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These Japanese Wooden Pens Are Perfectly Elegant

You know, there’s nothing quite like finding the perfect writing instrument. It’s a wordsmith’s holy grail of sorts. And we love these elegant new pens from Japanese brand Miidori. The smooth ebony and tulipwood pens come in two colors options, and they’ll arrive on your doorstep in a nice little box. Sure, they’ll run you…

UFO Disclosure Hearings in Washington — Sort Of

This week, there will be a series of “citizen hearings” about UFO disclosure in Washington, DC. It sounds really official, until you read the fine print. This video is a marvel of misdirection, luring you in with the promise of UFO disclosure hearings for the first time since the 1960s — but then admitting, along…

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Report: There’s Going to Be a Lot of Jony Ive in iOS 7

With Jony Ive in the driver’s seat for iOS 7, the scent of change is on the breeze. Change itself is inevitable, it’s just a question of how much. And according to 9to5Mac’s sources, the answer to that question is “a lot.” According to several unnamed sources who have been briefed on the upcoming iOS…

Watch ice needles shooting out of a lake in this insane video

Ice needles literally spurt out in waves from chunks of ice at a Minnesota Lake in this amazing video. The phenomenon looks like magic, and the scientific explanation is even better. We share the amazement of the people in the video, watching as ice all along the shore of Medicine Lake suddenly seemed to spit…

We loved artist Sean Hartter’s “alternate universe” science fiction movie posters. Sadly, he died over the weekend, and there’s a fundraiser to pay his funeral expenses. Please give!

Saturn’s Harrowing Hurricane Is Even More Terrifying in Technicolor

Not too long ago, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft managed to get some awesome photos of Saturn’s 1,250 mile-wide polar hurricane. It looked pretty intense in black and white, but this new colored version is one blood-red beauty. https://gizmodo.com/stare-into-the-eye-of-saturns-terrifying-polar-vortex-5963849 Cassini shot the picture with special spectral filters that can detect the subtleties of wavelengths of near-infrared light.…

Scientists have engineered the world’s first glow-in-the dark sheep

Nighttime sheep-herders rejoice, for green-glowing sheep are now a thing. Two questions, though. How? And why? Photo courtesy Funcación IRAUy/J. Calvelo Here’s the how: last year, a team of researchers led by Alejo Menchaca at the Animal Reproduction Institue of Uruguay genetically modified some wooly ruminants to express a peptide commonly known as green fluorescent…

Playing favorites with children can be deadly

In eastern bluebird society, fathers favor their sons over their daughters, with brighter-colored sons winning out over their duller brothers, according to a new study. This favoritism has dire consequences for the less loved chicks, which are more likely to end up as crow food. In the last 15 years, a lot of work has…

The Limits of the Earth

This is part one of a two-part series on the limits of human growth and prosperity on planet Earth. Both parts are based on Ramez Naam’s new book, The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet. You can also read part two. https://gizmodo.com/expanding-the-planets-limits-475944711 Is the world doomed? Are we headed for a…

AOL shuts down Comics Alliance because they are jerkfaces

Sad news for comics journalism and the blogosphere, as AOL has decided to shutter Comics Alliance. Started by Laura Hudson in 2009, Comics Alliance quickly established itself as one of the biggest and best comics news-sites on the Internet, thanks in no small part to its smart criticism, progressive attitude, and wicked humor. No site…

The Woman Who Received the First Successful Womb Transplant Is Now Six Weeks Pregnant

Derya Sert, a 22-year-old Turkish woman, is officially six-weeks into a normal, healthy pregnancy. The absolutely remarkable part? Sert was born without a womb and received the first successful uterus transplant ever. After performing the actual surgery in 2011, doctors were able to use her own eggs, which they then fertilized before placing an embryo…

Treasure Trove of Empire Strikes Back photos will amaze you

Just when we think we’ve seen every single Star Wars photo in existence, we find a new cache of behind-the-scenes glimpses that show just how crazy this set got. Here’s a collection of images shows just how the sausage was made in The Empire Strikes Back. Some of these you’ve seen, some you probably haven’t……

A Chinese Winery That Mimics Everyone’s Favorite Five-Armed Glyph

Here’s a fun little piece of literalism for a Monday afternoon: Asterisk, a winery designed by the Japanese firm Sako Architects. Sited on an artificial island in a complex outside of Beijing, the building’s five prongs each house a different program—one for eating, one for boozing, and so on. The 60,000-square-foot winery is part of…

Look at SpaceShipTwo’s Rocket Ablaze

In case you missed it earlier today, Virgin Galactic successfully performed its first rocket-powered test flight of the SpaceShipTwo. In other words, space tourism is nigh. https://gizmodo.com/today-might-be-virgin-galactics-first-rocket-powered-t-484341889

The best interview with Neal Stephenson you’ve ever heard

Over on Slate’s Future Tense, the brilliant internet law professor Tim Wu has just launched a series of interviews with science fiction writers — and he starts with Neal Stephenson. They talk about everything from Stephenson’s hope for the future to Plato’s Republic. It’s heady, awesome stuff. Look out for future installments in the coming…

On Game of Thrones, some men just want to watch the world burn

The Mad King of Westeros really, really liked wildfire. A lot. Crazy King Aerys has been dead a long time, but he still overshadows the realm — not just because those who deposed him are ruling, but also because his terrible reign raises the ultimate question: When is it okay to break your oath and…

A Full Copy of Windows 8 Is Your Deal of the Day

The best time to upgrade to a new version of Windows is during the launch window—due to Microsoft’s abysmal adoption rates for new operating systems, they offer a slew of great deals on upgrade copies. Those deals are over now. But the versions for cheap were upgrade copies: if you were building a machine and…

Set Your Phone’s Photos Free With the Wikimedia Commons App

Wikipedia just wouldn’t be the same without its pictures, but someone has to go out and take ’em. Now you can help, armed with nothing but a smartphone and some stuff to shoot. The new Wikimedia Commons apps for iOS and Android make uploading pictures to Wikimedia’s Creative Commons archive a piece of cake. By…

Why Drew Goddard Should Direct the Next Star Trek Movie

Maybe J.J. Abrams will really be able to helm Star Trek 3 after Star Wars VII. But we kind of doubt it. And out of all of the people in Abrams’ orbit, there’s one guy we’d actually like to see direct the next Star Trek: Cabin in the Woods director Drew Goddard. (Assuming Brad Bird…