Tech News

The UK Now Has Poop-Powered Buses

America has the Tesla electric car, Britain has… a poop bus. Bristol Airport now has a bus that will shuttle people to Bath city centre, powered solely by human and food waste. To be specific, it’s the biomethane gas produced by the anaerobic digestion treatment of said waste that the bus runs on. Anaerobic digestion…

Can You Ignore Your Own Voice?

We listen to our own voice when we talk – it helps us monitor what we’re saying. But simultaneous interpreters have to translate one language into another in real time, so they learn to ignore themselves. In the 1990s Franco Fabbro and colleagues at the University of Trieste in Italy asked students to recite the…

Report: Amazon Is Planning to Launch a Travel Site With Hotel Bookings

Looking to get away? Maybe you should just add a trip to your Wish List in the hope someone buys it for you. At least, that’s what you might be able to do soon, if reports of Amazon branching out into travel are accurate. The travel news site Skift reports that Amazon has been working…

It’s A Weirdly Calm Week On The Space Station

With only three astronauts and three spacecraft, the station seems awfully empty. About the most exciting activity was garbage day, with the Progress M-24M that kicked off from the station in late October finally burning up during a destructive reentry. https://gizmodo.com/the-space-station-has-the-most-beautiful-garbage-day-1623444197 Top image: Progress M-24M probably looked very similar detaching from the station in October…

This hand drawn Big Hero 6 trailer is so simple but so lovely

CGI is wonderful and I love it when excellent animators use it for their films but there’s something about the ol’ trusty pen and pencil way of hand drawing (even if it’s not done with a pen and pencil) that always makes me smile. It’s like doing things simpler is sometimes better. This hand drawn…

Watching this Kaiseki chef putting food on plates is fascinating

Food all goes down the same but there’s so much beauty in food and each ingredient that chefs like Niki Nakayam of Los Angeles Japanese Kaiseki restaurant n/naka turn the idea of putting plate of food into an art form. You’re no longer eating protein and vegetables, but edible art on a plate. It’s the…

The process of turning raw cow hide into leather is really gross

Leather is beautiful and luxurious and natural and one of the great materials of the world. However, it’s absolutely gross to make. Here’s the process of tanning raw hide into high quality leather. You’ll see gray goops, a lot of residue, dumps of bizarre liquids and more. Worth it? I guess. Here are some of…

​The Gear That Helped Me Survive Camping With Bear Grylls

What clothes, boots, knives and backpacks does the editor of an adventure travel site fall back on when he’s feeling intimidated? This is the best of the best, the stuff I took with me to go camping with Bear Grylls, and how it performed. Not all of it survived. https://gizmodo.com/i-went-camping-with-bear-grylls-and-survived-1661260281 Bear’s dressed like a cartoon…

Celebrate Mike Nichols, Watch The Graduate

Director, comedian, and EGOT-winning badass Mike Nichols died yesterday. Nichols got his start in comedy, first as an improviser and then as part of a duo with the equally legendary Elaine May. Even though he was funny as shit he decided he wanted to get into serious filmmaking and theatre, and directed a string of…

Buffalo Is Not The Only Place That Has Ever Received Epic Snow

Predictably, in the wake of the massive snowstorm burying Buffalo, we’re getting a lot of mislabelled photos floating around of other, not-Buffalo places buried in snow some time in the past. Here’s a few fakes we’ve spotted. Top image: Austria, February 2013. With social media, we all end up being content curators. When you see…

Talking Heads Wrote the Best Anthem For a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

It’s the cassette tape that everybody should have in their earthquake go-bag: The single “Life During Wartime” by the Talking Heads. The song comes from their 1979 album Fear of Music and seems to be set in an urban dystopia with bands of freedom fighters skulking in the shadows. There’s meager rations, a cacophony of…

This is the stuff that some of my nightmares are made of

I have some kind of innate deep fear/repulsion against birds and especially flocks. Watching this massive group of little winged velociraptors taking off some kind of poplar tree—there are so many that the tree is deformed by their weight—is my idea of hell. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

The gates of hell just opened in Russia (again)

A potash mine in the Perm region, Russia, has collapsed, leaving behind a gigantic sinkhole in the middle of an abandoned town. It’s scary but that’s not the real bad news: a connected mine just few miles away sits right underneath a town full of people and houses and experts say it may collapse too.…

Did Ben Franklin Want the Turkey to Be Our National Symbol?

It’s one of those Thanksgiving fun facts I loved repeating when I was a kid: Ben Franklin liked turkeys so much that he wanted them to be our national bird, instead of the bald eagle. It’s a popular fun fact. But I was shattered to learn as an adult that this little nugget of trivia…

Half of a Teapot Is Actually the Perfect Amount of Teapot

Have you ever filled your teapot up more than halfway in your life? Oh, you have? Well, not all of us are constantly having wild parties with dozens of friends for whom to make tea. The rest of us are usually only making one or two cups—and that’s who the design team at the Dutch…

The 25th Anniversary Batman Blu-ray comes with a Keaton Batman figure!

Oh my. NECA dashed hopes of a ‘proper’ Keaton Bats figure when they released their (admittedly cool) video-game version – but it’s now been revealed they’ll be making one for the 1989 Movie’s upcoming blu-ray rerelease. Rejoice! The ‘Diamond Luxe Edition’ (which can I just say is a godawful name for something – just call…

This AWESOME Mario Kart Lego is the blue shell of builds

A collaboration between 6kyubi6, 74louloute and fujiia celebrates the awesomeness that is Mario Kart. Even though this game makes you hate your friends, these pals somehow made this build come together. All of my favorite characters are represented and nearly all of the weapons of destruction were built. You’re reading Leg Godt, the blog with…

How to Use Satellite Imagery to Predict the Market

You can do some crazy shit with satellite imagery. What kinds of crazy shit? Well, for one, a startup’s spying on the shadows of half-built skyscrapers in China and then selling the data to investors who want to predict what the real estate market. That’s crazy! The startup is run by former Googler James Crawford,…

Ikea Is Reissuing Amazing Old Designs From the 1950s and 60s

Ikea is over 70 years old, which means the company has survived through dozens upon dozens of design trends, from stuffy conservatism in the late 1940s to the craziness of the 60s. Wonderfully, the company is now plucking classics from its archives to sell in some stores. As one of the only mass-produced furniture companies…

Airbnb already provides reimbursement for property damage, now they’veadded liability insurance that will protect both hosts and their landlords should anyone get injured during a stay. The coverage is automatic and goes into effect in January; U.S. only for now. [Airbnb]