Latest

The Scientific Formula for Perfect Eggnog

Have you ever felt like making boozy eggnog is a total crapshoot? Half the time you get a smooth and delicious cocktail, and half the time it’s a lumpy, curdled mess. What gives? Turns out there’s a formula you ought to be following. Here’s the scientific secret that will get you a silky nog every…

We’re All The Questing Robot In This Bleak Existential Film

A robot’s quest for meaning unfolds with beautiful despair in the short film We Were Not Made for This World. Let the stark and lovely visuals wash over you as you listen to the tale of the robot’s search for the beings who created him. Colin West McDonald directed this short, adapted from the comic…

Everyone Is Torrenting The Interview 

After much humming and hawing, Sony released The Interview to the internet yesterday, charging $6 for the privilege of seeing a CGI Kim Jong-Un go pop. And, because this is the internet, hundreds of thousands of people are repaying the favor by torrenting the crap out of it. According to estimates from TorrentFreak(which are in…

These Festive Bots Are Just As Excited About the Holidays As You Are

Every year the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zurich trots out its weird and wonderful robotic creations adorned with festive garb as one of the more entertaining video holiday cards you’ll see every year. At this point it’s almost as much a holiday tradition as watching Charlie Brown or the Grinch on TV, and though…

The Book Of Strange New Things Will Blow You Away

Michael Faber’s new novel The Book of Strange New Things pulls a neat trick. At first, you think it’s going to be about a human trying to explain our culture — and specifically Christianity — to aliens on the planet Oasis. But at some point, you realize it’s about the fate of humanity, instead. And…

Fly Swarms Reveal Something Profound About the Human Brain

We think of our brains as single, unified organs. But a new set of experiments with flies reveals that certain brain cells in these insects respond exclusively to crowd behavior. And that leads to an interesting question: Did cells in the animal brain evolve to think using something akin to the wisdom of fly swarms?…

It’s Snowing in the Grand Canyon Right Now, and It Looks Beautiful

Thanks to the wonderful Twitter feed from the park rangers at the Grand Canyon National Park, we have this incredible shot of a light dusting of snow that fell over the Grand Canyon today.

Hackers Are Attacking PSN and Xbox Because Christmas Spirit Is Dead

Since late last night, it looks like a bunch of hackers have been attacking the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live online gaming services. Merry Christmas 2014, everyone! The PSN status page is currently listing its services as online, although the official Twitter support page acknowledges that some users “may be having issues logging in”. The…

Watch This Supercut Of Santas Behaving Badly

Being Santa can be hard work — all that ho-ho-hoing and bouncing kids on your knee really takes its toll. So much easier to just be a drunken bearded degenerate instead. JoBlo have made an excellent supercut celebrating all the notable Santas Gone Wild in movie history. Between drinking, beating people up, and the occasional…

Impressive new image of Saturn from above the ecliptic plane

Our friend Val Klavans sent me a Christmas present this morning: A color photo of Saturn as you would have seen it if you were riding the spacecraft Cassini on December 21, 2014. Saturn’s north polar hexagon stands out prominently while the rings encircle the planet. You can see the hexagon storm on its north…

Chaos ensues as armored truck spills $4.5 million on a street

Dozens of Hong Kong motorists and pedestrians rushed to grab loads of money after an armored truck’s doors opened by accident on a busy road, spilling about 4.5 million US dollars in HK$500 notes (US$65) on Christmas Eve, reports the South China Morning Post. Check out all those frantic bastards. Police has asked the people…

The 10 Most Bone-Chillingly Inappropriate Christmas Movies

Yeah, there’s a soft spot in our coal-black hearts for the uplifting likes of A Christmas Story and It’s A Wonderful Life. But sometimes, the holidays call for a little more darkness. A little more mayhem. A little more murder. Inappropriate? Maybe. But that’s the way we like it. 1) Black Christmas (1974) No list…

The Marvel Movie Universe, In Completely Chronological Order

Comics blogger Michael Furth, editor of The Comic Archive, decided he needed a new way to appreciate the Marvel cinematic universe. So he painstakingly edited all the movies (and some Agents of SHIELD episodes) into chronological order to create the Marvel Omnibus Phase 1, a 12-hour extravaganza. Furth explains everything you’ll need to make your…

This 1.2 million-year-old stone tool found in Turkey shows that the ancestors of humans, Homo erectus, were hanging around in Turkey long before we evolved. Something about the region has long been attractive to us. Over a million years after this tool was made, humans built some of the world’s first cities in the same…

Dads With Drones Are Ruining Christmas

Lots of thoughtful people gave their father a drone this Christmas, because they had already gotten him a Kindle last year and an iPad the year before that and you sort of stall out on gift ideas from there. But! Drones can be difficult, and dads can be clumsy*, and the result has been nationwide…

How to Use Your Fancy New Camera Like a Pro

Congratulations, you just scored an awesome new camera. Welcome to our annual guide to getting started with your new tool. Whether you’re shooting on a DSLR, mirrorless, or a top-notch point-and-shoot, these tips will get you on your way. The rest is up to you. What do I need to buy? Extra lenses All but…

Watch The 2001 Intro With The Original Score That Kubrick Rejected

It’s hard to imagine that 2001: A Space Odyssey would have its incredible cinematic impact without that classical soundtrack. But director Stanley Kubrick originally hired a composer to score the film, only to abandon the score in postproduction. Kubrick tapped Alex North, who had scored a number of classic films, including Kubrick’s own Spartacus, to…

Building the Force: When L.A.-based Westside UrbanForum handed out its annual architecture awards, it bestowed cheeky “Darth Vader Awards” on a pair of memorable structures: Peter Zumthor’s “foreboding, jet black LACMA expansion,” and Renzo Piano’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum, which has a “helmet-looking theater.”

What the City of New York Did to “Typhoid Mary” Was Pretty Horrific

Mary Mallon, an immigrant woman working in New York City in the early 1900s, became the most famous symbol of infectious disease in the United States. But the true story behind “Typhoid Mary” is more terrifying — and depressing — than you ever realized. The Traveling Typhoid Epidemic Typhoid was one of the twentieth century’s…

How to Set Up Your New iPhone the Right Way

You got a new iPhone! Maybe it’s a slightly bigger iPhone 6 or a bigger-still 6 Plus. Either way, what now? Here’s what you need to get started with your new iPhone, whether you’re a first-timer or an iOS pro. Charging Tip As with any smartphone, the iPhone’s weakest link is its battery. Treating your…