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Christopher Walken as Zeus, Nelsan Ellis as Dionysus: Best Movie Ever?

Lots of off-beat choices have been playing Zeus lately. You had Liam Neeson in the Titans films. You have Sean Bean in the Percy Jackson films. But screw that — we want Christopher Fuckin’ Walken playing the King of the Gods. And this movie already exists. The movie in question is called Gods Behaving Badly,…

That Massive Russian Rocket Explosion Was Caused by Dumb Human Error

Last week a Russian rocket called Proton-M exploded over a spaceport in Kazakhstan just seconds after it launched. Turns out, we can blame some dumb humans for the blast—investigators found that the rocket’s angular velocity sensors had been installed upside down. According to a report, when sifting through the wreckage, investigators discovered that these key…

GroupMe, Still Awesome, Now with Emoji That Look Mostly Insane

GroupMe’s a lifechanger. You should use it. Today it got emoji (good) that for some insane reason use its logo in place of a human head, and then attach things like beards and devil horns and headphones to it (uhh). The emoji update is just on iOS (iPhone and iPad), but will be on Android…

Electron Microscopes May Have Gotten as Good As They’ll Ever Get

Electron microscopes have made it possible to see deeper into the fabric of matter than ever before, and they’ve only been getting better. But we might not be able to zoom in any further because the zoom lenses are making it impossible to see. In 2008, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California…

From Chucks to Dunks: 100 Years of Sneaker Design Visualized

Shoe companies have been mass-producing sneakers since the Converse All Star first appeared all the way back in 1917, and their designs have changed immensely since. But how did we get from no-frills kicks to Jeremy Scott’s garish winged monstrosities? A print from PopChartLabs shows the evolution over almost a century of sneaker design. You…

Samsung’s New R&D Office Will Be a San Jose Beacon

Another day, another gleaming Silicon Valley headquarters. Today, it’s Samsung, which broke ground on this dazzling 650,00-square-foot office in San Jose this morning. How does it stack up, so to speak, with its nearby peers? The building (which is actually just one of four projects Samsung has going on nearby) will serve as a research…

How an early psychiatric treatment lead to widespread mutilation

Henry Cotton got into psychiatry with noble goals, and ended up as one of the historical horrors of the medical profession. How did he transform from visionary to monster? It had to do with his habit of curing psychiatric disorders by chopping things off his patients. In 1907, when Henry Cotton took over the Trenton…

Japan Provides Best Reminder Yet to Check Your Google Privacy Settings

Everybody’s done it. You upload some potentially incriminating photos to the internet, forget to uncheck a box or two in the privacy settings, and the next thing you know your mom is staring at pictures of your friends doing bong rips. It’s a funny mistake to make—until it becomes a matter of public safety. That’s…

Here’s what 25 feet of sea-level rise would do to the U.S. west coast

A few months ago, Pittsburgh artist Nickolay Lamm that revealed what 25 feet of sea level rise might look like at a variety of East Coast tourist destinations. Now, Lamm is back with more visions of America’s watery future – but this time he’s focused on the country’s Pacific coastline. Above: San Diego’s Coronado Island…

An Exclusive Look at the Owner’s Manual for Adventure Time‘s BMO!

One of the coolest characters in Adventure Time is BMO, the little video-game friend who hangs around with Finn and Jake. But what would you do with your very own BMO if you had one? Maybe a couple pages from BMO’s owner’s manual could help? We’re psyched to present two pages of the BMO instruction…

This Crank-Charged RC Car Is All Work, Some Play

Ask any parent and they’ll tell you the best toys are the ones that leave kids exhausted and ready for a long peaceful nap. So instead of buying them a traditional RC toy car that chews through batteries or leaves them bored while they’re waiting for it to charge, consider the $20 DynamoGo which makes…

Vin Diesel is not being subtle about his possible role in Avengers 2

Hey, have you heard the rumors that Marvel wants Vin Diesel to join their cinematic universe? If you have, it’s possibly because Vin Diesel himself won’t shut up about it. And now he’s posted something on his Facebook page that very likely reveals exactly who he’ll be playing. Here’s the pic Diesel posted, and the…

Apple Guilty of Price Fixing

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote has found that Apple is guilty of colluding with five book publishers to fix ebook prices artificially high in the iBookstore, thereby forcing Amazon and other online booksellers to do the same. There’s no word yet on how much cash money and concessions Apple will have to fork over, but…

Idris Elba did that “Cancelling the Apocalypse” speech a million times

If you’ve seen the trailers for Pacific Rim, then you already know that Idris Elba plays an inspirational leader. But he’s also the movie’s emotional core. We talked to Elba about the cost of fighting monsters, and just why he always ends up playing the only level-headed person in films like Pacific Rim and Prometheus.…

Video proof that Agent Coulson will save television with S.H.I.E.L.D.

This seemingly innocuous S.H.I.E.L.D. featurette, which introduces us to Agent Grant Ward, starts off like all other PR video hype creations. And then it cuts to Agent Coulson and is IMMEDIATELY AWESOME. Hey Agent Ward, I’m sure you’re nice and Imma let you finish (because that S.H.I.E.L.D. crack was funny) but Agent Coulson is the…

10 Extreme–And Extremely Pretty–Close Ups of Bacteria and Plants

Bacteria has the virtue (and sometimes the vice) of being able to grow at incredible speeds—some strains can double in cell count in as little as four minutes. Fernan Federici, a postdoctoral student at the University of Cambridge, is pioneering the art of capturing the split-second process. And the results are absolutely beautiful. Federici is…

Firebreathing is even more epic when seen from first-person

Via the Royal Institution of Great Britain comes this entertaining video on the science of firebreathing, featuring some really great footage shot from the perspective of scientist and fire-eater Dr. Tim Cockerill. As Cockerill explains in the video, firebreathing ultimately boils down to the unique reactive properties of oxygen, which enables fuel to burn, but…

Ikea’s LED Strips Automatically Illuminate the Deepest Darkest Drawers

Whether you get ready for work at some impossibly early hour before the sun rises, or you live in a cheap windowless basement apartment, Ikea’s new Dioder strip lights will bring some much needed illumination to drawers, cupboards, and closets. To maximize the battery life of the $15 Dioder’s six AAAs, the LEDs automatically illuminate…

Fear of a Black Superman?

I hate to say it, but the Postman is bringing the controversy in this week’s “Postal Apocalypse.” Do you dare to find out the answer to this sensitive question: Does Doctor Who suck? The New Black Leslie S.: Reading about the controversy about Game of Thrones casting an actor that does not exactly match some…

And another one bites the dust; Google Latitude is being put out of its misery on August 9th, and has already been disappeared from Google Maps for Android. You likely won’t even know that it’s gone, but if its absence leaves a hole in your heart, most of it can be filled by Google+.