Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Last week, the 2017 World Yo-Yo Championship was held in Reykjavík, Iceland. And as in years past, watching these performers, including world champion Shu Takada, can only lead you to a single conclusion: these competitors were probably born with yo-yos attached to their arms. How else could someone ever get this good at playing with…
At the top of every Alaska-bound tourist’s wish list is the chance to see a bald eagle in the wild. But as the latest mini-doc from CNN’s Great Big Story reveals, to the residents of a small Alaskan town called Unalaska, the birds are as plentiful, and as much a pest, as pigeons are in…
Because they use wide-angle lenses, home security cameras are able to capture much more of the scene than a conventional camera can. This is the kind of info you might wanna know before you try to secretly turn off one your dad has set up in the living room, as one YouTube user’s son recently…
If you’re going to endure all the pain and discomfort of getting a tattoo, you might as well ensure you’re getting inked with a memorable design. Truck driver Kenny Ollerenshaw raised the bar with a tattoo that makes him look like a tiny pilot controlling a humanoid robot. It apparently took tattoo artist Richard Batey…
Spreading my arms and taking to the skies like an eagle has always been my biggest fantasy. The closest I’ve ever come is piloting a two-seater Cessna, which was fun, but nowhere near as exhilarating as Jarno Cordia’s latest stunt involving a wingsuit and a pair of jet engines strapped to his ankles. A hot…
Having already smooshed everything imaginable, the internet is ready to leave hydraulic presses behind and now focus its collective interest on weird things you can stick in an industrial shredder. First up is a classic Stretch Armstrong toy ,whose moist, squishy death cries will haunt your nightmares. Featuring a body made of latex rubber filled…
High school is that boring stepping stone in life between grade school (when you have recess twice a day) and college (where you can skip class without getting in trouble). But wouldn’t getting your diploma be far more enjoyable if the minimalist covers on your textbooks were turned into trippy animations you could stare at…
We’ve been told our entire lives not to play with fire. But whoever coined that expression never stopped to think about how flames and explosions could make falling dominoes even more captivating to watch. Using matches, candles, sparklers, and firecrackers, YouTube’s Kaplamino created this chain reaction that’s triggered by nothing but dominoes toppling over. You’ll…
Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Santa Monica; all great reasons to visit Los Angeles that are unfortunately overshadowed by the city’s overwhelming traffic and perpetually-gridlocked highways. But through the lens of Ralph & Randy’s timelapse cameras, LA’s traffic nightmare somehow looks like best reason to head to the West Coast. The seventh video in their TimeLAX series,…
Mother Nature has done a good job at dotting the planet with hidden caves and caverns that yield amazing footage once they’re discovered. Humans have created similarly spectacular secret locales, albeit accidentally, as this kayaker discovered while paddling through the abandoned MV E Evangelia cargo ship off the coast of Romania. It’s lacking the hanging…
Getting a tattoo is (mostly) a lifelong commitment. So what’s more impressive than this Bart Simpson kickflip animation is that tattoo artist Phil Berge somehow convinced 19 different people that The Simpsons was still cool and relevant enough to get random frames of this flipbook inked on various body parts. Given the long-running animated series…
Adam Savage’s One Day Builds series for Tested has taken him everywhere from making faux Apollo-era spacesuit parts to a ping pong machine gun, but this time he went a little more medieval. In this week’s installment, Savage decided to remake the legendary sword from 1981 fantasy film Excalibur using some of the same techniques…
Of course, there’s a level of subjectivity to pain. One person might find listening to Kid Rock to be more painful than stubbing their toe. Another person might enjoy a little bit of pain. And who can say how painful heartbreak feels? But we can still generally identify most of the worst sensations that people…
If a looming helium shortage isn’t enough to dissuade you from getting balloons for your next birthday party, consider the consequences if they escape from their ribbon moorings and end up brushing against some high-voltage power lines. You might be safer decorating for your kid’s party with hand grenades. This incident was filmed in Long…
In what is now the sixth installment of a stunning and weirdly addictive series, the BBC has released 10 full hours of video shot during the filming of the Planet Earth II “Cities” episode. The beauty of this video, aside from the sheer volume of it all, is that it’s delivered without any commentary and…
Hacker Allen Pan built a pair of custom gloves featuring a butane dispenser, parts from an electric arc lighter, and a motion sensor that automatically trigger a terrifying blast of fire with every detected punch. https://gizmodo.com/how-to-build-working-versions-of-iron-mans-gauntlet-and-1774295170 Pan says he was inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra for this build, but…
It doesn’t take long for a grass fire to turn into a raging inferno that sweeps through entire forests, so a pair of quick-thinking boaters in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, used their jet boat to create a massive rooster tail that helped douse the flames before firefighters arrived on scene. Tasha Hunt and Koyne Watson’s…
Over 22,000 fans were evacuated from the Tomorrowland music festival in Barcelona on Saturday after an unspecified “technical malfunction” caused the stage to burst into a towering inferno straight out of hell. According to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, local authorities suspect a malfunctioning pyrotechnics display was to blame for the massive blaze, which started on…
Ever notice how Christopher Nolan’s movies (Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige) feel like an anxiety attack? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a bit. But the director does have a knack for creating an unnerving degree of tension. Turns out he’s using a little bit of musical magic to do it. The magic is actually a science-based audio…
Shortly after the Super Soaker was first released in 1990, it became surrounded with controversy about hooligans allegedly filling the toy with harmful chemicals. But if that sounds dangerous, just imagine how local news stations would freak out over a squirt gun that blasts molten liquid metal. https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-biggest-super-soaker-is-powerful-enough-to-s-1796820585 Kevin Kohler—aka the Backyard Scientist—used pewter, a malleable…
