Lonboarder Josh Neuman put together this compilation of his ten closest calls while filming his longboarding over ten years. What he says about his number one closest call:
What Happened: While on a production shoot we had one of the crew members drive down before us and block off the road for one minute at a time while we skated down the mountain. We were rushing to beat the sunset and get as much footage as possible while the lighting was good so our communication about where exactly the car was supposed to be blocking off the road was subpar. As you see in the video, the result is us having to swerve off to the side of the road to avoid hitting the car that was parked roughly 200 feet closer than it should've been. We never go into the opposite lane on a blind turn unless we have walkie talkies and/or a spotter letting us know the road is clear
It's good to know he actually has a team and spotters and all that, but it's still crazy how little protection he's wearing. Even with all the precautions, there's no way I would be doing this without wearing full motorcycle armor and wrapping myself with enough pillows to look like Michelin Man cosplay.
This is incredible (chilling?) video of Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot doing parkour.
Parkour is the perfect sandbox for the Atlas team at Boston Dynamics to experiment with new behaviors. In this video our humanoid robots demonstrate their whole-body athletics, maintaining its balance through a variety of rapidly changing, high-energy activities. Through jumps, balance beams, and vaults, we demonstrate how we push Atlas to its limits to discover the next generation of mobility, perception, and athletic intelligence.
It's truly amazing (terrifying?) that this isn't CGI but actual physical robots doing this stuff in real life. Let's just hope they find parkour to be more enjoyable than killing humans because obviously it's just a matter of time before they get a taste of both.
Keep going for the video as well as a behind the scenes of how they're teaching Atlas to do these beautiful (horrifying?) things.
This is an incredibly well done and hypnotic stop-motion animation by Tomohiro Okazaki featuring every conceivable play on matches. And as if the creativity wasn't impressive enough on its own, it plays back at 60fps. The stop-motion video I made for my high school art class played back at two frames per second so 60 is just showing off. Also, it's seven and a half minutes long. At 60 frames per second. I mean...Jesus.
I'm not exaggerating at all when I say this is one of the best stop-motion animations I've ever seen. I can't even comprehend the amount of work that went into this. It's so good it makes me wonder if it's actually CGI, which is usually what people say when they see photos of my face.
Keep going for the full video as well as another of his stop-motion animations showing a Rube Goldberg machine of sorts.
Apparently snownados exist and if you guessed that they're dust devils but with snow you'd be correct. They're not nearly as interesting as Sharknados or firenados, but those are impossibly high bars for a 'nado.
Keep going for another video of a snownado. According to The Weather Network they're so rare only a half dozen or so have ever been caught on camera.
This is a series of surreal phone booth videos by TikToker solopsist. You may be wondering what a "surreal phone booth video" even is and I couldn't explain it to you if I tried, so I'll just let you experience them as I did.
Is it art? Is it real life? Is it...something else? Whatever the explanation, I'll be curled up in the corner rocking back and forth while hugging my knees.
Keep going for a bunch more or check out all of his videos on his TikTok page. They're all equally bizarre and incredible and it's impossible to tell where they're going.
This is a series of videos demonstrating space juggling as performed by physicist and circus performer Adam Dipert who goes by, well, The Space Juggler. If you're wondering what space juggling is just trust you're gut because you're probably correct.
When learning to juggle in weightlessness, the first thing to understand is that the balls will move in straight lines. They will not move in parabolas like we're all used to.
Okay, okay, technically he isn't actually juggling in space. He's using a harness and juggling on the floor to simulate zero gravity. It's still very neat, but if you find yourself outraged by these videos it's perfectly understandable. It hurts to be sold a space juggler and then presented with a ceiling-hanging floor juggler. It's like every time I show up for a Tinder date and the other person wonders why I'm suddenly not Timothée Chalamet like my name and pictures suggested.
Keep going for a bunch of videos of Adam "space" juggling as well as a video showing how he came up with the idea and his rig to simulate the zero-g environment. No, he's not in space but it's still very neat.
In honor of Suni Lee winning Olympic gold in the women's all-around gymnastics, here's that time the officials set the vault too low at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and all the competitors fell and almost killed themselves.
During the all-around competition in the women's gymnastics at the 2000 Olympics, it was discovered that the vault was too low. This low vault caused Elise Ray to have some scary falls and Svetlana Khorkina to have an uncharacteristic fall. Similar scary falls and uncharacteristic mistakes occurred during the first subdivision during the preliminary competition. Two of the Australian gymnasts (Allana Slater and Brooke Walker) had scary crashes on their vaults. Liu Xuan underrotated her vault. Kui Yuan Yuan and Kristen Maloney injured themselves on the vault. Kui sprained her knee and was out of team finals. Kristen reinjured the leg that had the rod put in to heal her stubborn stress fracture. Kristen Maloney had not fallen in vault in competition since early 1998. Was the vault too low?
The crazy part is the vault was set to 120cm instead of 125cm, meaning a difference of less than two inches was responsible for all this mayhem. To get an idea of what this is like, there used to be a subway station where one of the stairs was a fraction of an inch taller than the rest and it caused everybody to trip. And that was just walking up the stairs. I can't even imagine what two inches does when you're flying through the air like the Tasmanian Devil.
Keep going for the full video as well as the full original NBC coverage from the event.
This is intense footage of a paddleboarder who was saved by his waterproof phone pouch because it allowed him to make the phone call you're about to hear.
When Alfie got into difficulty while paddleboarding, not only was he wearing a lifejacket that kept him afloat, but he was also carrying his phone with him in a waterproof pouch.
After alerting the Coastguard that he was in danger, volunteers from Abersoch RNLI launched their lifeboat and raced to the scene to pull Alfie from the water.
When afloat, always wear a lifejacket and carry a means of calling for help.
Bravo to the operator as well as Alfie for collectively keeping their cool and giving this story a happy ending. PFD or not, if I was in the same situation I don't think I'd have the wherewithal to call the coastguard to save my life. No, my final phone call would be to my internet girlfriend who refuses to video chat with me but I know she's definitely real and loves me because she lets me send her money.
Keep going for the full video. It's easy to dismiss because Alfie has a lifejacket on, but you can tell the fear in his voice is real.
