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Watching a CD spin so fast that it gets warped and shatters is so fun

The Slow Mo Guys spun a CD (a Spotify playlist shaped like a circle mirror, kids) so fast that it started warping and then eventually shattered into a hundred little pieces. You can see the disc spinning at 23,000 RPM and getting bent out of shape until it just gives out, all at once. So…

Anova Precision Cooker Review: Killer Sous Vide for Everyone

I have a problem. It’s a kitchen gadget addiction. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to try the latest and greatest cooking appliances—or at least all the As Seen On TV and Sky Mall shit. Well, that addiction just paid off: The Anova Precision Cooker has been bringing me stupid amounts of…

Study Suggests Magnetic Fields Can Control Heat And Sound

More than a hundred years ago, physicists discovered that heat is simply the energy stored in the vibrations of atoms. This meant that heat and sound are related. Now, for the first time ever, scientists have experimentally shown that these atomic vibrations have magnetic properties, too. Above: A lopsided tuning fork, made of the semiconductor…

I Stared Into The Red Eye Of The T-800 On The Terminator: Genisys Set

I’ve been to the Terminator: Genisys set. I witnessed four hot, moderately exciting seconds of walking and talking, touched a time machine, and smelled the T-800 in the flesh. And this involved a lot of emotions balanced with a lot of speculation. Here’s our complete set report. Some spoilers ahead. As we were bussed into…

GM Is Developing Smarter Headlights That Will Follow a Driver’s Gaze

There are already cars on the road with intelligent headlights that can sweep left or right to improve visibility as a vehicle steers into a turn. But Opel/Vauxhall, a European subsidiary of GM, are developing next-generation headlight systems that can keep track of where a driver’s looking, and automatically re-direct the lights in that direction.…

The Emergency Escape Rockets For The Crew Dragon Are Surprisingly Quiet

A pair of SuperDraco engines firing at the same time is far quieter than I thought it would be. The dual firing is part of SpaceX pad abort testing for the rocket engines, ensuring both engines can simultaneously ignite and throttle if they need to carry the Crew Dragon to safety. Top image: SuperDraco engine…

Facebook is gunning hard for YouTube with its new embeddable video feature, which lets people take videos posted to Facebook and put them on other sites. Before, if you decided to put a video on Facebook and wanted to share it elsewhere you basically had to re-upload it to another site or simply link back…

A New Pacific Rim Prequel Comic Will Provide The Jaeger Action You Want

Pacific Rim 2 is still a long way off, but if you’re hankering for some more hot Jaeger/Kaiju battles, you won’t have to wait much longer: a new comic miniseries from Legendary will fill in the gap between the first movie and the previous graphic novel prequel. Update: Now with glorious High-Res art! The new…

Grumpy Americans of the 1970s Wanted to Rewrite the Constitution

The 1970s was a rough time for most Americans. The economy was tanking, inflation was out of control, and thanks to the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal, few people had anything good to say about their government. Which is why predictions about the future from this era are so fascinating. No matter what your political…

Barbed Wire’s Dark, Deadly History

In the mid 1800s, not many (non-native) Americans had ever been west of the Mississippi. When Frederick Law Olmstead visited the west in the 1850s, he remarked that the plains looked like a sea of grasses that moved “in swells after a great storm.” Massive herds of buffalo wandered the plains. Cowboys shepherded cattle across…

This Epic Rap Battle Between Hodor And Groot Is Gloriously Silly

The two characters who have the smallest vocabulary have a lot to say in this new “rap battle” video. But who will win: Hodor, Bran’s helpful sidekick on Game of Thrones? Or Groot, the big lovable tree from Guardians of the Galaxy? See for yourself!

Facebook Is Finally Getting Messaging Right

Facebook wants to be your everything, and the next step in its long and deliberate journey to subsume the entire world is here. Messenger, Facebook’s separate (and now genuinely useful) messaging app, is growing up and you have every reason to be excited. Up until now, Messenger and its growing list of functions were entirely…

Facebook Will Put 360-Degree Spherical Videos Right In Your News Feed

I think that 360-degree video is going to be a big deal. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg agrees! He just announced that Facebook will be able to embed spherical videos right in your News Feed, much like YouTube 360. So what’s spherical video, anyhow? I could tell you, but why not just show you instead? Here’s a…

​The Flash Goes Back In Time To Try To Make Last Week’s Episode Better

In last week’s recap of The Flash, I said “Out of Time” was an average episode with a thrillingly exciting core. Since the Flash ran back in time and “Rogue Time” begins more or less at the same point, Barry has a chance to do the episode over. The result? Now it’s a great episode…

Wondering What To Expect After A Medical Abortion? Read This.

The latest installment of Oh Joy, Sex Toy offers an accessible, informative, and non-judgmental overview of medical abortion, one of several choices available to newly pregnant persons. The comic is well worth reading in its entirety. It links to a number of resources and medical studies, and deals with everything from basic anatomy to abortion…

An App That Turns Your Texts to Songs Is a Wonderful Disaster

What if the worst possible text messages you could receive were delivered as singing telegrams? We decided to use an app that turns text into song to find out. Ditty is a new app that rides on top of Facebook’s Messenger app, and takes whatever messages you write and attempts to crush them into the…

This Tree Branch Hits A Power Line, Screams, And Then Explodes

This tree branch is screaming — seriously, it actually is making screaming noises — as it catches fire on a group of power lines. But why does this branch spontaneously combust when it hits them, and birds that land on power lines don’t? The power lines above your head aren’t insulated. This video is a…

Making this 24 carrot gold cake is pure alchemy

One of the reasons I desperately want to time travel is to blow the minds of people in the past with just the simplest of things today. Imagine going back hundreds of years and baking this gold 24 ‘carrot’ cake. With a few drops of food coloring and a few edible gold leaf sheets, I’d…

The Best Cylon Design Is Being Turned Into A Cutesy Funko Pop

Okay, it’s ending may have caused a lot of anger, but on the whole the Battlestar Galactica reboot was pretty great. Its redesign for the Cylons was great, too — but nothing beats the retro-tastic original Cylon design. All the more better then that it’s the Classic Battlestar Galactica getting the Funko treatment! Four figures…

9 Batman Knock-Offs That Utterly Miss The Point Of Batman

Everybody loves Batman. After 75 years of saving Gotham City, the Caped Crusader has become an archetype. So it’s not surprising that every comic needs its own version of Bats. And yet, Batman remains unique, and it’s not so easy to copy him. Here are 9 Batman knock-offs that totally miss why Batman works. Top…