Laughing Squid

Killing Cancer Preview (HBO) “Killing Cancer” is a Vice special report that takes an in-depth look on cutting-edge, experimental alternatives to chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer. Cancer has been such a scourge of humanity for so long that the very word inspires a deep dread in anyone who hears it—it’s a two-syllable gut punch, […]

Last fall, hunter Alexander ‘Sasha’ Banderov in Russia’s Sakha Republic came across a the carcass of a baby woolly rhinoceros—a species of rhinoceros that went extinct about 10,000 years ago—at a riverbank. Banderov told the Academy of Sciences about the discovery (translated by The Siberian Times). At first we thought it was a reindeer’s carcass, […]

An online photo shows a resourceful young man using a clear glass IKEA VITTSJÖ laptop stand as an improvised smartphone viewer. via reddit

In a recent post on his blog, former Saturday Night Live cast member Gary Kroeger shared his experience behind the scenes at the SNL 40th Anniversary Special. Kroeger took his 15-year-old son with him to enjoy the special event, and in the blog post he talks about sharing the experience with his son. The Red Carpet was […]

Swedish photographer and retoucher Erik Johansson delves into optical illusions and the surreal in his visually striking digitally manipulated photography. Johansson builds each image from many photographs, which he typically takes in multiple locations after meticulous scouting and planning. He then assembles the photos into the final image, a process he likens to putting a […]

Eggplant Parmesan In 2007, Filmmaker Christopher Cannucciari and his great-grandmother Clara partnered together to create “Great Depression Cooking,” a video series that ran from 2007-2013 and was based on Clara’s experience living through the Great Depression in the United States. The series, which led to subsequent recipe books and a DVD, brought Clara’s history, her […]

A Chandelier for One of Many Possible Ends is a light sculpture that sporadically flickers and clicks in reaction to local ambient radioactivity. The effect is achieved through 92 Geiger counters, each connected to an LED lighting element. The sculpture was created by artist Phillip David Stearns in response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster […]

The fascinating short animation “OTTO” examines the concept of cycles through a dark metaphorical tale centered around a lively sheet of paper. The animation was directed by Salvatore Murgia. via Vimeo Staff Picks

The Wandsworth Council in London is currently holding a design competition for a planned pedestrian and bicycle bridge that will span the Thames between Nine Elms and Pimlico. So far the competition has attracted 87 design proposals, many of which are strikingly ambitious, even bizarre. While the designs themselves are remarkable, the competition seeks to […]

Today Google unveiled plans to redevelop their Mountain View, California campus with an innovative complex of new buildings. The plan–conceived by architects Bjarke Ingels of BIG and Thomas Heatherwick of Heatherwick Studio–calls for lightweight block-like structures housed under massive and airy canopies. The blocks will be moveable to accommodate the changing needs of Google’s various […]

A very chilled-out cat who’s just hanging out in her straw basket with her elbows over the side looks like she could be sitting in a hot tub, enjoying the warm water bubbling all around her. via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

Adam Tran, a skilled origami artist from Vietnam and member of the Vietnam Origami Group (VOG) has created an incredible series of dinosaurs, flowers, and other creatures, all through the beautiful craft of folding paper. photos by Adam Tran via Colossal

Five very generous older women in the prefecture of Weinan in the Shaanxi Province of China have banded together to create the Weinan Dog Asylum, a shelter where over 1,300 stray dogs in the area are given food, a safe place to sleep, and other canine (and human) companionship on a daily basis. The shelter […]

On July 19, 2014, a team of light painters from East Coast Light Painting created a long-exposure photograph of 200 glowing orbs in a field in Virginia. To create the orbs, the group collaboratively developed a spinning light tool. During the 1,651-second exposure, the team fanned out to create each of the 7-foot-diameter orbs. The […]

“Paul Thomas Anderson: From a Distance” is short compilation film by Jacob T. Swinney, who has compiled together the long shots used by filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson from scenes in the films Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will be Blood and The Master, all of which create a unifying sense of loneliness […]

Editor Luc “Zapatou” Bergeron has combined 198 of YouTube’s biggest video moments, starting with its first video “Me at the Zoo,” to celebrate the site’s 10th anniversary. Bergeron has also created a playlist of all 198 clips he used to make his tribute.

