Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Growing up, I never wanted Cyclops’ optic blast or Wolverine’s adamantium claws or Magneto’s power over magnetic fields, I wanted to throw cards like Gambit. I don’t know if that makes me an unimaginative little kid who only dreamt about realistic powers but I do know I spent many summer days throwing cards at everything.…
When you get hundreds of reindeers together and try to move them around, they turn into one gigantic sentient-seeming swarm that spins around together. This footage, taken from above with a drone by photographer Jan Helmer Olsen, shows the stunning spirals that are created when herding reindeers. It’s got to be dizzying for them. SPLOID…
Kaboom. And fireball. And ground shake. And shockwave. And boom. AtomCentral shows us some amazingly clear HD footage restored from 1953 of the Atomic Cannon test from Upshot-Knothole Grable. In the video below, you can see cars, jeeps, buses and tanks against the backdrop of the ginormous blast’s initial burst and shockwave. The blast eventually…
Don’t worry, the seal was just a decoy. But the breaching great white shark attack was real. The Great White comes at the seal at such a high speed (up to 25mph) that it launches itself and the seal decoy it caught out of the ocean and into the air. It’s beautifully fierce, isn’t it?…
Check out this video of a Rockwell B-1B Lancer bomber landing at Roger Dry Lake, at Edwards Air Force Base, California. After discovering a failure in their front gear, the crew was directed to land in this location because its clay surface minimizes airplane damage. I love how it keeps a steady level for many…
After almost two decades retired, Bill Watterson—the genius who crafted the universally beloved Calvin & Hobbes from 1985 to 1995—has published a new cartoon: A movie poster for Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder’s Stripped. (Wait, is that Calvin 20 years later?) He appears in the movie too, in his first-ever recorded interview. Some of his…
Of course, this insano knife-throwing video is not real—after all, these guys are not Russian. But the fake is so well made that you’ll swear it is real. I went through it frame by frame and you can’t notice the trick. Clever. Kudos to Freddie Wong and his team. SPLOID is a new blog about…
This is why I love data and data visualization: The larger the pizza, the cheapest the price per square inch is. Get the largest size, eat the rest at room temperature the next day. https://gizmodo.com/one-graph-explaining-why-you-should-always-order-a-larg-1531640267
Twister Sifter found this a 24,507-pixel tall image created by Nina Geometrieva. But instead of scrolling all the way through it, I made this GIF for your psychedelic and hypnotic pleasure. Zoom in to full screen, pop a pill, play something crazy, look deeply into it, and enjoy! SPLOID is a new blog about awesome…
Even if Hubble had been a total disaster spewing one crappy image after the other for more than two decades, it would have been worth it just for this single image: a supernova explosion in the galaxy M82, taken on January 31, as it approached peak brightness. From NASA Goddard: This is a Hubble Space…
These extraordinary photos by Viktoria Haack and Jaclyn Tanemura show the 463-foot (141-meter) Helmcken Falls. That’s almost three times the height of the Niagara Falls—half the size of the Chrysler Building! It’s like a giant ice machine pouring cubes into an ice bucket. Top image by Viktoria Haack. Just look at the size of that…
Ocean Ramsey doesn’t ride on top of great white sharks for fun or frivolous show. She does it to dispel their image of cruel killing machines, to call attention to the fact that sharks are seriously endangered. Which really sucks, because they’re crucial for the sustainability of the oceans and, therefore, our own species. Like…
This has to be the best example of the Many Worlds hypothesis by Hugh Everett, a theory that postulates that an infinite number of parallel universes exist thanks to quantum mechanics, with infinite versions of you doing infinite number of actions with infinite number of outcomes. Just like Mario here: The video shows a superimposition…
Oh baby. The US Navy is saying a prototype of the solid state Laser Weapons System (LaWS) is ready for deployment. This summer in the Persian Sea, the USS Ponce will be outfitted with lasers that can shoot down aerial drones, speedboats and swarm boats that are miles away. It’s going to be Star Wars…
Hey Mister Man, what are you doing filming us with that camera over there. Hey Mister Man, I don’t appreciate you tempting me with food to trick me into dancing like a monkey. Hey Mister Man, that’s it, I’m stealing your camera. That’s—I’m assuming—what went through the head of this funny little monkey in Bali…
A good policy on all wingsuit jumps is to never crash into anything. A secondary policy to follow would be if you do crash into something, make sure it’s soft and not Rio de Janeiro’s 125-foot tall Christ the Redeemer statue. Jesus Christ may be forgiving but his statue made of 635 metric tons of…
Who knew a sad story told through water drops can be so fun to watch? This stop motion animation called Cachoeira (which means waterfall in Portuguese) by Rodrigo EBA! is illustrated with a little droplet man in a little droplet car trying to take a dip in a little droplet waterfall. I find it adorable.…
Suck at Flappy Bird? Don’t worry, most humans do. Even if you’re smart, the game is so silly it won’t reward your intelligence. But do you know how you could outsmart Flappy Bird? By building a Flappy Bird terminator. Two guys from China used their frustration to make a robot who basically kicks ass at…
Awwwww, look at these little alien angels dancing and moving their tiny feet. They are so cute! Too bad they’re really trying to destroy that aquarium glass to rip your throat and suck all your blood through the aorta. OK, so they won’t really do that but they’re totally thinking about it. See what I…
I love John Conway’s dinosaur illustrations, which you can buy on his site. His dinosaur pet guide is a lot of fun too—and you can buy it as a poster for $16. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
