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A bag of loose zip ties always seems to collapse into the same knotted ball at the bottom of a drawer. Writing in his latest Gar's Tips & Tools newsletter, maker and longtime tech writer Gareth Branwyn passes along a fix he picked up from an Instagram creator who goes by The No Way Guy: chain the ties together so they stop wandering off. - Read the rest The post A clever trick to keep loose zip ties from turning into a tangle appeared first on Boing Boing.

A fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Gus sold at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday for $50.1 million to a phone bidder, making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil ever auctioned. The price nearly doubled its estimate and beat the $44.6 million a stegosaurus fetched in 2024. - Read the rest The post A T. rex skeleton just sold for a record $50.1 million appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: For just $111.99 (reg. $269.99), theKyocera DuraXE Epic E4830flip phone is a reliable, premium downgrade that's suitable for travel and worksites.If you're a traveler or someone who works in harsh environments, spending money on the latest smartphone is pointless. - Read the rest The post Stay connected with this refurbished $112 flip phone appeared first on Boing Boing.

There is a special section of the human brain where stuff like this lives:Sniffing it and pulling it out still confuses me.Previously:

Carl McDaniel, the tourist who was launched into the air by a Yellowstone bison, recognizes the animal could have killed him but chose not to do so. The bison has still not been reached for comment.Having shared his story, all I can say is Carl McDaniel is one awesome grandfather. - Read the rest The post Man, yeeted by a bison, is grateful for its mercy appeared first on Boing Boing.

To be honest and vulnerable, the last thing I remember liking Tom Cruise in was that mistakenly uploaded The Mummy trailer with the music and sound effects missing. Before that, it was probably Collateral, if only because his villain turn allowed him to flex his acting muscles instead of being yet another runny jumpy action guy. - Read the rest The post Tom Cruise plays an eccentric billionaire in a doomsday short film appeared first on Boing Boing.

An eternity and a half ago, I wrote about Footy Scran, a growing database of the most appetizing (or not) food served at stadiums across the world. If you're going to be paying thirty bucks out of pocket for a thing of fries with mayo (oh, sorry, aioli) that will instantly go limp under the harsh summer sun, the least it can do is look good. - Read the rest The post Scrandle turns stadium food into a daily taste test appeared first on Boing Boing.

Bethesda's magnum opus The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the most modded, dissected, and reinvented games ever made, if not the most. There's one glaring oversight that none of the province's jarls have ever taken steps to fix, though: there's no public transit. - Read the rest The post A YouTuber gave Skyrim a full high-speed rail network appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Optimize your digital office set up with 92% off thisMicrosoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows + Windows 11 Pro Bundlefor just $34.97 (Reg. $418.99).What if you could expand your digital landscape and optimize all your processes without spending your monthly business budget on one subscription? - Read the rest The post The smartest business decision you can make? Optimizing your operating system for 92% off appeared first on Boing Boing.

Venice's buildings were famously built on millions of wooden piles driven into marshy lagoon floor, but the lagoon itself is not one giant man-made raft. It contains natural, marshy, reclaimed, and artificial islands, formed over thousands of years by rising seas and sediment. - Read the rest The post The only curse on Venice's cursed island is us appeared first on Boing Boing.

Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist dictator who sealed Albania off from most of the world, was sure enemies could strike at any moment - "like the snake that bites you and injects its poison before you are aware of it." So, from the 1960s to the 1980s, his government fortified the country withmore than 750,000 concrete bunkers, an average of 5.7 per square kilometer, sprouting from beaches, vineyards, mountain passes, and city streets. - Read the rest The post A paranoid dictator built 750,000 bunkers no one ever used except for sex appeared first on Boing Boing.

A spite house is a building put up to punish someone - by blocking a neighbor's light, ruining a view, or planting a permanent monument to a grudge in their sightline. America has been building them for centuries. In 1716, sailmaker Thomas Wood built the ten-foot-wide Old Spite House in Marblehead, Massachusetts - by one account, sized precisely to block the view of two houses on Orne Street after its owner got a small share of his father's estate. - Read the rest The post Houses built for one purpose: to make the neighbors miserable appeared first on Boing Boing.

AI models contain a vast, compressed map that they pull every answer and image out of. In his new essay, Kevin Kelly calls this latent space a real creative medium, as consequential as film or photography. Because the model stores patterns instead of copies, the sum of human knowledge fits on a palm-sized card. - Read the rest The post The billion-dimensional map hidden inside every AI model appeared first on Boing Boing.

