Mesmerizingly cool. Read the rest

For those of you who enjoyed "These boxes aren't rotating" from earlier this week... These gears aren't spinning either. I promise. You are experiencing the "reverse-phi" illusion.

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Designer Harikrishnan's inflatable latex trousers suggest "anatomically impossible" proportions. They're so weird, silly, and so delightful. Read the rest

Above, a visit to a building in Liuyang, China where stacks of roman candle tubes and pop-its cover the floor. This is a fireworks machine trade show, where companies purchase contraptions for cranking out explosions of all kinds. Liuyang is commonly known as the fireworks capital of China. Here are some of the captivating machines that make (or break) July 4th and New Years Eve in the US.

(Props to Tasick Media on YouTube)

And as a bonus, here's a video of another machine that was used for manufacturing M-80s before they were outlawed in the US in 1966 (unless you have a license):

(Credit goes to displayfireworks1 on YouTube) Read the rest

Love Hultén, who makes retrofuturistic game consoles, built this thing called an EvoBoxx, which lets you play mathematician John Horton Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton he devised in 1970. "The game is a zero-player game," writes Hultén, "meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves, or, for advanced players, by creating patterns with particular properties."

If you don't have an EvoBoxx, you can play The Game of Life here.

Image: Love Hultén Read the rest

This is a really cool homebuilt arcade game project. Read the rest

The fine folks at Boston Dynamics, busy building our future robotic overlords, have loaned Adam Savage a Spot robot for the Tested team to play with.

For his first project, Adam built a gorgeous steampunk/Victorian rickshaw for Spot to pull. The results are glorious.

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Delightful, but barely adequate, the Vanagon is one of the few enduring cars from a decade of shit. This 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia is just waiting for you to make it your own.

Bring-a-trailer:

This 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon is a Westfalia camper equipped with a pop-top and canvas tent as well as a sleeping loft, convertible bed, stove, refrigerator, sink, and utility hookups. Power comes from a water-cooled 2.1-liter flat-four paired with a four-speed manual transaxle, and the van is finished in metallic blue over a gray cloth interior. New tires were fitted and an oil change, tune-up, and front brake work were performed in the last 500 miles. This Westy Vanagon shows 38k miles and is offered by the selling dealer on consignment at no reserve with curtains, a ladder, manufacturer’s literature, a clean Carfax report, and a clean Florida title.

Oh this is gloriously satisfying. Read the rest

In Switzerland, the state-owned Swissmint says today that a 2.96-millimeter (0.12-inches) gold coin created with Albert Einstein's face on it is the smallest in the world. Read the rest

Petrick Studio's Instagram for Windows 95 imagines a world where nothing has changed, but for one app alone. Click through for the GIFs. Read the rest

I did not know how much joy ice fishing in Kazakhstan could possibly bring me until I watched this video of an amazing and talented fisherman in the icy-cold former Soviet republic fish through the ice like a damn boss. Read the rest

A group of high school students in Michigan made good use of their holiday break: they built a toilet paper pyramid. Read the rest

BB contributor and DIY science hacker Ariel Waldman recently went on a research expedition to Antarctica to study microscopic extremophiles under the ice. She made a great video series about it and has now created a wonderful interactive tour of this hidden world called "Life Under the Ice." It's damn cool. (Get it? Get it?!) From Ariel's project description:

Typically when we think about Antarctica, we think of a place that's barren and lifeless... except for a few penguins. But Antarctica should instead be known as a polar oasis of life, host to countless creatures that are utterly fascinating. They’ve just been invisible to us – until now. Life Under the Ice enables anyone to delve into the microscopic world of Antarctica as an explorer; as if you had been shrunk down and were wading through one large petri dish of curiosities...

The collected Antarctic microbes were found living within glaciers, under the sea ice, next to frozen lakes, and in subglacial ponds. Microbes from under the sea ice were discovered in the Southern Ocean’s McMurdo Sound near McMurdo Station and the Erebus Glacier Tongue. Microbes from glaciers and frozen lakes were discovered in the McMurdo Dry Valleys at Lake Bonney and Lake Hoare.

Life Under the Ice Read the rest

I have but one question. Are they hiring? Sounds like a great place to work. Read the rest

This is super neat. Read the rest