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This might only be an ad but when I saw these guys back flipping and jumping over each other while playing soccer on inflatable trick mats I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The action is real and it is performed by professionals—so don’t get too excited about doing this anytime soon. SPLOID is a…
You’ve almost certainly seen a histogram on your camera’s display at some point, but if you don’t take photography particularly seriously you might not know what it tells you. Well, you should—and this video explains very simply what you need to know. Created by John Greengo for CreativeLive, this five-minute snippet breaks down what the…
This visual effects reel from digital compositor Calvin Romeyn showcases some of the best shots in the most exciting and bloody scenes from Game of Thrones season four. It is fascinating to see which gruesome bits were added in post production. Warning: Major spoilers ahead. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…
Inspiration can come from the strangest places—so what if buildings were designed around the sounds produced by famous musicians? That’s exactly what Italian architect and illustrator Federico Babina has imagined in his new series called Archmusic. It takes 27 popular songs—from the likes of David Bowie t0 Mozart—and turns them into cartoon buildings. The results…
New changes to Wikipedia’s terms of use mean that anyone who is paid to edit articles will have to disclose that arrangement. Which is a good thing.
Apple has settled an $840 million ebook price-fixing claim brought by consumers and US states outside of court. The lawsuit stemmed from a previous ruling by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote who found Apple guilty of colluding with publishers to keep ebook prices high.
A pair of tornadoes touched down within a mile of each other in northeast Nebraska today. While multiple tornadoes spawning from a single storm are common, having an independent pair of strong twisters touch down this close together is rare and downright devastating. A pair of tornadoes touched down within a mile of each other…
Two months after Nest took its smart smoke detector Protect off the shelves based on an internally-identified safety issue, Protect is once again for sale. Nest announced it would resume sales in a late-night blog post today—and the news comes with a welcome price chop. If you missed the commotion over Protect back in March,…
According to the Pierre Sprey, co-designer of the F-16, the F35 is a turkey. Inherently, a terrible airplane. An airplane built for a dumb idea. A kludge that will fail time and time again. Just impossibly hopeless. And judging from the bajillion times the F-35 fleet has been grounded, well, he’s probably not wrong. It’s…
Someone recorded two tornadoes touching down at the same time on US-275 near Pilger, Nebraska. The footage is absolutely nuts. There are two videos, but make sure to see the B-Roll for the entire thing. Insane. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
Roadtrippers has a fun little map that translates the setting of the mythical world of Westeros from Game of Thrones to the United States of America. Kings Landing becomes Washington DC, Winterfell becomes Detroit and other famous castles and kingsdoms get scattered across America. Here are some of Roadtrippers’ US equivalents for Game of Thrones…
Most humans have accepted that fast food burgers will never look as good in real life as they do in commercials and advertisements. Those puffed up buns, saliva inducing patties, perfectly melted cheese, wonderfully dressed greens, etc. are all disgustingly limp in real life. But we eat them anyway! But what if you asked the…
What’s better than watching Walter White mix meth and scheme his sinister schemes? Watching Walter White mix meth and scheme his sinister schemes in Ultra HD, that’s what. And now you can, because Netflix is streaming Breaking Bad in 4K starting right now. Obviously, you’re going to need a 4K television to watching Breaking Bad…
If you watch any Martin Scorsese flick you’d know how perfectly he marries music with his movies. But it’s his masterful use of silence that makes some of his scenes hit even harder. The absence of sound can be even more powerful than the perfect song. Tony Zhou explains how Scorsese works the art of…
Circa 1935: Cortlandt Street’s “Radio Row” in lower Manhattan at night. The first radio shop on the street, City Radio, opened in 1921 and soon after other radio shops started opening nearby. New York’s “Radio Row” was torn down in 1966 to make room for construction of the World Trade Center. [Getty Images]
You’ve jumped on one trampoline, you jumped on them all, right? Wrong, you cynical sad sack. The mother of all trampolines is currently being readied for its public unveiling inside a series of caverns in Wales. Yep: It’s a network of trampolines hung from the walls of an old slate mine. In the Welsh mining…
Today would have been Tupac’s 43rd birthday, so what better time than tonight to post the classic “Changes”? It’s a great song—not Tupac’s biggest hit, but still significant. The cruel irony of it, however, is despite the message, Tupac himself ultimately fell victim to violence himself. But time certainly did not forget him, and he…
Honeycomb is hexagonal. Not circular. Not square. Not triangular. Why did bees settle on that particular shape? It was no accident; like many of their compatriots in the animal kingdom, it turns out the lil’ insects are excellent mathematicians and stellar architects. The repeated pattern makes perfect sense when you take a closer look at…
Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning right now? For you it would be like being in a car at 1000 miles per hour and stopping dead in your tracks—you would die instantly. But, believe it or not, it gets even worse after that, as this video explains. The…
If you thought origami was just a delicate, ornamental art, then come meet these robots. These (deliberately) deformable little wheelers can climb over obstacles, squeeze under crevasses, and basically change gears automatically. At the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation this month, two research projects from Seoul National University had led to clever origami-inspired…
