Boing Boing

Before becoming a 1980s TV-dinner hall of famer, Salisbury steak was a 19th-century health fad. Dr. James Salisbury looked at chopped beef and somehow saw medicine; America looked at it and covered it in gravy.Dr. Salisbury wanted to start a high-beef-scraps diet, and apparently only missed on the "please cover it in cholesterol" attractant. - Read the rest The post Salisbury steak was health food before it became cafeteria nostalgia appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Microsoft Office 2024 Professional Plus for Windows is $54.99 (reg. $249.99)with Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Access, and OneNote for one Windows 10 or 11 PC.Somewhere between the ninth app login and the fourth "manage subscription" page, normal software started to feel weirdly needy. - Read the rest The post Microsoft Office 2024 puts the old reliables back on your PC appeared first on Boing Boing.

The latest addition to LEGO's Ideas is a gorgeous dose of nostalgia. The upcoming X-Files set was introduced by none other than Gillian Anderson herself. When a mysterious black box arrives at her door, she dons her gloves and investigates. "This is where it gets implausible," Anderson says with a skeptical grimace, as she assembles the alien ship. - Read the rest The post Gillian Anderson reveals X-Files LEGO set appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Orange Menace puked out a Truth Social post that started whinging over how Iran's "Arrogance" and the Reflecting Pool are his "TOP Concerns," then somehow swerved into an ad for a Fasset/Tether gold-backed Visa card already issued to "Myself and My Family." - Read the rest The post Grandpa Pudding Brains turns foreign policy into a crypto gold-card ad appeared first on Boing Boing.

Asked why Democrats dumped Graham Platner after a sexual-assault allegation while Republicans keep Max Miller and Cory Mills in the conference despite domestic-violence allegations, "MAGA" Mike Johnson's offered the kind of moral clarity you get from a used car salesman:"The key word there is allegation." - Read the rest The post Mike Johnson discovers the word "allegation" only applies to Republicans appeared first on Boing Boing.

Light, maker of the stripped-down Light Phones (previously recommended), today announced the Light Flip, a clamshell model that swaps e-ink for matte OLED and gets a hinge, a keypad and (drum roll!) a camera. As much as I loved my Light Phone II, the slow and frustrating e-ink screen ground me down; with OLED, the main tradeoff for responsiveness and clarity will be shorter battery life. - Read the rest The post Light Flip is a minimalist phone without the dumb appeared first on Boing Boing.

The lightsaber that Mark Hamill held and lost, along with the hand holding it, to the central reactor shaft of Bespin's Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back," which canonically was preserved in a cloning tank by Emperor Palpatine, or whatever, sold for $3.75m at Heritage Auctions' Hollywood & Entertainment Signature Auction last week. - Read the rest The post Luke Skywalker's severed hand and lightsaber prop sold for $3.75M appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Learn to speak one (or more!) new languages confidently and naturally with aone-year subscription to Rosetta Stone Sapphirefor $127.20, a 20% savings on the $159 regular price.Learning a new language has a ton of benefits: It challenges the mind, open up new career opportunities, and make travel more rewarding. - Read the rest The post Speak a new language confidently sooner than you dreamed with Rosetta Stone Sapphire for $127.20 appeared first on Boing Boing.

From the South Korean side of the DMZ you can look through binoculars at a tidy North Korean town - bright blue roofs, multicolored walls, a childcare center, schools, a hospital. Kijng-dong is a stage set.The buildings are concrete shells with no glass in the windows, and some of the windows are just painted on. - Read the rest The post North Korea's fake village with painted-on windows appeared first on Boing Boing.

Fear of the number 13 has a proper name - triskaidekaphobia - and it's baked into the buildings around you. In 2002, an Otis Elevator executive estimated that among buildings with 13 or more floors and Otis elevators, 85% had no floor labeled the 13th. - Read the rest The post Why 85% of tall buildings skip the 13th floor appeared first on Boing Boing.

Most attempts to hide a drone tinker with how it looks - camouflage, transparent shells, light-bending optics. Northwestern University engineers went the other way and changed how your eyes see it. Their prototype, the "Phantom Twist," spins up to 25 times a second, too fast for the eye to track, so the whole aircraft smears into a ghostly blur that all but disappears against whatever's behind it. - Read the rest The post Drone spins into a ghostly blur, making it almost invisible appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:GetMicrosoft Office Professional 2021 for Windowsfor $27.97 instead of $219.99. The one-time purchase includes eight familiar productivity apps for one PC, with no recurring subscription fee. The deal ends July 26 at 11:59 p.m. PT.Subscriptions have quietly colonized everything. - Read the rest The post Microsoft Office is just $28, but only through July 26 appeared first on Boing Boing.

