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We all know that Quentin Tarantino is a petty whiny dickhead who steals all his plots from other movies, ripping off scene after scene, and recombining them into silver nitrate milkshakes. But I enjoyed Pulp Fiction anyway. If you did too, you’ll like these nine factoids—which include the real content of Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase. SPLOID…
The Panama Canal is not the only water line connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There’s a place in Wyoming—deep in the Teton Wilderness Area of the Bridger-Teton National Forest—in which a creek splits in two. Like the canal, this creek connects the two oceans dividing North America in two parts. Yes. You read that…
And if you like what you see from the newest spooky supernatural flick from Joss Whedon’s brilliant brain, you can watch the entire movie on demand on Vimeo for 5 bucks. A great deal for those of you who want more Whedon in your life. The tagline talks about this being a story about a…
This isn’t new, but it’s worth a listen, especially if you’ve (1) never participated in a soundwalk or (2) not yet read Trevor Cox’s sonic travelogue, Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound. Cox visited the offices of the Guardian and proceeded to take the editors on a blindfolded guided tour — except he was…
By now, you’ve likely heard the insane story of a 16-year-old boy who survived a five-hour flight from California to Hawaii hidden in a wheel well. How the hell did his body make it through sub-zero temperatures with little oxygen? Probably by going into “suspended animation,” a strange, frozen state that’s about as close you…
You may have heard about a weird and wonderful new thing called Palcohol coming soon to a store near you. Except, psych! The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is now saying the powdered alcohol product was approved in error—all because of a labeling discrepancy. The whole situation seems a bit bizarre. A…
Chances are you won’t see these rare animals at the local zoo because their population is down to the last hundreds. In some cases, it’s much worse than that with only a couple left. Some of these animals you’ve never heard of but others on the verge of extinction are related to animals you know…
This is Dark Sky Week, an international effort to promote appreciation for dark skies and reduction in light pollution. Where are your favourite places to escape the city lights and stargaze? New York during a blackout. Photograph credit: Craig Ruttle/AP Most cities have skies so bright that except for catastrophic blackouts or coordinated lights-out during…
Built shortly before the dawn of the Jet Age, L.A.’s Union Station has been called the Last Great American Railway Station—one final monument to rail transportation’s heyday. Judging by a newly digitized color film, the city celebrated its grand opening on May 3, 1939, with appropriate fanfare. Nearly half a million Angelenos came out for…
Now I’ve got you in my space, I won’t let go of you/Got you shackled in my embrace, I’m latchin’ onto you. This song is slightly creepy. If someone said that to you without context or the banging Disclosure beat to boost it, you’d be like no way, dude. But this track is incredibly infectious,…
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array consists of 66 individual radio telescopes that can be moved to zoom in on a patch of sky. But how do they move those 100-ton beasts around the desert? Otto, the red-railed transport crawler. Twin transporter Lore has green rails. Image credit: José Velásquez/ESO A telescope array functions by coordinating…
What burrowing owls have to do with San Francisco’s housing protests, a luxury apartment for horses in Manhattan, and Boston looks back on the transformation of its civic identity, one year later. Plus, a recap of Gizmodo’s Utopia Week. Climb aboard this week’s Urban Reads. “If you’re wondering why people are protesting you, how we…
New Yorkers have said plenty of negative things about the super-expensive supertalls going up in Manhattan. They tower over their neighbors. They cast shadows over Central Park. But no one has yet equated them with anorexic women—until the May 2014 issue of Vanity Fair. I winced when I saw the headline for the story about…
Drones are getting pretty advanced, and they’re continuing to prove their usefulness. They can do anything from dodge bullets to land on aircraft carriers. And up next is an emerging new class of drones that can take off and land vertically, thanks to the likes of the new Arcturus UAV Jump system. The Jump system…
Over the last couple of days you might’ve heard that a company called Palcohol has been cleared to market powdered alcohol in the United States. It sounds exciting! And scary! Are we all going to be drowning in boozy Ovaltine soon? Maybe. Maybe not. Update: Probably not, seeing as how all it seems this was…
Amazon Fire TV‘s voice search is one of its best features, but at launch it only played nice with Amazon stuff. That’s about to change—last week it got support for Hulu Plus, Crackle, and Showtime, and later this year Fire TV is going to work with Netflix, says CEO Reed Hastings.
Originally created way back in 2007 by Eiko Ishizawa as a sort of homage to a bear that was killed after wandering from the Italian side of the Alps to the Bavarian, this plush bearskin sleeping bag is finally available for purchase on a made-to-order basis. Because the sleeping bags will be made entirely from…
Today, the Japanese tech giant Hitachi announced a contract to build two of the fastest elevator in the world for a forthcoming skyscraper in China. Seems innocuous enough, right? But buried within the press release are a few fascinating details that illustrate how China’s skyscraper boom is affecting the global economy—including the fact that it…
Bad news: Netflix will be hiking its prices for new subscribers. Per a first quarter letter to shareholders, CEO Reed Hastings says: Our current view is to do a one or two dollar increase, depending on the country, later this quarter for new members only. Hastings added that the $8 rate for existing customers will…
Move over, Google Fiber. There’s (maybe) a new gigabit internet game in town, and it’s (maybe) coming to 100 cities and municipalities by way through AT&T, at some point in the future. Maybe. Today AT&T announced that it has its fiber internet sights set on 100 U.S. cities and municipalities, 21 of which are major…
