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Understanding Humans and Life with a Lot of Numbers Is Overwhelming

Men lie, women lie, number’s dont. PBS takes a look at the sheer ridiculousness of some numbers and then compares them against each other. Like how there are 7 billion humans… but 10 billion bats in the world. Or how humans weigh 287,000,000 tons total but one species of krill would weigh 500,000,000 tons. If…

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Is This What the Next iPad Will Look Like?

9to5Mac has an image that shows a prototype design for the next iPad and guess what, it looks a lot like the iPad Mini. These pictures are only unconfirmed images, but if proven to be real, it looks like the big iPad might follow in the iPad Mini’s footstep of lovely chamfered edges. Taking a…

Top 100+ io9 Stories from Our First 5 Years

Over the past five years at io9, we’ve explored a lot of strange frontiers, and asked a lot of ridiculous questions. Some of our strangest discoveries have been the ones that hung around, as if we adopted a baby alien and it grew up eating out of our hands. Here are 117 stories from our…

These exceptionally rare color photographs show Paris at turn of the 20th century [Updated]

Back in 1903, the Lumière Brothers invented autochrome technology, an innovative photographic technique that allowed for extraorinarily vivid color images. Now, while some of these rare photographs might seem photoshopped or enhanced, they are the real deal — and a remarkable glimpse of what Paris looked like during the first part of the 20th century.…

These Warped Chairs Are Actually a Mind Melting Optical Illusion

These warped chairs, designed by French studio Ibride, have so many hidden features it’s making my brain wrinkle at a rate it’s never scrunched up before. The optical illusion is to show the chair with a classic silhouette from one angle, while the actual sitting of the chair requires a completely different angle. It’s a…

io9 Book Club Reminder: Meeting 2/5 to Discuss Warren Ellis’ The Gun Machine

The io9 Book Club meets every month to discuss a book, and then the author usually joins us for a chat. This month, we’re reading Warren Ellis’ Gun Machine. We’ll meet February 5, 2013 to discuss it. Watch for a post that day announcing the book club, and jump into comments for discussion. There’s still…

It’s Okay to be Smart is now on YouTube!

Joe Hanson, creator of the fantastic science tumblr It’s Okay to be Smart, has a new YouTube science show by the very same name. He’s teamed up with PBS to make it happen, and it sounds like they’ve got big things in store. Via his Hanson’s tumblr: I can’t tell you how excited I am…

Your Netflix Viewing History Is Pretty Embarrassing

Because Netflix spends so much time tweaking, working and twerking its recommendation engine to spit out more personalized results for you, sometimes the suggestions can get a little bit eerie. Just because I watched a movie about twin brothers doesn’t mean I like incest movies! UCB Comedy poked fun at Netflix’s ridiculously specific movie suggestions…

What It Means to Love the Future

io9’s slogan is “We Come From the Future.” It’s a reference to science fiction stories where people come from Earth’s future to warn us about dark things to come, or possibly to harvest our bodies for some techno-authoritarian regime. Rarely do visitors from the future arrive with good tidings. But at io9, our writing and…

A Swedish Police Taskforce Raided a Bunch of Teenagers Playing Call of Duty

Whether you chalk it up to the hyper-realism of today’s video games or an overzealous neighborhood watch program, it’s hard to blame the Swedish police who responded to a frantic call reporting what sounded like a brutal massacre. The ten-man team raided the apartment to find a group of teenagers in the midst of murder…

Here’s What It’d Look Like if JJ Abrams Directed the Original Star Wars

So JJ Abrams is directing Star Wars Episode VII, and everyone is quite certain that it will be very great or very bad or very dumb. But before we see a single frame of lens flared footage, this shot-for-shot recreation of the Star Trek Into Darkness trailer using original trilogy clips is a taste of…

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This Is the Single Worst Way to Begin Your Kickstarter Pitch

Want to know how I know your Kickstarter project isn’t going to get funded? You started with “oh hey, I didn’t see you there” which, in the minds of consumers, means you’re either an unobservant stooge who can’t be trusted with money or we’re really bad at hiding. And, as we all know, rule number…

Nooly: Get the Most Accurate Forecast Possible

There are few things more annoying than bringing an umbrella with you when you don’t need it. Never make that mistake again—Nooly will give you accurate, super-local forecasts for your exact neighborhood. What does it do? It gives you the most localized weather report possible, by telling you exactly where and when it will rain,…

An even more revolting vision of American Horror Story Asylum‘s aliens

Still wondering what those weird alien character in American Horror Story Asylum were supposed to be like? Well, wait no more. A crop of concept art from the TV series has been released, thanks to artist Jerad S. Marantz, revealing the true Ass Cat face of these grey aliens. Get full body shots plus a…

Old-Fashioned Lighting Meets Modern Style in These Stocky Stone Candle Holderns

Lucky for you a well-lit night is just a lightswitch away, but it wasn’t always that easy. The “Weight Here” family of candle-holders by Menu harkens back to a more fiery time, with a flourish of sleek minimalist design. The collection contains single candle-holders and three-pronged candelabras in thin models for normal candles, and thicker…

This is what happens when you open a can of mixed nuts in space

This video comes to you courtesy of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield — the first Canuck to walk in space, and easily one of the country’s greatest exports since Kids in the Hall. Or Keanu Reeves. Or maybe William Shatner. Whatever, you get the idea. Dude rules. Fun Canada/space/awesome-collision-of-scifi-and-science fact: Shatner recently opened a hailing frequency…

An iOS 6.1 Jailbreak for iPhone 5 Is Definitely Probably Maybe Coming This Sunday

iPhone 5 users have been waiting a long, long time for a jailbreak. Sure, the current versions of iOS have been opened, but unlucky kids with A6 chips and the fancy new Apple devices they come in have been out of luck. But no longer! Probably. With today’s release of iOS 6.1, jailbreak release rumors…

Powerpuff Girls will live again, but Young Justice is dead

We’ve got good news and bad news. The Cartoon Network has just announced that everyone’s favorite bug-eyed crime fighters, the Powerpuff Girls will return to television. But sadly the animated superhero shows Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, will not. Earlier today Cartoon Network released their new roster of shows, Young Justice and…