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A Real-Life Nine-Inch Nail Gun Puts Puny Nerf to Shame

Played Quake recently? Or listened to any Trent Reznor? This man’s insane, semi-automatic nine-inch nail gun will make you want to do both. That and also eat some melons. From the same mind the brought us a lovely and inadvisable 3D-printed cornstarch flamethrower comes this spike-sling monster, which can apparently be made from the sort…

You Can Now Attend a Protest in Virtual Reality

Sundance 2015 is the year of VR, marking a metaphorical starting gun for an entire new film industry. Presumably timed to the festival, Oculus VR took the opportunity to launch its own film-focused studio alongside a spate of other cinematic VR projects. Now three new non-fiction films are tackling how news documentaries specifically will work…

How To Create A Virtual “Body” For Your Uploaded Mind

The prospect of uploading your brain into a supercomputer is an exciting one — your mind can live on forever, and expand its capacity in ways that are hard to imagine. But it leaves out one crucial detail: Your mind still needs a body to function properly, even in a virtual world. Here’s what we’ll…

Having Superpowers Probably Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

Most of the time in comics and movies, when someone gains superpowers, they go off more or less without a hitch. But as this short comic points out, superpowers may not be as great as we think they are — especially if they’re incomplete. JHall of JHall Comics put together this bit of silliness for…

Colleges Stalk Your Facebook To See How They Should Hit You Up for Money

On the scale of “irritating” to “soul-boiling” telemarketers, college alumni fundraisers aren’t the worst. The way that school alumni relations offices decide which former students to contact, however, is a liiittle creepy. Colleges are scouring former students’ Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to figure out who to hit up for cash, and using targets’ interests to…

We May Finally Be Getting A Live-Action X-Men TV Show

The X-Men have been battling across our movie screens for a decade and a half, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard talk of a live-action TV series. However, the mutants may finally be coming to the small screen in a new show. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox “is having preliminary conversations” about…

​How To Build A Snow Shelter

Want something fun and productive to do during this whole giant blizzard thing? Why not learn how to build a snow shelter? It could save your life one day but, more importantly, they’re just a ton of fun to make. Here’s how. Why Build A Snow Shelter? Do it right and your snow shelter will…

Holy Crap, David Tennant Cast As Purple Man In Jessica Jones Series

Although it seemed like Marvel’s Jessica Jones Netflix series couldn’t get any better, it just did. David Tennant has just been cast as the villainous Purple Man. That’s right, the beloved Tenth Doctor is about to turn into a total nightmare. The Wrap is reporting that Doctor Who legend David Tennant will be joining Marvel’s…

Read An Exclusive Chapter Of Catherynne M. Valente’s New Fairyland Book!

Catherynne M. Valente’s Fairyland series has captured the imaginations of kids and perspicacious adults alike — and now, the fourth volume in the series, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, is coming out in March. But no need to wait — we’ve got an exclusive excerpt, in which a troll becomes a boy. C H A…

Magnetic Buckyballs In a Blender Create One Terrifying Light Show

It didn’t take long for those “Will it Blend?” videos to get long in the tooth. You can only watch so many smartphones being torn to shreds before the novelty wears off. But to celebrate the birth of his 40th grandkid, Tom Dickson tosses a mountain of magnetic Buckyballs into the blades and the results…

Someone Stop Me From Buying This Incredible and Useless Telescoping Cane

Yesterday I did not know what an “appearing cane” was. Today I just have to have one. Someone please stop me. The appearing cane is a very simple magic trick, one where you hide a very small and compact telescoping cane in the palm of your hand, wave around a little napkin, and then BOOM…

Use These Tips And Never Lose At Rock Paper Scissors Again

Your days of never getting shotgun are over, thanks to this new video from Numberphile that breaks down the best strategies for winning at Rock, Paper, Scissors. Host Hannah Fry explains below, but the essential tips are: if you lose, the person who just won will almost certainly play the same move in the next…

10 Weirdest Projects That George Lucas Has Been Involved With

This past weekend, George Lucas released his fairytale musical fever dream, Strange Magic. A movie in which fairies sing ELO and Lady Gaga for 99 minutes. But that wasn’t the only bizarre venture that Lucas has tried to develop. Here are the 10 weirdest projects Lucas worked on throughout his career. https://gizmodo.com/strange-magic-is-a-relentless-tirade-of-cg-fairies-sing-1681299506 1) Howard the…

The 9 Worst Fake News Sites

A joke without a punchline is just a lie. And there sure are a lot of missing punchlines on the internet these days. You’ve probably seen these “fake news” websites floating around on social media recently. You might have even shared a story from one of them yourself! But don’t be ashamed. We all make…

One Of Two Surviving Star Trek Phasers Is Heading To Auction

The original Phasers from Star Trek have almost been lost to history – only two surviving props from the 60’s remain. But now, 47 years after it first appeared on screen, one of them is going up for auction next month. The Phaser, first sold off in 1969 by Desilu after the original series wrapped…

How We Come to Know Ourselves In the Age of the Quantified Self

My grandmother recently had a pacemaker implanted. Major surgery and its aftermath are frightening at any age, but for a 93-year-old and her family it is a particularly scary tightrope to walk. Had her recovery been filmed for a montage in a family drama, there would have been reassuring doctors and smiling nurses with encouraging…

Some Police Think Google’s Waze App Helps Would-Be Cop Killers

Waze’s community-curated real-time traffic network includes keeping tabs on nearby five-o. And cops aren’t very happy about it, claiming it makes it easier to stalk the police. The Associated Press reports that a few U.S. sheriffs are accusing Waze of aiding cop stalking and even being a potentially powerful tool for would-be cop killers since…

10k piece Lego build is a beautiful way to illustrate an ugly practice

Like Greenpeace’s video utilizing Lego to illustrate how everything is not awesome, Mike Doyle has utilized Lego to raise awareness about Mountain Top Removal. It is one of the ugliest practices plaguing our country today, destroying an extremely old and equally beautiful piece of our landscape in the interest of more coal. https://gizmodo.com/lego-ends-shell-partnership-after-greenpeace-campaign-1644281170 What is…

Neuroscientists have captured the first-ever video of neural activity in the brains of freely moving nematode worms. Using an elaborate camera setup and software, researchers were able to observe 78 individual neurons—an advance that will help them better understand how the nervous system controls animal behavior.

Captain America: Civil War Just Revealed A New Major Marvel Villain

And no, I’m not talking about Iron Man. A new casting call sheet for the third Captain America movie causally mentioned that the recently added castmember Daniel Bruhl will play Baron Zemo, one of Cap’s most formidable foes, in the film. Here’s why this is awesome. Explaining who Baron Zemo is a little complicated. When…