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Take the Staircase Down to the Clouds to Fetch a Pail of Water

When the wells go dry and the only source of clean water is in the sky, there’s one solution. A daily trek up and down a single staircase to get what’s needed. This is “down to the clouds and collect sky from a well” by Tiesei, an Escher-like work that flips sky and ground, leaving…

Peeking In On A Protostar and A Not-Quite-Star Hiding In Clouds of Chaos

What happens when you take observations of a gas cloud, a protostar, and a pre-star dense core of gas, and model them with turbulence? A downright hypnotizing model at how multiple star systems may form. A gas cloud 450 light years away in the constellation Taurus hosts not just a newborn protostar, but a dense…

Guy with superhuman lungs can make a hot water bottle explode

Meet Brian Jackson, an 11-time Guinness World Record holder who’s probably a mutant with the lungs of a giant. He can make those red hot water rubber bottles explode in 51.98 seconds. Those bottles need 170 pounds of pressure to blow up so yeah, Jackson’s breath is basically superhuman. Jackson says doing one of these…

Fermenting beer time lapse shows one beautiful breathing sludge monster

Watching the fermentation process of beer is a lot like seeing a brown sludge monster grow in strength. It’s not pretty. But then you remember how delicious beer tastes and how wonderful it makes you feel and you forgive it for looking so unsightly. Or at least I did. I think this time lapse is…

Star Wars Undergoes a Calendar Crisis

Much like the introduction of the Gregorian calendar to replace the Julian calendar, so has a series of tweets from Leland Chee, the keeper of the holocron, turned the Star Wars universe on its head. For those not content to place the whole of the universe in some nebulous “long time ago,” there was a…

These unreal burgers may be inedible but I want to eat them all anyway

I’ve been craving a good burger lately and looking at these fantastic burger pictures from Fat & Furious is not helping me at all. Some of them look absolutely delicious, others look crazy and surreal, and all of them are photoshopped and heavily styled. It doesn’t matter: I would like a bite of every single…

The Hardest-Living Musician With The Most Beautiful Voice

Musicians are notoriously hard-living, but there’s one man who, based on deeply affectionate and incredibly wild stories from his (famous) friends, really and truly went for it. Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) is a fantastic introduction to the singer-songwriter whose flawless voice belied a decidedly imperfect, human existence. Here…

One Of The Most Wonderful Dance Showdowns In Science Fiction History

The 1983 Alien spoof The Creature Wasn’t Nice (aka Naked Space) is painfully unfunny, despite the presence of Leslie Nielsen, Cindy Williams, Patrick Macnee and others. But this sequence at the end, where they confront the killer alien with a synchronized dance routine, is absolutely perfect. Usually, when you watch something as terrible as Naked…

This Meta Movie Trailer Is Set to the Absolute Perfect Tune

The trailer for Birdman, starring Michael Keaton as a washed-up actor and former star of a superhero franchise (heh) who’s trying to stage a comeback with a play he wrote to direct and star in himself, looks like all kinds of meta cinematic insanity—set to a sweet cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” for…

The Desolate State of Athens Olympic Venues 10 Years Later

Ten years ago this week, the Summer Olympics triumphantly returned to their historic home with splashy opening ceremonies in Athens, Greece. Unfortunately, the glory did not last after the Games. While the dilapidated state of Athens’ venues post-Games has been well-documented, new photos taken this week show just how devastating the Olympics were for the…

Microsoft’s First Website From 1994 Looks Delightfully Ancient Today

In 1994, there were just a few thousand websites on the internet. HTML was still new, and the concept of web publishing was still embryonic. It was the year that Microsoft launched its own website—and today, to celebrate its 20th anniversary on the web, the companydug that old website up and put it back online.…

Boston police with a pile of “subversive” literature, confiscated during the post-WWI Red Scare in November of 1919. [Getty] For more on the “First Red Scare” in America and how it shaped the post-WWII Red Scare, check out Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States, 1919-1943 by Regin Schmidt at…

How An Architect Who Has Never Left North Korea Imagines The Future

North Korea’s architecture is truly fascinating, influenced by the need to rebuild Pyongyang in the wake of the Korean War and the nation’s relative isolation. What happens when an architect who has never been outside North Korea designs futuristic buildings to accommodate tourists visiting their country? Top Image: A Self-Sustaining Silk Cooperative, Credit: Koryo Group.…

Put This Compact Grill On a Stick To Turn a Campfire Into a BBQ

Believe it or not, when camping you can’t just survive on toasted marshmallows and s’mores. You need vitamins and protein to keep you fuelled through canoe trips and hikes, but don’t toss that pointy stick just yet. Grandpa’s FireGrill is compact enough to bury in a backpack, but jam a stick into the end and…

Brutus The Three-Legged Croc Enjoys A Sharky Snack

At first, you might think that Croc vs. Shark is just something that gets discussed in the writers’ rooms at SyFy. But there are some places in the world where crocs and sharks do swim the same waters. Like in Australia. Brutus, the 18-foot local celebrity (who, according to legend, lost his front arm to…

The Facebook Messenger App Migration Officially Starts Today

The Great Unbundling has begun. Recode reports Facebook has begun to shut off access to chat within its main app. We’ve known about Facebook’s plan to make everyone use Messenger by disabling chat within the main Facebook app for a while now, but itjust started rolling out to people in the U.S. If you still…

Roving Robots Can Look Through Buildings Using Nothing But Wi-Fi

Previously, we’ve seen researchers use everyday Wi-Fi signals like radar, able to detect shapes through a door or wall. Well, here’s the logical next step toward the robot overthrow: Putting that tech on top of wheeled robots. You can run (okay, walk), but hiding behind a brick wall is futile. Dr. Yasamin Mostofi and her…

How Can Batman Stay An “Urban Legend” In A World of Surveillance?

In a lot of versions of the Batman story, he’s an “urban legend” — nobody has ever seen him or photographed him, and few even believe he exists. But could that even work, with surveillance cameras and cameraphones everywhere? Top image: Alex Ross. In a discussion about today’s “Morning Spoilers,” Tonii said Batman as an…

See Inside a Living Mouse Brain Thanks to Lasers and Carbon Nanotubes

The living brain has always been a tricky thing to study. How do you figure out what’s going on without poking, prodding, and jostling the brain so much that it’s not working right? A relatively non-invasive new technique developed by neuroscientists at Stanford and Massachusetts General Hospital uses a laser and fluorescent carbon nanotubes to…

Groot Was Inspired By James Gunn’s Dog—That Explains A LOT

Did you wonder why it was so wondrously easy to open your heart to the lovely sort-of-talking tree creature Groot? Because he’s an amalgam of everything that is adorable in this world, including director James Gunn’s dog, Dr. Von Spears. We spoke to Gunn about the secret origins of the movie version of Groot: You…