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Last Night’s Bradley Cooper-Filled Limitless Was a Roller Coaster of Emotions

Bradley Cooper, star of the original Limitless movie and an executive producer of the CBS TV version, has made most of his appearances on the show in constantly re-aired flashbacks (plus the time he voiced a talking CGI fetus). Coop returned on last night’s winter premiere, and his sleazeball character made me question everything we…

Scientists Figured Out a Way to ‘See’ a Black Hole with Just a Backyard Telescope

Black holes are some of the most powerful but difficult to comprehend objects in the universe, operating mysteriously and practically invisibly out of the reach of our sight. Until now, that is. Scientists have long used X-ray or gamma ray telescopes to figure out where black holes may lie—but a new study suggests that we…

Audio-Technica’s New Turntable Will Play On Your Bluetooth Speakers

Following the introduction of new turntables from both Technics and Sony, Audio-Technica is getting into the fray with a low-cost record player that’ll beam tunes to your Bluetooth speakers. Audio-Technica has been making affordable quality record players—try the LP-120—for ages, and unlike other brands didn’t abandon making them even though the market collapsed. Now that…

Hermione Shoves Harry Aside: How I Learned To Subvert the “Chosen One” Trope

So I had this idea of Nazi artifact hunters crossed with a Harry Potter-type young hero who inherits one of those artifacts. At the time I was planning on writing a science fiction novel, but when I thought about it… Come on, how could I not write about magicians fighting Nazis? The trouble was that…

Netflix Launches in 130 New Countries and China’s Not One of Them

The internet streaming company that’s promising 600 hours of new original content next year has just taken a huge leap in its march toward global domination. CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement today in Las Vegas: Netflix is now available in 130 additional countries as of today, including emerging markets like India, Indonesia, Russia, Azerbaijan,…

35,000 Dairy Cows Were Buried Alive By a Freak Blizzard in Texas

The day after Texas experienced weirdly warm temperatures and Christmas tornadoes, a blizzard slammed across the western part of the state. A dozen people were killed by the storms, and now, another tragic death toll has been reported: More than 35,000 dairy cows lost their lives. The New York Times reports that it was not…

Turn Your Dog Into a Punk Porcupine Weapon With This Anti-Coyote Kevlar Vest 

Who’s a good doggie? NOT this GRUNGE PUNK PORCUPINE DOG! This dog is a weapon. Coyotes are vicious, omnivorous scamps who do NOT respect the bonds between man and dog. I know this from experience: In 2008, I spent a week on my friend Rosanna’s parents’ farm. They had recently acquired a delightful poodle puppy…

This Is the Steven Universe Moment That Cartoon Network UK Doesn’t Want British Kids to See

Steven Universe is a show that prides itself in subverting gender sterotypes and championing non-binary displays of love, so two feminine characters dancing seems like a pretty mild thing to worry about. Fear not though, as there’s some very absurd people over at Cartoon Network UK who think that the above gif is TOO HOT…

Snag All the Images from a Website with One Click

Whether you’re gasping at the beauty of Earth or the wonder of modern-day architecture (or both), there may well be times when you need to quickly download all of the pictures on a particular page—even if you just want some new phone backgrounds to use. One such tool for the job is the I’m A…

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now the highest-grossing film in U.S. history. In just 20 days, it’s surpassed the $760.5 million James Cameron’s Avatar grossed in 34 weeks, but now it sets its sights on the seemingly insurmountable $2.79 billion international gross of Avatar. As of January 4, it had made $1.54 billion, but…

The Director of Ex Machina Is Recruiting a Trio of Awesome Lady Scientists for His Next Movie

Before Alex Garland blew our minds with Ex Machina, we already knew he was a force, as he’d been writing great movies long before he started directing them. Now it sounds like his next film—another scifi movie—is on the same track, as three amazing leads have just joined on. That next film is called Annihilation,…

The New York Public Library Just Uploaded Over 187,000 Free Images For All To Use

While it’s easy to forget just how many things are actually in the public domain, the New York Public Library is very much into making sure that its collection is as available as possible. Which is why over 187,000 public domain images were put online today. All of the public domain works—that is, ones no…

Who Cares What the Back of a TV Looks Like?

Over the past few days I’ve heard top executives from two massive electronics companies brag about the design of their television. Normal! Well, it would be if they weren’t talking about the backs of their televisions. The photo below was taken at the Sony booth at CES just a short while after the Sony North…

You Can Finally Preorder the Oculus Rift Right Now for $600 

Want an Oculus Rift? Go order one. They cost $600, plus the price of whatever powerful computer you’ll need for VR. (Your dusty old PC probably won’t work, by the way.) Preorders are open right now, and the device will start shipping on March 28. Note: The Oculus website is understandably flooded with eager nerds…

Please Try Not To Be Shocked, But Star Wars Was the Best-Selling Comic of 2015

If a single force dominated the pop culture world last year, it was the reawakening of the titan that is Star Wars. While The Force Awakens has ruled the box office for weeks now, the galaxy far, far, away has been ruling the roost on comic book shelves for entirety of 2015. Comics distributor Diamond…

No, Ammon Bundy Didn’t Compare His Militia to Rosa Parks (He’s Not on Twitter)

A lot of news outlets are enraged about tweets by Ammon Bundy, the leader of a group that’s currently “occupying” a bird sanctuary building in Oregon. The only problem? Bundy doesn’t have a Twitter account. Last night an account called @Ammon_Bundy compared the Bundy militia’s campaign to Rosa Parks. Yes, it would be a shocking…

The Copyright Office Wants You to Explain Why the DMCA Is So Bad

The DMCA takedown and counter-takedown procedures has been a mess for a while now. And it didn’t look like anyone who could fix it cared to. Which made it a surprise when the Copyright Office asked for public comment on the issue on New Year’s Eve. If you think DMCA takedowns are bullshit—and they often…

We’ve Been Completely Wrong About How Cats Get Their Black-and-White Spots

For quite some time, scientists had a working theory of why certain piebald (patchy black-and-white) mammals look the way they do. They assumed the coloring is a directed pattern that involves pigmented cells instigating a controlled expansion. Turns out, it’s all just random. Scientists at the University of Bath and the University of Edinburgh have…

TP-Link’s New Touchscreen Router Is a Giant Leap Towards a Unified Smarthome

The hundreds of different smart home platforms premiering at CES 2016 is a perfect summation of that technology: it’s kind of a mess right now. But with its new SR20 Smart Home Router, TP-Link might have just helped to streamline the smart home and make all the connected devices in your home finally play nicely…

Alien Life May Be Hiding in These Brilliant Star Clusters 

For three decades, humans have searched for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth, and yet we’ve only sampled a tiny drop of our vast cosmic ocean. If we’re ever to find a radio-hot, spacefaring civilization, we need to know where to point our telescopes. But the answer may be simpler than we thought. According to…