China's humanoid robots continue to improve their kung fu and have expanded into MMA cage fighting. The Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend tournament is a showcase for EngineAI's humanoid robot, the T800.The model is seemingly unironically named after the Terminator model with the same designation, but perhaps legally distinct without the hyphen. - Read the rest The post Humanoid robot keeps fighting, even after his block was knocked off! appeared first on Boing Boing.

Everyone in Seattle and beyond is obsessed with a raccoon with a spinal condition.Kiana Hall recorded a video of a ball-shaped creature with long legs, resembling a cryptid or alien, sprinting away from her as she asks, "What am I looking at???" - Read the rest The post Jimothy is the weird little raccoon we need in these dark times appeared first on Boing Boing.

Riot Fest has packed its lineup for 2026, with the Pixies, the Sex Pistols (sans Johnny Rotten), Patti Smith, and... William Shatner? The 95-year-old actor/space tourist/horse semen owner/singer and his heavy metal band the *uckers - the asterisk appears to actually be part of the name, not censorship - will perform live for the first time at the three-day annual music festival. - Read the rest The post William Shatner's metal band is playing Riot Fest appeared first on Boing Boing.

For the past decade and a half, one question has been at the forefront of gamers' minds: what the absolute hell is Bethesda Game Studios up to? Although no AAA dev cycle could ever reasonably be accused of being snappy, Bethesda's apparent inability or unwillingness to do anything with two of the biggest RPG franchises in the industry has been a source of great frustration and speculation alike. - Read the rest The post Bethesda provides "studio update" on its franchises appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm blown away by eleven-year-old Samuel Henderson, who has an amazing ability to mimic birds. Sam lives in Oklahoma, where he's become a bit of a local celebrity. He's also begun sharing his incredible talent on his social media, where his mom describes him as "bird caller extraordinaire." - Read the rest The post This Oklahoma boy is truly a "bird caller extraordinaire" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tesla is finally selling a bicycle, something the company's fans have apparently been speculating about excitedly for years. This bike, however, is not an e-bike and is not for adults. It's a toddler balance bike.The $225 "Balance Bike for Kids" has a silver and black design, complete with Tesla branding, and actually looks pretty cool, not that most toddlers care about that. - Read the rest The post Tesla's latest offering is a $225 bike for toddlers appeared first on Boing Boing.

In May 1974, locked inside California's Vacaville Prison, Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson put together a manuscript they called The Periodic Table of Energy - a system of correspondences among the periodic table of elements, Leary's "neurogenetic theory of evolution," the Tarot, the I Ching, and the zodiac. - Read the rest The post A prison manuscript maps the periodic table onto Tarot and the zodiac appeared first on Boing Boing.

"Surveillance Monitor" gets a new meaning.LG's screens have apparently entered their "consent is someone else's problem" phase: some monitors can trigger silent Windows software installs, while some LG TV terms reportedly tell you to warn guests they may be recorded by AI voice features to comply with local wiretapping laws. - Read the rest The post LG monitors install spyware; LG TVs make wiretapping your problem appeared first on Boing Boing.

The internet is the world's most efficient copy machine, and everything it touches - music, movies, books, code - slides toward a price of zero. In an essay called "Better Than Free", Kevin Kelly argues that isn't a death sentence for creators. - Read the rest The post Eight things you can still sell when digital copies are free appeared first on Boing Boing.

Trump Border "Czar" Tom Homan's message is clear: when masked men come for you, surrender first and ask questions after they bash your head into the pavement.Make the violence more convenient for the government, or suffer the consequences? This Republican talking point is pretty ripe, as the party of guns and guts now thinks letting the Gestapo stomp your head is the American way. - Read the rest The post Tom "Bag o' Cash" Homan says people killed by ICE should have complied appeared first on Boing Boing.

Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer facing rape and sex-trafficking charges in multiple countries, was arrested in Miami this weekend, putting another accused sex offender from Trumpworld's orbit back in the legal spotlight.Reuters reported that the Tates returned to Florida in February 2025 after Romania lifted travel restrictions while they remained under criminal investigation there, and that the Financial Times had reported Trump administration officials pressured Romanian authorities to lift the ban. - Read the rest The post Andrew Tate, another accused sex offender in Trumpworld's orbit, arrested in Miami appeared first on Boing Boing.

California already had feral pigs. Then a Monterey County landowner added Russian wild boars for sport hunting, and nature responded with a century-long "absolutely not."Like many problems in California, a rich man decided he wanted to do something and to hell with the public good. - Read the rest The post California's wild pig problem started when a rich guy imported Russian chaos hogs appeared first on Boing Boing.

