Latest

The Fukushima radiation nightmare isn’t over. Japanese officials have upgraded from a level 1 to a level 3 “radiological event” alert after discovering that highly radioactive water is leaking from the plant into the ground nearby.

A Look Inside the Workshop of Brooklyn Bike Builder Horse Cycles

As the number of cyclists in New York grows each year, more and more bike shops have popped up around the city to meet demand. A growing group of them specialize in entirely handmade, custom bike frames—like six-year-old Horse Cycles, a custom steel frame workshop in Brooklyn. This week Horse’s founder, Thomas Callahan, gave me…

UK Moves to Ban Phones Designed to Fit Up Prisoner Butts

Necessity is the mother of invention, and invention is the father of designing things that you can fit into your butt to sneak them into prison. And so a phone shaped exactly like a small butt plug has come into our world, and the UK government is trying to ban it. The phones in question…

Beach monster season kicks off with dead devil beast

A terrifying and disgusting dead sea serpent washed up on Spain’s southeastern coast last week, spooking vacationers and bringing military officials to the tiny beach town of Villaricos. What is the 13-foot-long beast? And what sea monsters will August deliver next? http://gawker.com/what-the-hell-is-this-horned-sea-monster-that-washed-as-1177984154

This new app makes casual sex as easy as ordering in Seamless

Kate Dries says the Pure app is “for people who want casual sex but don’t want the bullshit of Craigslist or the hours it takes to online flirt with someone on OkCupid.” A Seamless Snapchat hybrid for sex. https://jezebel.com/the-endless-quest-for-a-hookup-app-women-will-actually-1177735667

The NSA Collected Thousands of Non-Terrorism-Related Communications

In a not-so-startling revelation, the declassification of three secret court opinions on Wednesday show that the NSA hasn’t just been collecting communications related to terrorism investigations. It’s been collecting all kinds of stuff from unsuspecting Americans. The details don’t exactly instill confidence in our nation’s intelligence sector. As the Associated Press explains, the NSA “scooped…

How to Turn Cutting-Edge Science into a Page-Turning Thriller

Author James Rollins has been compared to Michael Crichton, and his latest book The Eye of God includes biohacking, DIY mad science and other current ideas. In this essay, he talks about visiting Fermilab and explains the secrets of transforming science into a cracking good read. Turning Science into Fiction By James Rollins “Tell me…

What are these incredible red lights in the sky?

Of you look close enough and for a long enough time, you will see this uncanny and extremely rare lights in the sky. They are called red sprites. What are they? https://gizmodo.com/ethereal-photos-capture-rare-red-lightning-phenomenon-1177809208

How The World’s End rejects ‘drunken, misogynistic’ manchild films

In The World’s End, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost gather their former best friends to drink their old hometown dry. But when we talked to Pegg, Frost and director Edgar Wright, they told us how this apocalyptic comedy isn’t like your usual “drunken midlife crisis” film. Plus the secret of using genre to tell a…

A free Mario game for iPhone or Android would actually suck

Many iPhone and Android owners dream of having the Nintendo classics for their touch gadgets, but as this Kotaku article demonstrates, a Mario game reinvented for touch screen only will be really terrible. Especially if it’s free. https://kotaku.com/the-horror-if-super-mario-bros-3-was-made-in-2013-for-1168392829

A Soft Squishy Lamp You Can Cram Anywhere (Even Under Your Head)

No one wants to be told what they can and cannot do in their home, even when it comes to lamps. So someone has finally found a way to stick it to ‘big lighting’ with a lamp that you can install almost anywhere. Our deliverer of illumination freedom is an artist named Simon Frambach who…

Germany is the first European country to recognize a third gender

Starting this November, German parents will be able to select male, female, or “indeterminate” when filling out their newborn’s birth certificate. This means that parents won’t have to label their baby’s gender, thereby allowing those born with intersex characteristics to make a decision later in life. Or not. The new law, which goes into effect…

How To Keep Travel From Wrecking Your Body

It goes without saying that modern methods of travel—planes, trains, and automobiles—are a hell of a lot better than ye olde horse and buggy days, but convenience has a cost. Many hours of remaining sedentary exact a serious tax on your body. While nothing you do can make a long trip a zero-impact affair, there…

Dealzmodo: Haswell Desktop, 1.5TB USB3 External, Klipsch Soundbar

If you’re looking to put a decent computer on your desk and not spend much in the process, this Haswell i7-packing Radeon-equipped Dell XPS 8700 certainly deserves your consideration. Windows 8, 8GB Ram, 1TB HDD, 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0. Lock it up for $650 at Dell using promo code 0H9Q3PQ6L3744C [Dell] Today is the last day…

Let’s Get Caught Up on Five Years of Fermi Space Porn

At this very moment, NASA’s Fermi space telescope is up in the sky, zooming around Earth, and doing space stuff like sidestepping Soviet space junk and spotting mysterious galactic soap bubbles. For its (roughly) five year anniversary, NASA put out a little montage of the ‘scopes stellar achievements so far, and the list is impressive.…

Jon Snow is a half-naked sex volcano in the first Pompeii pic

Jon Snow apparently knows one thing, and that’s ab crunches. That’s the only way to explain Kit Harrington’s super-ripped, half-dressed body as seen in this first picture from the historical epic Pompeii. Hell, he looks like he’s in danger of burning the city down on his own. Harrington plays Milo, a slave turned gladiator, who…

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Lying

You’re surrounded by lies, but most of what you think you know about them is probably — you guessed it — a lie. 1. You can’t tell somebody is lying from their eyes A liar always has shifty eyes and can’t look you in the face. It’s one of our most commonly-held beliefs, and it’s…

Word of the Day: Now there’s a word for that thing where a planet has a single climate, ecosystem or culture: a Monocosm.

Ethereal photos capture rare “red lightning” phenomenon

Jason Ahrns has had a very unusual summer. For the last several weeks, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks grad student has been studying sprites – a rare form of red lightning that appears high above thunderclouds. And he’s been doing it from a plane. Above: Sprites over Red Willow County, Nebraska, on August 12, 2013 //…

Giant Military Hovercraft Lands on Crowded Beach Because Russia

In the most recent bit of Russian bizarreness, a 550-ton military hovercraft carrying sophisticated weaponry casually pulled up onto a crowded, seemingly public beach. Because, apparently, Russia wants to become Europe’s own personal prison planet. These giant Zubr vessels are purportedly the largest in their class (which consists of the world’s largest hovercrafts) and—when fully…