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The Metallic Metals Act Shows People Always Bluffed About Politics

A staple segment of partisan talk shows, or regular comedy shows, is sending a camera operator out on the street and demonstrate – via a quick survey – how little people these days know about politics. But political ignorance, covered by bluffing, is not a modern thing, as the Metallic Metals Act shows. Every election…

GeoCakes are Pretty, Delicious Geology Lessons

The Geological Society hosted a bake-off so spectacular I challenge any other discipline to compete. From rock cores to outcrops, phylogeny trees to death assemblages, and thin sections to test pits, geology and baking make a great combination. Mars cake with a marzipan rover. Image credit: unknown While the Geological Society awarded points and winners…

Can You Guess The Subject Of This Photograph?

The folks at Nautilus have put created an eye-catching game of Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? from photographs captured at the microscopic level. For the photo above, the choices are Vegetable: Leaf Stem, Mineral: Coal fly ash or Animal: Cross section of hair. Can you guess which it is? The photo above is a cross section…

Do Wild Animals Get Drunk and High On Purpose?

In South Africa, local legend has it that the elephants like to get drunk. They seek out the marula tree, overindulge on its sweet fruits, and enjoy the intoxicating effects of the slightly fermented juice. Tales of the tipsy pachyderms go back at least two centuries. In the 1830s, a French naturalist called Adulphe Delegorgue…

A Motion-Stabilized Cloverfield Is Awesomely Unwatchable

I bet I can guess the first thing that comes to your mind when I say Cloverfield: “SHAKY CAAAAAM!!” It’s so excessive it can be a little bit of a problem, and some endeavoring internet hero tried to fix it. The result is a Cloverfield that’s unwatchable in a completely different way. This can’t be…

NASA Observes A Solar Explosion In Unprecedented Detail

NASA’s sun-observing IRIS spacecraft has gotten its first close-up look at a colossal coronal mass ejection erupting from the sun, and boy howdy is it beautiful. In the video above, a tremendous sheet of solar material can be seen erupting from our parent star. Watch as it rapidly consumes a field of view five-Earths wide…

Dear and the Headlights: I Just Do

Ugh, love songs are so sappy, right? Usually! But every once in a while there’s a glorious exception. Something full-to-bursting with a vital vibrancy. Something earnest and cute without being lame. Dear and the Headlights’ “I Just Do” is one of those songs. Off the band’s fantastic 2007 debut Small Steps, Heavy Hooves, “I Just…

This Blade Runner Art Show Will Hold You Over Until the Sequel

Not long ago we covered an Indiegogo venture that was too good an idea not to let the world know. Six months later Moments Lost: A Blade Runner Tribute has come to complete fruition and it brought some really succulent Blade Runner fanfiction along with it. https://gizmodo.com/moments-lost-a-blade-runner-tribute-thats-more-than-a-1461538176 On display starting at 7PM on May 31st…

What the Synapses in Your Brain Actually Look Like

Without synapses, your neurons wouldn’t be able to communicate and your brain would be little more than a ball of meat. Exactly what synapses look like has been a mystery until now, and it turns out that even though their job is simple, they’re complicated as hell. You have trillions of synapses in your brain,…

Get Ready: Netflix To Stream Sherlock Season 3 Beginning Monday

Looks like someone’s calling in sick. Vulture has the details: On Monday, the third season of Sherlock will become available for streaming exclusively on Netflix. The service will also stream Sherlock Uncovered, a set of three half-hour making-of specials following each episode, and Unlocking Sherlock, a one-hour behind-the-scenes feature about the making of the series.…

Pizza Slice Pizza Plates Are a Classier Way To Serve Pizza Pie

Paper plates might be ok in a barbecue scenario, or for serving birthday cake, but a greasy pizza will make short work of what little structural integrity they had to begin with. When a slice of pepperoni pie is on the menu, there’s no better way to serve it up than on a set of…

Crabeater Seals Look Like They Have Buzzsaws For Teeth

Just look at them. The scientific name for the crabeater seal, Lobodon carcinophaga, translates to “lobed-tooth crab-eater,” and one look at its mouth tells you why. This thing’s so toothy its teeth have teeth: These screenshots come from an old episode of The Brain Scoop called “Little Skeletons.” In it, Chicago Field Museum Collections Manager…

This week in tech reads: What really happens when you shock a dead brain with electricity, the real science behind the summeriest sci-fi movies, ex-Lulzsec hacker walks free, and more! Danny Yadron talks to the man behind the first computer password, and digs into how this whole password thing got so out of control. [WSJ]…

The Forgotten History Of CGI

The roots of CGI lie in the first mechanical aids to drawing and painting. The earliest of these were developed to help solve a problem every artist has found to be sticky: perspective. Before the introduction of geometric perspective, the realistic depiction of nature was not one of the purposes of art. Instead, artists chose…

Do You Ever Snoop on Friends’ Phones?

If you’ve ever disabled the PIN on your lock screen (hi, hello), or lent your phone to someone, you know the feeling. Oh shit I left my phone in there with them! I hope I don’t have anything embarrassing on there. Shit, did I leave that tab open? It’s OK. I can trust them, right?…

Google’s Stealthy Logo Update, Beats by Apple, Pink Slime, and More

WWDC is on the horizon, and we’re waiting with bated breath about what iOS 8 might bring. But in the meantime Google tweaked its logo ever so slightly, Apple bought Beats f’reals, we tried out the Surface Pro 3, pondered pink slime, and saw some new self driving cars. Check out all that and more…

The New D&D Adventures Will Include All the Dragons

This summer’s Dungeons & Dragons relaunch includes a set of adventures focused on the rise of the dragon goddess Tiamat, designed by Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter of Kobold Press. In this interview, they told us about adventure design and the joys of writing for a game system while it’s still in development. io9: Could…

One Man’s Crazy Quest To Build a Tiny House on the Moon

There’s no end to fantasies about living on the moon. Actually possible moon bases, fictional Nazi moon bases, insane Newt Gingrich moon bases. Swedish artist Mikael Genberg has a more modest goal: one, tiny, uninhabited lunar house by 2015. Of course it takes a whole lot to make that possible. First there’s the matter of…

What If Ayn Rand Had Written Harry Potter?

How might Harry Potter have played out with Objectivist Supreme Ayn Rand at the keyboard? Over at The Toast, Mallory Ortberg imagines a series of vignettes from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Objectivism. They’re excellent. One of our favorites: “Give me your wand, boy,” Voldemort hissed. “I cannot do that. This wand represents my wealth,…

Tauntaun Butcher Chart Is Your Definitive Guide To Reptomammalian Meat

Super7 teamed up with Acme Archives to create this limited edition silkscreen diagram of the cuts of meat on everyone’s favorite omnivorous reptomammal. Our favorite cut is the sleeping bag. (Edible offal goes great in soup.) Hand-numbered editions of 200 go on sale Thursday, June 5th at noon PST. Perfect for a galactic butcher shop…