Spain won the World Cup, but Grandpa Pudding Brains saw a gold trophy, cameras, and a stage, so naturally he seemed to assume the ceremony had taken a wrong turn away from him.Reuters reports that Trump and Infantino were booed as they entered the field for the trophy ceremony. - Read the rest The post Grandpa Pudding Brains thinks he won the World Cup appeared first on Boing Boing.

Trump's FDA appears to have shat the bed on the cyclospora outbreak: a major lettuce recall disrupted the food chain, the outbreak kept spreading, and now the agency says its positive product test was wrong.On July 19, FDA said its lab experts re-reviewed a Taylor Farms de Mexico lettuce sample that had been reported positive the day before and concluded the result "does not represent true amplification" and should be considered a false positive. - Read the rest The post Cyclospora: Trump's FDA shits the bed appeared first on Boing Boing.

It seems the "Avengers: Doomsday" trailer is here, giving away all the goodies.Disney needs money, so they've packed this with as many people as they could, including the characters they killed off. Shockingly, they aren't CGI'ing in people who actually passed away. - Read the rest The post Disney bravely waits one movie before resurrecting dead Avengers appeared first on Boing Boing.

Every tool has two ends: the business end that does the work, and the end that meets your hand. Manufacturers obsess over the first and skimp on the second, which leaves anyone with a weak grip or sore joints to fix it themselves. - Read the rest The post Four cheap ways to fatten a tool handle so it stops hurting your hand appeared first on Boing Boing.

In December 1958, a Soviet expedition reached Antarctica's Pole of Inaccessibility, the point on the continent farthest from any coastline: 1,400 kilometers inland and 3,700 meters up in the coldest region on Earth. The year-round average temperature there is minus 58 degrees centigrade. - Read the rest The post Resin Lenin presides over Antarctica's Pole of Inaccessibility appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sergio Furnari, a Sicilian-born New York sculptor, plans to unveil a life-size Charlie Kirk statue in Times Square on the first anniversary of Kirk's assassination. But the announcement drew thousands of hostile comments to his Instagram account, reports Rhea Nayyar at Hyperallergic. - Read the rest The post Crowdfunding campaign for $100k Charlie Kirk statue languishes appeared first on Boing Boing.

Florence Foster Jenkins(1868 - 1944) has been called the worst opera singer who ever lived, and she filled Carnegie Hall anyway. A wealthy New York socialite, she sang coloratura arias wildly beyond her range - consistently flat, mangling the rhythm, her accompanist scrambling to follow - while dressed in wings and tinsel of her own design. - Read the rest The post The worst opera singer who ever sold out Carnegie Hall appeared first on Boing Boing.

Indiana's State Personnel Department booted a burger truck from the Statehouse Market over its slogan, "you'll love our meat in your mouth," but a First Amendment scholar suspects the state may have bitten off more than it can chew. Here's Jack Forrest, reporting for the Indiana Capital Chronicle:

In October 2000, a stunning discovery hit the antiquities market in Pakistan: a mummy in a gilded coffin, wearing a golden crown, with a cuneiform inscription identifying her as Rhodugune, a daughter of the Persian king Xerxes. Experts dated the Persian Princess to around 600 BC, and Iran, Pakistan, and the Taliban each rushed to claim her. - Read the rest The post The $11 million mummy that turned out to be a fake appeared first on Boing Boing.

Minutes before she was to be killed at a slaughterhouse in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, a three-year-old, 1,600-pound heifer named Emily cleared the five-foot gate and ran. She stayed loose for 40 days through record snowfall in the winter of 1995, foraging in backyards and, at times, running with a herd of deer. - Read the rest The post A cow escaped a slaughterhouse and hid for 40 days appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mexico's Ministry of Health has issued a travel advisory for citizens heading to the United States, where foodborne parasites have infected more than 1,600 people. The advisory was published by the National Committee for Epidemiological Surveillance, known as CONAVE. Newsweek was first to report in English, but neglects to link to the official Mexican advisory. - Read the rest The post Mexico warns travelers of "Explosive Diarrhea Risk" in USA appeared first on Boing Boing.

Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying: tell a fib, your nose grows. But the late tech writer Om Malik argued in an essay that reading "misses almost everything." Carlo Collodi's original 1881 serial, before Disney sanded it down, is a bleak portrait of a society where "deception has gone ambient" - courts punish victims, experts are decorative, and the society is focused on spectacle instead of accountability. - Read the rest The post The original Pinocchio was a dark parable about a world of lies appeared first on Boing Boing.

