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Was This the World’s First Emoticon?

The emoticon might be older than we thought. This passage of text, which includes a cheeky smiley, is taken from Robert Herrick’s 1648 poem To Fortune—and it might be the first ever use of an emoticon. Literary critic Levi Stahl thought the punctuation might be a typo in his copy of of Hesperides, but he…

FBI Wants 52 Million Photos in its Face Recognition Database by 2015

New documents released by the FBI show that the Bureau is well on its way toward its goal of a fully operational face recognition database by this summer. EFF received these records in response to our Freedom of Information Act lawsuitfor information on Next Generation Identification (NGI)—the FBI’s massive biometric database that may hold records…

Try the Super-Secure USB Drive OS That Edward Snowden Insists on Using

We all know that Edward Snowden insists on secure email, but he’s also very picky about his operating systems, too. In fact, he uses a free, super-secure version of Linux—called Tails—that fits on a USB stick and can be used on any computer without leaving a trace. Linux installs on USB sticks are nothing new,…

Microsoft’s Office Online—the free, web-based version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote—is headed for the Chrome Web Store as a series of apps.

Mind-blowing video shows how humans are basically bad copies of amoebas

Vsauce, the master answerer of life’s toughest questions and professional blower of minds, tackles something so philosophical in his latest video that you’ll start to wonder what in the hell our purpose is on this Earth. And if it’s any different than a purpose of a rock. It starts with the discussion of art and…

Here are 12 of the best long takes in movie history

There are few legal things that can teleport you to another world as well as an excellent long film take in a movie. When those happen—think of those scenes in Children of Men or Goodfellas—you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie anymore, you feel like you’re seeing it happen in real life. Like you’re…

Once Upon A Time Lets Hook Be The Hero. He Fails.

Last night, Once Upon a Time revealed what Hook was up to during the “lost year.” Turns out, it was absolutely nothing at all. But Once Upon A Time feeds on nothing, this show devours it. This is a show that runs simply on the fact that we all really like Disney cosplay. A lot.…

Boss Noodles Make Lunch in Your Cubicle the Best Part of the Day

Waddaup playa, you tired of this 14-hour-a-day Salary Man drudgery? Well, your ticket to the boardroom has just arrived in an easy-to-open cellophane wrapper. Crunch through those delicious flash-dried noodles, rack up a seasoned fatty, and show Elaine in marketing what she’s been missing with Boss Noodles. Andre Maat conceived and produced this absurd commercial…

Gobi Desert Road Trip with Google Glass

Did you know the American Museum of Natural History was on Kinja? They are, and they produce some really neat articles. They have a whole lot of palaeontology, with articles on fuzzy pterosaurs, pink pterosaurs, and toothy pterosaurs all this month. And this one, going on a road trip through the Gobi Desert.

Not Photoshopped — These Two Planes Really Are Flying Like This

It’s called a Calypso Pass. That’s when two jets fly in a mirror image pattern like this, often only inches apart. A few weeks ago, two U.S. Air Force Thunderbird F-16 Fighting Falcons did just that. Show me a drone with this kind of style. The Thunderbirds performed for a huge crowd on March 23,…

Watch how a traffic accident is cleaned up in this timelapse

When a semi-trailer truck carrying a rig filled with toilet paper crashes into a bridge, what happens? A giant mess. A giant mess that someone has to clean up. This timelapse shows a city clean up crew picking up all the crap, repackaging it for another truck and getting the streets clean so that no…

In The Netherlands, There Are Now Glow-in-the-Dark Roads

There’s a quarter mile stretch of highway in the Netherlands that now features light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings. It’s a pilot project that, if proven effective, could dramatically reduce our need for streetlights. The project is a collaboration between interactive artist Daan Roosegaarde and Dutch civil engineering firm Heijmans. The paint contains a “photo-luminising” powder that…

Downtown L.A.’s Skyline from the Air: 1940s vs. 2014

Is L.A. flat? With mountains ringing the Southland on three sides—and even bisecting the city of Los Angeles along the Hollywood Hills—”flat” has never been an entirely fair description. But for decades the city’s architecture betrayed a commitment to horizontality. While Manhattan and Chicago strained toward the stratosphere, Los Angeles imposed a strict 150-foot height…

One Of The Best “Pulling The Rug Out From Under” Scenes In Film History

The movie The Forgotten, starring Julianne Moore, feels like your standard-issue “everything is messed up and nothing is real, and everyone thinks I’m crazy because I’m the only one who can see it” thriller — until this moment. Warning: Mega-spoilers! In The Forgotten, it’s been a while since Moore’s son died in a not-at-all suspicious…

A weird black ring appeared in the sky in England and then disappeared

This is bizarre. A 16-year-old girl saw a giant black ring in the sky above England and captured it on video. After three minutes of floating around like a cloud, the black ring disappeared completely. So far, experts have no idea what it was. The black ring appeared over Leamington Spa, Warwickshire in England and…

Latest Update Brings KitKat to Google Glass

It’s been a while since we last heard of a software update for Glass and now I guess we know why. The team over at Mountain View has been busy updating the face-computer to run on the latest version of Android (4.4.2 a.k.a. KitKat). It sounds like it won’t be a very obvious change, but…

How the movie Frozen should have ended (Spoiler: Elsa joins the X-Men)

All anyone ever wanted to talk about for the past few months has been Frozen. It’s so fun! The songs are so good! We want to lip sync them! Disney Animation is better than Pixar now! And so on and so on. Was it really that good, guys? HISHE thinks it could have better. Or…

The power of magnets shown by destroying things in slow motion

After seeing this video of strong magnets destroying glass in slow motion, I really wish I had a few to play with now. Magneto was always my favorite supervillain. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Look At This Amazing Disney Animated Firefly Mash-Up And Get Sad

…because it’s so great and it’ll never, ever happen. I don’t know whether to praise artist Stephen Byrne for giving us this magnificent look at what might have been, or to curse his name to the heavens for taunting us with a joy we’ll never know. But I may just go have a beer. [Via…

Mushrooms Can Mine the Gold From Your Old Cellphones

Crack open your dumb old phone, and you’ll find lots of circuits and no lack of precious metals. “In 100,000 cell phones, it’s estimated that there is 2.4 kilograms of gold, more than 900 kilograms of copper, 25 kilograms of silver, and more,” according to Motherboard. Could a safer and and cheaper method of recovering…