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Ghostly Thermal Imaging Portraits are Eerie and Fascinating

A few years ago, photographer Linda Alterwitz was inspired by an episode of Cops to start taking photos using a borrowed thermographic camera. The results are compelling and a bit eerie. The photo above is Alterwitz’s German Shepherd, Ruby. This photo is part of Alterwitz’s Thermal Series, specifically the canine subseries. Shot with the thermographic…

io9 Katharine Trendacosta Oct 13 '13

Pencils Are Even More Deadly When They’re Actually Steel Nails

The thing I appreciate about The Slingshot Channel is that it always brings projects two or three iterations past what I would ever think to pursue. The pencil shooter Joerg made last week was more of a curiosity. Not the most deadly thing we’ve seen by a long shot. See what I did there? Anyway,…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Oct 13 '13

Crowdfund the reprinted adventures of Canada’s first superheroine

This week, we have a few groups of people looking to bring historic works of art to a modern audience. There are the reprinted adventures of Nelvana, a superheroine from Canada’s Golden Age, a publication of 19th-century illustrations for Poe’s “The Raven,” and a documentary about a famed Victorian taxidermist. Nelvana of the Northern Lights:…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 13 '13

Artist hangs his paintings inside a gallery owner’s ear

An unusual art show opened yesterday in a very tiny space: inside the ear of a gallery owner. Conceptual artist Joe Sola’s exhibition of itty bitty oil portraits is less about the paintings than their venue. It sounds like the subject of a magical realist story, or an eccentric detail from a science fiction travelogue,…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 13 '13

Weirdly, A Reverse To-Do List Makes A Lot of Sense

It’s fun to check things off of a to-do list, but often what’s more important is remembering when you last did something. Is it time to change the water filter? Get a new toothbrush? Go to the doctor? If you had something in your calendar the last time you did it, it’s fairly easy to…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Oct 13 '13

A short film about an undercover space agent—or a boy in mourning

Young Simon tells his audience that he’s the Governor General of the Ramada Space Corps, an alien who has been sent to infiltrate Earth and awaits the return of his superiors. But the truth may be more than his brain is prepared to accept. Graham Tallman’s Codename: Simon is a quiet exploration of the stories…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 13 '13

What was worse: SNL‘s Gravity sketch or the Armageddon sketch?

Oh, Saturday Night Live. You saw fit to give us not one but two space-themed sketches during last night’s episode, including one that referenced the NASA shutdown. Unfortunately, they were both terrible. Apologies to folks in non-Hulu regions. Combining Gravity with the NASA furlough was promising, and could have made for a really smart, politically…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 13 '13

A Robotic Petting Zoo Is Just as Creepy-Awesome as it Sounds

Petting zoos are fun, but they can also be kind of sketchy. Is that rabbit being attacked by too many five-year-olds? Is that goat depressed? It’s awkward. But if the tactile experience were coming from robots and AI you might really be able to enjoy yourself. Conveniently the London-based architecture and design studio Minimaforms, known…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Oct 13 '13

The Most Ridiculous Mystical Pregnancies in Fiction

The magic pregnancy is a staple science fiction and fantasy fiction. Whether it’s the impending birth of a savior, the coming of some form of Antichrist, or some kind of experiment, speculative fiction has been the home of a lot of ridiculous stories of pregnancy and birth. Here are the most absurd ones. Last week,…

io9 Katharine Trendacosta Oct 13 '13

Is There A 12-Inch Retina MacBook in the Pipeline?

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has released predictions about Apple’s future laptop plans. Most notably he is forecasting that a 12-inch MacBook with a retina display will be announced in mid-2014, and that it will have a redesigned clamshell that is thinner and lighter than the current MacBook Airs. This is still definitely in…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Oct 13 '13

How the Defiance TV show and videogame tell their story together

The first season of Syfy’s hit Defiance had a lot of promise, and one of its coolest aspects is how the show ties into the videogame and vice versa, not just promoting the other, but building off each other. Here’s a preview of one of the extras on the Defiance s1 DVD/Blu-ray set (arriving on…

io9 Rob Bricken Oct 13 '13

Surreal portraits of classical beauties with fish heads [NSFW]

The notion of the inverted mermaid usually comes up as something of a joke, Hannah Yata‘s gorgeous and grotesque paintings give us lovely ladies with fish for heads while evoking mythology, Renaissance era painting, and beauty and monstrosity of the natural world. Artful nudity and fish vomit below. Yata has more odd aquatic paintings on…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 13 '13

The nuclear physics letter that was ghost-written for Einstein

This letter, signed by Einstein, paved the way for the atom bomb. Except it’s not Einstein’s letter. It was actually written by a man named Leó Szilárd. Leó Szilárd was a great physicist and accent mark enthusiast. While some physicists thought about the philosophical implications of the fact that atoms weren’t as indivisible as previously…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Oct 13 '13

What if Disney followed Cars and Planes with Boats?

