Laughing Squid

In a snappy episode of their incredibly informative whiteboard series for Mental Floss, linguist Arika Okrent and illustrator Sean O’Neill verbally and visually explain the etymological origins of the word “cool”, specifically how its connotative use has essentially remained the same within the English language for centuries. In other words, how cool stayed so cool...

Life Noggin, narrator Pat Graziosi aka Blocko very succinctly and logically explained the very real mental disorder of schizophrenia, when it’s most like to appear, the symptoms, existing treatments and those currently on the horizon, the mythical suppositions around the disorder, and how one can help a friend or loved one with the disorder. …our...

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sabina Zweiacker performed a phenomenal cover of composer Jeremy Soule‘s bard song “The Dragonborn Comes” from the popular video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. via reddit Skyrim Dragonborn Statue Holding an Illuminated FireballBattle Damaged Skyrim Dragonborn Iron HelmetA Dragonborn From Skyrim Practices His Forceful Shout on Innocent Civilians...

Musicians BR Somashekar Jois and Kumari V Shivapriya performed a duet in which they both took turns reciting syllables in an impressively rhythmic, percussive manner known as Konnakkol for which they are both widely known. They will be reciting few exciting rhythmic phrases set to Mishrachaapu Tala followed by a special Mohara-Korvai composed by Vidwan...

Jeffrey Lipton, Adriana Schulz, Andrew Spielberg, Luis Trueba, Wojciech Matusik, and Daniela Rus, a skilled team of researchers from MIT‘s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), worked together to develop the Autosaw, a robotic carpenter that can cut mass quantities of wood on its own and help keep workers safe while building custom furniture....

Weird Al Yankovic is widely known for his good-natured habit remixing songs with new lyrics to make them funny, however when it came to Hamilton, Yankovic played it kind of straight. He kept the lyrics intact, but added his own unique spin with a fabulous polka beat to a medley of songs from the show’s...

Artist Chris Scalf released a fascinating timelapse featuring hin creating a detailed painting of an fearsome dragon with airbrush acrylic paints. Scalf’s realtime, 6.5-hour video is available to download from Gumroad. Was really desiring to get back into traditional art again. So I chose to do a basic pose to kinda “warm-up” back into it,...

In February, we wrote about the talented actor Doug Jones and his amazing ability to transform into fantastic creatures without complaint even though it rendered him completely unrecognizable when playing big parts in film and television. In an interview with Great Big Story, an rather amiable Jones personally shared some of these very sentiments, particularly...

Vox video fellow Tian Wang took a look at the concept of method acting, the actors who employ these techniques, the correlation between method acting and winning awards, the marketability of method acting and how these techniques allow an actor to become their character rather than portraying a role There’s been this sort of evolutionary...

A post shared by aloe design (@aloedesign) on Jan 1, 2018 at 12:32pm PST Aloe Design Studios created a bizarre 3D animation in Cinema 4D that shows a bunch of donuts flying at a man’s face and then going berserk. The donuts slide around all over the gentleman’s face, fly all over the place, and...

The Screen Junkies series The Dailies has reimagined the iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey scene during which HAL-9000, the sentient computer onboard refused to open the pod bay doors to let Dave back inside the craft. In doing so they replaced HAL’s voice and functionality with that of Amazon Alexa, adding a hilarious bit of...

A post shared by Love Hulten (@lovehulten) on Mar 1, 2018 at 10:12am PST Swedish designer Love Hultén has created the PET De Lux, a luxurious handmade console built as a tribute to the classic Commodore PET 2001 series computer from 1977. The PET 2001 was released by Commodore in 1977 and was the first...

A tiny little fennec fox with gigantic ears named Kuzma and a British shorthair cat named Zima live happily together under the same roof in Moscow, Russia with beloved human Milana Valevskaya. The two adorable little creatures snuggle together, play together and even get a bit testy with one another, but in the end they...

A post shared by White on Rice (@white_onrice) on Feb 3, 2018 at 10:08pm PST “MiniatureGami” is a fun little project by Cape Town artist Ross Symons of White on Rice where he creates adorably tiny piece of origami art, designed by himself and other artists from around the world, every day for the next...

British animator Lee Hardcastle created a dark Simpsons claymation short where characters from Springfield reenact a concept robbery scene from Quentin Tarantino‘s 1992 film, Reservoir Dogs. The animated short features music by ruiji. A post shared by Lee Hardcastle (@leehardcastle) on Mar 1, 2018 at 6:19am PST A post shared by Lee Hardcastle (@leehardcastle) on...

Brazilian artist Juliana LePine, who made a miniature sculpture of Freddie Mercury, is back and this time she sculpted an incredible mini model of Doc Emmett Brown from the Back to the Future films. Official LEGO ‘Back to the Future’ DeLorean Time Machine PlaysetHUVr Board Video Claims to Show a Real Life ‘Back to the...

