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Shop at Appla and Drink Sffcccks Coffee on China’s “Street of Fakes”

A cursory glance at this street in Wuxi, China would give the impression of a booming downtown marketplace that runneth over with only the hottest international brands. Look a little closer, and you’ll notice that some of the spellings are a bit—er, off. Look even closer than that, and you’ll realize that this bizarro strip…

The medicine you give your pet may be worse than useless

When pets get sick, we’re often willing to spend a lot of money to help them get well — we’ll pay for expensive tests, medicine, and even surgery if it helps our furry pals play with us again. But one investigator found that there’s not much evidence for the effectiveness of commonly-prescribed medications for animals.…

IBM’s Graphene Circuit: A Genius Reminder of How Far Graphene Has to Go

IBM’s mad scientists have created a graphene-based circuit that’s 10,000 times more powerful than existing alternatives. This radio receiver is so sophisticated and futuristic, in fact, that it can… send a text message to your friends. Yes, unfortunately the best we can do with this incredible, ultra-conductive, one atom-thick material is create a little chip…

First custom mutant monkeys bring us one step closer to designer babies

These are the first monkeys with customized mutations were just born in China, marking a new era in precision gene editing. (Read: bringing us closer to a Gattaca-like future where designer babies grow into perfect people that never get sick.) They are twins. Working out of the Model Animal Research Center of Nanjing University, a…

Starting today, you’ll be able to order from GrubHub and Seamless restaurants directly from Foursquare. In addition to the usual info you see when you look up a restaurant, you’ll also see the option to order from participating joints. Which is kind of weird because Foursquare is about going places and delivery is about sitting…

Watch this guy draw shockingly photorealistic everyday objects

You’re probably not going to instantly become as talented an artist as Marcello Barenghi by simply watching these wonderful timelapses of his photorealistic drawings. But it’s still utterly captivating to see them come to life, and all the tiny details that make them look so real. And who knows, maybe watching someone bring something as…

Explore Spotify’s Millions of Unplayed Songs with Forgotify

Four million songs on Spotify—a whopping twenty percent of the site’s tracks—have never been streamed. That is a ton of lonely tunes, but thanks to Forgotify they’re going to start getting some listening love; the service queues up stuff that’s never gotten a spin—the non-Biebers, the un-Mileys, the bizarro-Beys—and creates a running playlist of all-but-unknown…

10 Major Franchises That Have Never Been Rebooted

Most heroes get a facelift every decade or so, to keep them from showing their age. The longer an epic saga goes on, the greater the chances you’ll see everything start over from scratch. But not everybody succumbs to the Etch-a-Sketch urge. Here are 10 epic storylines that have never had a reboot. Ever. Oh,…

Man Photoshops Technology Into 15th Century Paintings, Hilarity Ensues

Not everyone appreciates a GIF. And not everyone appreciates an early Renaissance masterpiece. But there’s more audience overlap than you’d think. Just ask Scorpion Dagger, née James Kerr, an artist whose GIFs feature subjects from 15th century paintings creeping on Instagram and unfriending each other on Facebook. Kerr is a Montreal artist whose Tumblr, Scorpion…

The Air Force Prototype Fighter That Was Just Never Quite Good Enough

Despite the US military’s robust budget, not every design makes it onto the battlefield. In fact, only a select number of the very best designs ever actually fly. So what the hell was the USAF thinking choosing the defect-ridden F-22 Raptor over this gorgeous jet? When the Soviets rolled out their advanced Su-27 and MiG-29…

Lego Ghostbusters is now official!

Attenshun, Lego and Bill Murray fans all over the world! Start saving because the Keymaster has finally met the Gatekeeper and Gozer the Gozerian has materialized at Lego’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark: The 30th Anniversary Ghostbuster set—designed by Lego fan Brent Waller— is going to be an official Lego product. Update: I was so excited…

This is the First-Ever Weather Map of a Brown Dwarf

The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope has been used to create history’s first-ever map of weather on the surface of a brown dwarf. These images provide us with an unprecedented look at the atmospheric features of these poorly understood “failed stars.” Top Animation adapted from this video, via ESO/I. Crossfield. The brown dwarf in…

Tiny Copper and Carbon Nanotube Wires Increase Current Flow 100 Fold

Researchers in Japan have developed an incredibly thin wire—just half a micrometer in diameter—made from a new composite material composed of traditional copper and those new fangled carbon nanotubes. But what makes this creation particularly awesome is that the new wire allows over 100 times more current to flow than a traditional copper thread. Furthermore,…

Scariest Apocalypse Yet? A World Without Cats

Depending on whether you’re a cat-lover or someone who’s terrified of toxoplasmosis, this could be the most terrifying biological disaster scenario of all time. A biology professor has written a novel called World Without Cats. No more emergency kittens! https://gizmodo.com/common-cat-parasite-could-actually-be-causing-schizophr-5883618 The self-published World Without Cats is about three scientists “who encounter a terrible feline hemorrhagic…

I wish dogs would always move in slow motion like this corgi

Screw Google Glass. What I want is to see the world slowed down, shot at 500 frames per second and played back at 24 frames per second whenever I want. Or see time-lapses by blinking twice and accelerating time. Example: This corgi. Just imagine being able to watch anything in the real world and be…

This Genius App Would Turn Your Smartphone Pics Into Prints, For Free

Where are the dozens of pictures on your smartphone or tablet going? Nowhere, probably. Printing them at home looks chintzy, and getting professional prints is expensive. Flag wants to change that, with an app that would give you high-quality prints and mail them wherever you want, all for free. Cool! The app, which is currently…

New Cosmos trailer shows how Carl Sagan’s series got upgraded

Neil deGrasse Tyson has picked up where Carl Sagan ended, and his newly rebooted Cosmos series look pretty astounding, as you can see in this trailer with the first actual footage. We are exceptionally excited for the 13-episode series titled Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey, produced by Seth MacFarlane and Sagan’s original 1980s collaborators —…

This mesmerizing timelapse shows an entire year’s worth of weather

Behold EUMESAT’s first annual global weather overview! Over the course of eight minutes, the narrated video reviews all the global weather 2013 had to offer, from arctic blasts to super-typhoons. The video was put together by EUMETSAT using images taken by European, Japanese, and U.S. satellites. The background was provided by NASA’s Blue Marble Project.…

The new From Dusk Till Dawn TV series looks oddly light on vampires

Here’s the first trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s From Duck Till Dawn TV series, which… reimagines his 1996 movie, and I say reimagines because I don’t know how else to say “completely rewrites Quentin Tarantino’s original script and made it a dramatic story about two horrible criminals who take refuge in a vampire brothel.” I’m actually…

Alien monsters or awesome spiders, I just love these little guys

I can’t stop looking at the extraordinary photos by Thomas Shahan, an Oregon-based artist and microphotographer who creates amazing portraits of arthropods, including these awesome jumping spiders. His beautiful monsters don’t make me run in fear, but make me smile (knowing they are tiny, that is.) In fact, some of their faces are hilarious. Above:…