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This Restaurant in Japan Gives Solo Diners Stuffed Animals for Company

Eating alone in restaurants is awkward. Sure, you can take a book and pretend like the solitude is emboldening. But be honest with yourself—sitting across from an empty chair is sometimes sad and lonely. This whimsical restaurant in Japan has a solution: stuffed animals. The Moomin Cafe in Tokyo is themed around the eponymous series…

What If LucasArts Had Made A Buffy Point-And-Click Video Game?

Imagine if Buffy the Vampire Slayer had become a puzzle-solving video game in the vein of Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentacle. Artist Andrew Scaife gives us screencaps from that imaginary game, placing us in a pixellated version of Sunnydale. Each of Scaife’s “screencaps” represents a different Buffy episode. Up top is “Welcome to…

Saturn’s Rings Are Even Weirder (And Prettier) Up-Close

The shape of Saturn’s rings is usually what gets all the attention — but what can the colors tell us? The picture was shot by Cassini’s Ultraviolet Spectrograph camera as it did a fly-by of the famous rings and represents a cross-section about 10,000 km across. These rainbow colors don’t just look cool, though —…

The Ship-Breakers Who Tear Apart Dead Cargo Vessels By Hand

On the Bangladeshi coast of the Bay of Bengal, past-their-prime oil tankers and cargo vessels are beached on the muddy shore like industrial, open-air graveyards. There, these massive ships are taken apart by men—”ship-breakers”—who toil hand-to-metal for minimal wages on the toxic, exceptionally dangerous sites. A Maritime Graveyard: A satellite image shows a mile-long stretch…

This Superheroic Train Keeps New York City’s Subway Safe

You probably don’t realize it, but, at any given hour on any given day, a small yet incredibly sophisticated train armed with cameras, lasers, and ultrasound equipment is sliding around New York City’s subway system inspecting the tracks. It looks a little bit like Optimus Prime, and, like the good Transformers, it’s there to keep…

10 Feline Celebrities That Prove We Were Always Obsessed With Cats

Grumpy Cat and Lil Bub may be the Internet’s cats du jour, but our obsession with famous felines goes back long before the era of YouTube and Instagram. Here are a handful of historical cats who became famous—or infamous—among us humans. There are a number of cats who have become historically significant: cats who have…

Tumblr’s new mobile app is getting font and color customization.

Released Emails Show the Cozy Relationship Between Google and the NSA

A series of email exchanges between Google executives and (now former) NSA director Keith Alexander show that tech companies behind the services you use aren’t being all the way forthcoming about how closely they’ve worked with the NSA over the years. The two 2012 exchanges, one between General Alexander and Google chairman Eric Schmidt, and…

The Downside Of Eliminating A Possible Ethnic Bioweapon

Ethnic bioweapons, i.e. weapons designed to kill a particular ethnic group, sound like pure evil. For most of history, they’ve been used solely for evil. In one case, though, removing a “weapon” ended up being a humanitarian disaster. The Terai region in Nepal is covered with wet, dense forest, and inhabited by a group 0f…

Aww, The Broken Blood Vessel In This Woman’s Eye Spells “Love”

This woman’s broken blood vessel in her eye has a secret message — a message of love. Or perhaps the tiny creatures who control her body functions are trying to spread the message of love to their host? We may never know. According to youtuber LivingOak this video is of her mother. Sweet, but gross.…

NASA’s New Orbiter Will Watch Plants Photosynthesize from Space

For the last 25 years, scientists have been able to monitor the “greenness” of trees from space and use that as a tool for evaluating plant health. The problem is that greenness isn’t a good indicator for stresses—such as drought—because some trees (think pines) continue to be a lovely green until they’re dead. Researchers are…

Time-lapse video shows that packing for space is pretty complicated

This time-lapse video shows the intricate steps involved as the European Space Agency loads its latest Automated Transport Vehicle in preparation for a summer launch. The ATV-5 will be carried on an Ariane 5 rocket from the agency’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, and will deliver 2,600 kilograms of dry cargo to the International Space…

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: The Amazing Spoiler-FAQ

Having trouble figuring out the insane plot of the hot mess that was The Amazing Spider-Man 2? No worries. Our patented Spoiler FAQ is here to help decipher what the hell happened in all those weird, awkward scenes where Spidey wasn’t fighting people. Spoilers ahead, obviously! What is The Amazing Spider-Man 2 about? It’s about…

7 Google Search Redesigns That Are Better Than the Real Thing

Google’s homepage is one of the most immediately recognizable websites on the internet—if not the most. And it’s for that very reason that it’s also one of the most overlooked. So why fix something if it’s not broken? Why the hell not. There’s always going to be room for improvement, which is whycollaborative, challenge-based design…

Summertime ozone levels in the U.S. could rise 70% by 2050, according to a new study. Warmer temperatures related to climate change are spurring chemical reactions that increase overall levels of ground-level ozone, which can aggravate health problems such as asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.

The Trailer For Coherence Will Make You Wary Of Evil Comets

That’s right, you heard us — evil comets. Watch what happens when a dinner party coincides with an nefarious astrological anomaly. We honestly have no idea what is going on in the trailer for Coherence, but the premise has our interest. Here’s the official synopsis: On the night of an astrological anomaly, eight friends at…

This Is the Milky Way’s Magnetic Fingerprint

The swirls, loops and arches in this image may look like a new artwork—but they are in fact the results of the first ever all-sky observations of polarized light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way, and they represent the galaxy’s magnetic fingerprint. Compiled from data acquired by the ESA’s Planck satellite, the image…

Sonic Tractor Beam

Doctor Who visited Star Trek, and the crossover showed up in our reality as a macroscopic acoustic tractor beam. The newly-developed acoustic tractor beam can pull objects six orders of magnitude — that’s a million times! — larger than any previous experiments. The concept of manipulating matter through the careful application of fields first showed…

The Great Polio Vaccine Feud

Sixty years ago, polio was infecting tens of thousands of children a year. In the past few years, despite setbacks, it has been brought near eradication. Two different vaccines are responsible for the fight against polio. An inspirational story… if the two people who developed the vaccines hadn’t spent their whole lives hating each other.…

Wallpaper That Looks Like a Swedish Sunset

If you long for a little extra sun after-hours, then this wallpaper might be just the ticket. Designed by Swedish brand Sandberg, the wall covering resembles a sunset from the nation’s shores. It is, in fact, one of two wallpapers which form the Carl Collection. Designed by Karolina Kroon and Sissa Sundling, the Skymning (above)…