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How to Grow Food in the Middle of a Desert Using Seawater

As conventional sources of clean water dry up, we’re looking ever farther, wider, and deeper. In a long feature on unusual sources of water, Nature leads us somewhere especially unexpected—into the middle of a desert. The Sahara Forest Project wants to prove we can green the desert, turning barren land into oases of cucumbers and…

Warner Bros. Is Developing A Scooby-Doo Reboot

But will they ever solve the mystery of how Shaggy can hear a dog talk? Deadline is reporting that Warner Bros. has appointed Randall Green to create a brand-new Scooby-Doo franchise. But will they use a CG dog? Yes, the answer is probably yes. I actually didn’t hate the first live-action reboot with Freddie Prinze…

Gravity Falls Is Back August 1 With Lots To Look Forward To

Disney’s answer to the likes of Adventure Time and The Regular Show returns at the beginning of August for its second season. The new season will give the cast plenty to do, with new creatures to combat and plenty of weird stuff going on in the Mystery Shack. Specifically, Dipper and Mabel will continue unraveling…

Relive June 17th, 1994: The Craziest Day in Modern Sports History

Twenty years ago today you were glued to your TV watching OJ Simpson lead the LAPD on a low-speed chase in that now-infamous white Bronco. But that wasn’t the only thing happening. 30 for 30: June 17, 1994 is the story of that and several unrelated sports developments that serendipitously happened on the same day.…

20-year-old makes amazing portraits just using colored pencils

20-year-old self-taught illustrator Heather Rooney has an uncanny ability to capture people’s faces in photorealistic drawings made just colored pencils. So picture perfect that they look like printed photos—but they are not. Check out her time-lapse videos. Here’s LeBron James. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

The Story Behind the Foam That World Cup Refs Use To Stop Cheating

If you’ve been enjoying any of the World Cup matches over the last several days, you’ve likely seen a new addition to the referee’s arsenal: a spray-on foam. And if you’re not a soccer expert, you’ve probably wondered where it came from. So what is this stuff and how do I get it off my…

The British Government Just Set a Dangerous Precedent for Online Spying

Today, the British government revealed its justification for surveilling its citizens’ every move on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. UK citizens communicating using the aforementioned services are considered to be using “external communications,” as the companies are not based in the UK. It’s a distinction with staggering implications. Charles Farr, the Director General of…

“White Blood Cell Chases Bacteria” Is Our New Favorite Suspense Movie

From a nail-bitingly tense chase sequence all the way to a seemingly impossible run down an all too narrow alleyway, this video of a ridiculously-dogged white blood cell in hot pursuit of some fleeing bacteria is a master class in suspense done right. The video sequence above depicts a neutrophil dodging through a path of…

Adebisi Shank: Thunder

I love words. I love them on their own, and also in my music. But when I listen to Adebisi Shank, that all goes away. I never want to hear words again. Just a badass guitar riff over and over forever. “Genki Shank” off Adebisi Shank’s This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called…

Baroque-Era Drawings Reveal Early Ideas About Evolution

These are works by “the greatest French artist of all time,” according to Louis XIV. Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) used his artistry to compare human and animal faces, later inspiring Charles Darwin to write The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Bear Boar Camel Cat (via Charles Le Brun) Cow Crow Donkey (via…

Watch This Diamond-Dusted Robot Saw Through Marble Like It’s Hot Butter

There are lots of fun ways to watch machines show-off: see them play massive Jenga games; ooh and aah as they draw peens and portraits; or, in the case of Carrara Robotics, check out a wire-saw saturated with diamond dust slice through a chunk of marble like it it’s absolutely nothing. One of the coolest…

OK Go’s New Music Video Is Made Up Entirely Of Optical Illusions

Want to trip out your brain for a few minutes? Watch OK Go’s new music video for their song “The Writing’s on the Wall” and delight in what you can do with mirrors, paint, and objects in the proper position. We thought that nothing could ever top the foursome doing a choreographed routine on treadmills—or…

This Isn’t a Utopian Vision — It’s Actually What London Is Like Today

There’s a common sense idea that cities are the opposite of nature. And yet if you look at this visualization of green space and gardens in London, what you’ll find is that this giant metropolis contains more plants and wildlife than buildings. This image is part of a campaign to turn London into a “National…

Is There a Brain Region Associated with a Belief in Social Justice?

Some people believe that we could live in a just world where everybody gets what they deserve. Others believe that’s impossible. Now, neuroscientists say they have evidence that the “just world hypothesis” is a cognitive bias that’s connected with a specific part of the brain. This does not mean there is a “social justice center”…

This App Can Tell If a Soccer Ball Needs Air By Listening To It Bounce

Nothing tops talent when it comes to how well a soccer player performs on the field, but believe it or not, how inflated (or under-inflated) a soccer ball is can affect how the ball moves when kicked. You can throw your antiquated pressure gauge away, though, because there’s now an app called BallTune that can…

January 2000: Truck concept vehicle from Ford called “The 24.7” featuring technologies like internet, hands-free mobile phone, real-time route assistance, weather reports and stock read-outs. [Getty Images]

The Insane Plan to Build the World’s Tallest Towers in a Lake in China

These days, ambitious new skyscrapers are blanketed in a cloud of “green” buzzwords. Wind turbines! Hydrogen fuel cells! Insect farms! (Yes, insect farms.) Then there’s Phoenix Towers, which has all of the above and more and looks like this. Let’s call it what it is: a greenwashed dick-measuring contest. The monstrosity, recently unveiled by the…

A Guide to the FBI’s Guide to Twitter Slang

The FBI cares what you have to say on Twitter. It cares so much that it created an 83-page document about “Twitter Shorthand.” The guide includes 2,800 entries that basically amount to every acronym known to man—along with quite a few that I didn’t even know existed. Here’s one: WYLABOCTGWTR. That string of characters evidently…

The Tomb Of Vlad Dracula May Have Been Found In Italy [updated]

Estonian researchers believe the remains of Vlad III — aka Vlad the Impaler and the inspiration for Dracula — are buried in a church in Naples, Italy. But to prove it they may have to open his tomb — which sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea. Update: This now appears to be a rather dubious…

Can You Tell Which Is The Real Gundam Toy And Which Is A Mere Illusion?

We’re suckers for the mind-blowing properties of a perfectly placed anamorphic image. And in this video, there are flat images hiding in a collection of Gundam toys. Can you tell which ones are real? https://gizmodo.com/we-cant-stop-watching-this-anamorphic-optical-illusion-1450080938 Canon and Pixus teamed up to create this perspective-warping video. There’s also a (product promotion-heavy) making-of that shows how all…