Death Wish star Bruce Willis sat down with Wired to answer the web’s most searched questions about himself during an Autocomplete Interview. Did Bruce Willis go to college? Was Bruce Willis in the military? Was Bruce Willis Batman?? Patton Oswalt Answer the Web’s Most Searched Questions About HimselfChris Evans Answer the Web’s Most Searched Questions...

In a somewhat prescient departure from his usual subject matter of films, video blogger and web producer Evan Puschak aka the Nerdwriter takes on what he considers to be “The Most Disturbing Painting” – “Saturn Devouring His Son” by Francisco Goya. This work was inspired by the legend in which Titan Cronus, fearing a prophesy...

A very determined border collie inexplicably decided to roll a giant snowball across the backyard. Being there was still snow on the ground, the ball got bigger as he rolled it and the tenacious little dog had to take a number of breaks to catch his breath. According to his human, this behavior came out...

A post shared by Dain Yoon ??? (@designdain) on Oct 22, 2017 at 8:01am PDT In 2016, we wrote about Dain Yoon, a talented artist who has an amazing ability to create highly detailed, real-looking illusions with makeup that can sometimes be appear a bit creepy. Since that time, Dain has created new illusory styles...

A chubby little squirrel in Washington, D.C. who scored big with an entire glazed donut, wasted no time climbing up on to a tree branch to enjoy the treat to its fullest extent. The combination of sugar and the squirrel’s own natural jumpiness nearly took hold when people came near, but in the end, the...

An incredibly rare yellow cardinal made a surprise appearance in the southern Birmingham suburb of Alabaster, Alabama. This bird is just like other cardinals but is yellow instead of red due to a genetic mutation that interrupted the metabolic process of pigmentation. Resident Charlie Stephenson, who captured beautiful video of the bird, told AL.com that...

While filming a music video for the Thunderpussy song “Torpedo Love“, producer Sylvia Massey struck a snare drum inside the abandoned Satsop nuclear cooling towers in Elma, Washington where they were shooting. After a moment’s delay, the sound rolled around the side of towers and exploded into a thunderous roar. During the recording of Thunderpussy...

It appears that the waters of Cabo San Lucas in Baja, California are filled with some very hungry sea lions who will ask boaters for food

Great Big Story went inside a Boeing plant in New Orleans that’s currently collaborating with NASA to build the Space Launch System, an incredibly powerful rocket that could quite possibly put the the first human on Mars. They spoke with a number of employees who are working on this exciting project, including Chad Bryant, the...

In a sinewy episode of their incredibly insightful and fascinating animations, the ever-philosophical design house Kurzgesagt explains the history of string theory, the possible uses for string theory, the limitations of string theory and how string theory was an elegant story created to account for gravity in quantum physics, but could not overcome the limitations...

Drone racer Paul Nurkkala (a.k.a. “NURK FPV“) shows off his insane skills while expertly piloting his FPV quadcopter drone through his extremely difficult obstacle course with hoops, walls, twists, and turns. This has to be one of the best courses we’ve ever made. It was SO much fun to fly when you nailed it. A...

Ben Cusick (a.k.a. “NightHawkInLight“) took a look at how magnets react to copper last week and, after his findings and his audiences curiosity, Cusick attempted to slow down or stop a magnetic cannonball by shooting it through electromagnetic induced force fields in copper. An Electromagnetic Quadcopter Demonstrates How Magnetic Levitation Works100 Pounds of Magnetic Putty...

An impressively intelligent German shepherd named Rambo, who’s learning how to read with the help of his human Lily, deftly demonstrated his comprehension by correctly following written commands like “sit” and “bow” on signs held up for him to see. 2.5 years old GSD Rambo is learning how to read Rambo and Lily in a...

A man, who was in the process of building a wall for a client, used the double domino effect to make a row of stone slabs almost all fall perfectly into place. Bricklayers Set Up a Row of Bricks That Fall Perfectly Into Place Like Dominoes to Cap a WallA Colorful Mountain Made Out of...

Mehdi (a.k.a. “DrMachakil“) has created a hilarious video where classic and modern films feature soundtracks literally picked up from random lines in a scene. They feature musically enhanced scenes from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Terminator 2, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Blue Planet II, A Prequel to the...

Sam Gorski and Niko Pueringer of Corridor Digital have created “Come Get Some!,” a new live-action short about a half naked matador (Jake Watson) who battles a zombie to prove his worth at a survivor camp. A Journalist Interviews Two Reformed Zombies in the Funny Animated Comedy ‘Less Than Human’Fighting Mad, California Bloodless BullfightsConan Gets...

On a wonderful episode of the Mental Floss series, Scatterbrained, hosts John Green, Amanda Suk, Becca Scott, Elliott Morgan, and Dani Fernandez jump into the world of Sesame Street to share surprising stories about the iconic muppets and the amazing people who brought them to life. We will not be telling you how to get...

