighs just 160 pounds so it can safely operate both…

Crave Vesper: A Stealth Vibrator That’s Also a Necklace

Let’s face it. There are two reasons you’d want to use a vibrator: because you are a gadget-lover who can’t imagine anything, including sex, without a little technology involved; or because you just want to have an orgasm, and fast. But with the Crave Vesper, there is a third possibility. Fancy San Francisco vibrator maker…

How We Imagined The Future Of Transportation Would Look In The 1940s

These ads made for the Detroit-based Bohn Aluminum and Brass Corporation were largely dreamed up by legendary illustrator Arthur Radebaugh during the 1940s. Radebaugh’s utopian visions and Bohn’s desire to appear as a forward-looking company combine for a slick retrofuturistic view of transportation. It’s not a surprise that aluminum and brass are crucial to build…

Every Smartphone Should Come With Free VR Goggles

LG just announced that people who buy a new G3 smartphone will get a free VR headset to match. That’s an idea we can get behind. This new, cheap VR for G3 hardware is closer to Google Cardboard than Samsung Gear VR, but fits somewhere between the two. The headset is based on the Google…

Raspberry Pi 2 Loses Its Shit When You Blast It With a Camera Flash

One user of the newly available Raspberry Pi 2 computer has discovered a pretty weird flaw with the new hardware: If you shoot the cheapy computer with a camera flash, it shuts right the hell down. In a blog post, Raspberry Pi communications director Liz Upton explains that in the company’s testing, there is indeed…

This May Be The Toy-Shillingest Batman Cartoon Of All Time

To pretend that WB and DC’s many, many Batman cartoons weren’t at least partially designed to sell Mattel action figures would be naive. But usually they’ve tried to tell a good Batman story in each series, and get kids interested in the characters that way. Well, until this new direct-to-DVD animated movie, that is. Batman…

Meet Tiffany Two, The World’s Oldest Cat (She’ll Be 27 Next Month)

Congrats to San Diego tortoiseshell Tiffany Two, who will turn 27 on March 13 … making her the world’s oldest living cat, according to Guinness World Records. That’s 125 in human years. Tiffany Two’s owner, Sharon Voorhees, paid $10 for her remarkable pet in 1988; the name is “a tribute to another tortoiseshell cat she…

Isostatic Rebound Is Why Local Sea Level Drops As Global Sea Level Rises

Geology is usually so intuitive, it’s rare to find something that goes against your instincts. But isostatic rebound creates a moment of exactly that: the more landlocked glaciers melt, the lower the local sea levels drop. Here’s how. Jacobsen Glacier is one of the few remaining chunks of ice from the vast Cordilleran ice fields…

Red Dawn Was An Accidental Remake—In More Ways Than One

A bellicose enemy attacks a complacent country and institutes martial law until a ragtag group of unbroken patriots rally and re-take their country. It sounds like Red Dawn, but actually it’s The Invasion of 1910. And due to some editing, it was widely popular in the country of both the rebels and the invaders. Red…

Fictional Spy Disguises That Fooled Absolutely No One

There is nothing better than a spy disguise, especially when it’s a terrible one. Here are the best of the worst spy disguises on television and film. Jennifer Garner – Alias It pains me to put Sydney Bristow on this list, because the major appeal of Alias was seeing what sort of wig and midriff-baring…

The AI Revolution: How Far Away Are Our Robot Overlords?

Imagine taking a time machine back to 1750—a time when the world was in a permanent power outage, long-distance communication meant either yelling loudly or firing a cannon in the air, and all transportation ran on hay. When you get there, you retrieve a dude, bring him to 2015, and then walk him around and…

The Real Story About That Wheel Of Time Pilot That Aired Last Night

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan is one of the most popular book series of all time. So you’d think the first episode of a TV version would air with massive fanfare… so why did the pilot air in the middle of the night instead? We reached out to the producers and found out…

Sony 4K Action Cam Hands-On: Giving GoPro a Run for Its Money

It’s been a hard fight for Sony (and everyone else) who is trying to get a slice of that action camera pie GoPro is so effectively hogging. Sony has had some solid cams that offered best-in-class audio, but they’ve always fallen just a bit short beating GoPro on image quality and ease of use. This…