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This Animal Is Almost Impossible to Kill

Hydras are tentacled, freshwater animals that vaguely resemble tiny sea anemones. They’re rather unremarkable except for one trait: if they’re torn into tiny pieces, they can reassemble themselves. At the Conversation blog, Rebecca Helm, who studies jellyfish and other sea life at Brown University, has instantly won my admiration by describing the Hydra as the…

Usagi Sounds Perfectly Annoying In The New English Dub Of Sailor Moon

This is not a bad thing. If you’re a Sailor Moon fan, you know Usagi — at least early on in her career as a Sailor Scout — sounds like an immature girl who’s on the verge of crying at any given moment. Voice actress Stephanie Sheh nails it in Viz’s new English dub of…

America’s Littlest Black Ops Whirlybird Is Armed to the Teeth

Operation Eagle Claw was supposed to free 52 diplomats held during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Its failure not only shamed President Carter’s administration and paved the way for Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential run, it also instigated the formation of the Army’s Special Operations Command, and the development of this petite powerhouse: the MH-6 Little Bird.…

Victorian Naturalist Dissects A Robot, And The Results Are Creepylovely

The Victorians sure loved to dissect and categorize. What if one of their famed naturalists got his or her hands on a robot? That’s the fanciful idea behind this art by Oliver-Quellette, called “Victorian Robot Autopsy; Rose, Wax and Creosote.” This artwork is appearing in a group show in Santa Fe, NM called “Hard &…

BlackBerry’s Finalllllllllllllllly Getting Its Own Siri-Like Assistant

Today, BlackBerry is giving us our first look at one of the key features of BB 10.3: A voice assistant. Like everything else the company formerly known as RIM does these days, BlackBerry Assistant would have been revolutionary years ago. Today, it’s just an obvious feature that’s too late to make it a differentiator. The…

​If You Want a Glimpse of the Future Food Wars, Look to Hawaii

After Hawaii banned GMO crops, local farmers say they have no idea whether their plants are illegal or not. Plus, it’s unclear whether the state even has the right to enforce this ban in the first place. The Aloha State is about to become ground zero for the U.S. food wars. Hawaii might seem an…

Blackmagic announced today that they are cutting the price of the Pocket Cinema Camera to $495, down from the original $995. Half off! Dang! The deep discount is only in effect until August 31st, so act quickly.

Buzz Aldrin once punched a moon hoaxer in the face

Amazingly, there are still some people who don’t think we landed on the moon. These people are complete idiots, to put it kindly. Back in 2002, Buzz Aldrin punched one of those idiots after being followed and harassed at a hotel in Beverly Hills. You can see video of the altercation below. “Why don’t you…

Here’s the Shiny Cover of William Gibson’s New Novel!

With this exclusive io9 reveal, at last we’ve got a solid glimpse of William Gibson’s long-awaited novel,The Peripheral, coming out October 28. This is the first time in two decades that the author of Neuromancer has written a book set in the far future. Gibson himself is ecstatic about the cover, and explained why to…

Experience Tour de France Mayhem First-Hand From New On-Bike Cameras

If you’ve been watching the Tour de France you know that it’s been one of the more brutal tours in recent years, with intense weather conditions and terrible crashes that have led to several top contenders abandoning the tour already. It’s also the first year that riders are allowed to put cameras on their bikes—so…

New Big Hero 6 Trailer Is Surprisingly Dark

Whoa, we did not see this dark reveal coming in the new Japanese international trailer for Marvel’s Big Hero 6. Spoilers ahead. Turns out the little boy is an orphan? Or maybe that’s his brother, or dad? I don’t know. But it looks like whoever appeared in the video is the original inventor of Baymax…

Amazon’s Prepping a “Kindle Unlimited” Subscription Service For Books

Amazon is testing an ebook rental service called “Kindle Unlimited,” as GigaOm pointed out today. The e-commerce company put up test pages for the service, which will offer “unlimited access to 600,000 titles.” Users would pay $10 a month for access to the online lending library. The question is: Will they? Amazon already offers a…

Humans Have Been Going to the Moon for Almost Half a Century

Forty-five years ago today, Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center on humanity’s first crewed mission to the surface of the moon. This view of Earth was captured from Apollo soon after translunar injection, just as the spacecraft was breaking away from our planet’s orbit. Humans haven’t been back to the moon since 1972, but…

The FBI’s Worried That Self-Driving Cars Could Be Turned Into Weapons

An internal FBI report obtained byThe Guardian speculates about what the roads will look like when they’re packed with driverless cars. And because it’s the FBI, there’s a gloomy analysis of how criminals could exploit our autonomous automotive future. The Strategic Issues Group report obtained by The Guardian analyzes the many potential law enforcement and…

Who’s Really to Blame When Netflix Slows Down?

If you’re a Netflix customer on Verizon, there’s a good chance you’ve spending a lot more time with that bright red buffering screen than you’d like. That’s why, over the past few weeks, Netflix and Verizon have been displacing blame by taking pot shots at each other. But while they’re busy bickering, we’re the ones…

20 Screenwriting Tricks And Tropes We Never Need To See Again

Pop culture is a never-ending source of wonder and amazement. We’re seeing some really top-notch, innovative writing across every medium right now. But there’s also a lot of tired, warmed-over stuff, that feels copy-pasted from script to script. Here are 20 screenwriting moves we’d be happy never to see again. 1) “He’s right behind me,…

This Lego Super Mario Bros aquarium is the coolest aquarium of all time

Kelsey Kronmiller, a graphic designer, designed this amazing LEGO aquarium, which is about 90% done and “entirely coated in “Krylon Fusion,” a clear enamel recommended by aquarists to protect fish.” I love all the little details. This is such a cute build and totally makes me want to build a Lego aquarium. She plans on…

First Official Look At Ultron In Avengers 2!

Oh, and Iron Man’s new armor and Captain America’s uniform but OH MY GOD IT’S ULTRON AND HIS ROBOT MINIONS. This is obviously the cover for Entertainment Weekly’s Comic-Con issue — which has the first Avengers: Age of Ultron synopsis, too. From EW: For better or worse (trust us, it’s worse), his Tony Stark has…

Biologists Have Finally Realized That Animals Don’t Live in Flatland

Animals live their lives in three dimensions. By incorporating data from the third, vertical dimension – elevation, altitude, or depth – scientists can finally have a more accurate understanding of how animals move. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions was an 1884 parable written to satirize the hierarchies of Victorian culture, but it also provides…

Which Animals Can Differentiate Between Languages?

Talking to animals, including baby human animals, is a waste of time. They don’t know what you’re saying. But there has been an experiment that proves certain animals they do know what language you’re saying it in. Scientists at the University of Barcelona have figured out that animals can distinguish between different human languages. How…