Somewhere in Los Angeles, a group of executives gather to discuss their next big tentpole film: Boats. This comedic short envisions the cynical development meeting in which merchandising ideas come before story. Justin Dec wrote, directed, and edited Boats, which stars Parks & Recreation’s Jim O’Heir. It teaches us that all you need to make…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 13 '13

8 Ways to Keep Body Snatchers from Stealing Your Corpse

If you died in the United Kingdom or North America during the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a risk that your corpse might be stolen from your grave and wind up beneath a medical student’s scalpel. But if you had enough money—or very good friends—there were ways that you could try to avoid that…

io9 Lauren Davis Oct 13 '13

Hanson: MMMBop

This song. This. Song. I mean really. But consider the video, too. There are gems in here, people. First of all, boy can these kids fit in the backseat of a car. Note also their ability to all ride simultaneously in what appears to be an Army Jeep. They also have fun on public buses.…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Oct 12 '13

Make Kids Type-A From the Start With This Intense Toy Organizer

Childhood is about carefree play, but even kids have to move their crap out of the way sometime. Perhaps looking to lay down the law in a stylish way, Torafu Architects designed the koloro-wagon, which converts three stackable wooden baskets into a multi-tiered cart. The koloro-wagon is really cleverly designed so the hinged handles of…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Oct 12 '13

S.H.I.E.L.D. may show Agent Coulson’s mysterious Cellist Lover

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. showed up to New York Comic-Con and screened the entire next episode, which, had some pretty funny parts. But the real gem we gleaned from the NYCC panel was what was implied. Producer Jeph Loeb took the stage and didn’t answer much. When asked any sort of spoiler question his response…

Television Meredith Woerner Oct 12 '13

Optical Illusions Make A Boring Desk Unexpectedly Amazing

Never Hide Films has been working with Ray Ban since 2007 to put out weird videos that make you think about the world differently. And ideally make you want to go buy sunglasses. This one, titled “Super Clever Sunglass Illusion,” has enough twists to keep the momentum going. And I don’t think it’s a spoiler,…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Oct 12 '13

Walking Dead casts Eugene and a badass Abraham

Walking Dead’s big New York Comic-Con announcement? They’ve found their Abraham. It’s Bull from Band of Brothers… so the crush continues. Plus they’ve cast the mullet-ed Eugene as well! At the NYCC panel, the cast of Walking Dead was met with thunderous applause. But (as per usual) Norman Reedus was the belle of the ball;…

Television Meredith Woerner Oct 12 '13

Ghostly Thermal Imaging Portraits are Eerie and Fascinating

Pencils Are Even More Deadly When They’re Actually Steel Nails

Crowdfund the reprinted adventures of Canada’s first superheroine

Artist hangs his paintings inside a gallery owner’s ear

Weirdly, A Reverse To-Do List Makes A Lot of Sense

A short film about an undercover space agent—or a boy in mourning

What was worse: SNL‘s Gravity sketch or the Armageddon sketch?

A Robotic Petting Zoo Is Just as Creepy-Awesome as it Sounds

The Most Ridiculous Mystical Pregnancies in Fiction

Is There A 12-Inch Retina MacBook in the Pipeline?

How the Defiance TV show and videogame tell their story together

Surreal portraits of classical beauties with fish heads [NSFW]

The nuclear physics letter that was ghost-written for Einstein

What if Disney followed Cars and Planes with Boats?

8 Ways to Keep Body Snatchers from Stealing Your Corpse

Hanson: MMMBop

Make Kids Type-A From the Start With This Intense Toy Organizer

S.H.I.E.L.D. may show Agent Coulson’s mysterious Cellist Lover

Optical Illusions Make A Boring Desk Unexpectedly Amazing

Walking Dead casts Eugene and a badass Abraham

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