Latest

This Week’s Top Comedy Video: Idiotsitter

Look, it’s a rough economy. Harvard-educated Billie is left seeking babysitting jobs. And accepting them, even when the job isn’t exactly as straightforward as advertised. For even more of this week’s top comedy videos, head on over to SplitSider. Comedy legend Harold Ramis passed away at the age of 69. We took a look at…

Antiviral: Celebrity Culture and Cannibalism

Given that the entire internet has spent the past week buzzing over what may or may not be a sincere effort at selling lab-grown celebrity meat for consumption, it seems only appropriate that we end the week with Antiviral (currently on Netflix). The movie received some mixed reviews, but one thing’s for certain—this thing is…

Surgeons attach man’s calf to his arm to save his life

Ian McGregor lost his entire leg to a cancerous tumor, but he’s lucky to be alive thanks to a weird, never-before-attempted 18-hour surgical procedure: First doctors removed his calf and attached it to his arm to keep it alive during the tumor and leg amputation. Then they used the calf to fix the huge hole…

You Can Now Buy the Official Pillow-Fighting Pillow of Japan

Are you one of the All Japan Pillow Fighting Association’s rapt and loyal followers? Are you tired of the more conventional sports fans sauntering around in their jerseys while you walk around swag-less? Looks like your day has finally come. As of yesterday,you can finally buyan Officially Recognized by the All Japan Pillow Fighting Association…

The Financial Times is reporting that, come next week, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo will all be announcing their official launches of iOS in the Car at the Geneva Motor Show. Let’s just hope what we’re looking at looks a little something like this. https://gizmodo.com/ios-in-your-car-could-look-pretty-great-1505984952

Over 120 spoof papers withdrawn from major journal publishers

The publishers Springer and IEEE announced they would remove the papers from their subscription services after French researcher Cyril Labbé demonstrated the works were not original scientific work at all, but rather “computer-generated nonsense.” Top Photo via robotlab Via Nature News: Among the works were, for example, a paper published as a proceeding from the…

This outdoor sauna on stilts, designed by architect Duilio Forte, stands in the hills of Piacenza, Italy. Made almost entirely from spruce wood, the cozy cabin seats two. [Atelier Forte via ArchDaily]

Lose Yourself in these Stunning Lunar Maps

From the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Lunar Map Catalogue comes a gorgeous series of charts of the Moon’s nearside, farside and poles. Click here to see in hi-res [6105 x 4277]. Click here to see in VERY hi-res [12211 x 8553] According to the chart, the features depicted were “interpreted from the photographic records of…

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye make a Barack Obama sandwich

If there’s one thing we can take away from this photo, it’s that President Obama’s tie game is seriously lacking. Via Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Nothing’s as Beautiful as Hitting 55 Consecutive Green Lights in NYC

Driving in New York can be a pretty agonizing experience—but then, so can walking and biking. Still, in such a congested city, you’re going to need to be either extremely lucky or extremely okay with breaking the speed limit if you want to hit even just two green lights in a row. But 55 green…

​The Wild Hunt is no match for Wesen conservatism on Grimm

Remember this bit from my recap of Grimm’s last episode, the first installment of this two-parter? “I can’t help but feel we’re going to watch the next episode and feel like they both could have been condensed into a really good single episode.” Am… am I psychic? https://gizmodo.com/grimm-reveals-even-wesen-can-be-horrible-racists-1508733380 Because “Revelation” was even slower than “The…

Is everything finally coming together on Helix?

There were all the revelations you could want on last night’s Helix, plus some you probably didn’t want. Get ready to worship your psychic zombie goo barf god! Spoilers ahead. This episode was one of those rapid-fire deals where everything is coming together in ways that aren’t entirely unexpected but are still kind of creepy…

19th Century New York Was Covered in an Insane Web of Telephone Wires

Alexander Graham Bell may have invented the telephone in 1875, but the first phone installation didn’t come about for another three years. And that’s what makes these photos from 1887 so incredible; this tangled mass of telephone wires had already wound itself around New York City’s streets just seven years after that first installation. Then…

Things that Amuse Me: Eavesdropping on astrophysicists

Poking around in the code of astrophysics papers provides a behind-the-scenes peek at the process of science. Practical, hilarious, and cringe-worthy, this is how new science is discovered. Astrophysics research papers are regularly deposited in the open-access arXiv electronic archive and distribution server. The papers can be in various states: sometimes they’re papers awaiting peer…

This week in Tech Reads: experimental energy, polar bears on Google Street View, how movies and TV portray tech, and lots—tons!—more. Tara Isabella Burton contemplates the real originators of the selfie: “the silk-waistcoated dandies of nineteenth-century Paris.” [The Paris Review Daily] Derek Thompson peers into the mysterious numbers surrounding House of Cards. Based on number…

This Breaking Bad remix is way catchier than it has any right to be

A followup to the equally catchy remix of Breaking Bad seasons 1 and 2, this newly released mashup from YouTuber placeboing draws on memorable scenes from the show’s final three seasons to yield one highly addictive earworm. This should go without saying, but here be spoilers. https://gizmodo.com/breaking-bad-remix-is-the-perfect-soundtrack-for-your-n-5939875 This “outtake” is pretty perfect, too: [placeboing]

An Interview with Geoff McFetridge on the Interfaces from Her

Not even those who worked on the Oscar-nominated film Her are sure exactly how near we are to the near-future depicted in the movie. “I think the idea of the near-future is that you can’t predict the pace of technology,” says graphic designer Geoff McFetridge, who designed the interfaces for the film. Credited as Her’s…

Every New Yorker is (an) Animal in New Muppets Commercial

Get it? DO YOU GET THE JOKE? In all seriousness this is pretty brilliant, even if it is an ad for tea (Oy vey gevalt!). Easily one of our favorites in the leadup to Muppets Most Wanted‘s March 21st release. https://gizmodo.com/muppets-most-wanted-trailer-is-just-so-damn-charming-1468353800 https://gizmodo.com/new-muppets-most-wanted-trailer-focuses-on-kermits-lea-1530616316 https://gizmodo.com/first-song-from-the-new-muppets-movie-brings-back-that-1532714330 https://gizmodo.com/new-muppets-trailer-shows-movie-studios-the-right-way-t-1496547502 [Lipton/The Muppets]

Underwater Exosuits, Million-Dollar Time Capsules, Ghostbusters, More

From a shocking visual of the drought conditions in California to an incredible, disgusting real-time scroll of porn searches, we saw a lot of striking things this week. Let’s take a look back at our best stories of the week! Moov Might Be the Most Advanced Fitness Wearable Yet As you may have noticed, there…

Watch the opening scene of the Veronica Mars movie

More of a recap of the show’s original three-season run than a foundational scene to the new movie, itself, the two-minute title sequence to the new Veronica Mars movie still has us damn excited to meet the “marshmallow” Veronica says she’s become. https://gizmodo.com/first-veronica-mars-trailer-fills-us-with-squee-1493712503 https://gizmodo.com/behold-the-very-first-footage-from-the-veronica-mars-mo-850028778 Of course, the best way to prepare for the movie’s March…