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Taking photos of other people’s art is generally not good photographic practice. But what about when art melds with the human form? For this week’s Shooting Challenge, you’re going to photograph a tattoo. The Challenge Take a photograph in which a tattoo is the focus. The Method Most tattoo photography is pretty horrible. Some dude…
For the very first time, scientists have managed to create tiny, embryonic brains in test tubes. Say hello to baby Frankenstein. Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Science have successfully created “cerebral organoids,” little balls of brain just a few millimeters in size that actually have the same distinct,…
Picking out the right bottle of wine to take to a dinner party is too often a tough task, so many people go with the pick-the-pretty-label approach. And of course, you want to send the right message. With Vino Loco, that message is loud and clear: You crazy. This Spanish-designed bottle of wine comes wrapped…
It’s almost impossible to read this Craigslist personal ad—if you could get past the first three paragraphs without punching the screen—and not wonder which kind of personality disorder affects the man who wrote it. It’s so weird that it may actually be a diabolic plan to troll Jezebel’s writers. https://jezebel.com/insanely-detailed-craigslist-personal-ad-has-a-28-quest-1212317513
People finishing each other’s sentences. Indie rock. Video editing that’s way too fast. CollegeHumor is spot-on in its demonstration of how every tech commercial is exactly the same. This is yet another instance of “funny because it’s true.” In fact, it’s so right that you could basically change the text of this faux commercial to…
To watch collectors and aficionados, mechanical movements are particularly desirable since they best represent the fine craftsmanship and precise engineering that has gone into watch and clock making for centuries. But ironically, even with today’s technology, mechanical movements don’t keep perfect time. They gain and lose seconds as they lose power, so Urwerk has created…
Sometime in the next few months, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System will flip the switch on the largest solar plant of its kind in the world: A 377-megawatt, 3,500-acre solar thermal energy system. It’s located in California’s Mojave Desert near the Nevada border and it’s ridiculously big. I would suggest going to check it…
Google Hangout video chats have been quietly upgrading to 720p HD, and the mothership says all users should have high definition soon. The quality boost is part of a long-term upgrade that has Hangout moving toward a system that won’t require installing any plugins, but that’s still down the road. [Gigaom]
Want to watch a copter crash live and guilt-free? Of course you do. Well you’re in luck: NASA is serving one up right now. Today the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, will be dropping a 45-foot-long CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter fuselage—complete with 13 unlucky crash dummy passengers—and watching it smash into the ground. NASA’s…
When you think about all the forms of indoor entertainment available to us—the internet, cable TV, video games—it’s no surprise that the outdoors is having a hard time competing for our attention. But it turns out that a little exposure to the sun is not just beneficial, it’s actually vital to our health. Ultraviolet rays…
The legal debate over whether police need a warrant to search a suspect’s cellphone is more than just raging on — it’s headed to the Supreme Court. But even if the nation’s highest court decides a warrant is needed, the authorities could still block you from remote-wiping your phone while they wait for the legal…
Behold the new Nintendo 2DS! Its oversized slim wedge shape looks awkward but, according to Kotaku it’s “more evenly balanced than the 3DS, making the overall feel of holding the unit comfortable.” Unlike the foldable 3DS, the 2DS has no 3D display. It’s really weird. https://kotaku.com/introducing-the-nintendo-2ds-no-thats-not-a-typo-1214807721
To make kids living with visual impairments able to share the same experiences as their friends and peers, a new series of children’s books was created. The Storybook For All Eyes each feature a custom-designed font that incorporates both braille and english letters into a single typeface so they can be shared and enjoyed by…
America’s 60,000 dairy farms produce roughly 21 billion gallons of milk annually, more than 2,300 gallons per year per cow! Getting all that milk out of their udders and into your fridge has always been a bit of a chore for both the farmer and the heifer, but this new, laser-guided milker makes the practice…
Kinja user lotzosushi has uploaded a few pictures from a larger Flickr collection of what he claims are iPhone 5c parts. But while there’s nothing in the budget iPhones we haven’t seen before, there is a red iPhone 5 casing that got us dreaming of a red iPhone 5S future. https://lotzosushi.kinja.com/my-iphone-5c-housing-photos-1212723191 While there have been…
Earlier this week I had the rare opportunity to meet with archivists from Warner Brothers and got a peek at their archive of Jetsons material. As you can imagine, I was in paleofuture nerd heaven. I shot a segment here in L.A. with “CBS Sunday Morning” (airing this Sunday April 28th) about the impact of…
We’ve heard about plenty of promising electronic applications for miracle material graphene from headphones, to super-fast transistors, to crazy camera sensors, and even solar-powered paint. But now scientists have found a way to leverage its raw strength, by using it to make metal up to 500 times stronger. https://gizmodo.com/scientists-have-made-graphene-earphones-and-theyre-ama-5990520 By taking a thin film of…
Kinja user Lotzosushi has photos of the white iPhone 5C casing with some parts—plus a red iPhone 5 casing as well. Which made me think: Why wouldn’t Apple be releasing the iPhone 5S in multiple colors too? What would be your favorite iPhone color? There’s no more information on this, so it’s purely speculative. It…
The architectural rendering is a subtle knife. It can be used to convince, intimidate, and generate laffs—or all three at once, if you’re really good. Such is the case with this collection of renderings, which show proposed designs for the upcoming 2017 World Expo in Kazakhstan. The Expo will bring an estimated three million people…
Amazon’s got something cooking. First, we saw a huge fire sale on Kindle Fires, now the wonderful Wi-Fi Kindle Paperwhite has gone out of stock on Amazon’s website. Looks like someone’s trying to clean house. http://gizmodo.com/preview/is-amazon-making-room-for-its-next-e-ink-kindle-1214296487 The 3G Kindle Paperwhite—$179 to the Wi-Fi Paperwhite’s $119—is still in stock, but it’s probably a safe bet to…
