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This video is the most pleasant thing I've seen in a couple of days. Perhaps I should give up on the mainstream news.Puppies being cute is one thing, but puppies playing on ice? In little figure skater outfits? With SKATES? - Read the rest The post Dogs on Ice are beyond adorable appeared first on Boing Boing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate whose career has accumulated enough corruption allegations to require its own filing cabinet, has yet another interesting financial arrangement to explain.The New York Times reports that Paxton co-founded a cell-tower company, Premier Vertical Properties, in 2005. - Read the rest The post Texas' Ken Paxton somehow gets even sleazier appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander found strong "life affirmation" results in a Martian soil sample. Robert Jastrow, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, "Short of seeing something wiggling on the end of a pin, the case for life on Mars is now as complete as the Viking experiments could make it." - Read the rest The post Viking lander's 1976 Mars soil test may have found life after all appeared first on Boing Boing.

All the money in the world, and he still can't buy a beat. Elon Musk is dancing as if his firmware update just failed.The Six Flags old man literally hands Elon his ass. Even Diaper Donald's double-fisted dance of glory (holes) is more cohesive. - Read the rest The post Elon Musk has all the rhythm of an Austin Powers villain appeared first on Boing Boing.

Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup delivers everything I want from a fantasy detective story. Wonderful characters, fantastic world-building, and a mystery worth solving.Bennett tells the story from the point of view of Din Kol, an altered human whose misshapen talents left him useless to most regular sources of employment for altered humans in the Empire. - Read the rest The post The Tainted Cup gets the fantasy detective novel exactly right appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:SwifDoo PDF Prolets you edit, convert, translate, sign, and run OCR on PDFs without paying a recurring subscription. A lifetime Windows license is $29.97 with code SAVE5.Adobe Acrobat isn't the only way to wrangle PDFs anymore.SwifDoo PDF Procovers editing, conversion, OCR, and document signing for a one-time fee of $29.97 (reg. - Read the rest The post SwifDoo PDF Pro handles your PDF headaches for $30 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Victoria Gordon, operator of a cleaning service, found a 35-year-old Mars Bar while plowing through a hoarder's house in Scunthorpe, England. Shocked by its enormity, she posed it with a contemporary bar and took a photo. The old bar, from 1991, was 62.5g, while a 2026 model is just 40g. - Read the rest The post 1991 Mars Bar highlights shrinkflation and inflation alike appeared first on Boing Boing.

Britain's Minstry of Justice has so far spent 85,300 removing a mural painted on a wall at the Royal Courts of Justice in London by Banksy, just one of several similarly costly removals.

We're big fans of the classic Blackwing pencil (here's a 24-year-old post by Mark Frauenfelder from the depths of the Blackwing Dark Age), and its makers recently posted a video showing how they are made.Now you know how Blackwing pencils are made. - Read the rest The post How Blackwing pencils (and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk) are made appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nearest Pint is an interactive map of Britain showing pub density by parliamentary constituency, with each color-coded according to the number of pubs per 10,000 drinkers, which is to say, the population. At the top of the chart is Liverpool Riverside, with 23.73 pubs for every 10,000 people, closely followed by the Cities of London and Westminster, with 21.7 pubs per 10,000 people, and Manchester (21.6), then Bristol, Edinburgh and Brighton, about 21 per 10k. - Read the rest The post UK pub density map appeared first on Boing Boing.

On February 10, 1355, two Oxford students named Walter de Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield complained about the wine at the Swindlestock Tavern. The vintner, John de Croydon, dismissed the complaint. One of the students threw his drink in de Croydon's face, and by one account beat him with the quart pot. - Read the rest The post A complaint about bad wine left 93 dead and Oxford paying for 470 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1860s San Francisco, the city routinely poisoned or trapped stray dogs. The city exempted Bummer and Lazarus by name. Bummer was a black-and-white Newfoundland who lived on the sidewalk outside Frederick Martin's saloon on Montgomery Street, and he was an exceptional rat-killer. - Read the rest The post San Francisco exempted two stray dogs from its own laws appeared first on Boing Boing.

Doi Toshitsura was a feudal lord in Edo-period Japan who studied snow for about twenty years. His 1832 book of woodblock prints, Sekka Zusetsu, has eighty-six drawings of what he called "snow flowers" (sekka), plus a dozen more copied from a 1779 Dutch natural history book. - Read the rest The post A Japanese lord spent 20 years drawing snowflakes under a microscope appeared first on Boing Boing.

