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Speed painting video shows all the stages of a woman’s life in 4 minutes

From the beginning to the very end and all over again. From birth to death, here are all the stages of one woman’s life in drawings. You see the drawing morph from a baby to a child to a teenager and adult and so on. The speed painting, done by Stonehouse, is beautiful and it’s…

10 movie myths that can never actually happen in real life

We see some things happen so often in movies that they start to seep into our reality. We totally think they’re real. Like thinking the asteroid belt is some dangerous road or that firing a gun to break a lock works or that silencers truly silence a weapon. But nope! Those are all myths that…

The Alley Cats of Japan Look Pretty Badass

French photographer Alexander Bonnefoy recently traveled around Japan looking for felines. And boy did he find some pretty ones. He found some pretty scrappy ones, too! The kitten-laden adventure took Bonnefoy from Okinawa to Hokkaido, down back alleys and up into trees. The cats he found ran the gamut of badassery as well. From the…

The animated history of the Nintendo Game Boy

Nintendo’s handheld video game consoles didn’t start off being called Game Boy and the ones you can buy now aren’t even called Game Boy anymore but to my brain, and to many other well adjusted humans who are just pretending to be adults right now, a Nintendo handheld video game console will always be a…

It Might Not Happen Quite the Way You Expect

You think you know everything about launching a space vehicle, but the future is going to be a lot weirder than you might think. This is a sculpture by the famous designer Edward Tufte, taken from an image on his website. You can see more of his work there.

The best way to cope with traffic is actually to make multi-lane highways smaller, not bigger. Several long-term studies have shown that “road diets” that shrink 4-line highways to 3-lane highways significantly decrease traffic jams and accidents. Atlantic’s CityLab has the story.

Impressive photo of a spaceship 250 million miles away from Earth

You are looking at a photo of a spaceship flying 250 millions miles away from Earth. It’s Rosetta, floating in the pitch black vacuum of space photographed by its Philae daughtership, a lander that will soon arrive to the object on the background, the comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…

Long-Lost Recordings From the Remote Parts of the World

In the mid-1980s, a documentarian named David Blair Stiffler traveled to the most remote parts of the Philippines to capture a series of field recordings—a fairly straightforward task made considerably more complicated by kidnapping at gunpoint and subsequent captivity. Stiffler kept recording—and in the process, captured a series of incredibly candid aural portraits of people…

Cool trick billiards shots are even cooler from the cue’s perspective

Do not ever challenge Ziemowit Janaszek to a game of pool. This man can handle his cue and balls alright, and the trick shots he pulls off are all kinds of incredible. Even better? He strapped a GoPro to his rod for an entirely new perspective. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…

Good News: The English-Language Remake Of Real Humans Could Air On AMC

Among fans of thought-provoking storytelling about artificial intelligence, the Swedish program Äkta Människor (Real Humans) has become legendary. And now it looks like the English-language remake could be appearing on our screens next year. The Real Humans remake was being produced by the U.K.’s Channel 4, in cooperation with Microsoft’s Xbox production studio, and it…

Watch Apple CEO Tim Cook Chat With Charlie Rose Tonight

It’s been a big week full of fanfare for Apple, which is why it’ll be nice to watch it all capped off with a civil, amiable discussion between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Charlie Rose. The first part of the interview airs tonight on PBS. On the slate for part one of the interview: Beats…

Your Friday Evening Dose Of Swords, Dragons And Scenery-Chewing!

Just imagine if Game of Thrones was made for pocket change, instead of having its lavish budget. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it — we’ve got a clip from Merlin and the War of the Dragons, to show you what that would look like. Merlin and the War of the Dragons is the work…

Scientists Made a Soft Exoskeleton That You Put On Like Pants

Exoskeletons that give you superhuman strength sound incredibly awesome but also look incredibly awkward and bulky and uncomfortable. So what about a soft exoskeleton that you wear like a pair of pants? Harvard researchers recently won a DARPA grant of up to $2.9 million to develop the Soft Exosuit. So far, they’ve created a proof-of-concept…

This Could Be Windows 9’s New Virtual Desktops in Action

Earlier today we got a taste of what appears to be Windows 9’s new Start Menu in action. Now a leak by the German site WinFuture.de (which has beenleaking things left and right) shows rumored Virtual Desktops doing their thing. The actual behavior looks pretty unremarkable, as it should be considering that Virtual Desktops have…

This Revolving Ring Keeps Your Keys and Saves Your Fingernails

Nothing Apple announced on Tuesday has as much life-changing potential as this revolving keyring does. It’s apparently based on a clever design from the late 1800s that was either lost to time, or confiscated by aliens to slow mankind’s progress. Either way, it’s back, and ready to save your fingernails every time you need to…

This Doctor Who/Warcraft mashup tries to explain WoW’s confusing story

Warlords of Draenor, World of Warcraft’s new expansion, takes players to back in time to an alternate reality. No wait, alternate timeline. Maybe? Either way some fans are a bit confused – except for youtuber Scott Leyes, who’s taken to parody by recreating a pivotal scene from The Day of The Doctor. The scene in…

GrowlTap Review: Keep Craft Beers From the Brewery Fresh at Home

I’m not sure where this should fall on the spectrum of pride to shame, but it has been years since I’ve tapped a keg. Raging house parties aren’t quite as frequent in the years after college, but drinking delicious beer at home for a little take-the-edge-off tipsy pleasure remains a pastime for, well—a lot of…

Toyota’s New Transit Idea Is Like a Bikeshare for Tiny Electric Cars

Small, weird-looking smartcars are nothing new; there are plenty of them on the road, especially in cities where space is at a premium. But Toyota has launched something that makes great use of its zippy 3-wheeled i-Road vehicles: a new car-sharing service that integrates with a city’s existing transit system. The concept is basically a…

Should Television Shows Be Less Concerned With Continuity?

Ideally, a great television show should be both satisfying in terms of the overall story that unspools over the series and in terms of the smaller story that is told in a single episode. But what happens when the story needs of the series and the episode find themselves in conflict? In response to this…

Delivery Man vs. Machine: A Fight for the Future of Laundry

I hate doing laundry. I hate stuffing the musky-smelling threads into a machine. I hate pouring in the soap. I hate folding it, when it’s done. I hate the whole dance. So when I heard about two major innovations in the laundry-doing arena, I got excited—perhaps a little too excited. One of the innovations is…