Latest

The GIF Guide To Pigeons And The Animals That Eat Them

Pigeons are everywhere. New York City, alone, is thought to harbor as many as 7-million of them. But where are all the dead pigeons? The short answer: Inside other animals. The long answer – horribly, but necessarily – involves GIFs. Photo Credit: Carlos Larios via flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 WARNING: This Post Contains Graphic…

These Fish Look Like They’re Casting Spells

When you think about mechanisms that animals use to avoid becoming dinner, clever adaptations like poisons or pointy spikes come to mind. But the Ostracod, a type of zooplankton, uses something a little more magical. To avoid being eaten by a Cardinal fish, they excrete a sudden blast of luminescent chemicals that act almost like…

This Tiny Audio Mixer Would Let You Turn Smartphones Into Turntables

Want to mix music in a hurry or on the go? You’ll like the sound of Openmix, a teensy new audio mixing tool being developed right now. With it, you can connect your iPhone to a Walkman with a cassette of rare bongo concerts, or switch between your laptop and tablet. It’s just a super…

​The Defiance Season 2 Finale Defiantly Kicked Some Ass

When io9 does its “Best TV of 2014” this year, I’m going to vote Defiance for “Most Improved Show.” If that category doesn’t exist, I’m going to create it. Because while Defiance isn’t a masterpiece, it’s so much better than it used to be, and this excellent two-part finale showed all the reasons why. There’s…

A Rad Mini Grappling Gun You Can Make Out of Desk Clutter

When I was in grade school, I used poorly engineered retractable pen cannons to fire tiny beads at my friends an enemies during class. I thought it was pretty cool but this mini grappling gun puts all my pre-adolescent tinkering to shame. In a quick and easy step-by-step mist8k shows you exactly how you can…

What Happens When You Try To 3D Print A Rocket Engine?

Engineers at NASA found out in the test video above, when they assembled these 3D-printed rocket engine injectors, and put them up against a temperature of over 6,000º F and 20,000 pounds of thrust. The test of the rocket engine injector, as you can see, was successful, with the machine emerging from its brief run…

This Flat-Pack Water Bottle Can Squeeze Inside a Laptop Bag

A backpack’s got plenty of pouches and pockets for storing a water bottle, but a sleek messenger bag? Good luck fitting a Nalgene in there without an unsightly bulge. You’ll either need to go without and keep an eye out for drinking fountains, or toss a few dollars towards these Kickstarted flat-pack water bottles. Called…

Darkness and Whimsy: The Art of Fairy Tale Game Woolfe

In Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries, players guide Red Riding Hood through mazes and puzzles while battling steampunk soldiers and fairy tale menaces. Check out this gallery of concept art that shows off the game’s distinctive, Anton Pieck-inspired aesthetic. Belgian studio GRIN is developing Woolfe for a variety of platforms, with an ongoing Kickstarter to…

America’s first roller coaster began as a railway for transporting coal

If you’re wondering how people first decided plummeting downhill inside a rickety box on wheels seemed like a good time, look no further than the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway in Pennsylvania. What began as a railway for shooting coal down the mountain turned into a destination for thousands of tourists in the late 19th century.…

The Navy Built Its Own Indoor Ocean to Test Ships

The world’s seven seas may be wildly unpredictable, but if you ever find yourself itching to play Poseidon, you might want to consider enlisting. Because at the Naval Surface Warfare Center just outside Washington, D.C., the Navy gets to control every inch of its very own indoor ocean. And now, thanks to 216 newly acquired…

You Can Use A Vibrator To Give Yourself Powerful Body Illusions

How can I put this delicately? Do you have a vibrating toothbrush? A personal body massager? If you do, you can perform some amazing sensory illusions, like making your nose seem huge or your waist small. Finally, an excuse to give the TSA agents when they search your bags! Look online for simple sensory illusions…

80% of Americans took a week’s vacation in 1976. Just 56% will in 2014.

In Australia every full time worker is guaranteed four weeks of paid vacation each year. In Japan, it’s 10 days. Canada? A minimum of 10 days of paid vacation. Here in the U.S.? Zero. Just as the United States is the only wealthy country in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave, it’s also…

Why Aren’t We Fully Monitoring These Active Volcanoes in the U.S.?

The U.S. is one of the most volcanically rich countries in the world, with 169 active volcanoes. 57 of them are deemed high threats. But efforts to predict potential eruptions are being hampered by outdated equipment and lack of funding for scientific monitoring. As we are currently seeing in Iceland, volcanoes can show signs of…

Crash & Learn: The most important life rule in one beautiful short

This is the story of Aleksander Aurdal, a Norwegian freestyle skier who fully understands the most important rule in life: You need to crash to learn and progress. Repeatedly. In sports. In your job. In love. In life. Even Nature itself knows this—existence itself is a chain of failures and successes. Aleksander went to the…

The most extreme marathon deserves an extremely cool ad like this one

This ad is so cool it makes me want to run the Mizuno Uphill Marathon, one of the toughest and most demanding races I’ve ever heard of. It takes place at the gorgeous Serra do Rio do Rastro, a beautiful mountain in Brasil with a winding road with a drop of 4,658 feet (1,429 meters.)…

Russia Responds To Canada’s Sarcastic Geography Lesson

Russia has fired back at Canada’s NATO delegation in response to a snarky Ukraine tweet that went viral earlier this week. Canada’s Joint Delegation to NATO fired the first shot by sending this message to Moscow on Wednesday. The tweet was in response to a video which appeared to show Russian soldiers inside Ukraine’s eastern…

The Ebola outbreak currently ravaging West Africa likely started with a single infected person. This is actually good news because it meansthe current strain is descended from the original Ebola viral jump, and not new versions of the pathogen. It also means the current public health response is the right one.

Why Ikea’s Mostly Computer Generated Catalog Will Soon Be the Norm

The rooms in Ikea’s catalogs may look like wonderlands of inexpensive furniture, but they’re mostly computer generated. Like, 75 percent computer generated. The Swedish juggernaut has experimented with CG product shots for almost a decade now, and it’s getting incredibly good at it. But it’s far from the only company doing it. We learned about…

A rock so fantastically beautiful that it’s hard to believe is real

This looks like some 3D rendering of a fantastic alien matter that can’t possibly exist on Earth. But, being the amazing planet we live in, it is actually a real thing: “A bismuth crystal illustrating the many iridescent refraction hues of its oxide surface.” We live in a wonderful world, people. SPLOID is a new…

An Interactive Map Lets You See Photos Of Earth Tweeted By Astronauts

Did the astronauts aboard the International Space Station snap a photo of where you live from orbit? Now you can find out, thanks to an interactive map of more than 650 pictures that the astronauts shared with the world on Twitter. The map was created by Dave MacClean, a faculty member at the Centre of…