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Grilled cheese sandwiches are usually a simple slapping combination of bread and cheese but the result is never as delicious as you imagine. Alton Brown has another way to make a grilled cheese sandwich that is truly grilled and looks absolutely fantastic. Watch him walk you through the process. He’s pretty much reinventing the wheel…
After months of drought, summer is starting with fires in southern California. The fires are being amplified by adiabatic winds, with smoke cyclone and fire tornadoes spinning out of the flames. Here’s the atmospheric science to go along with the breaking-news coverage of evacuations and burned acreage. Wildfire approaching homes in San Marcos, California. Image…
I think we’ve met the cutest 4-year-old boy that has ever existed. Or, if not the cutest, at least the coolest. But, if not the coolest, then definitely the most stylish. His name is Ryker and he recreates fashion poses to adorable success. Just look at him, he looks like he belongs on the cover…
Africa’s last full-time hunter-gatherers live in Tanzania. Gareth Wishart spent a month living with them. This tale is drawn from that experience. — Ed. Never has the phrase “torn to pieces” been so relevant to me. We had woken up to the warm African sun heating our bones and headed straight into some of the…
Rio de Janeiro-based Lightfarm Brasil is producing some really amazing illustrations for advertising companies. This one, inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, is just a test to show off their impressive talent. This video shows how it was made: Thank you for sharing, Lightfarm. Obrigado! SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff.…
Phantom Limb is a beautifully crafted short film written, directed and animated by Alex Grigg. “In the aftermath of an accident a young couple learn to deal with phantom pains,” the description reads. It’s a sad little tale selected for the Sundance Film Festival that is worth four minutes of your life. SPLOID is a…
Anyone who’s watched Gravity knows debris is always worse in space. Even dust, which can meddle with satellite sensors and cause all kinds of trouble—until now. Thanks to science, lasers are coming to the rescue. The engineering folks at Fraunhofer have developed a unique thermic-piezoelectric deformable mirror that won’t break while focusing high-powered lasers. When…
Hey, this little dude is 10-month-old Rasmus Futtrup (which is one of the coolest names ever, as cool as Guybrush Threepwood.) He likes swings, obviously. And drool. Smiles and drool for everyone! SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
Tivoli’s gorgeous radios and music player combos are all about their throwback design. Design that harkens back to the old days when hi-fis were unwieldy plugin appliances that you installed in a corner of your living room. Today, the company’s powerful Music System line goes portable for the first time. The new Music System Three…
Sandvine just released its twice yearly report on internet traffic, and it’s a doozy. While it’s no surprise to see mobile growing and Snapchat kicking ass, it’s a little bit mind-bending to learn that binge-watching streaming addicts gobble up over half the traffic on the internet in North America. That’s a lot of Netflix. To…
Birds flying into window panes might be the stuff of cartoon comic fodder, but the reality is bleak: Hundreds of millions of birds die from flying into transparent glass every year. Thankfully, science is finally putting a stop to it. A recent New York Times article gives us a glimpse into the fascinating research being…
For those of you lucky enough to try a glass of Hop Tech 431, the IPA of the future brewed by Sixpoint for Gizmodo’s Home of the Future, you’ll probably want to share some tasting notes. After all, it uses a brand new hop called HBC 431—so experimental, it doesn’t even have a real name…
Meet Galanter & Jones‘ Evia: It’s a heated outdoor lounger made from a single piece of reinforced concrete. It’s beautiful, it’s awesome, and it was just hand-delivered to the Home of the Future by the brother/sister team behind it. Evia is a perfect combination of tech and design—the very embodiment of the Home of the…
Biking is great. So great! But if you’re wearing a bag across your back, you are going to get sweaty, because you’re human and we’re all pretty gross. If you’re not ready to commit to installing a rack to carry your stuff, this Barrel Bag from our outdoorsy pals at Alite will be a cool…
Hollywood was little more than a dream, a boom-time subdivision etched onto the Cahuenga Valley’s fertile plain, when an intersection destined for fame first appeared on an 1887 map. Known today as Hollywood & Vine—a booming tourist hub and the center of the Walk of Fame—the intersection began as an undistinguished, dusty patch of land…
The 9/11 Museum, which opened today after years of construction, sits 70 feet below sea level. Nestled into the bedrock that supports the entire city, it’s protected by strong walls and great engineering—yet it, like so much of the city, will inevitably be threatened by rising tides. Amidst dozens of fantastic stories about the museum…
There’s not much in rural Washington, but there are lot of dams. And dams mean hydroelectric power. Following the lure of cheap electricity, Bitcoin miners and their power-hungry server farms are making out for sleepy little towns in the Pacific Northwest. Although Bitcoin is a digital currency, mining it still has a gigantic physical footprint.…
If we’ve learned anything from the history of 20th century vaporware, this gorgeous hoverbike from Aerofex probably won’t be hitting showroom floors by 2017. Companies that announce release dates of two or three years away generally like to keep pushing it further into the future while they’re raising money. Just look at flying cars and…
Galaxy collisions are a slow-speed, spectacular crash of whirling stars driven by gravity. A new simulation from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center runs through the history of the universe in under a minute, with galaxies swirling together in a beautiful mess of dust and stars. From the video description: Galaxies are collections of stars, gas,…