VinePair (previously) has created “The 20 Most Popular Beers in America”, a colorful infographic that plots the U.S.’s “favorite” beers in order of popularity, as determined by annual sales. Big Beer is a big business in America. Total annual sales stand around $100 billion. Craft Beers, as defined by the Brewer’s Association, are booming, yet […]

German parlor game company Kickpack produces cardboard versions of table tennis and foosball tables that can be folded up into carrying case and moved from place to place. The foosball table is, unsurprisingly, the more intricate and expensive of the two products (including holders for cups and speakers), but the company promises that it can […]

“TED Talks Open Mic” is a comedy sketch by the IFC web series Pantry Boy that applies comedy open mic tropes to TED talks. Alexis Parera stars in and wrote the sketch which features a number of speakers presenting ideas that are “pretty close to being worth spreading,” a play on TED slogan, “Ideas worth spreading.”

Ro-Bow, the latest kinetic sculpture by retired engineer and artist Seth Goldstein (previously), plays songs on a violin by moving the bow and rotating the instrument based on MIDI music files created by an electronic keyboard. The horizontally orientated violin is rotated underneath a reciprocating violin bow while four mechanical fingers are moved to make […]

Musician Andrew Huang (previously) recently created a song using nothing but sounds made using a series of chairs, a recliner, and a couch. Huang technically also used the floor, but that’s getting a bit pedantic. No other sounds, just one wood chair, one comfy couch, two office chairs, one recliner with footstool. A bit of […]

The Book o’ the Brig A Scottish historian named Walter Elliot recently unearthed a “lost” Arthur Conan Doyle story while he was looking around in his attic. The story, “Sherlock Holmes: Discovering the Border Burghs and, by deduction, the Brig Bazaar“, was part of The Book o’ the Brig, a compilation of stories written to […]

CBS Evening News has captured a stunning aerial photo of Manhattan Island surrounded by the frozen waters of New York Harbor due to the record low temperatures that have recently plagued New York City and much of the country. FEBRUARY 20, 2015, 6:30 PM|For the past few weeks, tugboats in New York Harbor have had […]

A recent episode of Vsauce2 features host Kevin Lieber and special guest Bill Nye explaining the problems with implementing so-called “future technology” like flying cars, teleportation, and lunar colonies. In the case of flying cars, the biggest problems seem to be safety and logistic concerns rather than the technology itself being limited. submitted via Laughing Squid […]

The Legless Bar Stool is a cleverly designed wooden stool that–from certain angles–looks uncannily like it is missing a leg. The illusion is achieved with a diagonal cross brace and a truncated fourth leg. The Legless Bar Stool was created by Melbourne-based designer Josh Carmody. photos via Josh Carmody via NOTCOT

Oni Press has revealed that the comic publisher has partnered with Jhonen Vasquez and Nickelodeon for an ongoing Invader Zim comic based on the animated television show of the same name. The show, which originally ran in 2001 and 2002, was cancelled prior to airing every completed episode, but has remained popular with fans. According […]

Human robot impersonator Chadd Smith perfectly replicates the movements of a robot eating a sandwich in a recent video. Smith’s impressive muscle isolation makes him appear to be mechanical, and added sound effects really help sell the illusion. via Tastefully Offensive

Yoke Creative, a Wales-based production company, has released the first volume of their upcoming “Fire the Shutter” series, a beautiful short time-lapse film simply called “Wales”. ‘Fire the Shutter’ is a passion project created by Yoke Creative, to provide a platform for a series of awesome films we plan to make in 2015. Above is […]

In their latest video, Steve Goldbloom and Noah Pink of Everything But the News (previously) dramatically reenact the peculiar experience of ordering coffee in San Francisco. Everything But the News is part of the PBS Digital Studios network.

In her curiously captivating photo series “What do you hide?”, Argentinian photographer Romina Ressia shrouded people in patterned fabrics and then photographed them against patterned backgrounds. The fabric shrouds serve to camouflage the people, while wigs, eyeglasses, and other accessories add an uncanny human touch. photos by Romina Ressia via Slate

In 2014 the 5,800-year-old remains of a male and a female skeleton were discovered, locked in an embrace, in a cave in Southern Greece. The pair were uncovered in the Alepotrypa Cave, which served as a settlement between 6000 and 3200 B.C., when the cave collapsed. According to the Greek Ministry of Culture, the skeletons–dating […]

Carturesti Carusel, also known as “The Carousel of Light,” is a breathtaking, newly-opened six-story bookstore in Bucharest, Romania that is housed in a historic 19th century building. Nearly the entirety of the building’s interior, including its many 19th century flourishes, has been painted white with stunning results. The 10,700-square-foot space includes a basement multimedia space, […]

In the remarkable time-lapse video “Dubai Flow Motion” by photographer Rob Whitworth, Dubai is explored in a series of frenetic, seamlessly linked time-lapses. The video covers the length and breadth of Dubai, including the baggage sorting system of the Dubai International Airport, the interior of the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building), and the tanks […]

