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The Secret to Creating Great Environmentalist Art

Alex Rivera blew our minds with his movie Sleep Dealer, and now he’s organizing a film festival for environmental films, the Tales From Planet Earth festival in Madison, WI. Talking to the Cap Times, he explains how great art can challenge our ideas about what “the environment” is, and how to save it. Says Rivera:…

A San Francisco Cocktail Party Where the Bartenders Are All Robots

There’s both an art and a science to making the perfect mixed drink—it’s not just the stiffness of the drink but also the flashiness of the pour. At the 2013 BarBot event last weekend, guests were treated to an evening of mechanical bartenders that put Brian Flanagan’s bottle-flipping skills to shame. BarBot is an annual…

Computer Chess is the most realistic movie about AI ever made

An odd, off-kilter film, Computer Chess, has managed to pull off something that no other science fiction story ever has. With its tale of an early 1980s computer chess tournament, it reveals the mundane, silly way that a truly dangerous artificial intelligence might emerge. Famed indie director Andrew Bujalski has put together a collection of…

A Bionic Material That Lets Buildings Open and Close Like a Flower

Imagine a building with a façade that opens and closes like a flower blooming. It feels like the building is alive, but in reality, it’s just inspired by life. A material that can make this happen actually does exist—it’s called Flectofin, and it’s based on a flower called the Bird of Paradise. Flectofin’s been around…

3D Printed Lens Hoods Let You Stand Out In a Sea of DSLRs

At one point and time, carrying a DSLR made you feel special. In a sea of point and shoot cameras you looked like a bonafide professional photographer—even if you never ventured past your DSLR’s Auto shooting mode. But these days everyone’s got a prosumer camera hanging around their necks, and the best way to feel…

Noomi Rapace to headline in the “doomed septuplet” movie

The dystopian movie What Happened to Monday, centered around a pack of illegal septuplets, just got its star. Noomi Rapace has joined the scifi drama set in a future where each family is only allowed one child, so naturally a family of septuplets is doomed. Written by Max Botkin and directed by Tommy Wirkola (Hansel…

The Justice League goes to War in DC’s New 52 animated universe

Thanks to the straight-to-home video Flashpoint movie, the new animated universe based on DC’s New 52 relaunch is officially here. The first movie in this brand-new DCAU? Justice League: War, based on the first six issues of the Justice League comic by Geoff Johns — here’s the trailer. In War, Batman, Superman et al. come…

Make It a Cross-Species Halloween

Interaction designer Chris Woebken has taken Halloween to its logical conclusion: helping one species pass for another. As nothing more than a weekend project—more of an autumnal joke, not a serious art project—Woebken decided to extend Halloween to man’s best friend… and to dress a dog up like a cat, complete with eye holes punched…

One Tool Is All You Need To Turn a Roast Turkey Into a Feast

Is there a greater honor than being asked to carve the Thanksgiving turkey? Not on that particular day of the year there isn’t. The last thing you want to do is screw things up, and that means finding the right tool for the job. That could be Joseph Joseph’s Duo Carve set, which features an…

This Supposed Shot From the Nexus 5 Camera Doesn’t Look Half Bad

Hey, the Nexus 5 rumor mill doesn’t sleep. These are supposedly some of the first images taken with the smartphone’s camera, and from the looks of this shot, it might not be quite as horrible as its predecessor. https://gizmodo.com/the-best-smartphone-camera-5982478 The pics—which popped up on Google+ and have since been removed—had a resolution of 3264 x…

Who You Gonna Call? The Littlest Ghostbuster and His Adorable Ecto-1

Do you recognize Cooper? Probably not, because he’s a year older than the last time you saw him driving a tiny time-traveling DeLorean and wearing an adorable Marty McFly costume. This year, however, Cooper’s hitting the trick-or-treating circuit in a wonderful Ghostbusters getup complete with his trusty push car turned into an absolutely amazing miniature…

What’s the most overrated TV show of all time?

Science fiction and fantasy have a long history of brilliance on television. And with so many riches to choose from, and so much of it on DVD, we’re constantly reassessing the canon. Some shows look better, others worse. But what’s the most overrated TV show of all time? https://gizmodo.com/the-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-shows-of-all-time-5347048 Please include a picture or clip…

Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones, 14.1 million iPads, and 4.6 million Macs in the last three months, on the way to earnings $7.5 billion of pure profit. Both revenue and earnings were down from the same quarter last year but… uh… yeah. That is still a huge chunk of dough.

Scientists discover oldest human brain in the world

You’re looking at the oldest human brain in the world. About 1400 years older than the previous cerebral pudding discovered near the University of York—which looks really gross, see below—this one is four thousand years old. Scientists have a weird theory about how it survived all this time. Although the brain appears to be sightly…

47 Ronin trailer has a gigantic luck dragon in it

Carl Rinsch’s 47 Ronin trailer is all martial arts, troll people, Keanu Reeves and a giant motherfucking dragon. We are not still yet 100% sure what is going on — but oooooh, look at the pretty. LOOSELY based around the classic Japanese story, this film will be Rinsch’s feature debut, so it had better be…

Slate launched an animal blog today, and to kick things off they’ve got a post from Brian Switek that outs some of nature’s most adorable creatures as total dickheads. Equally important news re: animal behavior: Last Word on Nothing’s Whitney Robles reveals many of the Internet’s most squee-worthy videos actually depict animals in lust, anger,…

The UN adopts official guidelines for protecting Earth from asteroids

The United Nations has approved a set of measures to protect our planet from the dangers of incoming asteroids. The recently-adopted guidelines will correct a number of outstanding issues, including global coordination and an actual response plan. Indeed, this has been a long time coming. The guidelines were developed back in 2008 by the Association…

Space Age Plastics Reinvent the 19th Century Penny-farthing

BASF, the largest chemical company in the world, has finally put its materials knowledge to good use: By creating a ridiculously over-engineered penny-farthing, the big-wheeled bike of the 19th century. This conceptual velocipede might never make it to the local bike shop (in fact, it definitely won’t), but that doesn’t make it any less fun…

The Exact Moment Witches of East End Made Us Fling Shoes at The TV Set

Last night’s Witches of East End managed to spin its wheels — and to blow unsatisfyingly through a couple of storylines. How did it do this? By killing people. On the other hand, Freddie Prinze, Jr.’s character is still alive, and allergic to shirts. Spoilers ahead. After last week’s mostly enjoyable outing, “A Few Good…

A Tiny Letterpress Printer Made By a 3D Printer

The letterpress was a huge leap forward for mass communication when Johannes Gutenberg perfected the moveable type machine way back in the 1450s. These days, it’s considered a specialty craft. But this tiny letterpress is thoroughly modern: It’s assembled with parts printed on a standard 3D printer. Whoa. This meta-machine was designed by Technifico and…