Laughing Squid

Tom Scott created a visual explanation of how video compression works and why having things like snow and confetti ruins YouTube video quality. Your sports team wins. The confetti drops. And suddenly, the video quality falls apart. Why? Let’s talk about interframe compression, bitrate, and unnecessary green screen effects.

Art is never done as long as it has an audience In his latest animated commentary, video essayist Kristian Williams aka KaptainKristian has tapped into the fascinating timelessness of the incredible comic Calvin and Hobbs, noting how its creator Bill Watterson crafted a fantastic world within a limited space, how he shunned the commercialism of […]

The Australia online automated print ordering service, Express Cards, has created an animated video where they do a fantastic job of explaining the difference between the RGB and CMYK color models. They also provide helpful advice on which to use for different situations. via reddit

The Backyard Scientist performed a number of experiments by pouring molten salt into watermelons and coconuts to test how they would react. Earlier this year, he began experimenting with molten salt by pouring it into a fish tank full of water.

Hank Azaria addressed the graduates of the Tufts University class of 2016 as some of his characters from The Simpsons during his commencement speech on May 22, 2016. Besides Azaria’s own advice to the graduating class, they also heard from characters like Moe Syzlak, Apu, and Chief Wiggum. via GQ

The incredible 2CELLOS duo, comprised of Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, performed a wonderful, highly dramatic live version of Michael Jackson‘s “Smooth Criminal” at breakneck speed to an adoring audience at Suntory Hall in Tokyo. The duo also performed a really beautiful version of “Mombasa” from the film Inception.

Talapz has created an amazing LEGO model of the Himeji Castle in Japan that opens just like a three-dimensional pop-up book. Talapz stated that he spent approximately 15 months putting the work of LEGO art together and did not use any adhesives during the process. In the past, Talapz built a LEGO pop-up version of […]

Smarter Every Day host Destin Sandlin recently captured slow motion footage of his homemade potato cannon shooting squash and watermelon. To add to the destruction, Destin inserted metal objects into the potatoes before hurling them at the large fruits. music by A Shell in the Pit – “Adze” and “Rep by Pop“

On a recent episode of his Clueless Gamer series, talk show host Conan O’Brien sat down on his very own Iron Throne to play the newly released video game, Overwatch, with Game of Thrones actors Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) and Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister). A photo posted by CONAN (@teamcoco) on May 23, 2016 at […]

Bulletproof Thoughts by film director and motion designer Antoni Sendra, is a wonderfully provocative video series that takes notable interviews from the past, freely interprets the context and illustrates the words in a creatively unique and modern way. The first episode featured a 1999 interview with the late, great Joe Strummer, followed by a celestial […]

Taras Kulakov the “Crazy Russian Hacker” performed an experiment to see what would happen if he dumped 30 pounds of dry ice into a swimming pool. The ice sublimates into a large cloud of mist with the larger chunks creating an effect Kulakov compares to a volcano.

The Rollercoaster Restaurant at the Alton Towers Theme Park in Staffordshire, England opened on May 13, 2016 and has garnered a great deal of attention for its unique food delivery service. The dining process begins when the customer orders their meal on a tablet. The meal is then prepared, put in sealed metal containers and […]

Primitive Technology demonstrated how to create a small fenced-in sweet potato and yam garden using only simple techniques. The patch is protected by a wattle enclosure that keeps wallabies and other animals from entering and eating the plants, and the soil itself is fertilized with wood ash and fallen leaves. The garden was put in […]

Andrew Stadelberger attended a wedding that featured a slow motion photo booth for guests to record fun videos, but Stadelberger seized the moment to stare blankly into the lens while he was surrounded by carefree partygoers to create his video “This Is 30.” For added effect, the video is set to the Simon and Garfunkel song […]

Vancouver, B.C. resident Benjamin Danforth and his companion found a tiny Rufous hummingbird on the sidewalk. The little bird was unable to fly, so they brought her inside their home and fed her a bit of yummy sugar water, which she really enjoyed before they brought her to an animal care center. We found this […]

A beautiful black cat artfully slithered and shimmied on her back as she descended a set of cool marble stairs. She had almost made it to the bottom landing, when an errant bouncing ball caught her attention and turned her right side up. via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

Exurb1a created a quick animated summary of everything in the entire universe in one four-minute video. The animation covers everything from Planck length to the whole universe itself, and beyond.