1999 A.D. is a short film the appliance maker Philco-Ford made in 1967 to show what family life would look like at the end of the century. It opens with a boy named Jamie, who builds a sandcastle version of his family's house on a Southern California beach. - Read the rest The post This 1967 short film got video chat and online banking right appeared first on Boing Boing.

Luke Howard was an industrial chemist in London. He studied clouds as a hobby in the early 1800s. In hisEssay on the Modification of Clouds,he gave the standard cloud formations the names we still use today. Cirrus is the Latin word for a wisp of hair, cumulus for "convex or conical heaps," stratus for a "horizontal sheet." - Read the rest The post One hobbyist named cirrus, cumulus, and stratus back in 1803 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Microsoft Visio Professional 2024helps turn workflows, networks, floor plans, and other complicated ideas into polished diagrams. Get a lifetime Windows license for $44.97 (reg. $579.99).Some ideas are much easier to understand once you stop trying to explain them in a wall of text. - Read the rest The post Turn complicated ideas into clear diagrams with Microsoft Visio 2024 for $45 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Ask questions about PDFs, generate summaries, edit documents, and convert files without juggling multiple apps.PDNob Prois $49.99 for life (reg. $349.95).AI has finally made its way into one of the internet's least cooperative file formats: PDFs.PDNob Pro PDF Editorcan summarize, translate, and answer questions about your documents while handling all the editing tools you'd expect, and right now, you can get lifetime access for $49.99 (reg. - Read the rest The post This AI PDF editor can answer questions about your documents for $50 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Save big on tools you'll actually use with thisMicrosoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows license, now only $19.97 (MSRP $229).From building a budget to crafting the perfect presentation to get your point across and drafting documents, it's pretty rare to find a suite of apps that can help you tackle a full workday. - Read the rest The post From Word to Excel, score seven Microsoft Office apps for just $20 (MSRP $229) appeared first on Boing Boing.

A metal that has never been recorded before turned up in a grain of sand from Hiroshima Bay. Writing in Science Advances, Luca Bindi, Hans-Rudolf Wenk, Mario Wannier, and Teresa Salvatici report the discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast, sealed inside a glassy bead that formed during the airburst of 6 August 1945. - Read the rest The post A new alloy turned up in a grain of sand from Hiroshima Bay appeared first on Boing Boing.

A medevac flight that should have taken half an hour ended on the side of a mountain in New Mexico, killing all four aboard. Jeff Wise reports for Wired that a military GPS jamming exercise 100 miles away is part of the reason. - Read the rest The post Four died after a military exercise took GPS away over New Mexico appeared first on Boing Boing.

The surface of the Sun has been photographed in more detail than ever before, and it turns out to be covered in whirlpools. Victoria Gill reports for BBC News on the most detailed images of the Sun yet, taken by the Inouye Solar Telescope on a high peak in Hawaii and published in the journal Nature. - Read the rest The post The sharpest pictures ever taken of the Sun show it swirling appeared first on Boing Boing.

NASA created a Martian Dust Limit Working Group this year to figure out how much Mars dust a person can safely breathe, and Leonard David reports for Space.com on the dust hazard and how future astronauts might deal with it. - Read the rest The post Mars dust is full of perchlorates, silica, and heavy metals appeared first on Boing Boing.

Now you can immerse yourself completely in the uncanny valley by watching Fairgound, a new 24/7 AI slop channel available on Roku. It offers "series, films, and shorts from the world's best AI storytellers" across a variety of genres. [via Cord Cutters]

TL;DR:Headway Premiumnow includes a growing selection of fiction summaries alongside its huge nonfiction library. Get lifetime access for $69.99 (reg. $299.95).Big news for anyone who loves books but never seems to finish them:Headway now includes fiction summaries alongside its popular nonfiction library. - Read the rest The post Own Headway for life for $69.99 and finally make waiting in line productive appeared first on Boing Boing.

Osaka ranked seventh and Tokyo tenth in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2026 Global Liveability Index. Japan was the only Asian country with two cities in the top 10. BBC Travel asked residents and planners why, and their answers came down to four rules. - Read the rest The post Why Osaka and Tokyo keep landing in the world's top 10 cities appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: If you regularly bank, shop, and manage your finances online, this discounted15-month subscription offers an affordable way to monitor your identity and respond quickly if fraud occurs-grab it now for just $99.99 (reg. $187.35).WithLifeLock Core Identity Theft Protection, you don't have to be a cybersecurity expert to protect your identity thanks to this all-in-one fraud defense software. - Read the rest The post This $100 subscription helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud appeared first on Boing Boing.

