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Sony may get into the Windows Phone game, launching a model as early as mid-2014, according to The Information. If it pans out, it would be a break from Sony’s Android loyalty, and bring some variety to the Nokia-heavy Windows Phone segment. [The Information via The Verge]

I Wouldn’t Pay for 2013’s Most Pirated Movie Either

On the heels of Torrentfreak’s most-pirated TV shows of 2013 is their list of most-pirated movies. Not surprisingly, the list doesn’t exactly represent the refined cultural taste you might hope. https://gizmodo.com/the-top-10-pirated-tv-shows-of-2013-1490417092 Coming in at #1 is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I’m guessing it only took a handful of 2012 theater goers to spread the…

World’s most remote plane crash memorial is also the most beautiful

September 19th, 1989 UTA Flight 772, flying from Paris to Brazzaville (in the People’s Republic of Congo), was taken over by six Libyan terrorists. They set off a suitcase bomb over the Sahara Desert, and all 170 souls aboard perished. 18 years later the victims’ families met at the crash site to build this memorial.…

The Bizarre, Human-Animal Hybrids Imagined in the 1930s

Have you ever imagined yourself with a giraffe-like neck? Tentacles instead of arms? Maybe the lower torso of a preying mantis? If you have, great French space artist Lucian Rudaux beat you to it, creating bizarre illustrations of what humans might look like if “evolution had taken a different turn.” https://gizmodo.com/the-first-science-artist-to-draw-accurate-pictures-of-m-5876668 When I last wrote…

Believe it or not, this was Michelangelo’s grocery shopping list

Michelangelo Buonarroti was too busy to buy food, so he used to send his illiterate servant with grocery shopping lists like the one above, illustrated in 1518. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us in Facebook.

Pirate Bay Uploads Up by 50 Percent in 2013 Despite Raids and Blockades

Authorities and copyright holders all over the world tried their damnedest to kill the Pirate Bay, but as data reported by TorrentFreak proves, the file sharing hub is a rogue ship that won’t sink. According to TorrentFreak, the Pirate Bay’s monthly uploads grew roughly 50 percent year over year, from 50,411 in November 2012 to…

Want to know why the sexy e-book Moan for Bigfoot has been downloaded over 100,000 times? Fandom expert Bonnie Burton explains monster erotica to you, over at C|Net.

The Most Monstrous Machines of the Year

The future is all around us. From medical miracles that could cure our most deadly diseases to transportation revolutions that will change how we travel around the planet, these are the ten most impressive cutting-edge machines we’ve covered this year. https://gizmodo.com/how-a-supercomputer-may-have-finally-unlocked-a-way-to-510672032 How a Supercomputer May Have Finally Unlocked a Way to Beat HIV There’s no…

The doctor who made notes on cocaine as he was dying from an overdose

There has been a lot of eerie experimentation over the years, but few experimental journals touch Edwin Katskee’s diary. Katskee decided that he would go ahead and test the effects of cocaine. He took far too much, and then documented his own overdose. For years the medical profession handled “pain management” by providing straps to…

The Weirdest Science Stories of 2013

From human head transplants to magnets that prove gay marriage is wrong to potty-mouthed supercomputers, 2013 was truly a bizarre year for science and those purporting to be scientists. Here are 25 of the weirdest stories of the past year. Scientists say it’s possible to blow up the Sun. On purpose. As if we didn’t…

How Gravity Would Be Different If the World Were a Cube

Perhaps the main difference if the earth were a cube would be that students would become much more frustrated trying to calculate the gravitational field. For a uniform cube with side length L and density rho, the gravitational force on mass m at position (x,y,z) is given by with where alpha, beta, and gamma are…

Incredibly enough, this helicopter is not going down in flames

This incredible photo by Nir Ben-Yosef aka xnir—an Israeli photographer who specializes in aviation and air-to-air photography and production—may look really scary. But fear not, because this AH-64A Apache is not going down in flames. It’s just releasing flares to show off. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us in Facebook.

Safely Ring In the New Year With an LED Fireworks Extravaganza

It’s ironic that one of the nights of the year when fireworks are the perfect way to celebrate is also the one night when you and your friends should not be messing with explosives. But with this LED fireworks kit, you can drink yourself silly and still safely put on quite a show when the…

These Monkeys Always Give Birth to Twins – How Do They Do It?

Unlike all other primates, clawed New World Monkeys almost always give birth to twins. But why? It turns out these animals have a unique set of adaptations that make it possible — and could prove useful to humans as well. We spoke to the lead scientist of the new study to understand how it all…

Shit, Internet, Phone—But What Did You Tweet About This Year?

These are the words that appeared most often in my Twitter timeline. I know this thanks to Vizify’s fun new tool that pulls highlights from all of your 2013 tweets—including popular topics, Vines, photos, and followers—and assembles them into a delightful short video. Soooo, I probably swear too much on Twitter and nothing puts that…

I Never Want This Best Vines of 2013 Compilation To End

Picking a favorite Vine is like picking a favorite hilarious, non sequitur grain of sand from an endless beach of weirdness. Fortunately, some blessed soul has stitched together hundreds of six-second masterpieces for your near-endless amusement. Watch it, enjoy it, laugh and cringe at it. And if after sitting though all 23 minutes of madness…

Make a prediction about 2014!

What will 2014 bring? Will all our mail really be delivered by robots? Will the new Planet of the Apes finally deliver an image more iconic than Charlton Heston yelling at a statue? Do you have a prediction about what the year has in store for you personally? Tell us your predictions about the year…

The 20 Best Movies Disappearing From Netflix Tomorrow

When the clock strikes its last midnight in 2013—or somewhere around there, anyway—dozens of movies will disappear from Netflix streaming. Fortunately, you’ve still got some time to churn through the ones you’ll miss the most. Here’s a list of the very best of the movies that’ll be gone in 2014. While Netflix has made it…

Beat-Matching Glowing Sunglasses Are Perfect For New Years Eve and Morn

It’s New Year’s Eve and unless you’ve got children to tend to you’ll probably be partying well into 2014 this evening. And while normally sunglasses aren’t required for the middle of the night, these Dropshades are, since they feature a glowing pulsing EQ that stays in sync with whatever music you’re listening to. And, the…

Kentucky is about to host the world’s first Ninja Throwing Star Range

“Ninjas” and “Kentucky” are two nouns that very rarely manage to show up in the same sentence. But all that’s about to change when the first indoor throwing star range opens in the Bluegrass State this coming spring. According to the delightful official website, the Ninjas Throwing Star Range will feature 500 types of shuriken…