Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Okay, like, riding a bike on a handrail on top of a dam is very clearly not the smartest thing a person could do. But hot dang the views are actually sort of amazing. On one side, there’s the sidewalk. And on the other side is a sweeping view of a 650-foot tall dam, the…
The Japanese city of Beppu is known for its countless hot springs and spas that pop up around them. So much so, that the city’s mayor, Yasuhiro Nagano, pledged to build an entire spa-themed amusement park—although it might not be quite as awesome as the one featured in this promotional video. The “spamusement” park’s development…
Humanity gets served up a nice slice of humble pie in this NPR video that lays out the history of our planet on a football field. Even in a giant stadium, every inch represents an incredible 1.3 million years. Which means that humans, who walk around like they own the place, only show up about…
We were totally wrong in assuming that chain link fences were made by a warehouse full of people tirelessly bending wires with pliers. It turns out this giant machine does it all autonomously, bending, twisting, and weaving wires like it’s making a giant metal sweater you never want to wear. [YouTube via The Awesomer]
You know that queasy feeling you get in your stomach when the pilot of a large passenger plane has to make a rough landing in bad weather? Just try and imagine what this Royal Danish Air Force pilot was feeling while trying to land a Seahawk MH-60R helicopter on a boat while both were being…
“The sun dimmeth, the land sinketh, gusheth forth steam and gutting fire.” Quoting Norse poetry, celebrated documentarian Werner Herzog uses these words to describe our planet’s ancient forces in his recent film Into the Inferno. These same lines, it turns out, serve as a fitting eulogy for an unfortunate can of Chef Boyardee. By combining…
Musicians love to play the themes from Super Mario games. YouTube is absolutely stuffed with covers using all sorts of novelty approaches. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen one man tackle all the musical parts and the sound effects while syncing up with a playthrough. Using the power of split screen, YouTuber…
The Furby was the hottest toy of the Christmas season back in 1996. Now, there’s a new edition that updates the strange little creature with modern tech for modern kids. Nothing prepared me for what this thing would look like while it is being cut in half by a water jet. The summary on this…
Long before the days of WinAmp visualizers, the oscilloscope was making sound visible in green on black glory. Few have really pushed the potential of this rudimentary little device. But this is what happens when you make music from sounds that already produce recognizable visuals. YouTuber Techmoan refurbished a really prime specimen from the oscilloscope…
If it’s your first time preparing a bird for your Thanksgiving feast, you’ll understandably be a little nervous when it comes to time to carve it up for dinner. But there’s no reason to stress over slicing up the perfect portions if you’ve got access to a hundred thousand dollar industrial waterjet machine. As the…
Even if there is too much CGI in movies these days (and there is), let’s be thankful that the CGI we’re bombarded with looks good. Or, at least, it looks so much better than the utter crap computers spat out back in the ‘90s. God, that era of CGI was awful. Diane Bullock edited together…
Here’s a dopey animation from Sean Charmatz that imagines a world where every random object has a cute face. That means soup dumplings cling on to the paper when they get picked up, marshmallows enjoy a satisfying dip in hot chocolate, a glass pane closes its eye while getting washed, a Post-It note gets accidentally…
If you’ve always wondered how a pre-digital SLR film camera worked, you can either spend hours painstakingly removing all its tiny screws in order to completely take it apart, or just leave it in the path of a 60,000 PSI waterjet which will reveal the camera’s guts in a manner of minutes. We’re living in…
Even if there is growing fatigue when it comes to superhero movies, there’s no doubt that movies from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe are the best of the bunch. Heck, some Marvel movies are legitimately great films and even the not so good ones still have great actors playing fantastic characters. Basically, they’re all very fun to…
That’s it. I’m leaving the country. Since Planet Earth II isn’t available stateside yet, I can’t in my right mind live here knowing that there are other people in this world enjoying the soul lifting freedom that comes with seeing all this beyond gorgeous footage of our world and every creature in it. Just watch…
It’s a little bit sad that phones have replaced cameras because after watching this animated history of cameras by Portero Delantero, you start to miss all that fun camera hardware with quirky designs and lovely character you just don’t get from a thin rectangular slab. Sure, the best camera is the one that’s with you…
Working with glass not only requires a lot of artistic talent, it also requires nerves of steel given how fragile the material is. But master gaffer James Mongrain makes it look as easy as playing with Play-Doh as he turns a solid blob of molten glass into an intricate dragon sculpture. This demonstration at the…
The music of Eminem is extremely good, but do you know what’s better? Watching videos of people performing his songs in American Sign Language. These videos perfectly encapsulate the edginess of Eminem’s musical genius, while conveying important information to the hearing-impaired. This is the magic of YouTube. People confidently doing weird shit. I’m inspired. *hits…
I don’t think it’s possible to make anything cooler with your own two hands than this homemade multicolor fire tornado that spins around and weaves itself together with absolutely no moving parts. The only thing you need to do is cut up a glass cylinder and then offset the half-cylinders a little bit to let…
There are endless documentaries that explain the clever technology that allowed World War I fighter planes to fire their machine guns through their propellers without hitting the blades. But The Slow Mo Guys use their high-speed cameras so you can finally see exactly what’s happening. Developed by a few countries, but first installed in a…