Google has a difficult engineering problem at its enormous Fort Wayne data center: some of the land it wants to build on is protected wetlands.The search giant's solution is simple: build anyway. In the permitting documents for the not-evil-mastermind-sounding "Project Zodiac," Google's developer, Hatchworks, claims "meeting the project purpose and completely avoiding water resources was not feasible." - Read the rest The post Doing no "evil," Google proposes paving over protected wetlands for a data center appeared first on Boing Boing.

Los Angeles' stiffest self-proclaimed superhero is fighting a branding problem of his own devising.Based on the name alone, I had already imagined an incredible origin story involving the ever-popular fateful tumble into a vat of chemicals. His crackling electric baton was named either the Magic Wand or the Rabbit, and Rock Hard's sidekick could only be Rock Steady. - Read the rest The post Can you guess Rock Hard's branding problem? appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Never lose your wallet or ID cards again with thisGen 3, 1-pack KeySmart SmartCardfor just $31.99 (reg. $39.99).TheKeySmart SmartCard is a credit-card-thin, IPX8 waterproof, rechargeable smartcardthat works with Apple Find My or Google Find to help you keep track of your belongings. - Read the rest The post Never lose your wallet again with this $32 smart tracker appeared first on Boing Boing.

Meta is paying for posts that appear to break its own rules, according to an ABC (Australia) New Verify investigation by Lucy Carter. The report cites four accounts that have received payment from Facebook's invitation-only Content Monetization program, including a white nationalist with neo-Nazi links and an anti-vaccine campaigner. - Read the rest The post Meta pays 16.2 million accounts, including neo-Nazi-linked pages appeared first on Boing Boing.

"From The 'London Times' in 1904" is an 1898 Mark Twain short story set six years in the future, and it describes something very close to the internet. It opens as a murder mystery. Clayton, a hot-tempered army officer, is accused of killing Szczepanik, the inventor of a machine called the telelectroscope. - Read the rest The post Mark Twain wrote a story in 1898 that describes the internet appeared first on Boing Boing.

De Acupunctura is a 1683 book by the Dutch physician Willem ten Rhijne, and it came out of one of the most roundabout translation jobs on record. Ten Rhijne was living at Dejima, the artificial island off Nagasaki that was the only piece of Japan open to Europeans during the Edo period. - Read the rest The post A Dutch doctor translated acupuncture through four languages appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Florence Y'all Water Tower stands beside Interstate 75 in Florence, Kentucky, and it says "Y'all" because of a paperwork problem. When it went up in 1974 it read FLORENCE MALL. The developers had given the city the land for the tower on the condition that the mall's name be painted where interstate drivers would see it, and the mall itself was still two years from opening. - Read the rest The post A Kentucky water tower says "Y'all" because of a legal problem appeared first on Boing Boing.

There's been some speculation about exactly what Primetime, A24's movie about the hit show To Catch A Predator, is going to say. Having seen the trailer, I figure that if you were skeptical of host Chris Hansen's motives and character, this movie shares those concerns and might even be entirely about them. - Read the rest The post Take a seat and watch the trailer to Primetime appeared first on Boing Boing.

Georg Danek and Stefan Hagel have worked out a way to sing Homer, and Open Culture has their recording. Danek teaches at the University of Vienna and Hagel is at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. What they recorded is lines 267 to 366 of book 8 of the Odyssey, the passage where the bard Demodocus sings about the love of Ares and Aphrodite. - Read the rest The post Hear what the Odyssey may have sounded like as a song appeared first on Boing Boing.

Remember when having three browser tabs open felt excessive? Now it's ChatGPT in one tab, Claude in another, Gemini somewhere else, plus an image generator, a PDF tool, and whatever you use to summarize YouTube videos. You deserve better.That's exactly why 1min.AI - Read the rest The post Cancel your AI subscriptions-get a lifetime of ChatGPT, Claude & a ton of other tools for just $70 appeared first on Boing Boing.

In January 1933, five Bronx acquaintances - the press later called them "the Murder Trust" - took out life insurance policies on Michael Malloy, a homeless Irish former firefighter, and set out to collect the $3,500 (about $87,000 today) by getting him to drink himself to death. - Read the rest The post When five men tried to murder "Iron Mike" with increasingly poisonous drinks appeared first on Boing Boing.

