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More than a hundred NGO’s—including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Amnesty International—have united to put pressure on next week’s United Nations General Assembly meeting with this shocking PSA. As the slogan says: We can’t reverse what’s happened in Syria but we can change how the story ends. I really hope they will. The director of…
Some of the sequences in this video featuring Ryan Tuerck and 11 other formula drift drivers—filmed at Pat’s Acres Racing Complex in Canby, Oregon—reminds me of those old 8-bit top perspective racing games from the 80s. I want to grab a joystick and play Super Off-Road all day now. SPLOID is a new blog about…
This video shows the emergency descent of Jetblue flight 1416, which happened yesterday, September 18. Seeing those oxygen masks going down as the cabin fills up with smoke—after one of the engines stops!—is the beginning of one of my worst nightmares. Yet, all passengers seem completely calm about it. Even the guy holding the camera…
Corporate culture today is often said to be about working slavishly, with an above-all focus on profit and productivity. Nothing captures that idea more strikingly than this (fully functional) hamster-wheel desk. The project, designed and built in 24 hours by Pier 9’s artist-in-residence Robb Godshaw, is actually a pretty clever piece of design: the wheel…
If you’ve ever wanted to go wakeboarding, but thought “Man! Thosee ski boats are expensive!”, then never fear: the budget wakeboarding option is here. For just $20,000 (€15,000), Swedish entrepeneurs Alexander Lind and Philip Werner will sell you a jet-propelled, electrically-powered wakeboard. Using a salt-water-resistant jet, their creation (dubbed Radinn) will get you up to…
With almost all the results in, it’s now looking like Scotland will say ‘no’ to independance by a 54%-46% majority. Interestingly, that’s the same result predicted by a pollster…using Grindr. In the days leading up to the referendum, Tom Court polled a few hundred Grindr users to try and work out which way the vote…
Most humans’ priority when their flying metal tube starts filling with smoke: panic, scream, scrabble for oxygen mask, pee their pants a little. This guy? He pulls out his smartphone and starts video-selfie-ing for all he’s worth. A Jet Blue airliner had to make an emergency landing this morning after taking off from Long Beach.…
I come as much as I can to Gothenburg, Sweden, because two simple reasons. First, it’s one of my favorite cities in the world, along with New York and Madrid—I could spend a hundred pages talking about how nice it is. But, most importantly, it’s the home to some of my favorite people in the…
A person’s eyes can express so much. That’s why directors hone in on them in crucial scenes of movies. That’s why you can just see the eyes of a great actor and immediately know what movie you’re watching. That’s why this supercut about eyes is so fun to watch, it’s just famous scene after famous…
It’s iPhone 6 launch day, which of course means that YouTube will be full of drop tests by lunch time. But the very first buyer, coming out of the iPhone store in Perth, decided to beat them all to it. According to the local news reporter, ‘Jack’ was so excited to get his shiny new…
This is great. Celia Bullwinkel made Sidewalk, an animation that shows a little girl become a woman while walking on the sidewalk and all that it entails. There’s a perfect amount of awkwardness and embarrassment, annoyance at rude gawkers, and a whole lot of hard work. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…
iFixit, famous breakers of things, were Down Under to scoop up an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as soon as it went on sale. Now, they’re teasing the rest of us with a step-by-step liveblog of the teardown process. The disassembly isn’t the simplest — you have to extract two proprietary Pentalobe screws, and…
All the sexual fantasies of an adolescent hired by the sensual owner of a mansion to clean the pool materialize in this music video for Dancing Anymore, a song by the British band Is Tropical. Warning: This video contains 3D rendered sexual content. It’s definitely Not Safe For Work. Is Tropical is an English musical…
Over the past year, PC graphics cards have swelled to gargantuan proportions, with price tags to match: Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan costs an incredible $999, to say nothing of the $3,000 Titan Z you might consider if your family is in the oil business. Today, Nvidia’s trying something different: the new GeForce GTX 980 is…
We’ve seen so many beautiful time lapses of the Aurora Borealis (not that I’m complaining!) that it’s pretty refreshing to see how ethereal it can be in real time too. I guess that means I should really see it in real life. The video was filmed by O Chul Kwon in Yellowknife, Canada. If I…
Would a trip through airport security be a little better if it looked like this? Roxy Paine, a New York artist, has painstakingly whittled every last detail of a TSA checkpoint, rendering everything from the X-ray monitor to the plastic boxes for our belongings in smooth, sanded maple. The checkpoint (named Checkpoint) is part of…
When I first saw 300, it felt like I was using my eyes for the very first time. The stunning visuals made it feel epic. And though I may not feel the same about other Zack Snyder movies, I still enjoy watching them because if you use enough slow motion like he does, you can…
Larry Ellison, who you’ll remember as the CEO of Oracle and a man who likes to build really, really fast sailboats, has relinquished his boss-man role at Oracle. Although it means that Oracle won’t be helmed by Ellison for the first time ever, he insists that “nothing will change”. [Reuters]
The largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world is at Florida Southern College. Depending on how you count, there are 7 to 12 buildings, the most distinctive of which is Annie Pfeiffer Chapel. Time has taken its toll on the chapel’s one-of-a-kind concrete blocks, but it’s the 21st century, and we now…
Last night, Apple head honcho Tim Cook announced that iOS 8 will encrypt all your personal data by default, making it harder for the NSA to root through your stuff. Now, in a totally coincidentally timed move, Google’s announced that Android L will do the same. According to the Washington Post, the latest and greatest…
