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POV footage shows it’s a helluva drop so yeah, it’s scary. People will pretty much plummet straight down a 168-foot 7-inch tall slide—which makes it the world’s tallest water slide—at thigh burning speeds to blast over a massive hill to ride another “mini” 50 feet slide. It doesn’t get any sicker than this. Called the…
Remember Left Behind? It was cheesy and had way too much Kirk Cameron. Anyway, now HBO has a new J.J. Abrams-directed show called Leftovers, which tells the tale of people left on Earth, post-rapture. And you can stream the first episode for free on Yahoo. To be clear, I haven’t watched the episode yet myself,…
There’s something magical about Matthew Simmonds’ beautiful sculptures. He seems to carve the rock to reveal secret architectural worlds that were trapped for eons inside marbles and limestones—castles, palaces and cathedrals inhabited by invisible characters of some Shakespearian tragedy. The one above is Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, but his other pieces come from…
Finally, three years after the release of their hit debut album, Foster the People is back on our Hi-Fis with a new record and this wild music video—a trippy, Princess Mononoke-esque battle between opposing forces of nature. Just watch out for the gun-fish toting shorebirds! While Ben Foster is credited with the initial video concept…
When it’s hot, city dwellers begin to have a certain look of desperation: That single-minded determination to access the sweet summer relief of a pool. Well, here’s a public pool that’s completely free and available to use—provided you can locate the pool itself, which is somewhere in the middle of a 25,000 square-mile Southern California…
It looks like an illustration from a Dr. Seuss book, but the circular tower made of leftover cornhusks and fungus strings in the courtyard of the Museum of Modern Art’s P.S.1 building in Queens is as practical as it is whimsical. As part of MoMA’s Young Architects program, Brooklyn firm The Living designed the outdoor…
Executives from the flying car company Terrafugia are currently in China looking for funding, leading some in the media to innocently ask if flying cars could ease Beijing’s traffic congestion. As the young folks these days might put it: LOL. From the Wall Street Journal: “China is experiencing a lot of the pains of becoming…
If you’ve been anywhere near this great, big internet of ours over the past few days, you’ve probably heard about Facebook’s outrageous breach of trust. Except, at least this time, Facebook might not be entirely in the wrong. The Study In 2012, Facebook decided to spend a week doing a series of experimental user testing,…
When deadlines are a-looming and your creative well has momentarily run dry; when a conversation with colleagues would result in a down-the-rabbit-hole discussion that time won’t allow; or when a client wants a design change and you need guidance from an impartial third party; the Pocket Art Director wants to help you with your work.…
And you thought watching The Hobbit in 60fps was weird? At 15 billion fps, this camera from Heriot Watt University captures video so fast that you can actually watch individual photons move across a room and reconstruct the form of objects around corners based only on the light that they scatter. Take laser beams, for…
Did you know July 4 is the busiest day of the year for firefighters and emergency rooms? Here’s how to treat fireworks-related injuries. Everyone should read this by Friday. Prevention: As with all things, the best cure. If you’re planning to set off fireworks on your own, make sure doing so is permitted in your…
Every year, London’s Design Museum chooses a single object, building, or piece of software and calls it the best-designed object of the year. It’s always fun to see what they choose: Last year it was a simple but brilliant government website. But this year’s winner, a cultural center in Azerbaijan, raises more questions than it…
“EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT SHELTERS” proclaimed Life magazine in its January 12, 1962 issue. Specifically, everybody was talking about nuclear fallout shelters, since both the United States and the Soviet Union had developed weapons which could unleash unimaginable destruction upon the Earth. The living might envy the dead if nuclear war broke out between the two…
This is not your typical electron microscope snowflake photo, usually delicate and beautiful. It’s a capped column snowflake zoomed in 50,000 times. Those intriguing and sightly gross flabby little hair thingies on both ends of the flake are rime ice. Rime ice forms on snowflakes “under some atmospheric conditions, forming and descending snow crystals may…
Already bored with Yo but eager to experiment with a copycat app using the popularity of a prestige drama as its hook? Then you’ll love Yo, Hodor, the Game of Thrones-themed parody of the single-word novelty app. It’s the same thing as Yo except you send the word “Hodor” to your friends instead of the…
Screw flying cars—I just want the flying. The first production unit of Honda’s first ever airplane has taken to the skies for the first time in Greensboro, North Carolina. This flight is a major milestone towards its certification—and a great excuse to post a gallery of HondaJet F3 porn. The cockpit is great. Look at…
Magnetic Resonance Imaging has come a long way in the three decades since its inception in GE research lab in upstate New York. In fact, the advancement in its capabilities over that time have been simply staggering. Just look at the image above. That’s a picture of somebody’s brain. And it’s not just any picture.…
Orange County, California, hardly lives up to its name1 anymore. A few relict orchards may survive, but today the endless citrus groves that once clothed the county in green are only a memory. Before a postwar population boom triggered an almost wholesale conversation of farmland to suburbia, much of Orange County appeared decidedly rural. In…
Security researchers confirmed on Monday that a vicious new cyberattack has compromised the computer systems of over 1,000 organizations in 84 countries. Dubbed “Energetic Bear,” the Stuxnet-like malware is largely targeting energy and utility companies. It’s almost certainly from Russia. This is scary stuff. Not only has the attack been going on for 18 months,…
While last week’s episode of Halt and Catch Fire saw Donna start to shine, this week had a broader shift, and a little promise from Cameron. But while things are looking up for the ladies in episode five, things are getting worse and worse for the gents. https://gizmodo.com/halt-and-catch-fire-is-a-huge-missed-opportunity-1593807619 Adventure opens with Cameron returning from a…