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Man Attacks Car with Sword in Attempt to Slay the Dark Lord Morgoth

A Portland, Oregon man dressed in chain mail and calling himself a “high elf” claimed to be vanquishing the dark lord Morgoth when he stabbed a woman’s car with a sword. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that this J.R.R. Tolkien fan took LSD shortly before he decided to slay a sedan. What’s great…

Photos of Science Experiments are Mysterious and Dazzling

Caleb Charland has been merging science with photography for years, creating images that challenge you to figure out just what the heck is going on. His most recent work is a collection of disparate materials and methods, each one with their own wondrous flavor. https://gizmodo.com/when-apple-orchards-become-personal-power-plants-5873443 The titles of each image give you an idea of…

Listen to the Appliances of the Future

Last week, in collaboration with Disquiet, we turned our ears to the future of the domestic environment, tuning into the speculative sounds of the appliances of the future. The results, here on our last day of the Home of the Future, are worth a listen as you tour the home either virtually or in person.…

Mother Bear Heroically Saves Cub From Busy Highway

Joke all you want about chickens crossing roads, but highways really do pose a danger to wildlife. A bear cub learned that recently when it found itself a bit too close to oncoming traffic. Luckily, mom was nearby. According to the video’s description, a man named Ricky Forbes was driving through Canada’s Kootenay National Park,…

Adventure Time‘s Creator Is Making A Text Adventure Game Over Twitter

Ever wonder what a text adventure game made by Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors creator Pendleton Ward would look like? He’s making (and illustrating) one right now—and you can play along on Twitter. Ward is playing a game he’s calling Quest Attack with his Twitter followers. The premise is simple: the player has woken up…

Beautiful spinning video of New York makes me go both ooooh and barf!

This beautiful new commercial from Nokia uses the same principle of bullet time—the effect made popular by the movie The Matrix—but in a different way: Instead of freezing a moment in time, the rig is built to give the illusion that the world is spinning. It’s pretty, but it can make you a bit dizzy.…

Facebook App Adds Shazam-Like Function to Identify Songs and Shows

Facebook’s newest app addition is a Shazam-esque feature that can identify any song or TV show within 15 seconds purely by sound. Now, any time you’re watching TV or listening to music and want to share that fact with the world, you can pop open your Facebook app, tell it to listen, and post your…

Author Elly Blue Is Here To Answer Questions About Women and Biking

The cycling movement in this country is gaining momentum, yet it’s still predominantly male. So how do we get more women on bikes, and help females to feel more comfortable riding for transportation in their daily lives? Author Elly Blue is joining us today to talk about women and bikes. As part of our Bike…

This Force Is Strong with Geckos

Humans have many scientific achievements, but when it comes to the van der Waals force, we have been bested by geckos. Johannes Diderik van der Waals was a physicist and chemist working at the turn of the last century who was interested in how gases interacted. While there was a set of laws set up…

This amazing floating underwater city may become a reality in China

A Chinese company wants to build this incredible four-square-mile floating underwater city using the same techniques they’re using for the construction of the 31-mile bridge that links Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai. It’s incredible—the kind of stuff I dreamed about when I was a little kid. http://gizmodo.com/c/sploid The China Communications construction company commissioned AT Design…

How Historians Recovered the Only Surviving Nazi “Flying Pencil”

Many good sea tales begin with a fisherman snagging his net on an underwater object, and this tale is no different. In 2000 or 2001, fisherman snagged his net while fishing the waters of Goodwin Sands, fronting the White Cliffs of Dover near the town of Deal in Kent, England. Dover sits at the English…

The anonymous sharing app, Secret, is now available for Android. Now everyone can spill the beans without revealing themselves.

Ask An Entomologist Whatever You Want About Eating Bugs

Arnold van Huis is a tropical entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He’s here today to answer our questions about edible insects and why you should probably consider eating a bug. van Huis was the first author for the UN paper Edible Insects: Future Prospects For Feed and Security (which you can check out…

Airbnb Is Giving NY’s Attorney General a Load of (Anonymized) User Data

Don’t freak out. But if you’re an Airbnb host in the state of New York, there’s a good chance your user data is on its way to the New York Attorney General’s office. It’s anonymized data, so personally identifiable data like your name and address have been removed. However, if the you’re suspected of illegal…

Here’s The First New Star Wars: Episode VII Alien—And It’s Not CG

J.J. Abrams’ latest video comes straight from the set of Star Wars: Episode VII, where we get to see a new alien creature—one that uses practical effects. Even if this is just a background character, this is hopefully a sign that we’ll be seeing a return to costumed and puppet aliens in the new Star…

All The Things Michael Bay Cares About More Than Transformers

Guys. I’m a little freaked out. I checked my mailbox the other day, and it had a letter in it from my student loan people. They finally tracked me down, and want their $75,000 in gold and pelts. But what really bugs me is this — who put the letter there? Because it sure as…

The Simple Joy of 100 Pounds of Magnetic Putty

Magnetic putty makes me deeply happy. It slowly deforms under a gentle pull, or snaps when abruptly tugged, while the magnetism will draw it like a creeping monster to devour stray magnets. While a handful of putty is fun, I am utterly enchanted by a monstrous 100-pound blob. While you can magnetize normal silly putty…

The World Is Running Out of Gold

How much gold would you have if you stole every bit that’s ever been mined? Not much—you’d be able to make a cube of solid gold with 60-foot sides. There just isn’t that much gold in the world, and it’s getting harder and harder to find it. In fact, our love of gadgets may be…

Google Wants to Put Ads on Thermostats (And Everything Else You Own)

There’s a reason Google (among a number of other companies) has been pushing for the internet of things. Not only does it engrain Google in your daily life, but every extra screen it can slap on to your possessions means one very important thing—precious ad space. In a letter Google sent to the Securities and…

Pluto’s Five Moons Explained In One Cool Video

Although Pluto has been downgraded to a “dwarf planet,” it boasts more moons than Mercury, Earth, Venus and Mars combined. (Take that, smug inner planets.) Last year, its two newly discovered moons were named Kereberos and Styx — which, like their companions, take their monikers from the underworld of ancient mythology. As this video by…