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Concept Art Writing Prompt: A Boy and His Robot vs. The Police

Two boys are playing with their robot in a sunny meadow when the police appear on the scene. Are they here to ruin their robotic fun? What happens when the police face off against this remote-controlled machine? Simon Stålenhag created this illustration, via Geek Art Gallery. His site is filled with tons of gorgeous futuristic…

Travelers Beware: Google Play Might Delete All Your Books (Updated)

It’s easy to forget that owning something digitally is way different from owning it for real. And if you do forget, it can bite you in the ass. That’s what happened to Jim O’Donnell when he traveled into Singapore and found that Google Play Books app on his iPad had up and deleted all his…

Phineas and Ferb‘s Next Mission: A Star Wars Crossover

Last night, the Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb teamed up with Spider-Man, Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man for a bit of intra-company zaniness. And that won’t be their only Disney crossover, as the pair are headed to Tatooine. Disney first announced the one-hour special Phineas and Ferb Star Wars during the show’s Comic-Con panel this…

Everybody’s gone crazy on Continuum, and futureshock is to blame!

In last night’s episode of Continuum, the whole town of Vancouver goes bonkers. It’s basically a total political/social meltdown, precipitated by the internetz. But really, all this madness is just various forms of future-shock, because the future is arriving ahead of schedule. Spoilers ahead… The original logline for Continuum — which is still basically mentioned…

Woz on Jobs, Hyperloop Hijinks, Area 51 Declassified, And More

Hyperloop week! And as if that wasn’t exciting enough, plenty of other things went out of their ways to happen to. Area 51 is declassified! Google’s DNS server had a freakout! We found out about carrots and Nazis and lying! Woz saw Jobs! Check it out! Right now! Ahhhh! I Quit Cable 2.5 Years Ago.…

A street rat tries to save its lab rat love from a research robot

The rats in Alex Weil’s short film One Rat Short aren’t quite as anthropomorphized as the scavengers in Ratatouille, but they evoke plenty of emotion through their squeaks and twitching noses. A street rat stumbles into a behavioral research lab, and falls for one of the laboratory rats guarded by a robotic monitor. Weil created…

Joseph Kosinski, prepare to enter The Twilight Zone. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Tron: Legacy and Oblivion director is in negotiations to direct the latest big-screen incarnation of The Twilight Zone, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way.

The Cast of Family Guy as Game of Thrones Characters

Redditor Eric LaSorda has a lot of fun with these pieces of mashup art, casting the Griffin family and their neighbors as characters from Game of Thrones. As usual, Meg gets the short end of the weirwood stick. Check out the rest of the series on Imgur—and don’t forget the special Season Three spoiler character.…

This Levitating Matchstick Trick Is a Great Excuse to Play With Fire

Need an excuse to go play with matches? Too bad, you’re getting one anyway. Turns out if you place a couple matches up against each other just right and then light them on fire (duh), you can actually perform a crazy little levitation trick! https://gizmodo.com/strike-anywhere-matches-are-packed-with-secret-science-1039873722 Grant Thomspon pitches it like a clever, unloseable bar bet—and…

How Pacific Rim‘s kaiju parasites came to animatronic life

Pacific Rim’s “Rollie Pollies” are the bug-like parasites that hang out on kaiju bodies. Visual effects house Spectral Motion posted a video showing how these critters went from concept art to scuttling in the builders’ hands. [via Comic Book Movie]

Surgeon stole heroin out of a drug smuggler’s stomach

After removing capsules of heroin from a drug smuggler’s stomach, one Siberian surgeon walked off with a souvenir: five grams of the freshly liberated drug. The Guardian reports that after becoming ill on a train, a man acting as a drug mule was brought by police to a hospital in the small town of Bogotol,…

A Beautiful Analog Clock for Dummies Who Are Bad at Telling Time

I have a confession to make, and I’m sure I’m not alone: I’m really bad at reading analog clocks. I learned how to when I was a kid, and I even wear an analog watch today, but some 15 years of digital crutches in between has made reading old-school clocks kind of a drag. You…

Two sisters must cope with an alien invasion—and each other

Anyone who thinks comics aren’t for kids or for ladies hasn’t read Dani Jones’ webcomic My Sister, the Freak. It stars a pair of sisters who seem like they couldn’t be more different from one another, but discover they’re Earth’s best hope against an alien invasion. Everyone thinks that Allison Seaver’s little sister Mary is…

The Gear and Apps You Need to Survive the Next Semester

Okay, this is it. Back to school, again. Whether it’s your first college semester or you can see graduation on the horizon, these tools will make the next few months infinitely more bearable. Take Note This isn’t 2003; you no longer need to carry a cumbersome spiral-bound notebook that will either get lost/torn/burned by your…

Watch DC Nation‘s ultra-cool Wonder Woman shorts online now

If you were intrigued by the first clip of DC Nation’s 1970s-flavored Wonder Woman shorts, but haven’t gotten to see the whole shebang, DC has kindly put Diana’s three-part rescue of Steve Trevor on YouTube. https://gizmodo.com/an-animated-wonder-woman-like-youve-never-seen-her-befo-749708481 Robert Valley created this series of shorts, with plenty of gorgeous visuals and Wonder Woman using everything from an…

Two Timelines of Slang for Genitalia, from 1250 Through Today

Depending on what era you live in, a penis might be known as a plough, a pillow prick, a jigglestick, or a jasper, while a vagina might be a fly-trap, an oracle, a catch ’em alive-o, or the antipodes. Brush up on your historical slang with a pair of genital charts. TimeGlider created these timelines…

Google’s Not Getting Its Fancy Dotless “Search” Domain

ICANN’s loosening up and getting ready to roll out a whole new batch of .whatever generic top-level domains, but Google wanted more. Google was pushing for crazy, dotless domains like http://search. But the dream is over. ICANN just smacked it down. https://gizmodo.com/google-wants-to-create-a-dotless-domain-called-search-5994354 On Friday, ICANN New gTLD Program Committee decided to confirm and all-out ban…

A wacky Disney/Marvel Crossover plus Metamorpho on Beware the Batman

This week in the world of cartoons, we are treated to an unusual Marvel/Disney crossover, an Iron Man appearance on Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., and a story of Fry traveling through time on Futurama. Ultimate Spider-Man is off for a little while to make way for the new Hulk series and Avengers Assemble…

Researchers Snuck Malware Onto the App Store By Making It a Transformer

No one really knows exactly how Apple makes sure the apps that wind up in its store are safe. All we know is that the App Store has a comparatively better track record than its Android counterpart. But nothing is ever totally safe. Researchers managed to sneak malware onto the App Store with ease by…

How did people call their penises and vaginas eight centuries ago?

Cat’s meat, thatched cottage, fanny, cartsue case, jam, quim-whiskers, front parlour, whopper, percy, doover, swanska, jamoke, jolly bean, donniger… these timelines tell you the nicknames of your intimate parts from 1250 to today. https://gizmodo.com/two-timelines-of-slang-for-genitalia-from-1250-through-1157205966