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Awesome new TED-ED videos explain the physics of superhero powers

Educator Joy Lin has teamed up with TedEducation to produce a series of fantastic animated shorts that explain the physics behind such superpowers as flight, speed, strength, invisibility, body mass manipulation, and immortality. The physics of superhero flight is explained in the video up top. Super strength explained: Explaining the physics of superhero speed: Immortality…

Man catches freaky 200-year-old fish, promptly kills it [Updated!]

A 40-pound shortraker fish, after minding its business for the past two centuries, was recently caught 10 miles off the coast of Alaska by a Seattle fisherman. But just looking at this thing we kinda wish he just left it where he found it. Shortrakers, also known as rockfish, are actually quite common in the…

In a summer filled with painfully stupid, joyless blockbusters, Disney’s The Lone Ranger offers a very special brand of insultingly terrible boring nonsense. But is it the year’s stupidest movie, or just in the Top 10? At least the western’s “accessories collection is made by a Lakota Sioux leatherworker named Gabriel GoodBuffalo.” “A Pirates of…

Google Maps Street View Now Lets You Explore Thomas Jefferson’s Digs

Nobody wants to spend their vacation day studying history, but if you’re feeling particularly patriotic tomorrow, you can head on over to Google Maps where Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello residence is now available to explore using Google Street View. You can virtually wander around outside the property on its sprawling greens, or head indoors and explore…

DIY Fireworks Instructions From the 1920s Were Ridiculously Unsafe

Americans love things that sparkle, things that glow, and especially things that blow up. So it makes sense that on America’s birthday, we take great pride in our various spectacles of light and noise. Today, there are countless YouTube videos and how-to websites showing how to create your own firecrackers and noisemakers. But back in…

How To Prep Your Grill for the Fourth of July

Tomorrow’s barbeque is going to be epic, a cookout for the ages. But first you’ll need to make sure your grill is up to the task. Here’s how to turn your fire pit up to 11 in time for the 4th. Cooked to the Grills Stuck between open flame and charring flesh, your grill’s cooking…

The 14 Greatest Action Figure Playsets of All Time

An action figure needs a place to act. And while pretending an empty shoebox is a secret HQ, or that dangerous caves lie under your bed, very few imaginations beat an awesome playset. While its heyday is mostly over, it’s worth celebrating the best playsets — new and old — that gave our toys a…

Command a Fleet of Carry-Ons with this Supersonic Jet Fighter Luggage

Why put your luggage in the belly of an aircraft when your luggage can be the belly of an aircraft? Enter the Aviator collection, suitcases that look like they could take the flight to your destination all on their own. Designed by Timothy Oulton, the Aviator collection is a four-piece set with a distressed aluminum…

This Thorium Reactor Has the Power of a Norse God

The Uranium-235 and -238 we use in modern nuclear fission reactors are humanity’s single most energy-dense fuel source (1,546,000,000 MJ/L), but that potent power potential comes at a steep price—and not just during natural disasters. Its radioactive plutonium byproducts remain lethally irradiated for millennia. That’s why one pioneering Nordic company is developing an alternative fuel…

Using Super Slow Motion to Study the Biomechanics of Flight

DARPA’s hummingbird drone might be terrifying, but it’s pretty remarkable that we’ve been able to create a bot that mimics that kind of agility. Researchers at Stanford armed with high-speed cameras are studying the minutiae of bird flight frame-by-frame to see if we can’t one day make these bots even nimbler. That’s right, super-slow motion—for…

Shooting Challenge: Fireworks

Say what you will about Americans, but we are really, really good at blowing things up. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge—and the 4th of July!—we’re going to celebrate that in our traditional fashion. The Challenge Photograph fireworks. They can be big, small, extreme, or perfectly quaint. The Method As I’ve said before, if you…

What makes creepy things creepy?

Lots of stuff frightens us that should frighten us – things that pose a clear threat to our physical wellbeing, for example. But what about things that just… creep us out? A shadowy visage, for example, or an almost – but still not quite – human-looking robot? In the latest installment of VSauce, Michael Stevens…

The Dog Goldberg Machine Is the Best Rube Goldberg Machine

This might be an ad for Beneful dog food, but who cares. The Dog Goldberg Machine is just the greatest, most adorable pup-powered kibble and ball distributor ever. This video actually fulfills a fantasy of mine where my dog lets herself in and out of our fifth-floor apartment through an elaborate pulley system. Too bad…

An Octopus-Inspired Propulsion System Not Designed By Supervillains

Inspired by the brilliant getaway mechanism of octopi and squids who use a blast of water to propel themselves away from danger, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering in Germany have developed a similarly stealthy propulsion system for boats and submarines. And it can be created with a single run on a 3D…

Despicable Me 2: Being a single dad is harder than saving the world

Despicable Me blew us away with its inventive, heartfelt story of a supervillain who adopts three girls and turns sort of good. In the sequel, we discover that there’s one thing harder than juggling supervillainy and fatherhood: being a good guy and a dad. Spoilers ahead… In Despicable Me 2, Gru is still a reformed…

An incredible image of the Chrysler Building shot by Jason Hawkes. Jason is a professional aerial photographer. His photos are always so perfect they look almost unreal. Here’s a video too, showing New York City’s always impressive architecture. Have a great day! You’re reading Kinja’s front page, the showcase of the very best, must-see stories…

Why Randomness May Not Mean What You Think It Means

Are you convinced that the shuffle mode on your iPod is messing with your mind? Or that certain numbers are bound to come up in the next lottery? If yes, you may be holding on to some serious misconceptions about randomness. Here’s what it means for something to truly happen by chance. Randomness is an…

A Cut Above the Resty: Only the Best of Etsy

There’s so much good stuff on Etsy, but there’s also a mountain of crap on Etsy. You’ve probably laughed about that on Regretsy. But a great site called A Cut Above the Resty cuts out all the DIY trash and shows you the best of the online marketplace. Anyone who’s ever gone to Etsy to…

New Frozen footage reveals the Ice Queen in action

The first footage from Disney’s new princess movie Frozen felt like a Ice Age 18 or whatever. It was not awesome. Thankfully we’ve got a new, better look at the movie thanks to a Japanese show. Bleeding Cool found a collection of recut trailer footage on a Japanese program. Even though we’re not sure what’s…

Spy on Your Own Email to See Exactly What the NSA Has on You

By now, we US citizens are all very very aware that our metadata is being harvested by “the man.” It’s not the actual email or phone calls, but metadata still matters. And if you’ve wondered what it looks like, MIT’s Immersion project can help you out. The service that lets you snoop on your email…