When a heatwave hits the UK, where almost no homes have air conditioning, staying cool takes improvisation. Dr. Ben Roberts, a researcher at Loughborough University, tested one of the stranger fixes going around and found it actually works: smear plain yogurt on the outside of your windows. - Read the rest The post Smearing yogurt on your windows can cool a house by 6 degrees appeared first on Boing Boing.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is not a Mexican company: the U.S. "burrito giant," as the BBC puts it, has 4,100 outlets across the world but none in the country that inspired its menu. Osmond Chia reports that the first is coming soon, though, with Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright announcing that they are "entering Meixco with deep respect for the country's culinary heritage." - Read the rest The post Chipotle Mexican Grill actually opening a restaurant in Mexico appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get this13.2-inch 2019 Dell Latitude 7300 with preloaded Windows 11 Profor just $249.99 (reg. $699).Sometimes all you need is a dependable laptop that provides stable everyday functioning, and the Dell Latitude 7300 does just that. This laptop is a business-class piece of hardware designed for individuals looking for the intersection between modernity and security-grab it now for just $249.99 (reg. - Read the rest The post This refurbished Dell Latitude laptop is just $250 with Windows 11 Pro appeared first on Boing Boing.

A tick bite can make you become allergic to hamburgers. Alpha-gal syndrome - a red-meat allergy triggered by the Lone Star tick - is spreading so quickly that researchers just held the first-ever scientific conference on it. According to Scientific American, the CDC estimates 450,000 Americans have it, and a July study found about one in four people tested across five Southern states carried the antibodies. - Read the rest The post A tick bite can make you allergic to meat, and cases are climbing appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1995, a Dutch television repairman named Jan Sloot claimed he had cracked something impossible: a way to store an entire feature film in a single kilobyte of data, less than the plain text of this post. The Sloot Digital Coding System defied a basic law of information theory, which says that much unique video simply cannot be squeezed into that few bits. - Read the rest The post The hoaxter who claimed he could fit a whole movie in one kilobyte appeared first on Boing Boing.

Juliane Koepcke survived a plane breaking apart at 10,000 feet on Christmas Eve, woke up alone in the Peruvian Amazon, and then had to do the only thing more impossible than falling from the sky: walk out.Koepcke's survival seems like a fantasy because every detail feels invented by a cruel storyteller: Christmas Eve, lightning, a plane coming apart, a girl strapped to a row of seats, one sandal, candy from the wreckage, vultures, maggots, petrol, fishermen who briefly thought she was a river spirit. - Read the rest The post She fell out of the sky on Christmas Eve. The jungle was only the beginning. appeared first on Boing Boing.

"Hillary" Dawa Sherpa was presumed dead on Everest. His family had begun funeral rites. Then a cleanup crew found him crawling near the Khumbu Icefall.Everest stories either arrive dressed up as triumph: flags, summits, sponsor logos, oxygen bottles, a human doing something expensive and stupid at altitude, or a person turned into a popsicle. - Read the rest The post Sherpa left for dead on Everest tells his story appeared first on Boing Boing.

CDs are somehow cool again, which means we have reached the part of the streaming era where everyone misses "owning" music.This video sets up vinyl, CD, and lossless streaming systems side by side, then walks through the hardware and the arguments: turntables, cartridges, tonearms, CD players, DACs, and whether a modern streamer can compete with physical media in terms of sound quality. - Read the rest The post CDs are back because streaming made music feel disposable appeared first on Boing Boing.

A sugar found in raspberries and used in fake tan lotion has turned up in a huge cloud of dust and gas near the heart of the Milky Way, according to the Guardian. The compound, erythrulose, is the first sugar ever detected in interstellar space. - Read the rest The post A sugar used in fake tan was found floating in deep space appeared first on Boing Boing.

Everyone knows how to ride a bike. Nobody completely knows why the bike is helping.The old explanation was that bicycles stay upright because of spinning wheels acting like gyroscopes. That is part of the story, but not the whole story. - Read the rest The post The humble bicycle is still hiding a physics mystery appeared first on Boing Boing.

For forty years, one sailor knew the North Atlantic by color, smell, light, weather, and the animals that surfaced around him. Then, in 1907, he wrote that the sea had changed - not for a season, not for a storm, but for good. - Read the rest The post In 1907, a sailor watched the North Atlantic mysteriously change color forever appeared first on Boing Boing.

Staff at Florence's Santa Maria Nuova hospital are accustomed to tourists arriving with dizzy spells and disorientation after viewing Michelangelo's David or the Botticellis in the Uffizi. The condition has a name: Stendhal syndrome, a psychosomatic reaction to great art that can include rapid heartbeat, confusion, hallucinations, and fainting. - Read the rest The post Florence hospital staff are used to tourists collapsing from beauty appeared first on Boing Boing.

