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Google Is Struggling to Trademark the Word ‘Glass’

It won’t surprise you to hear that Google is desperately trying to trademark the world Glass—but it may raise a wry smile on your face when you find out that the U.S. government is taking exception to the idea. The Wall Street Journal reports that the US Patent and Trademark Office has objected to granting…

Sprint wants to pay you to switch carrier. Between April 4th and May 8th, it’ll cover $350 of early termination fees and offer up to$300 in service credit for your old phone when you sign up to its Framily plan.

This beautiful newly-discovered species is about to disappear soon

“Just described ‘microjewel’ snail in extinction danger,” announces NewScientist. Every time I see a headline like that and I look a the picture, it really makes me sad. Just admire that beautiful, delicate little beast. Which secrets will this soon-to-be-gone species take away with it? Because that’s the quid here. Even if you’re a cold…

Oh god, Korean plastic surgery will never cease to amaze me

I’m truly fascinated by the obsession of some South Korean women to transform themselves into this animesque beauty ideal through extreme plastic surgery. This is not the case of this woman, however. Her story is quite sad. According to RocketNews 24, her husband “got fed up of her plain features and sun spots and had…

Take a Mind-Melting Trip through 1960s Psychedelics (NSFW)

And that’s why you don’t take the brown acid. This startling short film by Spectacle Theater starts off benignly before jolting the viewer into a fractured cascade of ’60s pop culture iconography. Be sure to watch it with the lights on. Update: Per Greg Eggebeen of Spectacle Theater, In actuality, the video isn’t a ‘short…

Watch an X-Class Solar Flare Ignite the Skies Over Iceland

On February 25th, the Sun let loose an X4.9-class solar flare. It was our parent star’s most violent outburst of the year. When the debris from the ensuing coronal mass ejection collided with Earth’s atmosphere, it produced one of the most colorful auroral displays in recent memory. It was a spectacle to which Henry Jun…

The Universe according to Adventure Time

I’ve been on an Adventure Time binge lately, so I find this GIF from the episode The Real You absolutely stonestastic—just like the rest of the series, really. It should be called Ambien Time. If you have never seen Adventure Time, you must start right now. The first two seasons are on Netflix. SPLOID is…

For a Sharper Mind in Middle Age, Try Running in Your 20s

Reason #34,857 that exercise is important: getting your pulse up when you’re 25 can make for a better brain at 45, according to a newly published study out of the University of Minnesota, the first to examine how exercise in young adulthood affects cognition later in life. Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk // CC 2.0 Researchers…

Here in Ship City, We’re Working Our Way Back to the Information Age

After the collapse, people started recycling things on an epic scale. They lived inside ship hulls and mined skyscrapers for scrap. A strange new civilization was blooming out of the old, and things were going to be different this time. Florent Llamas is a student studying video game concept art in France, and his environment…

What Is the Room Tone of the Internet?

Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. Tracks by participants will be added to this playlist as…

This Rare Peek At Pixar’s Animation System Is Computer-Generated Magic

Computer animation has come a long way since the first Toy Story movie. Last week, Pixar offered a rare behind-the-scenes look at the sophisticated system used on Brave and Monsters University. As part of the Pixar Keynote at the GPU Technology Conference, attendees got a peek at Presto, the proprietary animation system Pixar built for…

There Is So Much Death In The 100. So. Much. Death.

The 100 is all death, death, death, pause for video blogging, and more death. And I still love it. Spoilers ahead… First up, apologies for missing last week’s episode. However, I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to sum up the entire episode in one, perfect gif. Voilà! Apparently crash landing on a dangerous future Earth turns…

L.A. Once Had Cable Cars (Just Like San Francisco’s)

They used to be more than just a San Francisco novelty. In the late 19th century, cable cars were a widely used public transit solution in cities across the United States—including Los Angeles. There, they replaced the city’s first generation of streetcars, horsecars, and brought real estate development to previously inaccessible terrain, encouraging the growth…

Incredibly claustrophobic photos of Tokyo’s subway at rush hour

The World’s Best Ever picked up this great photo series by Michael Wolf. Titled Tokyo Compression, it shows snapshots of passengers captured at Tokyo’s subway stations at rush hour. If you’re claustrophobic, don’t look at these. If you go to work at rush hour in certain New York subway lines, I’m sure you have experienced…

The Big U, one of ten proposals presented today as part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rebuild by Design competition, aims to protect New York from “the next Hurricane Sandy” with a network of gardens, knolls, and parks. This berm, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, would slow storm surges with the…

Glowing Sticks and Long Exposures Turn Drumming Into a Visual Feast

It can be mesmerizing watching a talented drummer beat away on a set of skins, but even more so when they’re sitting in the middle of a long-exposure camera rig with a pair of glowing drumsticks in hand. What’s usually a blur of arms and sticks suddenly becomes an intricate web of mid-air streaks and…

Scientists Cured Paralysis in Mice with Stem Cells and Lasers

This is wild. Chasing the elusive dream of curing paralysis, a team of scientists used stem cells and optogenetics to circumvent the central motor system of lab mice whose nerves had been cut. This enabled them to blast individual motor neurons with a laser, triggering movement in the legs of the mice. Okay, so it’s…

How Optical Illusions Help Restore Art

New York City’s streets were drained of color on a recent cold and overcast March day. Their pallor—and that of the cars, trucks, and people occupying them—mimicked that depicted by Childe Hassam in his Winter in Union Square, an oil painting on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Things couldn’t be more different in…

NASA finds hidden water ocean in Saturn moon, may contain alien life

NASA has found a subterranean ocean in Enceladus, “a large underground ocean of liquid water.” According to the space agency, this may be a potential home to extraterrestrial life. Enceladus was out of the list of potential life harbors in the solar system until now, the other major candidates being Titan and Europa. The data…

These Hand-Forged Kitchen Knives Are Works of Rural Art

The world is not lacking for inexpensive kitchen knife sets—they’ve long been a staple of late-night infomercials and homeware bargain bins alike—but top-quality cutlery is much harder to come by. These blades from Chelsea Miller Knives offer a rare mix of artful simplicity and rugged sturdiness equally at home in New York City or rural…