Latest

Circa 1935: Cortlandt Street’s “Radio Row” in lower Manhattan at night. The first radio shop on the street, City Radio, opened in 1921 and soon after other radio shops started opening nearby. New York’s “Radio Row” was torn down in 1966 to make room for construction of the World Trade Center. [Getty Images]

What Are The Best Examples of Real People Making Fictional Cameos?

The boundary between fact and fiction can be surprisingly permeable, with life sometimes imitating art and art sometimes returning the favor. Here are some of the real people who made that boundary even more fluid, by showing up in fictional settings. Image: JL8 by Yale Stewart, via commenter Bat21 In response to author Paul Cornell’s…

The Coolest Trampoline On Earth Is Suspended Inside a Huge Cavern

You’ve jumped on one trampoline, you jumped on them all, right? Wrong, you cynical sad sack. The mother of all trampolines is currently being readied for its public unveiling inside a series of caverns in Wales. Yep: It’s a network of trampolines hung from the walls of an old slate mine. In the Welsh mining…

Would This Building Make You Want to Eat Bugs?

As you already know, we’re going to have to start eating bugs if we want to avoid mass starvation in the near future. But how do people from non-bug-eating cultures get over the ick factor? Swedish architecture firm Belatchew Arkitekter has come up with a plan so bizarre it just might work. https://gizmodo.com/should-you-really-start-eating-insects-509900937 Their idea…

Tupac: Changes

Today would have been Tupac’s 43rd birthday, so what better time than tonight to post the classic “Changes”? It’s a great song—not Tupac’s biggest hit, but still significant. The cruel irony of it, however, is despite the message, Tupac himself ultimately fell victim to violence himself. But time certainly did not forget him, and he…

“WildLeaks” is like WikiLeaks But For Wildlife Crimes

Wildlife-related crimes comprise the fourth largest category of international crimes, after drugs and trafficking in humans and arms. A new, anonymous reporting tool helps whistleblowers fight back. At The Guardian, journalist Damian Carrington writes: The WildLeaks website, which uses Tor technology to ensure anonymity, has been set up by Andrea Crosta, a security consultant who…

Why Hexagons Are The Best Building Block For Bees and Their Hives

Honeycomb is hexagonal. Not circular. Not square. Not triangular. Why did bees settle on that particular shape? It was no accident; like many of their compatriots in the animal kingdom, it turns out the lil’ insects are excellent mathematicians and stellar architects. The repeated pattern makes perfect sense when you take a closer look at…

This Is Disney’s Idea of How to Dress the Kids Of Fairy Tale Villains

Disney’s brand new, live-action series about the spawn of all the famous fairy tale villains being let out of their hereditary prison camp, The Descendants, has released its first image. And now we know what Cruella De Vil’s son “Carlos” looks like. Amazing. He looks amazing. I’ve already ranted about my many, many concerns with…

Terrifying, Century-Old Photographs from Neuroscience Experiments

An 1862 monograph by pioneering French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875) is full of disturbing photos of human subjects. Using electrodes, the scientist triggered muscular contractions in their faces. You know, for science. The scientist was trying to figure out whether there was some kind of evolutionary basis for facial expressions, so he would…

This is what would happen if Earth stopped spinning right now

Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning right now? For you it would be like being in a car at 1000 miles per hour and stopping dead in your tracks—you would die instantly. But, believe it or not, it gets even worse after that, as this video explains. The…

Why Washing Raw Chicken Could Be Hazardous To Your Health

Some two-fifths of people wash raw chicken in preparation for cooking. But health experts say the practice could cause more harm than good. According to the Food and Standards Agency (FSA) in the United Kingdom, washing raw chicken can spread harmful bacteria on to hands, work surfaces, clothing, and cooking equipment through splashed water. The…

The Origami Wheels on These Robots Change Shape As They Roll

If you thought origami was just a delicate, ornamental art, then come meet these robots. These (deliberately) deformable little wheelers can climb over obstacles, squeeze under crevasses, and basically change gears automatically. At the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation this month, two research projects from Seoul National University had led to clever origami-inspired…

This Map Reveals Where Our Future Water Wars Will Begin

As droughts intensify around the world, the stand-off over who gets access to which water sources is becoming more and more fraught. Here are the places around the globe where the competition for water has already begun playing itself out. Map: Pitch Interactive for Popular Science Popular Science had the map put together from data…

The Surprisingly Accurate Science of the Romantic Comedy

Traditional rom-coms are a dying genre, but perhaps hard science fiction fans should mourn their loss. These films’ characters and plots are more grounded in psychological realism than most science fiction films ever made. The Pratfall Effect One of the great staples of the romantic comedy is the pratfall. Sometimes it’s literal. Romantic heroines have…

Measured and Perceived Shaking from a Vancouver Island Earthquake

Victoria, British Columbia experienced a tiny earthquake this afternoon. It poses no threat, but its location within a dense seismograph network and proximity to population centers make it an ideal case study for comparing measured and perceived shaking. The earthquake was located just off the southeast tip of Vancouver Island at 1:37 pm local time,…

Real-Time Waste Water Analysis Can Show Who’s On What Drugs, and Where

After a hard night of partying, the metabolized chemical remnants of whatever you snorted, smoked, sucked, or injected are expelled through your urine. While authorities have long been able to detect these metabolites through direct urine tests, monitoring drug use in any given geographic region has been far less precise—until now, that is. https://gizmodo.com/how-to-pass-a-urine-test-or-at-least-stand-a-fighting-1552844463 In…

How dogs react when a human dog impersonator barks at them

Voice actor Rudi Rok can do a pitch-perfect dog impersonation. Watch him interacting with actual dogs in this interesting video experiment. I really really wish science came up with a working human-dog-human translator. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

What Was the Greatest Ending That Wasn’t Really an Ending?

So you’re reading or watching a story, and BAM it just ends, right there in the middle of everything. Sometimes the greatest way to end a science fiction or fantasy story is just to leave people dangling, wondering what happened next. What’s your favorite example of a story that did it well? In fancy literary…

The Galaxy S5 (and Other Android Phones) Are Easier to Root Than Ever

Famed hacker Geohot has released a tool called Towelroot that will allow you to root your Galaxy S5, along with a number of other prominent Android devices. Geohot, the hacker behind a number of iOS jailbreaks and the target of Sony’s legal team after hacking the PS3 a few years back has turned his sights…

See The Alternate Opening Of How To Train Your Dragon 2 In Comic Form

The acclaimed sequel to How to Train Your Dragon originally had a very different prologue, highlighting the movie’s new characters and dragons. One story artist shows us how that opening could have looked by drawing a comic version of the whole thing. Inspired by director Dean DeBlois’ earlier script and ideas, Johane Matte has posted…