"I don't care if it's a trans, gender confused person, if it's a muslim, if it's whoever else that's standing in front of you that's spitting on you, cussing at you, throwing your buttons everywhere - you are what, you are a happy warrior, that is what you are." - Read the rest The post Erika Kirk rallies her "happy warriors" against trans people, Muslims, and "whoever else" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Yellowstone tourons, AKA tourist/morons, regularly get stomped, gored, and launched into the air by bison when disregarding the rules and disrespecting wildlife. In a rare turn of events, a man who, by all accounts, did nothing wrong was tossed up into the air by an agitated bison. - Read the rest The post Tourist yeeted by Yellowstone bison not at fault, for once appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: TheUltimate 3-Month Xbox Game Passgives you access to over 500 high-quality games, in-game add-ons, consumables, and partner offers at no additional cost. Get it now for just $62.09 (reg. $89.99).If you're tired of paying full price for every new release, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offers access to hundreds of games for one subscription price. - Read the rest The post Play 500+ games with 3 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $62 appeared first on Boing Boing.

The free IKEA pencil - the little stub in the box next to the maps and measuring tapes - has changed color over the years, from blue to yellow to bare wood, but never its dimensions: 7 by 87 millimeters. IKEA orders 5.2 million of them a year for its Canadian stores alone. - Read the rest The post Surgeons use free IKEA pencils to mark bone cuts appeared first on Boing Boing.

An entry in the Close Rolls of Edward I's chancery for April 26, 1278, records that one John le Fucker of Tythinge, imprisoned at Peterborough for the deaths of Walter and William de Leyghton, was granted letters of bail. Lexicographers have been arguing about his name ever since. - Read the rest The post A 1278 court record may hold the first written F-word appeared first on Boing Boing.

At Greek drinking parties in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, guests reclined on couches and competed at kottabos - flicking the sediment from the bottom of their wine cups at a bronze target across the room. The standard rig was a small disc balanced on top of a lamp stand; a direct hit knocked it down onto a larger disc below with a bell-like clang. - Read the rest The post Ancient Greeks built special arenas for flinging wine dregs at targets appeared first on Boing Boing.

A man walking with his grandson at Yellowstone's Bridge Bay Campground was hurled about eight feet into the air by a bull bison on July 10, Cowboy State Daily reports. The two believed they were keeping a safe distance - more than 100 yards - when a passing white pickup truck spooked the animal into charging, and it turned on the pair as they ducked into nearby trees. - Read the rest The post A bison tossed a Yellowstone tourist 8 feet in the air appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:If your camera roll is a graveyard of screenshots and duplicate photos,CleanMyPhoneuses AI to sort through the mess for you - a 1-year license is on sale for $59.99, down from $99.99.Manually scrolling through thousands of photos to figure out what's safe to delete is tedious enough that most people just... don't. - Read the rest The post Your camera roll is a disaster - This app fixes it for $60 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tacoma, Washington spent most of a century known for its smell. The Aroma of Tacoma - a rotten-egg odor concentrated in the tideflats and familiar to anyone driving that stretch of Interstate 5 - got its name by the early 1940s, though resident George Francis Train was already rhyming on it in a 1901 civic cheer: "Seattle! - Read the rest The post The rotten-egg stench that drove Bruce Springsteen out of Tacoma appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 2014, an author calling herself Grace Ann Parsons, username "proudhousewife," began serializing Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles on FanFiction.Net. Her version recast Harry as an American orphan raised by his atheist, career-driven aunt Petunia. Hagrid arrives as an evangelical missionary who knocks on the Dursleys' door, and Harry heads off to a Hogwarts where Headmaster Dumbledore - now married, with a daughter named Hermione - teaches prayer instead of spells. - Read the rest The post The fan fiction that rewrote Harry Potter as an evangelical tract appeared first on Boing Boing.

When the WS Game Company got hit with a seven-figure tariff bill on the board games it imports from China, CEO Jonathan Silva decided to find out whether he could make one in America instead. He picked a 250th-birthday edition called Monopoly: The Americana Edition and, according to NPR, hit a wall almost immediately: he couldn't find anyone in the United States to make him 10,000 dice. - Read the rest The post A company tried to make Monopoly in America and couldn't get dice appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Get lifetime access to theuTalk language learning appand learn from native speakers for $69.97 (reg. $300), its best price yet through July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT.Most language apps can handle Spanish, Italian, or French. But things can get trickier if you want to learn Urdu, Swahili, Icelandic, or one of the many other languages that rarely make the app-store shortlist. - Read the rest The post Learn 150+ languages for life for $70 with uTalk appeared first on Boing Boing.