The Dinner DJ is an interactive melamine dinner set for kids that emulates a turntable with a spinning record plate, tonearm eating utensil, and various adjustable knobs. There’s no mention of exactly how fast the plate can spin–perhaps an important piece of information when combining kids, food, and centrifugal force. The Dinner DJ is available […]

Potty Glo is a series of glow-in-the-dark decals that make it easy to find the toilet and determine its seat orientation in the dark. The decals can be affixed to the underside of the toilet lid, and according to the company will glow for 12 hours after just a 30-minute charge in the light. Potty Glo […]

In “Why Vaccines Work” by It’s Okay To Be Smart, host Joe Hanson explains the history of vaccines, the science behind vaccines, and how they work. “Our immune system is on constant alert against germy baddies, with millions of white blood cells each on the lookout for specific infections. When an immune cell meets its […]

Lesley Gore, the American singer and songwriter who started her career in 1963 at the age of 16 and blasted up the charts with hits such as “It’s My Party” and “You Don’t Own Me“, passed away from cancer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital . She was 68 years old. Rest in Peace. via People

Stereokroma, a Nova Scotian production house, has created “How to Make Handmade Candy”, a wonderful 9-minute video showing confectioners behind-the-scenes at La Confiserie Candy Labs in Montreal, Canada as they rolled, stretched and manipulated a base candy formula to create their signature old-fashioned candies with customized designs incorporated in the center. On a search for […]

Brian Cox, the popular BBC Science presenter who’s also a physicist at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester and confirmed Doctor Who fan, demonstrates to a receptive audience how time travel is possible, but only under very particular circumstances. In this clip Professor Brian Cox – a confirmed Doctor Who […]

photo by Mark J. Terril Gary Owens, the enormously talented announcer who lent his golden baritone and his deadpan delivery to hundreds of radio programs and such television shows as Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, Space Ghost and Ren and Stimpy, passed away at his home in Los Angeles from the effects of his lifelong struggle […]

The otters and penguins of Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois, gleefully enjoy a bunch of colorful frozen Valentine’s Day treats that were made specifically for them in honor of the holiday. Celebrate Valentine’s Day with the animals at Shedd! Watch as our penguins and sea otters get into the spirit of the holiday. …Valentine’s Day, […]

Objects endlessly move, rotate, and wobble in surreal environments in the wonderfully odd animated GIFs of French graphic designer Julien Rivoire. We previously posted about his surreal illustration in the Computer Virus Catalog. GIFs by Julien Rivoire via The Creators Project

A hoopoe, a strikingly colorful bird with a jaunty crown of feathers, feeds its young in this beautiful slow motion footage shot by nature filmmaking duo Saturnina and Artur Homan. The footage is from their upcoming film The Secret Life of Trees. They’ve posted a trailer for the film online. via Presurfer

Sydney-based designer Nick Barclay has created an ultra-minimalist film poster series in which each movie is represented only with circles. He has more minimalist design work on Behance. photos by Nick Barclay via My Modern Metropolis

In his 2012 photo series Città Minime, Italian photographer Matteo Mezzadri created a miniature city out of bricks, which he then documented in a series of delightful photographs. Because Mezzadri built the city in his studio, he was able to manipulate the lighting and even the atmosphere for each image. Mezzadri talks about the series […]

Recently, the esteemed artist and illustrator Bob Staake created the very touching “Broken Arch” illustration for the December 8, 2014 edition of The New Yorker magazine in response to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. But in 2008, Staake had put together Pixfix, a timelapse video series in which he demonstrated how to create unique animated […]

Jim Kearns, the head bartender at New York City’s Tijuana Picnic who’s known for his wonderful Mexican-influenced libations, spoke with Potluck Video about Mezcal, the smoky spirit derived from the maguey agave plant; what it is, how it’s made and how it can be used creatively in cocktails. Mezcal is an agave distillate. Mezcal is […]

British artist Jenni Sparks has created a meticulously detailed hand-drawn map of Paris that highlights everything from obscure corner shops to famous landmarks. It is available for purchase at Evermade. We previously posted about Sparks’ hand-drawn maps of London and New York City. photos via Evermade submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

An Airbus A380 operated by Emirates flies into a cloud, leaving a giant gash in its wake, in this short video by aircraft spotter Schipholhotspot. Schipholhotspot recorded the video of the plane on December 31, 2014, the same day the spotter shot this video of a China Southern Airbus 330 performing a similar feat. No […]