Camp Bonifas, the United Nations Command post 400 meters south of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, has a golf course. One hole, par 3, with an AstroTurf green - and minefields on three sides. Sports Illustrated called it "the most dangerous hole in golf," and there are reports that at least one shot detonated a land mine. - Read the rest The post The world's most dangerous golf hole is surrounded by minefields appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo said the name "Officer Abdelnabi." Trump supporters booed. Lombardo had to explain that Abdelnabi was the Las Vegas police officer killed the day before.So much for "back the blue." Lombardo was paying tribute to Austin Abdelnabi when someone in the audience began booing loudly. - Read the rest The post The thin blue line encounters an unfamiliar last name appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Circle K shopper posted a screenshot of an AI self-checkout screen that listed a few flavors of Gatorade at a few dollars apiece, then a line item of $8.5 billion for the American Red Cross, according to the New York Post. - Read the rest The post AI self-checkout bills a snack run at $8.5 billion appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 2020 the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts picked up a one-star review that read "worst aquarium ever." It is a museum about the history of whaling, and it keeps no live whales. Six years later, the museum has printed the line on hoodies, T-shirts, crew necks, and bags, according to Boston 25 News. - Read the rest The post A whaling museum printed its worst review on a hoodie. It sold out appeared first on Boing Boing.

On February 4, 1982, Arizonan David Grundman shot a 27-foot saguaro with a shotgun. The saguaro dropped 23 feet of itself on him.The story is Grundman and his roommate drove into the desert near Lake Pleasant on February 4, 1982. - Read the rest The post In 1982, a 27-year-old man lost a gunfight with a cactus appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tesla told federal regulators that the headlights on 19,900 Model 3 and Model Y cars were up to nearly twice as bright as the law allows, then argued it shouldn't have to fix them because the defect was "inconsequential" to safety. - Read the rest The post Tesla headlights were twice as bright as legal appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Glad av Gillberga is a Swedish replica of a warship pulled from Denmark's Roskilde fjord and dated to around 1040. In nearly 30 years it has crossed the North Sea and sailed to Canada. Universal borrowed it for six months for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, where it played one of the escort ships in Odysseus's flotilla - the Greek boats are thought to have resembled Nordic longships. - Read the rest The post Swedish shipowner says Odyssey filmmaker won't pay $6,000 damage bill appeared first on Boing Boing.

A gongoozler is someone who stands beside a canal and watches the boats. According to Wikipedia, the word may have begun as canal workers' slang for a person loitering on the towpath, and The Times has described it as meaning "someone who hung around bridges to laugh at the inept efforts of less experienced barge folk as they struggled to pass through locks." - Read the rest The post Ever stood and watched boats work a lock? There's a job for you appeared first on Boing Boing.

In the year 937, Mount Fuji erupted and sent the Ken-Marubi lava flow down its northern slopes and over a stand of fallen trees. The lava hardened around the trunks while the wood inside burned away, leaving long hollow tubes in the ground. - Read the rest The post A 937 eruption at Mount Fuji left a cave shaped like a womb appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Edit, convert, merge, split, rotate, crop, delete, and reorganize PDFswith ease with this lifetime subscription to PDF Expert's Premium Plan while it's on sale for 43% off.After forking out a pretty penny for a MacBook, the last thing you want to do is spend even more on software. - Read the rest The post Own your PDF software outright with this $80 Mac tool appeared first on Boing Boing.

France's ban on unsolicited solicitations comes into effect next week, protecting consumers from telemarketers and other intrusive sales pitches. Acknowledging that its "opt-out" system (as found in other countries) had only served the hucksters, the Fourth Republic is trying something new: actually stopping them. - Read the rest The post France bans cold-calling telemarketers appeared first on Boing Boing.

DuckDuckGo is well-known for its privacy-oriented search engine, but a pivot into fashion proved a big hit this week. Its "Normal Fucking Sunglasses," posted yesterday here at Boing Boing, sold out right away despite being otherwise unremarkable Paso Robles from Knockaround. - Read the rest The post DuckDuckGo's "Normal F***ing Sunglasses" sell out in a day appeared first on Boing Boing.

For those who find the Squatty Potty gauche but want to spend less time in the bathroom, there is a new option: Sh*t Shoes.The way people in most Western countries sit on the toilet isn't great. Squatting is common in non-Western countries and likely contributes to a lower incidence of hemorrhoids, which can be caused by straining. - Read the rest The post There's now a $69 pair of shoes designed only for using the toilet appeared first on Boing Boing.