Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Happy holidays everyone. Enjoy the time with your family and friends and the days off you might get. Here’s a holiday Rube Goldberg machine from Quirkology, it starts a little slow but then grows bigger and basically becomes a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) miracle. Have fun! Stay safe! SPLOID is a new…
You might not want to admit it but your favorite action movie is pretty corny. But it’s okay! Because they’re fun and they’re ridiculous and there are explosions and they’re quite wonderful at wasting two hours. But when you only see little bits of the movie? Especially just the punchline? It gets quite embarrassing. Just…
As far as humans are concerned, the world didn’t exist until, well, they existed. That means anything that happened before you were born is mere fairy tales and make believe conversation. But what about those words that filled those tales and conversations? When did they start existing? When were those words born? Well, the Oxford…
Here’s a fun way to look at the world. What if every country’s population actually matched its size? So more populous places like Japan and Vietnam that are cramped in tiny specks of land now get to stretch their feet a bit while uselessly big countries like Canada and Australia get their population booted to…
Think you’re eating grouper? Nope, it’s Vietnamese catfish. What about cod? Could be escolar. Can you tell the difference between red snapper and rockfish? Farm-raised salmon and wild? Here’s the thing with fish: once you fillet it and get rid of its characteristics, it can get kind of, sort of hard to tell what from…
Maybe it’s the wonderful accent or maybe it’s the tidy timeline the video uses but I’m definitely more captivated with watching Kurzgesagt’s animation on the history of time and the future of everything than I ever was in history class. And I loved history class. The short is equal parts fascinating and revealing mixed with…
Today is the 45th anniversary of Earthrise. We take it for granted now but, along with Blue Marble, it’s the most important and famous photo ever taken. In a world saturated with fakery and cynicism, it’s easy to ignore the magnitude of its impact. But in 1968, this photo changed everything. To commemorate its anniversary,…
A few months ago, eye-grabbing images of tiny web-like structures baffled etymologists everywhere because they had no idea who made them. However, Wired recently followed a team of scientists down to the Amazonian rainforest, and the mystery is finally solved. Sort of. The research team observed these tiny structures for days before three eggs hatched…
We’re at the peak of the busiest delivery season of the year. To prove how mad it is, Animal New York recorded this insane 24-hour time-lapse of a UPS parking lot packed with truck trailers behind its office in Hell’s Kitchen—”Due to space constraints, this plays out like an real life game of Tetris.”
Someone at the Keikyu Aburatsubo Marine Park, Miura City, Japan, had a brilliant idea: Make a little opening on the glass that overlooks the otters’ habitat. You know, so you can shake hands with them. Gimme five, ottersan! I love you, otter. Never change. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us in…
Bertha, the world’s largest tunneling machine, has suddenly halted operations after encountering what the engineers say is “something unknown.” They don’t have a clue about what it is, but they know is gigantic. It’s so mysterious that they call it “The Object.” https://gizmodo.com/something-called-the-object-has-stopped-worlds-large-1487090414
It’s 2013. Of course Santa Claus has traded in his sleigh and reindeers for a fighter jet. That way he can zip around the world in the coolest rig possible. The US Air Force posted this picture of a pilot in a Santa costume for a bit of holiday cheer. Happy Holidays everybody! SPLOID is…
Film is better! No question, right? Well Shanks FX wants you to take a closer look at pictures and footage taken on film versus images and footage taken with a digital camera. As much of a copout as it is to say, I think the answer is it depends. Shanks FX used a Canon 5d…
The New York Times has a great little short about ants, specifically their ability to both flow like a liquid and become a solid ball. It’s kind of gross but also pretty awesome in how twisted the duality is. Look at it above. On the left, it’s a thick, syrupy liquid. On the right, it’s…
If skiing isn’t enough of a thrill for you, why not up the ante and zoom through a whole forest? And if that’s still not enough for you, why not make it even scarier by going at warp freaking speed? That’s what Candide Thovex and Aziz Benkrich did. The GoPro footage from their latest ski…
Here’s something you will want in your closet: clothes that never stain. Hell, they never even get wet. This Silic T-shirt basically cleans itself with hydrophobic nanotechnology. That means no matter what you spill on it, it’ll never damage the shirt. It’s not exactly new technology but hydrophobic nanotechnology is something that always feels magical.…
This is the Grand Prize Winner of National Geographic’s best photo of the year competition, taken by Seattle-based photographer Paul Souders. It’s titled The Ice Bear, and it features a female polar bear staring at Paul from underwater. It’s an outstanding image, but I think the rest of his series are equally good—or even better!…
Remember Jean-Claude Van Damme’s split between two Volvo trucks, the ad that wasn’t computer generated but an actual stunt? Well, Chuck Norris splitting between two Lockheed C-5 Galaxy with a squad of special forces on top of his hat is CGI. But that doesn’t matter, because if Chuck wanted, Chuck would totally do it. https://jalopnik.com/jean-claude-van-dammes-split-between-two-moving-trucks-1464285108…
This is Manhattan’s Central Park as seen by Sergei Semenov. Taken earlier this year, this incredible scene is actually a straightened panorama, stitched from multiple photographs taken from a helicopter. There’s an interactive version, but this perspective—exaggerated by the straightening process—is more impressive than that. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…
This brilliant Drone Survival Guide contains “the silhouettes of the most common drone species used today and in the near future,” each drawn to scale and marked as surveillance or killing machines. You can print it yourself (PDF) or order a folded offset print on Chromolux ALU-E mirrored paper. They claim the guide itself can…
