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Bloomberg Terminals Have a Secret Craigslist for Crazy Rich People

For about $2,000 a month, Bloomberg Terminals seem like a tremendous waste of money for anyone but the avid trader. But! Did you know that insane price comes with access to a special classifieds section, populated exclusively with stuff from other overpaid Bloomberg subscribers? It’s called POSH, and it’s kind of amazing. BuzzFeed recently took…

Why We Deserve More Bisexual Characters On Television

Today we learned that, in addition to losing his precious cigarettes the TV version of John Constantine will see his bisexuality downplayed, and some of you chimed in with reasons why Constantine should have both male and female lovers. In response to one Hellblazer comics reader who noted that they never realized that Constantine was…

Chris Pratt Was Turned Down For The Roles of James Kirk And Jake Sully

Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t come out until next month, but we’re already pretty sure that Chris Pratt is our new space-opera hotness. And if things had turned out differently, he could have starred in Star Trek. Or Avatar. This weeks’ big Entertainment Weekly cover story about Pratt mentions an odd tidbit — he tried…

Masters of Sex Is Trying to Do Something That’s Almost Impossible

I am obviously the target audience for Masters of Sex because I love romances involving repressed men, but I am also a fan of hot sex scenes and laboratory dramas. Last night’s premiere, however, reminded me that this show does something even harder than creating a story about kinky/repressed geeks. Spoilers ahead. This season is…

Horns Trailer Shows Off Daniel Radcliffe’s Dark Side

Adapted from the Joe Hill novel, this new teaser trailer for Horns shows Daniel Radcliffe in a whole new light—a darker light, and with horns. He looks great. The premise is twisted: “Horns,” a supernatural thriller driven by fantasy, mystery and romance, follows Ig Perrish (Radcliffe), the number one suspect for the violent rape and…

Your Entire Family Can Waste Away the Summer On This Mega Hammock

There’ll never be another fight over who gets to lay in the hammock with this monstrosity strung up in your backyard. The Mega Hammock requires you to find at least four nearby trees (or cranes) for hanging, but when it’s up it looks like it can easily support a group of at least ten loungers—plus…

Two genetic programs have been discovered that turn stem cells into blood. The method, which mirrors the way blood is produced in the body, allows researchers to make both white and red blood cells. Encouragingly, the researchers produced 30 million blood cells for every million stem cells. Image: eurostemcell

Journey Underground to These Eye-Poppingly Incredible Old Mines

Want to know what it would be like to live in a subterranean world? Visit these incredible old mines and see how the Morlocks live. Turda Salt Mine (Salina Turda), Romania, operated between the 2nd century, abandoned in 1932, reopened for tourists in 1992. More than three billion tons of salt was mined here. One…

Here’s The Best And Worst Of The Last Ship In One Short Video

There’s a lot to love about The Last Ship, the TV show about the crew of a heroic Navy destroyer trying to save the world from a global pandemic. But there’s a lot that makes us roll our eyes so hard, we get a headrush. See both aspects of the show in one brief clip.…

See How Much of NYC a Taxi Driver Sees in a Single Day

Everybody’s wondered what it’s like to be a taxi driver. Whether riding in the back of a cab contemplating your existence or watching a Robert De Niro movie, we’ve all contemplated how many passengers it takes to make a day’s wages. Now, thanks to some clever code, you can watch it play out before your…

High Speed Footage Reveals The Alien Mechanics of Fish Feeding

How do you eat if you don’t have any teeth? Combine an independently moving jaw with a delicate, refined use of the principles of fluid dynamics and you’ve got a perfect hunting mechanism. If you’re like me, you haven’t spent all that much time thinking about how fish eat, but it’s pretty incredible. The super…

True Blood Brings Back Everything We Love About This Series

OK, now that was a very good episode of True Blood, mostly because it ended a lot of annoying story lines that no one cared about in favor of delivering piping hot fan service—and one reveal so fantastic it almost caused me to throw both my wine and my cat. Getting right down to business…

What’s The Weirdest Comic Book Adaptation Of All Time?

Everybody knows it’s hard to convert comics to movies, TV or prose fiction. There’s just something about the dynamic storytelling in comics that’s hard to capture in other media. But what’s the most bizarre comics adaptation of all time? Please include a picture or clip (or book cover) for your chosen weird adaptation. And please…

How Painters Used To Make Pigments With Poisons, Mummies, and Gems

When you walk into a museum you’re likely not thinking about chemistry. Yet you probably ought to be. Before the industrial revolution brought us manufactured pigment, painters had to be great chemists—tinkering with rare, expensive, and sometimes downright poisonous chemicals to make colors. At London’s National Gallery this summer, a show called Making Colourlooks at…

io9 Newsstand: Best Short Stories for the Week of July 7 – 12

Summer reading — is it really a thing once you leave primary school? People seem to think it is, from all the summer reading lists that pop up around this time of year. But in between plowing through the novels in your to-read pile, don’t forget to pick up or download some magazines as well.…

The Bone-Chilling Freezer Where 10 Miles of Ancient Ice Are Kept

Since 1993 the USGS has been extracting ice cores from glaciated regions of the world and storing them for research. Scientists keep them in a gigantic walk-in freezer—the National Ice Core Laboratory—located just outside Denver. It’s so freaking cool. The cores are collected from various parts of Antarctica, Greenland, and North America to study climactic…

​A Man Challenges Time Itself To Save His Wife In Comic Epic Ei8ht

Rafael Albuquerque is best known for his haunting art on Vertigo’s American Vampire comics, but he’s running out of time (literally!) in Ei8ht, co-written by Mike Johnson, and due out next February from Dark Horse. We’re thrilled to announce and reveal the first details regarding this chronally challenged scifi epic. io9: What can you tell…

Airbus: Who Needs Real Seats When You Can Straddle Bike Saddles?

Today in Questionable Airbus Patents, it’s not the pilot being displaced; it’s our sweet, precious legroom. And about three-quarters of the seats themselves. We just hope you’re not a fan of personal space, because otherwise—it’s going to be a long flight. This newest patent is all about cutting down on “bulk,” the word here referring…

​The Real Reason the Pentagon Has Downgraded the Iran Missile Threat

An unclassified excerpt of a Defense Department document reveals a subtle, but significant, change in language, which suggests that Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile technology does not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. This year’s Annual Report on Military Power of Iran opens with a two-page executive summary that notes, “Iran has publicly stated it…

Watch Out Chromebooks: Super Cheap Windows 8 Machines Are Coming

Chromebooks are great if you want a super cheap computer, but they’re not without their limitations; you (basically) have to run everything in a browser. And Microsoft is aiming to give them some competition withfull Windows 8 machines around those same, dumb low price points. You know, netbooks. Today at the company’s partner conference, Microsoft…