For most of human evolution, the air held about 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. It has now surpassed 420 and is climbing by more than 2 ppm per year. A new open-access study in Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health argues that shift may already be showing up in our blood. - Read the rest The post Rising CO2 may already be showing up in human blood - a "potentially toxic atmosphere in 50 years" appeared first on Boing Boing.

In the 19th century, people living near the Barisal region of Bangladesh kept hearing what sounded like distant cannon fire booming out of a clear sky. The Barisal guns became one of the best-known examples of a "skyquake," a sudden loud sound with no corresponding earthquake activity. - Read the rest The post What is the cause of mystery booms heard around the world? appeared first on Boing Boing.

On December 5, 1945, five Navy torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale on a routine navigation exercise and never came back - the disappearance that launched the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. Partway through, the flight leader, Lt. Charles Taylor, radioed that both his compasses had failed: "I am sure I'm in the Keys but I don't know how far down and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale." - Read the rest The post In 1945, Five bombers vanished and launched the Bermuda Triangle legend appeared first on Boing Boing.

Most UFO theories reach for outer space. The cryptoterrestrial hypothesis reaches down instead: it proposes that flying saucers come not from distant planets but from an advanced, hidden civilization that has been living on Earth all along - under the oceans, inside mountains, or beneath our feet. - Read the rest The post The theory that UFOs come from Earth, not space appeared first on Boing Boing.

On the morning of July 17, a redditor who normally pays Amazon Web Services about five cents a month opened their inbox to a wall of billing alerts and a running tab of $2.5 billion. Their whole setup was a single S3 storage bucket, untouched since 2023 and not even public. - Read the rest The post An AWS bug turned a 5-cent bill into $2.5 billion appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:This Grade Arefurbished 2020 MacBook Prohas 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 13.3-inch Retina display for $429.97 instead of $1,999.A new MacBook Pro can cost the approximate GDP of a small moon colony. Or you could get this refurbished 2020 model for $429.97 and spend the remaining $1,569.03 on rent, groceries, or an unreasonable number of novelty lamps. - Read the rest The post This $430 MacBook Pro once cost nearly $2,000 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sexsomnia is a parasomnia - in the same family as sleepwalking - in which a person engages in sexual acts during non-REM sleep. People in an episode often appear fully awake because their eyes are open, but they're unconscious and typically have no memory of what they did. - Read the rest The post Some people initiate sex in their sleep and remember none of it appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:FileJumpis offering 2TB of cloud storage in an easy-to-use package for only $59 (MSRP $467) for a lifetime subscription.No more 'out of storage' notifications blocking your flow - go with cloud storage fromFileJump for 2TB for life. - Read the rest The post Free up computer space with 2TB of cloud storage for $59 - for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Someone at TryAI handed two frontier AI models the same assignment: here's Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk," a budget, and a shell with ffmpeg plus access to every video-generation model on the market - now direct a music video by yourself. - Read the rest The post Two AIs got $100 each to make a music video by themselves appeared first on Boing Boing.

An international team including Yale researchers has described a new species of Colobus monkey living high in the forest canopy of the Democratic Republic of Congo - only the fifth new African monkey found in the past 75 years. The small, black animal wears orange-cream patches around its mouth and nose, and the people who share its forest call it "Likweli." - Read the rest The post New monkey: so rare only 8 of 52 nearby villages knew it existed appeared first on Boing Boing.

Knitters call it the sweater curse: knit a sweater for a significant other and they'll break up with you - in one version, before the sweater is even finished. In a 2005 poll, 15% of active knitters said they'd experienced the curse firsthand, and another 41% considered it a possibility to be taken seriously. - Read the rest The post Knitters believe a hand-made sweater can end your relationship appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1970, composer Gavin Bryars and a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art formed the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra open to anyone regardless of talent. Trained musicians could join too, as long as they picked an instrument entirely new to them. - Read the rest The post An orchestra with inept players sold out the Royal Albert Hall appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ten years ago, an Australian company called Geeky Sex Toys launched a line of adult toys based on Pokemon. It sold out almost instantly. Now, according to the relaunch drop, Pokemoan is back with four redesigned toys - and a disclaimer that distances it from the franchise it's plainly spoofing: "It is not licensed or endorsed by, or affiliated with, The Pokemon Company." - Read the rest The post Pokemon-parody sex toys are back, with holographic trading cards appeared first on Boing Boing.

Harkening back to the good old days when Bub Rub and Lil' Sis were all the rage, this interview is pure gold. These two gentlemen may not like turtles, but they sure have their priorities in line.A day after Los Angeles' crumbling infrastructure wiped out a critical roadway, these guys wanna know what is up with the Supreme clothing brand summer sale. - Read the rest The post This Los Angeles man-on-the-street interview is internet gold appeared first on Boing Boing.