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Nissan’s Smart Rearview Mirror Isn’t Blinded By Passengers or Cargo

Have you ever been hesitant to over-pack a vehicle with luggage or passengers because it would obscure the sightline for your rearview mirror? Nissan’s Smart rearview mirror solves that problem by alternately displaying a live video feed from a camera mounted on the back of the vehicle. Rearview cameras of course aren’t new in the…

Israel Is Putting Frickin’ Lasers on Its Commercial Airliners

It’s not just IDF forces and Israeli settlements that come under rocket fire; militant groups have been known to take pot shots at commercial airlines as well—such as when a pair of SAMs narrowly missed an Israeli charter shortly after it took off from a Mombasa, Kenya airfield, in 2002. To protect vulnerable aircraft from…

George Takei describes his experience in a Japanese internment camp

Actor and activist George Takei recently made an appearance on Democracy Now! where, in addition to discussing Arizona’s recent anti-LGBTQ bill and his role as Mr. Sulu, he talked about his family’s experience inside a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War. The clip above is about seven minutes long, but here’s the transcript:…

Cool thingamajig lets you have your books flying around your home

This Harry Potterish floating book thingamajig designed by Kiril Gitman lets you display your favorite volumes flying around your living room. Useless awesomeness. He says he was inspired by the 2012 Oscar-winning animation The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Watch Wind-up Toys and Walkmen Create Intricate Mechanical Drawings

Art can happen where you least expect it, which is definitely the case with the work of Echo Yang, who uses small toys and everyday electronics to create detailed drawings. Yang is a student of information design at Design Academy Eindhoven. In an effort to put a twist on the trend of generative design based…

Venezuelan anti-government protesters are cobbling together home-brew gas masks from just about anything they can find—including empty water bottles packed with cloth, stuffed into larger water bottles—to defend against tear gas attacks from their nation’s riot police as clashes between the two sides grow more violent by the day. Image: AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd

This dude has eaten only cheese pizza for the last 25 years

This is Dan, a 38-old-year old woodworker from Maryland who claims he has only eaten pizza for the last 25 years. Cheese pizza. Exclusively. He says he didn’t stop eating it despite being diagnosed with diabetes. That’s when doctors told him he had to change his diet if he didn’t want to lose his life…

America’s first settlers were trapped in Beringia for 10,000 years

The ancestors of Native Americans came to the New World by walking over a land bridge across the Bering Strait. But there’s a rather glaring 10,000 year gap in the story — one that could be explained by a migratory pause that lasted for millennia. Genetic evidence proves that Asian populations made the trek across…

This stunning animal looks like a glitch in reality’s programming

It belongs to the genus Sapphirina, and its skin – which can flicker from brilliant blue to near-invisible in an instant – is something you truly need to see to believe. Deep Sea News’ Rebecca Helm calls it “the most beautiful animal you’ve never seen.” The tiny marine crustaceans have shimmering, crystalline skin that derives…

The Jim Henson Creature Shop Highlight Reel Reinforces Our Muppet Love

The work done by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop doesn’t only just show up on Sesame Street and in the latest batch of Muppet movies. Any time you see a convincing looking creature in a commercial that wasn’t brought to life through CG, odds are the Creature Shop had a hand in its creation. So if…

Auto-Pause When You Fall Asleep Is the Best Netflix Hack

Falling asleep while watching Netflix is the worst. Invariably you miss all the meat of whatever you’re watching, and snap awake to the closing credits (or your morning alarm). Ugh. But a bunch of Netflix engineers have a (theoretical) solution: a Fitbit hack that pauses your stream when the wearable senses you’ve fallen asleep. Netflix’s…

I wish they made this amazing version of Dune

“Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unbridled enthusiasm for the project doesn’t seem to have waned in the thirty years since he began assembling what might be the greatest story never told on the silver screen,” says Jordan Kushins in Gizmodo. I don’t blame him—it would be so awesome. https://gizmodo.com/incredible-concept-art-from-the-most-amazing-sci-fi-mov-1531018019

Somebody please make this Batman vs Terminator into a movie ASAP

The animation in this tiny short may not be as good as I’d like, but oh boy oh boy oh boy I really need to watch a movie or a TV series that chronicles Batman’s fight against Skynet in the Terminator universe. (We can kill the rest of the superheroes because Batman is enough.) SPLOID…

Come on in, GIFs! This is a party.

It’s GIF Party Friday, people! Do you have news to share, things to talk about, or just TV moments to re-live? Then put them down in GIF form, because we made a reservation under GIF, party of you, and it all begins now.

Meet the One Guy You Want to Be Stuck on Mars With

Very soon, in the never ending debate about whether or not info dumps can be compelling, someone will point out that Andy Weir made some 300 or more pages of info dumps nail-bitingly thrilling in The Martian. To which someone else will reply, ‘Well yeah, but that’s only because Mark Watney’s life hung in the…

The Promising (But Problematic) Future of Ultra-Fast Internet

While you weren’t looking, the internet got super fast. I’m not talking Google Fiber fast. I’m talking Star Trek fast. Today, it’s not just possible to download a movie in seconds. New technology makes it easy to download dozens of movies in fractions of a second. Fast is almost too slow a word to describe…

A Clip That Turns Any Stack of Paper Into a Homemade Notebook

Tired of waiting for Field Notes to release a notebook in your favorite color? Take matters into your own hands with this simple $9 Eco Clip. All you need is a stack of letter or legal-sized paper and enough strength to fold it in half. Then you just slide the Eco Clip down onto the…

This is the insane way Terry Gilliam’s Watchmen movie would have ended

There was a while where it seemed like Brazil director Terry Gilliam would be the one to bring Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel Watchmen to the big screen. It obviously didn’t work out, but producer Joel Silver has revealed how Gillaim’s adaptation would have ended, and it’s bonkers. Here’s what Silver revealed in an interview…

Stark, Beautiful Photos of an Abandoned Greek Airport

Ellinikon International Airport, located in Athens, Greece, was shut down in 2001. The site has been left partially intact while development plans take place, and photographer Alexandros Lambrovassilis has been revisiting the site for years to document its remains. Lambrovossalis, a frequent passer-by of the abandoned property, felt a strong connection to the history and…

A Strong Case For an Umbrella With a Bendable Handle

As useful as an umbrella is for staying dry when it’s pouring rain, they can be a pain to deal with when you get back inside and they’re soaking wet. But designers Liang-Hock Poh and Ming-Hung Lin realized that by simply making the umbrella’s handle flexible, it was far easier to hang somewhere for drying,…