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Play 1984’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text game for free online

This warning says it all: “The game will kill you frequently. It’s a bit mean like that.” Thirty years ago, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams and Infocom’s Steve Meretzky designed an interactive fiction version of the classic work of scifi humor. The game was a huge hit; according to the BBC, it…

Glenn Beck Is Making a Movie About Edison and Tesla

Former Fox News TV personality Glenn Beck is really sick of talking about politics. So what rustles his jimmies these days? The mythologized feud between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Beck even has a movie in production about Edison that he hopes will “expose the truth” about this “bad man.” From National Review: Another film…

Streaming TV Isn’t Ready for Prime Time

So you’ve done it. You’ve cut the cord. You’ve got your Netflix and your Hulu Plus and your Aereo and your cousin’s HBO GO password and a bag of popcorn. You’re comfortable with the sacrifices—honestly, mostly just ESPN—and prepared to embrace the glorious future of television. Only problem? The future of television’s not prepared for…

The World’s Oldest Underground Fire Has Been Burning For 6,000 Years

If you’ve heard of underground coal fires, then you’ve probably heard of the one raging under the abandoned town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, since 1962. Fifty-two years is a long time—and a lot of coal—but that’s barely a blink compared to Burning Mountain in Australia, which has been ablaze for 6,000 years. Coal seam fires are…

​7 Characters Who Were Saved by the Fans

Authors, showrunners, directors and horrible people. They kill characters we love constantly, just to make us feel emotions, or they give us awesome characters and then plan to get rid of them for no reason! Luckily, sometimes fans can come together and keep these bastards from destroying the fictional people we love — here are…

The 25+ Best Tweets About True Detective Crashing HBO GO

In case you were blissfully unaware last night, just as the entire country was preparing to tune in to the highly anticipated True Detective season finale, HBO GO decided it was a good time to crash and burn. Twitter, of course, rose to the occasion. Here are the funniest, most bitter tweets from last night’s…

Reverse Photoshop Turns Bikini Model Into Something Even Cheesier

Timelapse videos showing the meticulous process of retouching the female body have opened people’s eyes to our culture’s sad manipulation of beauty. But when College Humor has a go, the reality is worse than we think. Photoshop Has Gone Too Far has all the makings of a truth-bearing internet video, complete with melancholy piano score.…

How to (ethically) blind someone in one eye

In the early 1800s, a scientist called Charles Wheatstone knew that the slight difference in the image seen by the left eye and the right eye was what gave people depth perception. He wondered, though, what exactly would happen if he showed each eye radically different things? He imagined that the mind would blend those…

New Test Predicts Alzheimer’s at Least Three Years in Advance

A new blood test developed by scientists from Georgetown University in Washington DC is capable of predicting onset of Alzheimer’s with 96 percent certainty three years in advance—and that figure could soon stretch to decades. The researchers report their new test in Nature Medicine, explaining that it identifies 10 chemicals in the blood which are…

“The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”

In 1980, Carl Sagan opened his series Cosmos with these words, capturing both the immensity and intimacy of the universe. Now, thirty four years later, Neil DeGrasse Tyson stands on the same seaside promontory Sagan used to open his program to introduce Cosmos to a new generation. The Ship of the Imagination For his series,…

Dan Harmon’s Dungeons & Dragons movie idea must be made

The premise isn’t too original, but the idea of casting Seth Rogen, Patton Oswalt and Will Ferrell is 100% wonderful. In an interview with What’s Trendingat SWSX, Dan Harmon lobbed an idea for a Dungeons & Dragons movies that we would totally watch, specifically for the middle-aged comics doing battle with dragons with nothing but…

The Only Time You’ll Ever Feel Bad For a Brown Recluse Spider

Meet Rabbit, the only brown recluse spider you’re ever going to feel sorry for. That’s because you’re watching her be restrained and milked for her super-strong silk. Oof. Rabbit is one of many spiders to be found in research laboratories at the University of Oxford’s Silk Group. But she is, according to researcher Sean Koebley,…

How to Avoid True Detective Spoilers on Twitter

Scared to look at Twitter because you missed True Detective last night? No problem. If you use TweetDeck, you can mute the show to live a blissful, spoiler-free day. It’s simple!. On the far left-hand side of your TweetDeck client, click the Settings icon. Click that, then select the Settings tab, then select Mute. Under…

This Week’s TV: Will Believe bring Alfonso Cuarón’s movie magic to TV?

The Gravity and Children of Men director brings is tale of a superpowered girl to television—will Believe reaffirm our faith in Cuarón or leave us with doubts? Plus, From Dusk Till Dawn is reborn as a TV series, Lady Sif teams up with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Cosmos takes us through the wonders of evolution.…

22 Incredible Images Show What the Future Looked Like 100 Years Ago

These amazing, almost 100-year old covers of the weekly French magazine Le Petite Journal are from the online collection of the french National Library. They show what were the most exciting innovations of the 1920s, and how people in Europe imagined the future of technology and science. The locomotion of tomorrow Image: Le Petit Journal…

For now, Resurrection‘s trappings are hiding its flaws

Last night, Resurrection premiered and valiantly tried to put its mark on the “loved ones back from the dead” idea. And, thanks to the cast and a commitment to a exploring these ideas in depth, it mostly succeeds. The episode begins with Jacob coming to in a field in China. He makes it to a…

NASA unveils a gorgeous new gallery of celestial images

To get you sufficiently pumped for the new Cosmos re-make, NASA has put together a stunning set of 43 cosmic images that are guaranteed to instill a sense of wonder and awe. Top image: The Carina Nebula (NASA/Hubble). Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the premier of the 13-episode series aired last night at 9:00 pm…

Facebook’s prolific I Fucking Love Science page—which has over 10 million likes—is reportedly making its way to TV with “a mix of live-action, animation and recreations that demonstrate the random manifestations of science that connects us.”

The Pale Blue’n’Red Dot Shows Where Plant Life Is Thriving

Forget the Pale Blue Dot: let’s throw some red in there, too. This false color image shows plant growth across the planet in red where usually you’d expect some green. Captured by NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, the image was captured using the Mercury Dual Imaging System’s wide-angle camera. NASA…

Canadian student has “out of body experiences” whenever she wants

After attending a lecture on “out of body experiences,” a 24-year-old student from the University of Ottawa approached her professor saying, “I thought everybody could do that.” She can apparently do this at will — making her the first person with this condition to be studied. The resulting paper, which now appears in Frontiers in…