In his beautifully shot short film “Hong Kong Strong“, filmmaker and world traveler Brandon Li captured the richness and density of the very many layers that make up the rich cultural landscape of Hong Kong in the busy days before Chinese New Year. A deep dive into the many layers of Hong Kong. A film […]

Expert woodworker and engineer Matthias Wandel, about whom we’ve previously written, excitedly marveled at the ingenuity and versatility of “tilt and turn” windows that can be easily found in many European homes. I love how windows in Europe work. Both sides open, and they open all the way. Quite the opposite of windows in North […]

Caleb Kraft recently interviewed Tim Fredoluco at Maker Faire Austin 2016 and took a close look at the awesome half-sized steampunk themed R2-D2 unit he built that “was rolling around, beeping and booping” on the show floor. R2 kind of happened as an accident. As Tim explained, he was just doing a simple sculpture that […]

Filmmakers Niko Pueringer and Sam Gorski of Corridor Digital recently teamed up with the talented drone racing pilots of Rotor Riot to create “Drone Star Wars,” an incredible Star Wars themed short film that follows R2-D2 as he sneaks into an X-wing starfighter and engages in an aerial battle with Imperial TIE fighters. Here are […]

Casey Anderson, a National Geographic television host, filmmaker, naturalist and founder of the Montana Grizzly Encounter introduced an orphaned rescued grizzly bear cub named Bella, with whom he’s spending a great deal of time and who likes to have her feet tickled. Tickling a Grizzly bear cub's feet!https://t.co/IeCuiiLqY2 https://t.co/3IqaW0smET — Casey Anderson (@Grizanderson) May 21, […]

In an absolutely hilarious parody of the excessive MTV rich kid show My Super Sweet 16 on Jimmy Kimmel Live, actor Bryan Cranston turned into a petulant brat as he planned his “Super Sweet 60” party, taking out his childish frustrations on everyone including his parents, the party planner Jimby (Jimmy Kimmel), his bestie (Bob […]

“Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song)” is a song by Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) from the upcoming movie Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. The song focuses on Conner4Real’s romance with a girl with a very specific request, and the music video aired during the May 21, 2016 episode of Saturday Night Live. The movie will be released […]

The Sweepovac is a very clever in-wall kitchen vacuum that acts as an automatic repository for sweeping. With just a kick of the foot switch, the Sweepovac quickly inhales the dust and dirt into a hidden vacuum unit that is completely stand-alone, space saving and easily installed with just a few tools. Sweepovac is a […]

An Australian man added humor to his Chinese wife’s cooking videos with english narration. He laid in english tracks over the videos of his wife demonstrating how to cook a variety of foods. The last few videos in the series have been posted both with and without the english narration. via reddit

Mashable Watercooler has created a great mashup movie trailer that combines footage from The Little Rascals with audio from the original Furious 7 trailer for their ongoing Trailer Mix series.

Polish artist Michal Socha recently created an amusing couch gag for The Simpsons that was done in the style of an IKEA instruction manual. He showed exactly what you need to “build your own couch gag.” It appeared in the finale episode, “Orange Is the New Yellow,” that aired on FOX Sunday, May 22nd, 2016. […]

A incredibly patient Dutch woman named Marie Verbouw has taught her chicken Milca and her two goats Roosje and Kato how to perform remarkable tricks such as weaving in and out of her legs as she walks, sit, play dead, turn circles and leap through hoops. All this was achieved through the positive feedback process […]

A sweet tortoise named Freddy barely survived a terrible forest fire in Brazil that burned her legs and melted most of her shell. The burns were so bad rescuers called her Freddy, named after the scarred main character from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Luckily, a few really wonderful humans stepped in to create brand […]

On a recent episode of The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon and Billy Crystal do all sorts of hilarious celebrity impressions by putting their mouths through cut-outs in various magazine covers. The two comedians converse back and forth while in character as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Seth Rogen, Bernie Sanders, and more. Billy often did impressions using […]

John Oliver called out the confusing and convoluted processes behind presidential primaries and caucuses on the May 22, 2016 episode of Last Week Tonight. Although the system is rife with problems as Oliver points out, “The middle of the game is the worst possible time to change the rules,” so he is calling on people […]

Competitive eater Matt “Megatoad” Stonie managed to consume 2 giant boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in a little over 17 minutes for his latest eating challenge. I think, I could eat cereal all day..

