Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Japanese artist Ei Wada specializes in turning old consumer electronics into new musical instruments. He’s rigged up old CRT TVs to simultaneously function like bongos, transformed AM/FM radios to squeal like a theremin, and converted a busted office fan into a wailing guitar. That and more, it all seems to bring him endless joy. In…
Hiking from Mexico through the United States and all the way up to Canada on the Pacific Coast Trail is just a little bit beyond a stroll in the park. It took Andrew Holzscuh, the hiker in the video, 166 days to take on over 2,600 miles. He got it done with only four pairs…
I’m not into Halloween, but I appreciate the people who really, really love it. You know the types, the ones that plan out elaborate costumes decades in advance, the folks who decorate their houses so well that it rivals the haunted houses of theme parks, the people who buy the best candy, the people who…
Things can get lost in translation, especially when something is translated to a foreign language and then translated back to the original language. Like movie titles. The Czech Republic can really get loose and wild with the names for American movies, and finding out what some popular movies are called over there is pretty damn…
The world is a very big place. Sure, satellites and the internet and, like, McDonald’s can make it seem much, much smaller now. Before all that, however, planet Earth was the great unknown with a world map that was totally incomplete. So it’s really interesting to find out how humans discovered what places when because…
Magic is mostly just how good you are with your hands. Here are three really easy magic tricks that you can pull with just a pen: making it disappear, making it appear out of nowhere, and making it look super small. Oscar Owen breaks down the techniques for each and they only involve super quick…
Japanese hand planes or kannas are remarkable tools that can shave off layers of wood so ridiculously thin that they look like tissue paper. The wood shaving in the GIF above is only 8 microns thick which almost sounds like an impossible measurement because even human hair has a diameter of about 50 microns. Kannas…
Here’s an idea for a sport: What if a bunch of poorly-dressed athletes wandered around a grassy park for four hours casually hitting balls with a long stick? Here’s a less boring idea: What if those athletes were instead racing the clock to put the ball in the hole as quickly as possible? That’s the…
King of the Hill, the most underrated of all of Fox’s animated series, gets a perfect pixelated tribute by Mauri Helme who re-animated the show’s entire opening as if it were a 16-bit video game. The Super Nintendo might be long gone, but we’d happily dust off our old consoles to play a game like…
Why bike regularly when you can bike while running sideways on a wall, or move forward while handstanding on the handlebars in the opposite direction? Heck, Tim Knoll, the biker in the video, is so good at busting bike tricks that don’t involve the act of pedaling that he can even launch off the bike…
Shanghai is a city that’s as chaotic and as busy as you’d expect from a place with a population of nearly 25 million people. This frenetic video, which runs through Shanghai as if it were teleporting all over the city, gives you a glimpse of what life is like beyond its iconic skyline and tourist…
Skittles’ “taste the rainbow” tagline seems all the more appropriate when you arrange the colorful candies in a ring on a plate and pour hot water over them. They immediately begin to melt and bleed color, producing a rainbow design that’s straight up magical without the need for a wand. [YouTube via Boingboing]
Soluble cyanide salts are some of the deadliest poisons known to man. Potassium cyanide is better known as the stuff in World War II-era suicide pills. Hydrogen cyanide was the major component in Zyklon B, a pesticide that the Nazis used to gas millions of innocents. And all the soluble cyanide salts do roughly the…
Everyone in your neighborhood is going to have a pumpkin carved with a goofy face sitting on their porches. Booooring. If you want to decorate for Halloween with something a little more original, why not turn your jack-o’-lantern into a working animated zoetrope and really wow all the kids stopping by to beg for free…
Meet the Lichen Katydid, an insect that has such impressive camouflage skills that it can hide in plain sight when walking on a lichen (a plant-like composite organism of an alga and a fungus). The bug’s body matches the wisps of the lichen so damn well that you’re not even sure which part belongs to…
Invented in 1850 by French violin maker Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, the absurdly oversized viola called the Octobasse, standing almost 12-feet tall, dwarfs anyone who tries to play it. But it’s a real instrument, designed to produce low, rumbling notes to accompany the rest of an orchestra. The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, has one of…
If you think about it, a crowbar already comes vaguely sword-shaped (or as sword-shaped as any long metal tool can be). You just need to hammer down the curved end of the crowbar to create a hilt and then sharpen the straight edge to create the blade. To add flair to the super simple concept,…
If you head on over to Deercreek Drive in Riverside, California, and find the house near Orange Terrace Park, you’ll be treated to what has become one of the best Halloween traditions anywhere in the country. There you’ll find one of the most spectacular Halloween light shows imaginable—making you thankful you’re not one of this…
The tarantula hawk is neither a tarantula nor a hawk—it’s a very big, very mean desert wasp. And of course someone on the internet decided to get stung by one. Oddly, the tarantula hawk isn’t a particularly aggressive insect. Generally they buzz around, eating nectar and avoiding humans or other animals. It’s even the state…
Even if you’re not the Michelangelo of pumpkin carving, you can still make a memorable jack-o’-lantern using a bit of grade school science. All you need is water, dish soap, baking soda, food coloring, and vinegar. The same ingredients used in a science fair volcano can make your pumpkin appear to puke or ooze disgusting…
