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What The Hell Is Wrong With Your Eyes? A Dress Explainer

At some point this evening your flatmate or loved one probably ran headfirst into the room, iPad in tow, screaming about how YOU HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT COLOR THIS DRESS IS, and then subsequently disowning you when you said blue/black. What the fuck is going on? Here’s an educated guess. According to a few…

Prisoners‘ Denis Villeneuve In Talks to Direct the Blade Runner Sequel

Well, now we know who may replace Ridley Scott in the director’s chair for the Blade Runner sequel: Denis Villeneuve, director of the Academy Award-nominated Prisoners. We’ve known for a while that Scott’s schedule made it nearly impossible for him to fit this in and Scott admitted a while back that he wouldn’t be doing…

Humans possess a remarkably keen sense of smell (a recent estimate puts forth that we can discriminate more thana trillion different odors) – so why are we so bad at describing smells? At The New Yorker, Alastair Gee explores several theories as to why our scent lexicon is so lacking.

My taste buds melted after watching this dessert get made

I don’t especially love pistachio. I don’t go crazy over tiramisu. Heck, I don’t always have the sweet tooth hankering normal humans have for dessert and yet after watching this pistachio tiramisu get made, I can’t help but feel as if my taste buds have all banded together demanding that I eat this right now.…

The Latest Twitter Update Tries To Address Doxxing

Doxxing, and the death threats and swatting that almost invariably follow, is one of the nastiest tools of internet trolls worldwide. Twitter is on the front lines of the online abuse problem, but thus far they’ve been fighting a fairly pathetic losing battle. The company’s latest update hopes to turn that around. Earlier today, Twitter…

Concept Art Writing Prompt: The Kid Who Paints The Moon

The phases of the moon get a bit fanciful in this week’s writing prompt, by artist Goro Fujita. Tell us your tale about this character and their rather unusual lunar job. As always, we invite you to write a story about this image, Fujita’s “Half Moon” and share it in the comments. Is this Earth’s…

Some people see this dress as white & gold while others see black & blue

I don’t know where this image originates from but it’s around the Internet right now and it shows a picture of a dress that is so very clearly white and gold to me but is black and blue to so many other people. It’s black and blue to Google Image Search. Photoshop’s eyedropper tool says…

Why The Aardvark May Be The Strangest Creature On Earth

The aardvark looks like a few other animals — the anteater, the armadillo, the pig — but it’s closely related to none of them. It may be one of the world’s few unique creatures. Nature is inventive and therefore crowded. If one design proliferates, it spawns variations of itself, which is why weasels can be…

The Greatest Advice For Science Fiction Writers: “Ask The Next Question”

Theodore Sturgeon, who would have turned 97 today, was one of the all-time great science fiction writers. And he came up with a great maxim that defines much of what SF authors do to make their work extraordinary: “Ask the next question.” Some current authors explain how this maxim shapes everything they do. Here’s how…

Oh, Hey, Catwoman Is Officially Bisexual Now

Just an FYI! Catwoman comics writer (and frequent io9 contributor extraordinaire) Genevieve Valentine has pointed out on her blog that Selina Kyle is now “canon bisexual” in the DC universe. It’s always nice to see a comic company increase its diversity — especially with a character as prominent as Catwoman. Unsurprisingly, Valentine herself puts it…

A Field Guide To The World’s Most Distinctive English Regionalisms

Why will asking for directions to a time machine get you sent to an ATM in Wisconsin, a request for a sarsaparilla spider gets you a root beer float in Australia, and someone wondering if you’ve seen their bunnyhug in Saskatchewan is actually searching for their favorite hoodie? Read on to find out. In response…

This 1750 BC Babylonian Tablet Is An Ancient Customer Service Complaint

The ancient Babylonians may not have had Yelp or customer service call centers, but they still recorded their complaints. They just had to do it on clay tablets, like this one, in which a buyer complains about receiving the wrong grade of copper ore. Top image from the British Museum. After reddit user tbc34 shared…

Neill Blomkamp Admits He “F*cked It Up” With Elysium

While we enjoyed Elysium by shutting our brains off for a bit, it wasn’t a movie without a lot of problems — and that’s something that even Neill Blomkamp agrees with, according to an interview with Uproxx. Although Elysium received a decent critical reception and made more money than Blomkamp’s previous smash success District 9,…

What Was Your Favorite (Non-Llama) Collective Internet Freakout? 

Today the entire internet was riveted by a live llama chase in Arizona. All work ground to a halt while the world watched the furry creatures’ daring escape. This is hardly the first time the internet has had a collective breakdown. What’s the weirdest clusterfuck that got everyone talking? We need your help to remember.…

A Catastrophic Flood Faked With LED Trickery

How do you demonstrate why people should pay attention to flood infrastructure? Show them what a flood would really look like. The Netherlands has the most advanced water management infrastructure in the world, hands down. But that doesn’t mean it’s secure: The country has spent billions repairing and strengthening its systems as sea levels rise,…

Here’s How A Mob Of Sheep Could One Day Save Your Life

When a crowd needs to pass through a small doorway – an emergency exit, for example – the opening can quickly become obstructed. Recently, researchers have been using sheep to understand how they might mitigate this potentially catastrophic bottleneck effect. The above video was shot by Iker Zuriguel and his colleagues at the University of…

How do you forgive a monster? A must-read for true crime enthusiasts is this in-depth profile of Kerry Rawson, who’s spent the past 10 years dealing with the psychological effects of finding out that her dad, Dennis Rader, was the notorious BTK serial killer. Contact the author at [email protected].

The Golden Age of Jailbreaking Is Over

Your smartphone may be as powerful as a computer, but it’s also hobbled. You can only install apps on it from the walled garden of the official app store. Your options are limited to the small, vetted collection of “approved” apps as opposed to the unlimited options available for PCs. That’s where jailbreaking comes in.…

A Tim Burton-Inspired Short About A Little Girl Who Gets A Pet Piranha

Pets can be an excellent way to teach kids about responsibility and how to treat living creatures, but not all pets are a great idea for kids. And when the little girl in this cheerfully macabre short film accidentally ends up with murderous piranha instead of a goldfish, things get bloody very quickly. Jordan Blum…

Our Chemicals Are Falling On Remote Parts of Antarctica In Snow

You probably haven’t heard of “cyclic volatile methylsiloxanes,” but you’ve almost certainly rubbed them into your skin. They’re widely used in lotions and cosmetics to create that smooth, satisfying feel. And now scientists are finding—to their surprise—these chemicals in remote parts of Antarctica. In 2009, a group of scientists took soil, plant, phytoplankton, and krill…