20th Century Fox has released a retro TV commercial for the upcoming Marvel film, X-Men: Apocalypse, that promotes enrollment for Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. The amazing 1980s style ad stars Jubilee (Lana Condor) as well as the voice of Stan Lee. X-Men: Apocalypse is currently scheduled to blast its way into theaters on May […]

Disney has released the first teaser trailer for the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. The 90-second trailer focuses primarily on the deterioration of Beast’s castle, but also gives a brief glimpse of Belle (Emma Watson). The film will be released on March 17, 2017 and also stars Dan Stevens as Beast, Luke Evans as […]

Transcend Rules has created “Game of Molds,” a fantastic recreation of the Game of Thrones intro using time lapse footage of mold and fungi growth. The magnified mold footage was originally filmed by photographer Nick Lariontsev. The original Game of Thrones intro for comparison: via reddit

A photo posted by Lara wirth (@armageddonpainted) on May 8, 2016 at 3:58am PDT Melbourne, Australia 16-year-old self-taught body artist Lara Wirth of Armageddon Painted used her stunning set of skills to create a wonderfully bizarre collection of body paintings depicting all sorts of both creepy and gorgeous creatures. Lara’s entire series of incredible painting […]

Insane Cherry has taken the classic Queen anthem “We Will Rock You” and recut it to dub in the vocalizations from various animal videos for an oddly schreechy rendition of the song. Among the videos tapped were Goats Yelling Like Humans, The Scream of a Fox, Crazy Funny Dog, Blah Blah dog and others. The […]

The makers of the interactive SHRU cat toy are currently raising funds through Kickstarter for their newest creation, the LICKI Brush. A novel silicon brush made in the shape of an oversized cat tongue, the LICKI Brush requires the participating human to grab onto the bite plate with their teeth and make licking motions with […]

Hey @JeepWorld, I think I found the perfect shirt! pic.twitter.com/M1GVW8ZNJe — Zach Mack (@zmack) May 22, 2016 Zach Mack came across a hilarious t-shirt that showing how “Jeep” can transform into “Beer” (probably after having a few beers). The t-shirt is available in various colors on Amazon.

Mechateuthis by Elko, Nevada sculptor Barry Crawford, is an absolutely magnificent hand crafted giant steel squid whose fully articulating tentacles flex when any or all of its eight hand cranks are turned. Taking its name from the pre-historic Megateuthis gigantea, the mechanical cephalopod was successfully funded through GoFundMe and made its debut at Burning Man […]

Cartoonist Damp Martin created a series of ridiculous and absurd new Pokémon for his daily comic Death Bulge. via Waxy Links

Paramount Pictures has released the second trailer for Star Trek Beyond, the third film in the reboot series, which is directed by Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious) and scheduled for release on July 22, 2016. “Star Trek Beyond,” the highly anticipated next installment in the globally popular Star Trek franchise, created by Gene […]

In his latest video, Davie504 visually answered a couple of tweets challenging him to play a bass with inverted strings (GDAE) and to play that bass left-handed, both of which he handled brilliantly. Playing slap style, he effortlessly switched between left and right without ever stopping. Well played.

In the first of the “Getting Started” videos from Cocktail Chemistry, a skilled mixologist offers his experience and advice about the right equipment to have on hand when making cocktails at home. Cocktail set (includes Boston shaker, bar spoon, hawthorne strainer, and muddler) Fine mesh strainer Angled measuring jigger Fancy mixing glass Julep strainer Citrus […]

In a new episode of the informative trivia series Today I Found Out, host Simon Whistler talks about sushi, its origins and its former iterations throughout history. Whistler also explains the difference between sushi and sashimi. …sushi is not raw fish, that’s sashimi.Sashimi is just sliced raw fish, sometimes dipped in sauces and sometimes served […]

The voice cast of Bob’s Burgers assembled to shoot “Bob’s Burgers Live: The Movie” during their recent live tour. The video was directed by Kristen Schaal (Louise Belcher) and also stars H. Jon Benjamin (Bob Belcher), Dan Mintz (Tina Belcher), and Eugene Mirman (Gene Belcher).

In 2013, College National Poetry Slam champion Neil Hilborn performed OCD, a really raw and emotional piece that offered insight into what goes on in the mind of a person with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and a first person view of the devastating effects it can have on a relationship. When we moved in together, She said […]

A group of friends head to the wilderness in the IFHT sketch “My First Time Camping.” The gang acts out common first-timer experiences like trouble with camping equipment, cliché photos, and basic discomfort in nature. Your first time camping was likely full of fire-building fails, thirsty mosquitos and cliché Instagrams. via Coudal

Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown of AsapSCIENCE explain the history of makeup, the chemistry behind the ingredients of makeup and what keeps these chemicals from being deadly in makeup form. Historically ancient Egyptians would grind up a mineral substance containing primarily lead(ii) sulfide by to rim around their eyesm creating the sultry Cleopatra look. Little […]