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George R.R. Martin Previews Winds of Winter! Plus More Star Wars Rumors

Sleepy Hollow gets new characters. Mark Ruffalo talks about the Hulk’s new groove. Extant’s creator explains what the show owes to Doctor Who. Plus Batman v. Superman and Avengers set photos, hints about Once Upon a Time’s version of Elsa and details about Outlander. Spoilers now! Top image: Avengers: Age of Ultron Star Wars We…

4 Parking Garages That You Wouldn’t Mind Getting Lost In

Cars are wonderful things. They take us places, they bring us joy, they’re arguably one of the most important consumer technologies of the last 150 years. Parking garages, on the other hand, are more like a necessary evil. Which is why these designers are trying to make them a little more pleasant to be around.…

This Golf Ball-Sized Magnet Creates Three Metric Tons of Force

This little superconducting magnet may look serene, but it in fact it’s a record breaker, capable of creating three metric tons of force. The magnet beats a record that has stood for over ten years, generating a magnetic field of 17.6 Tesla—that’s more than a typical MRI machine, or about 3,000 times more than a…

Falling crane misses fortunate pedestrian by a few inches

It’s Lucky People Day at Sploid! Watch this guy walking along a sidewalk come insanely close to being flattened by a crane—if he had taken just a second longer things would have ended very different. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Economy Airplane Seats of the Future Will Be More Like First Class

BAE Systems has taken a break from submarines and warships to lavish attention on the humble cattle-class flyer. Its IntelliCabin, a system that integrates passenger controls into a touchscreen tablet interface for fliers and staff, should make standard class a bit more like first. A bit. http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/05/new-nuclear-sub-artful-plops-into-the-sea-beside-cumbria/ The system delivers power to each seat, so…

You Can Now Buy the Super-Private Blackphone for $630

Paranoid? Or just privacy conscious? Well, the Blackphone is an Android handset that promises to keep your secrets safe, and now you can buy one for $630. The super-secure phone has been in the works for some time. While its specs were revealed at the start of the year—a 4.7-inch HD IPS display, 2GHz quad-core…

The best way to put on your pants without using your hands

This guy has a hands-free technique for putting on his pants that is as ridiculous as it is effective—and a total waste of time and energy. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Here’s The Strain Poster FX Had to Take Down

The full poster is below, but yes: worms coming out of eyes was apparently too much for the stomachs of some people and, after complaints, FX has had to start taking the image down. Now, the yuck factor may be a selling point of the show as a whole, but apparently some people were not…

Boston Is Getting Solar-Powered Smart Benches in Its Parks

The next park bench you sit on may be smarter than you think. Boston is rolling out new smart benches to parks around the city, which will use solar power to allow anyone to charge their phone on the go and record data about their surroundings at the same time. The benches, developed by MIT…

Crazy downhill city bike competition looks like a suicidal race

I don’t know how riders cope with the adrenaline of downhill urban mountain bike race. Here’s Andrew Neethling speeding down Bratislava, in Slovakia. Here is the official video so you can see the course from a different perspective: SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Researcher: Facebook Psychology Study Breached Ethical Guidelines

Over the weekend, the internet exploded over the fact that Facebook had conducted psychological experiments on user news feeds. While Zuckerberg’s team doesn’t see a problem with that it did, academic researchers seem think it breached ethical research guidelines. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-did-psych-experiments-on-random-users-to-study-1597385219 James Grimmelmann, professor of law at the University of Maryland, has written an extensive blog…

How Chilies Can Be Used to Treat Pain

Humans are, essentially, sadomasochists. For more 600 years we have sought out, cultivated, eaten, applied to our skin and even weaponized a chemical capable of making us feel heat and pain. Heat, it seems, is desirable. Whether in the kitchen or the bedroom, we have embraced the volcanic properties of the chili pepper to enhance…

Authors Convinced To Cosplay As Their Favorite Fictional Characters

Photographer Cambridge Jones got a bunch of authors to dress as their favorite characters. Above are Terry Jones as Rupert the Bear and Terry Pratchett as Just William. This project begs the question: If you had the chance, what character from your childhood would you dress up as? https://observationdeck.kinja.com/see-authors-cosplaying-as-their-favorite-childhood-cha-1597797884

The US National Archivesplans to upload all its holdings to Wikipedia—and that, apparently, includes so many images that it’s given up counting.

The Last Ship Takes a Stand, Declares “Terrorists Are Bad.”

In its second episode, The Last Ship looked at Guantanamo Bay, with all its associations in politics, ethics, and the media, and decided to answer the difficult question of “Are terrorists bad?” This was an episode that wasn’t really about the disease. It was about getting supplies to the ship and the fact that no…

All the Drugs From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Visualized

This is Raoul Duke’s stash, for a single weekend, in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That is quite a weekend, right there. [Flickographics]

Some random person stuck in a cave? Nope: this is one of the European Space Agency’s astronauts training for life in harsh conditions. Scrabbling through Sardinian caves, they collect scientific data and test equipment and protocols like they could, some day, on an alien world. [ESA]

A Disturbing Mind Trick to Make You “Confess” During Interrogations

So after you got up this morning, had some waffles, and murdered your neighbor, how did you get away from the scene? Did you walk or did you take your car? Answering this question might lead to incarceration due to the Recency Principle. The Recency Principle is pretty simple. If you ask a person a…

Two years ago, Google bought Quickoffice. Since, it’s made it free, ensured it only worked with Google Drive, and then rolled all of its features into Google Drive. And now? It’s being retired: from next week, you’ll be unable to download or install it. So long, Quickoffice.

Things Are Getting Real On the Jurassic World Set

This picture was tweeted by director Colin Trevorrow this morning. It’s not entirely surprising to see that someone meets a bloody end in a Jurassic Park movie, so we’re wondering more about the role a mobile vetrinary unit plays. Here’s the full tweet from Trevorrow: [via Bleeding Cool]