Awesome Weird

Developed by Madnetic Games, this unique sim game sends you on a global hunt as a wildlife photographer. It features photorealistic scenery and animals to shoot (with your lens). As they build their photo skills, players collect camera gear and sell their photos to magazines. Add it to your Steam wishlist.

After his animations started to crash Adobe After Effects, Cyriak decided to create his own animation system. Naturally, the results are as hilariously weird as you’d expect from the famed surrealist animator.

Tired of flossing your teeth one at a time? Well, Unnecessary Inventions has the solution, a gadget which can floss all of your teeth at once. While it was designed as a joke, we could totally see someone selling such a device. Though we imagine reloading the floss would take way more time than just flossing normally.

A young engineer named Burke McGabe got it in his head to build something totally unnecessary but nonetheless entertaining. What looks like an ordinary wall clock is designed to automatically fall off the wall any time he looks at it to check the time. It’s seen better days after all of its crashes.

Musician Grégoire Blanc previously impressed us with his cover of The Great Gig in the Sky. This video isn’t quite as melodic, but it’s just as entertaining. Enjoy as Blanc demonstrates 10 ways to make interesting and captivating sounds by playing a saw and a violin bow in concert with effects pedals and synthesizers.

This long, scarf-like tube has twin openings in which to place two heads for lo-fi chitchat and giggles. But we’d rather believe the wonderful weirdos at Meow Wolf who claim it’s a “communication device which connects one experience to another using the most sophisticated facial recognition technology.”

Ever wish clown-shoes could pass as streetwear? Larger-than-life DJ, designer, and funny guy Kerwin Frost believes more is more, so designed big-ass shoes that look five sizes bigger than their actual size. Superstuffed sneakers are padded to fit the wearer’s foot but look like classic adidas Superstars with a glandular issue.

Virtually every word written on this website is composed on a clicky mechanical keyboard. If you love the sound of clicky keys too, then take a listen to Mechanical Keyboard Sounds: Recordings of Bespoke and Customized Mechanical Keyboards, an album by Taeha Types and Trunk Records, demonstrated here by LGR Blerbs.

(PG-13: Language) Animator Steve Smith’s hilariously weird short film drops us into a post-apocalyptic world where all that remains are electronically augmented mutants who float around flooded cities collecting garbage that humanity left behind. Can we get a S.L.U.G.Z. feature film now?

Most people who want a portable gaming PC buy a high-end laptop. Russian builder Yolenzo created a gaming rig on a bicycle. The Exo Giga Bike packs an AORUS Z590I Ultra mobo, an Intel Core i5-11600K CPU, an Nvidia RTX 3070 GPU, a 2TB SSD, and 32 GB of RAM. They’re gonna need a really long power cord and HDMI cable.

While many considered Nikolai Tesla to be a genius, he also had some pretty outlandish ideas, like the notion that we would stop drinking coffee by the 21st century. Mental Floss editor Erin McCarthy explores this and a number of other wacky predictions that have yet to come true, among them, undersea buses propelled by whales.

Blue Man Group put the sound of banging on pipes on the map. Imagine if Doc Ock got their hands on their music makers, and you’d have a pretty clear idea of what OCTAV is. Created by industrial designer Asaf Wainberg, the wild-looking wearable is a set of plastic drain pipes that have been cut to different lengths to produce notes.

Good airflow is important for keeping electronic components cool, so most computers use fans to circulate air. But we’ve never seen a computer that cools itself by breathing. DIY Perks shows off a gigantic machine he built that quietly pumps air in and out using bellows.

Books written by the dead, the insane, and the Devil himself. Books made from knots. Books written in blood and bound in skin. Edible books, wearable books, books written in ciphers. Filled with fascinating discoveries on every page, The Madman’s Library reveals the obscure histories of the strangest books ever made.

While visiting London, historian and storyteller CGP Grey stumbled onto a quirky sculpture of sharks floating in a canal. Not one to ignore something so unusual, he decided to dig into the backstory of this floating artwork and discovered the piece has been mired in a battle between artists, bureaucrats, and conservationists.

The slide whistle is one of the goofiest-sounding musical instruments out there. Now, thanks to the engineering smarts of mitxela, we’ve now got a way for a computer to play music on a slide whistle using MIDI commands. It uses a pair of servos and a scissor mechanism to move the slide, and a pump to blow into it.

Before we watched this animated short film, we thought Between Two Ferns was the most awkward talk show ever. But Anat Efrati & Yannay Matarasso’s graduation film sure got us feeling more uneasy than Zach Galifianakis ever did within seconds of Dr. Zussman’s mystery guest arriving on stage.

Inspired by science instructor Bruce Yeany, YouTuber NightHawkInLight wanted to see if he could cook a hot dog while it floated in the air. NightHawk improved on Yeany’s compressed air levitation, using a nichrome and copper coil to heat his wiener instead of a blowtorch.

Wearing nothing more than a pair of tighty-whities and basketball socks, a rollerskater heads out into the universe without a care in the world. But when an evildoer tosses a banana peel in their path, things go from weird to weirder. Enjoy the latest CG animated short from Cool 3D World, the warped minds behind Bicycle.

“Weird Al” Yankovic narrates this film about the enigmatic and entertaining showman known as Tiny Tim. Known by most for his falsetto voice and ambiguous appearance, Tim brought joy to millions with his ukulele and Tip Toe Through the Tulips, but also helped pave the way for other performers who refused to be pidgeonholed.

Cher is known for her incredible vocal power, soufulness, and showmanship. To demonstrate her versatility, she played all of the major roles in a mini production of the musical West Side Story for her 1978 show Cher… Special. The same show featured a heaven vs. hell musical battle between Dolly Parton and The Tubes.

When is a flute not a flute? When it’s a street barricade, of course. Musician Xavier Lozano demonstrates as he performs a brief piece of music on a metal barrier he drilled out to work as a wind instrument. Lozano is known for his ability to transform unusual objects into musical instruments.

Musician Moritz Simon Geist creates music with the help of robots. For this performance, he set up a pan filled with hot oil, popcorn, and sensors that triggered strikes on a drum kit each time a popcorn kernel burst open. The resulting beats are definitely giving us a jazz fusion vibe.