Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
I love it when animals can solve puzzles and problems that I can’t even figure out. Here’s a crow going through a bunch of different exercises to show its understanding of size, weight, density, the elements and even the amount of effort it should put in to a puzzle to win its reward. The crow…
It’s incredibly sad that we can basically paint the map of our world just by using the locations of all terrorism acts since 1970. The brightest parts of the map show the areas of the world that have to deal with so much tragedy. The darkest parts are ‘safe’ because so few people live there.…
It’s always fun to realize that all your favorite childhood characters are completely disgusting creatures. Like Sonic the Hedgehog, who in real life can run really, really fast but would also create foam poop with its mouth to rub it on itself for no reason at all. In fact, hedgehogs love all kinds of poop.…
NASA has finished and stacked the Sunshield for the Webb Space Telescope and it’s now getting ready to test it. Look at this huge thing. That’s enough tinfoil to cover a roasted chicken— if the chicken was the size of Tyrannosaurus Rex. According to NASA, it provides the equivalent of a 1,000,000 Sun Protection Factor.…
Sometimes you just need a good laugh after you watch Game of Thrones. You need to see Lannisters act goofy and White Walkers fall off their horses and see beautiful actors screw up their lines. Here’s the blooper reel for season 4 of Game of Thrones, where you get to see all of that. I…
Well, he did it! That crazy genius of Colin Furze did it. The biggest fart machine ever created was a resounding success: He fired the giant butt at France from Dover, England, and it was reportedly heard across the English Channel by at least two people in Pas-de-Calais—four miles away. Knighthood for this guy, s’il…
Gina Hyams was in a Southwest airliner circling the Denver airport when she captured this beautiful shot of a pink lightning striking the fields of Colorado surrounded by rain. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
Watching 16 tons of explosives fall on this tiny little island is awe-inspiring—unless you are some animal living in that island, that is. Then it’s pretty terrible. Sometimes it surprises me how something as horrible as this raw destruction power fascinates humans so much. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on…
This title sequence is incredible—a piece of art, made exclusively with physical things, no CGI involved. The amount of work is just absolutely insane. Ironically, it was made for OFFF 2014, a contemporary digital creation festival that will be celebrated in Cincinnati. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
There are a lot of great applications for materials being developed that display extreme water repelling properties, inspired by nature and particularly desert life. This video doesn’t explain any of them and that’s fine—I just like to watch all those crazy water droplets doing crazy stuff. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join…
This compilation of window display designs from around the world is really impressive. Forget that they are hooked baits designed to drag you into a vortex of fierce consumerism. Just enjoy the creativity, the beauty and the playfulness they exude. Top image: Selfridges Tiffany & Co. Christian Louboutin This is not strictly a window display…
The residents of Wenzhou, China, woke up last Thursday to discover that the inner city river had turned blood-red. Everyone is puzzled, as this has never happened before and nobody knows the cause yet. China Radio International reports: Inspectors from the Wenzhou Environmental Protection Bureau are taking samples and analyzing the cause of the incident.…
The Hanwha Eagles—a South Korean baseball team famed for losing—now have robot fans to cheer them on. Absent supporters can use social media to deliver messages and show their faces on the robots’ LEDs. This has to be the saddest, most depressing thing I’ve ever seen in any sport. The Hanwha Eagles have won the…
Javier Laspiur made this series of pictures showing the evolution of video game controllers throughout history. I played with most of these, even the 1983 Teletenis, and it feels like it was yesterday. It’s been quite a journey that’s not over yet. I can’t wait to see what the future of video games will bring…
Princeton University is celebrating the beauty of science, a selection of of experiments and research papers that result in amazing displays of color and motion that can be classified as contemporary art. Here are the prettiest ones. Plenty of Fish to See. This video shows how fish can see far more than a few nearest…
Hmm, frozen fish sticks sure start off looking suspiciously like the protein blocks from Snowpiercer and you know how that turned out (if you watched the movie). But this is all fish! Minced cod, to be exact. The frozen blocks of fish supposedly trap the flavor and are presumably more efficient to ship. Apparently, one…
When I started to watch this video I thought “oh, that’s funny, a failed missile launch.” Obviously, it didn’t fail at all. That’s exactly how the nuclear-capable anti-submarine missile RPK-2 Viyuga is launched: Just throw it in the water and it will come alive to deliver its warhead up to 28 miles away. …it is…
Coachella. Glastonbury. Bonnaroo. The Grammys. You name the music festival, Marcus Haney has somehow snuck into it. He makes fake passes, pretends to be the press, jump fences and does anything he can to get in and has somehow made friends with famous bands and shot their album covers. Here’s the movie trailer for his…
This poop-powered flamethrower is like the old high school trick of using farts to light fireballs, only on a much more epic scale. The key to creating 30-foot flames from poop, apparently, is grinding the poop into a super fine powder with a blender. Nick Klein, the guy from Arizona who made this DIY rig,…
This is the first underwater launch of the BrahMos, the world’s fastest cruise missile in operation capable of flying at Mach 3.0. I just like to see it pausing and changing direction in mid-air, like a scene from Robotech. The BrahMos is one of the reasons why aircraft carriers are obsolete. The Indo-Russian supersonic aircraft…
