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How To Check Facebook Without Going on Facebook

Here’s the situation: you’re interested in what’s happening in the lives of a few of your friends, but you’re reluctant to open up Facebook lest you get submerged in the usual tide of branded offers, game requests, and inane updates from people you haven’t seen for several years. Don’t worry! There are ways to check…

Peter Capaldi Wrote The Doctor A Report Card—And It Isn’t All Top Marks

We know that Peter Capaldi has long been a huge fan of Doctor Who, but if he were the Doctor’s school teacher, Capaldi would actually give him pretty low grades. The educational charity Cecily’s Fund invited Capaldi to write up this report card for an online auction—and you can bid on it starting June 24th.…

The World’s Smallest Electric Vehicle Is More Compact Than a Carry-On

Trikelet, which is being billed as the world’s smallest electric vehicle, is probably not going to suffice for your morning commute if you’re coming in from the suburbs. But to get you from wherever you park your car to your desk, it sure beats having to fight the rat race on foot. With three wheels…

These Giant Solar Flares Erupted From The Sun This Morning

This morning, astronomers observed an incredibly powerful x-class solar flare erupting from the sun, only to be surprised by what they saw happen just about an hour later: a second x-class flare. Image: The first solar flare (left) and the second (right) / NASA – SDO Just what do two of the most intense class…

Proxemics Is the Science of Why You Shouldn’t Stand So Close to Me

Ever notice how space in a car fills up? How about space in a bus? How about space at a bar? Then you need to know about proxemics. It’s the study of how, precisely, humans like their space arranged — especially when it comes to other humans. After years of taking the bus, I have,…

Giant metal cylinder of unknown origin appears in Siberia

This 16-foot-long metal cylinder of unknown origin recently washed up in a Siberian village following severe flooding. Nobody knows where it came from but Aleksey Yaskin, a professor of aerospace engineering at Biysk Technology University, told Reuters that it may be the first stage of a rocket. This looks like the first stage [of a…

There’s a Whole New Type of Stone And It’s Made From Our Plastic

Congratulations, humanity: After millennia of building cathedrals and toiling over great works of art and science, we’ve finally created something that will far outlast us. It’s called Plastiglomerate, a stone made out of molten plastic, and yes, we should probably be ashamed of ourselves. In a study published yesterday in the Geological Society of America,…

​10 Stand-Alone Star Wars Movies We Actually Want

Disney has put the Star Wars movie-making machine in full gear, and we already have Han Solo and Boba Fett movies in the works. But do we really need more of these two guys? There are so many other great characters to explore, and so many genres that would perfectly adapt to the Star Wars…

Deals: Days of Future Past, Cosmos, E3’s New Games and Hardware

Pre-order the excellent X-Men: Days of Future Past and get it for just $23. [Days of Future Past, $23] Welcome to Kinja Deals Kinja Deals is the Commerce’s Team new take on a traditional, dedicated deals site. We’ll be eschewing our site-by-site curation in favor of putting all the best deals in one place, posting…

Mac OS X Yosemite Under the Magnifying Glass

Apple revealed a sneak peek into Mac OS X Yosemite earlier this week. Not surprisingly, Apple updated its desktop OS to match iOS 7’s design language. The new OS X now embodies a brighter and flatter styling, coupled with icon updates, font changes, and translucent materials. Here’s a quick look at the visual design changes…

The First Genital In An Animal Evolved From An Extra Pair Of Legs

A recent analysis of placoderm fossils — an early jawed vertebrate — shows that the animal kingdom’s first genital organ was a “clasper” that evolved from an extra set of legs, and that the first sexual mating position was likely to have been a missionary one. Above: A bull male Eastmanosteus placoderm. Placoderms were the…

You Won’t Know What’s Real Or What’s Fake In This Baffling Printer Ad

Apparently the best way to sell printers isn’t by boasting about its features, color fidelity, or DPI. It’s by blowing our minds with a bunch of optical illusions that leave us wondering if anything in our lives is actually real, or just a printed ruse. Canon created the ad to hawk its PIXUS printers in…

MakerBot has a new iOS app out that lets you track your 3D-printed projects from afar. You can see an image of what’s being built in real-time, you know, so you don’t end up with colossal failures like these.

That Time When People Thought Playing Chess Would Make You Violent

Although chess has been played for centuries, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the game really took off in Europe and the U.S. Yet not everyone had a favorable view of this crazy new fad. Several critics decried chess as a source of intellectual laziness and anti-social behavior that could even provoke violence. I…

7 Buildings That Look Exactly Like What Happens Inside

A duck that sells duck eggs. A picnic basket that makes picnic baskets. A donut hole that sells donuts out of a hole in its center. Some kind of Alice in Wonderland-esque acid trip? Nope, these are all real buildings that take their functions very literally. These structures are examples of novelty architecture, or programmatic…

Apple Patent Hints at a Weightlifting Tracker for the iWatch

If feeling the burn isn’t enough, a new patent issued to Apple suggests that it might, maybe, possibly be working on a weightlifting tracker that will work with itsimminent possible smartwatch. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Apple U.S. Patent No. 8,749,380— “Shoe wear-out sensor, body-bar sensing system, unitless activity assessment and associated…

iOS developer Hamza Sood has discovered secret settings in the iOS 8 beta hinting that the next version of Apple’s mobile OS could allow users to customize the pop-up Control Center—including adding, removing, and reorganizing shortcuts.

Man Transforms Gigantic Airplane Into His Home

This retied Boeing 727-200 is now the home of Bruce Campbell. The gigantic airliner has touched down forever in Hillsboro, Oregon, and is now a very comfortable home. Check out the interiors! In 1999, Campbell purchased the plane for $100,000 and has been slowly remodeling into his living quarters. Many more images (and details about…

What Happens When Your Sense of Smell Gets Twisted?

Ever had a cold hijack your sense of smell? Some people’s sense of smell gets a lot more twisted than that. Find out what the world is like when a banana smells like rotten meat, and roses smell like garbage. When we look at a banana we know that we’re seeing thousands of little particles…

Game Of Thrones‘ Gag-Inducing Prosthetics Are Amazing

Ever wonder how Game of Thrones makes all those disturbingly convincing severed limbs and gaping wounds? One of the special effects artists has been posting incredible photos of his work on the show’s grisly prosthetics. Spoilers through the end of Season Three. Sangeet Prabhaker, a prosthetic and creature effects artist, has been sharing his Game…