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A Little Vitamin B Is All That Makes This Worm Glow Bright Green

This might look like the result of some wild nuclear accident, but in fact this worm is perfectly healthy. It just happens to glow bright green when exposed to certain wavelengths of light. A team of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California has discovered that it’s a humble splash of…

Obama Administration Tries to Ban Phone Unlocking, Claims to Support It

Slate is reporting that, while the Obama administration has long been making noises about trying to support phone unlocking, it’s also been busy readying legislation that would actually ban the practice. https://gizmodo.com/the-new-fcc-chairman-wants-carriers-to-allow-phone-unlo-1465010676 Derek Khanna trawled through the recent Wikileaks dump—which included a draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Treaty—and found some things he wasn’t really…

Selfie Is Officially the 2013 Word of the Year

Time to fire up Instagram and party like it’s, um, 2013, because ‘selfie’ has been named the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year. Fending off competition like ‘twerk’, ‘bitcoin’, and ‘binge-watch’—all good words!—selfie won out because of its huge surge in usage over the past twelve months. In fact, Oxford Dictionaries editors claim the use…

Yahoo is (finally) going to encrypt all the information that moves between you and its products by the end of the first quarter of 2014.

Moga Ace iOS Game Controller First Look: Cheap Fun, Huge Potential

Ever since Apple introduced reference designs and an API for iOS gaming controllers at WWDC, we’ve known some kind of officially sanctioned iOS hardware was on the way. The Moga Ace is the first we’ve gotten in our hot little hands on, and after playing with it for a few days, we can safely say…

US Army to get Iron Man suit for troops in just four years

This is not the first time that the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) has talked about their desire to get a real life version of Iron Man’s suit for soldiers, but now it’s giving a very specific timeframe: “The goal is to have a contract in place by next fall and have…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Horse on a Treadmill

Not bad, but lets see how far can it throw a cinder block. Part of Virginia Tech’s long-running “Invent the Future” football halftime commercials, Horse on a Treadmill has gained a cult following among students at the school. Not only does Horse have its own dedicated Twitter account, the student body has even begun petitioning…

These animals unbelievably made from tissue paper are so fun

In what might be the most creative use of tissue ever, Fuyu Arai created this wonderful stop motion animation video for Nepia, a Japanese tissue paper company. It shows different animals like birds, dogs, kangaroos, frogs, etc. being formed through just tissue paper. The animation is so fluid that you almost believe that these tissue…

Aerial photos reveal the destructive path of the Midwest tornado

Tornadoes ripped through the Midwest of the United States earlier today and the damage it left behind is absolutely tragic. These pictures of Washington, Illinois, the worst area affected, show how a community gets shredded by natural disaster. The path is violent, the ground is scarred and the homes are just gone. From the aerial…

How to open a can without a can opener

Here’s a tip you should file away in your folder for zombie apocalypse preparation and in your brain for future conversations for whoa, I didn’t know it was that easy: opening a can without a can opener. All it takes is some abrasive concrete rubbing of the can’s top and a firm squeeze of the…

Marilyn Manson guest stars as Peter Pan’s shadow on Once Upon a Time

Shit is finally happening on “Don’t Worry, You Didn’t Miss Anything Upon A Time.” FINALLY. OH also — who wants to hear Marilyn Manson playing the epic role of “shadow?” Spoilers ahead! The big reveal this week: Peter Pan is Rumpelstiltskin’s DAD. Which I think we all saw coming, or at least suspected. I thought…

Terrifying van ride up the Himalayas would scare the life out of me

So like… Uhh… Yeah… Oh my… this is just the van ride up to the Himalayas. As in, this scariness is only the beginning of something even scarier (that would be climbing the damn thing). Mick Fowler shot this video of his van driving up the mountain and it’s so close to the edge of…

How did this four-winged Microraptor fly?

During the late Cretaceous, this gorgeous four-winged Microraptor flitted among the dinosaurs in a region we call China today. Now, paleontologist Darren Naish and his colleagues have done a series of crazy experiments to figure out how these seemingly-impossible bird ancestors flew. Illustration by Emily Willoughby With characteristic dry wit, Naish describes part of the…

A Few Possible Ways That We Could Fund Interstellar Travel

Stephen Hawking argues in the recent book Starship Century that humans need to spread out into interstellar space in the next thousand years, or we’re doomed. So over at Forbes, Elise Ackerman lays out three scenarios in which we could pay the immense cost of interstellar colonization. Image via Merbel on CG Hub. In a…

Human-caused earthquake rocks Chicago

On November 4, an earthquake shook the suburbs of Chicago. It was an incredibly rare event for the region, and now scientists say it was caused by human activity. Specifically, explosions in a quarry set off the quake — and could do it again. According to Alex Ruppenthal, on My Suburban Life: Scientists still think…

Comment of the Day: USA! USA! Edition

Today, we pitted Mockingjay against Catching Fire for the ultimate prize (bragging rights), closely observed a stunning showdown between two praying mantises, and pondered the legal ramifications of defamation of (fictional) characters. Georgetown law professor Rebecca Tushnet joined us for a Q&A on the legalities of fan fiction, artists’ mash-ups, and musical sampling. In response…

You can use your cheapo coffee machine to cook after the apocalypse

Here’s a clever piece of post-apocalyptic kit. You know that clunky drip-coffee maker you scored for like five bucks at your neighbor’s yard sale? Turns out it’s actually a pretty serious all-in-one culinary wonder machine – provided you know how to use it. NPR’s Michaeleen Doucleff lists the three basic cooking techniques afforded by your…

Does the apocalypse come in three stages?

Celebrated anthologist John Joseph Adams has teamed up with Wool author Hugh Howey to bring you a triptych of anthologies that sound like annihilation candy: The End is Nigh, The End is Now and The End Has Come. We talked to Adams and Howie about the three stages of apocalypse. Image by Julian Faylona The…

This is what a 3,400-year-old mummy steak looks like

If you were Queen Tiye of Egypt’s parents you wouldn’t want to go to the Otherworld just with some bread and beer and wine and jewelry. You would like to eat a good ribeye beef steak, prepared with a mixture of fat, beeswax, and Pistacia resin. That’s what Katherine A. Clarka, Salima Ikramb, and Richard…

What your favorite rock stars would look like if they were alive today

Rock stars don’t age, at least our memories of them don’t. Sure, some of them get the harsh lines of life imprinted onto their face and others pass away as a shell of themselves much too early but our memories of rock stars never change. They stay forever young through iconic pictures, through the emotions…