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Welcome to the Paleofuture Book Club, where we discuss the coolest books about retro-futures and the history of technology! Today we’re talking about Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age by W. Bernard Carlson. The book is, of course, about the late inventor Nikola Tesla and we have the author joining us to take your questions.…
Forget coffee. If you’re still in dire need of a little morning boost, we guarantee that nothing will be quite as effective as the adrenaline rush you’ll get from swimming for your life in this online drowning simulator. This is not for the faint of heart. The stress-inducing site comes courtesy of Sortie En Mar,…
HBO and Amazon just put a ring on it with a giant, multi-year deal that will put HBO originals on Amazon Prime exclusively. Woooooo! That means you don’t need an HBO subscription to watch old episodes of everything from the Wire to Eastbound & Down. And in this game of everything-but-Game-of-Thrones, everyone wins; Amazon, HBO,…
Artist Rachel Sussman has traveled to all seven continents in her tireless quest to document millennia-old lichen, moss, bacteria, trees, shrubs, and even underground forests. Her book, The Oldest Living Things in the World, gathers 30 of these specimens into one gorgeous volume. Sussman has been working closely with biologists and other scientists on this…
Getting crews out to patch roads is sometimes more trouble than its worth. It snarls traffic for hours at a time, costs counties and states hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, and typically only fixes the problem for a short time. But this gravel-blasting utility truck aims to make the permanent patch process faster than…
This is not a video trick. A person pours a transparent liquid and, suddenly, it turns black. It’s the magic of chemistry, Mr. White. The reaction above is called the iodine clock reaction, which is a classic demonstration of chemical kinetics. But there are others, more complex and cooler than this. The Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillating reaction…
If there’s one common feature among all the cool hacks and DIY projects you’ll find online these days, it’s that they’re usually made with an Arduino microcontroller of some sort. But if you lack the programming and electronics know-how to use an Arduino to bring your own creations to life, this simple starter kit will…
When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I expected another normal day. Work. Lunch. Work. Happy hour. Home. Heck, maybe I’d even treat myself to an iced coffee at some point. I did not expect to end up shivering, staring at rust, and dreaming about the America we’d lost. I did not expect to go…
Since the retirement of the venerable Space Shuttles, NASA astronauts have relied on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to get to the International Space Station. Take a moment to learn about the rocket and modules our astronauts are using until we develop new crew launch vehicle. https://gizmodo.com/nasa-has-unveiled-the-rocket-that-will-take-us-to-mars-5840466 Preparing to Launch Soyuz TMA-09M positioned to launch Expedition 36…
As CERN’s Large Hadron Collider attempts to discover unknown particles that could unravel the mysteries of our universe, this LHC-themed umbrella will help you deal with more common particles as they fall from a raincloud. Featuring a detailed graphic of the LHC printed on its 100 percent polyester canopy, the only discovery you’ll make with…
It has to be really annoying to be in your turf and have all these people come like the pest to take photos of you and leave crap around. If I were this leopard I would have stolen the camera, break it, and then poop on it. But I’m glad he didn’t so we could…
If you think being packed on an airplane with strangers sucks, then you’re probably a pleb like us who flies economy. But first class? It’s an entirely different alcohol-lubricated world up there—a world where a single seating unit can cost half a million dollars. How does something to park your ass in even get so…
Up until now, anyone hoping to time travel in Google Street View was more or less left at the mercy of the odd, serendipitous glitch. But starting today, Google is rolling out a new Street View feature that lets you travel back in time virtually anywhere. Apparently, Google’s been quietly hoarding old Street View snapshots…
Mother Nature has already mastered the art of camouflage, so it only makes sense that we steal her ideas when it comes to the art of hiding. Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a remarkable new material “inspired” by chameleons, which can change shape and color under different lighting conditions. Making the material…
Not only is Amazon Prime getting a whole bunch of HBO shows, but Amazon’s Fire TV is also getting an HBO Go app, which remedies one of its biggest holes at launch. Woo!
Amazon just announced an agreement that makes Prime Instant Video the only place you can watch HBO originals online without an HBO subscription. Starting May 21st, Prime members will get exclusive, unlimited streaming access to pretty much every HBO original you’re interested in except Game of Thrones. Right out of the gate, Prime members will…
What’s the oldest living thing you’ve ever seen? A 2,200-year-old sequoia in California, perhaps? That’s a relatively teenage specimen to the artist Rachel Sussman, who has spent the last ten years looping the globe on a wild adventure to meet and document the world’s oldest “continuously living” organisms. Working closely with biologists and researchers, and…
Climate change is one of the most complex areas of scientific study out there, causing physicists, chemists and meteorologists alike to scratch their heads—so it’s understandable that the rest of us find it a little difficult to grasp. But this video is your best chance yet of understanding the topic. Imagine our atmosphere as a…
Ever wondered who’s most likely to get the chop on Facebook? Wonder no longer, because researchers from the University of Colorado Denver have been looking into the most common unfriendings on the social network. By conducting surveys, the computer scientists were able to work out who most commonly gets the elbow. Their results, presented at…
Say hello to the oddly named OnePlus One: a high-spec new phone from a Shenzhen-based company (not to be confused with the HTC One) that runs a CyanogenMod version of Android straight out of the box. The hardware’s certainly impressive. It packs a Snapdragon 801 with a quad-core 2.5GHz CPU, Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB…