For an accurate episode of their The Super Slow Show, Gavin Free and Dan Gruchy of The Slow Mo Guys captured super slow motion footage of Shaolin monk, Master Feng Fei, throwing a needle with such force that it pierces through a pane of glass and pops a balloon on the other side. Shaolin Warriors...

VP of search engineering Ben Gomes and product manager Chris Haire from Google’s search team sat down with Wired to answer the web’s most searched questions about Google searches and autocomplete. Chris Evans Answer the Web’s Most Searched Questions About HimselfJennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt Answer the Web’s Most Searched Questions About ThemselvesGoogle’s Year in...

On an great episode of Vanity Fair‘s series, Secret Talent Theatre, Tom Hanks sits down to show everyone how to properly change the ink ribbon on a Hermes 3000 typewriter. Hanx Writer, An iPad App by Tom Hanks That Simulates the Experience of a TypewriterA Visual Compendium of Typewriters by Pop Chat Lab, An Art...

In 2014, musician David Tayler of the San Francisco based ensemble Voices of Music performed an absolutely gorgeous version of Prelude in C Minor, BWV 999 by Johann Sebastian Bach on a stunning, multi-stringed archlute. The piece was so beautifully adapted for this Renaissance instrument, which has such rich and full sound due the low...

A beautiful but very vocal double yellow headed Amazon parrot named Destiny learned how to say the phrase “ice cream” at some point and has not stopped screaming for it since. Perhaps this bird just has an insatiable sweet tooth. Here’s a hilarious compilation of Destiny screaming for ice cream . via Boing Boing A...

In another brilliantly illustrated episode of After Skool, British philosopher Alan W. Watts, who previously explained that life should not be considered a journey because the end is not the primary goal, explains that happiness is always more valuable when it is sought than it being simply granted, as this would make a state of...

In “The Nature of Millennials” by IFHT Films, Canadian nature broadcaster David Suzuki takes a humorous look at the typical habits of those who were born in the late 1980s through the late 1990’s, addressing how the eat, how they work, how they seek a mate and how they become intensely competitive when it comes...

In a resplendent report for Vox, senior producer Phil Edwards recounted a very clever idea of painting warships with brightly colored geometric shapes put forward by British artist Norman Wilkinson to ward off the danger of U-boats during World War I. The idea, known as “dazzle camouflage”, was used to confuse the enemy as to...

In the 16th episode of his series for IMDb, host Brandon Hardesty of No Small Parts takes a look at the award-winning career of Ann Dowd, an actress who seems to have found her groove as of late. For much of her career, Dowd was a character actress who played such parts as mothers, best...

Great Big Story had the opportunity to visit with legendary “dog photographer” William Wegman in his New York City studio where he spoke about his iconic portraits, his amazing career and of course Flo and Topper, the latest pair of his beloved Weimaraner muses. Over the years, Wegman has really honed his craft of making...

During Milan Fashion Week 2018, Italian designer house Dolce & Gabbana fully embraced the wonders of technology when they sent fashionable drones down (above) the catwalk to model their new DG Devotion bag. The beautifully lit flying robots came out one at a time in a coordinated dance that gave the audience a 360° view...

TANU, a Japanese man with a very steady set of hands, carefully stacks coins to create all sorts of amazing, gravity defying sculptures. His finished, mind blowing works of art are available to view on Twitter. ????????????????????????????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/QsHm6N0RCb — ??? (@thumb_tani) August 14, 2017 3???????…?????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/dg4Png4jwP — ??? (@thumb_tani) September 16, 2017 ????????????????????????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/wCkcohGeOv —...

Animator Elenor Kopka teamed up with sound and music designer Skillbard to create Majestic Wilderness, a mysterious and quirky animated short film that takes us on a journey into the shadows of the jungle. Strange creatures dance, enjoy a campfire, and make silly face during Kopka’s amusing animated expedition into the unknown. A post shared...

Walt Disney Animation Studios has released a teaser trailer for Ralph Breaks The Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2, their upcoming animated comedy-adventure film and sequel to the 2012 Wreck-It Ralph movie. The trailer follows Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) as he ventures into the world of online culture with Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) and manages...

In an effort to represent the mystery of fictional far-off places, a number of television shows and films have effectively created their own languages. The film Black Panther instead, used the already existing South African Xhosa language, which is also the native tongue of Nelson Mandela, as the language of the Wakandan people. BBC Correspondent...

Lauri Vuohensilta of the Hydraulic Press Channel posted a video showing how he easily cuts a bowling ball, a camera, and other random object in half with his hydraulic press equipped with a giant blade. Here is how Vuohensilta made the “guillotine tool” for his press. Punching Huge Holes Through Random Objects With a Hydraulic...

While taping a comedy special, filmmaker Kevin Smith began to feel ill, was unable to catch his breath and needed to lie down. His crew became concerned and called an ambulance to take him to Glendale Adventist Hospital where they determined that he was having a heart attack. Specifically, Smith had a severe blockage of...