On June 3, 1929, a Treasury official named A.E. Banham authorized the Office Keeper at 10 Downing Street "to spend 1d a day from petty cash towards the maintenance of an efficient cat." The job remains to this day. Britain's official resident cat now carries the title Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, and the current officeholder, Larry - a Battersea rescue picked out by David Cameron's family in 2011 after TV cameras caught rats running across the front steps of Number 10 - is the first cat to hold it officially. - Read the rest The post The British government has kept a cat on the payroll since 1929 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Los Angeles police are ending their three-year agreement with Flock Safety after privacy and civil liberties concerns, which is what happens when "neighborhood safety camera" starts sounding a lot like "citywide photographic dragnet."KABC reports that LAPD will allow its agreement with Flock Safety to expire Saturday, ending a three-year relationship with the company. - Read the rest The post Los Angeles police pause Flock's surveillance of everyday life appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:New members can score a1-year Sam's Club membership for just $25for a limited time.Warehouse clubs get a bad rap for feeling like a chore, butSam's Clubhas quietly become one of the easiest ways to cut your grocery bill without changing how you shop. - Read the rest The post You should get a Sam's Club Membership for $25 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:A lifetime license toMicrosoft Office Professional 2021 for Windowsis available now for only $29.97 (MSRP $219.99).Another subscription bites the dust - get the classic2021 Microsoft Office suitefor a one-time purchase to own Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and 5 more programs for life. - Read the rest The post Kill a subscription and own Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for life for just $30 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Anthony Hopkins, famed for his Oscar-winning performance as serial killer Hannibal Lecter among many other movie and television roles, has his first album coming out at 88 years of age. A lifelong composer, but busy with other work ("Music was my first desire," he says) Hopkins took 60 years to complete Life is a Dream. - Read the rest The post Anthony Hopkins releases first album at 88 appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Asian swamp eel (Monopterus albus) is an unusual freshwater fish with a snake-like body and no scales. Native to East and Southeast Asia, it lives in wetlands, rice paddies, canals, and slow-moving streams. It can breathe through its skin and the lining of its mouth, allowing it to survive in oxygen-poor water and even spend days out of water when conditions require it. - Read the rest The post Watch Asian swamp eels emerge from the mud for feeding time appeared first on Boing Boing.

Hastings, Nebraska, is the birthplace of Kool-Aid, and the city's museum has a permanent exhibit dedicated to the powdered drink's history. You can see photos of it here on Atlas Obscura. The display follows inventor Edwin Perkins, who transformed an earlier liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack into the easier-to-ship powdered mix that became Kool-Aid in 1927. - Read the rest The post The Hastings Museum celebrates Kool-Aid's origins with a permanent exhibit appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nine months into a ceasefire, Israel now controls nearly 70% of Gaza, up from 50% before the "ceasefire," because apparently the "cease" part was more of a branding exercise.NPR reports that when the ceasefire began in October, Israel controlled about half of Gaza along the "yellow line." - Read the rest The post Gaza's ceasefire has somehow expanded Israel's control to nearly 70% appeared first on Boing Boing.

SleepScroll is a free browser toy that offers an alternative to the endless social media feed. Instead, you are invited to interact with something designed to help you fall asleep rather than keep you awake. You scroll through a night sky where every familiar gesture works differently. - Read the rest The post SleepScroll is the anti-feed your brain has been waiting for appeared first on Boing Boing.

Since North Carolina's famed 11-foot-8-inch can-opener bridge was raised to 12 feet and 4 inches, the bridge's steady flow of victims has slowed to a trickle. Thanks to a major road closure, an overpass in Louisville, Kentucky, has stepped up its game, averaging one victim a day. - Read the rest The post Louisville's Can Opener gives 11foot8 a run for its money, peeling open trucks at a rate of about 1 per day appeared first on Boing Boing.

A single developer working under the name Novatetsu Games has built a train simulator that Steam reviewers are calling the best ever made. Running Train, an $18 Early Access release, recreates two fictional Japanese lines in obsessive detail - 42 routes across 40 kilometers of track, with rain, snow, and seasonal shifts you can watch roll past from a free camera if you would rather ride than drive. - Read the rest The post One person built what players call the best train sim ever appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Cancel your monthly license and getVisual Studio Pro 2026for life on sale for $35 (reg. $499.99).Good development softwareisn't cheap, but it's probably not as expensive as you think. Visual Studio Pro is one of the most popular IDEs in the world, and instead of paying a monthly license, you can get it for life on sale for $34.97 (reg. - Read the rest The post Did anybody expect Microsoft to drop Visual Studio Pro 2026 lifetime licenses for $35? appeared first on Boing Boing.

For most of the twentieth century, if you needed an ambulance in America, a funeral home sent one - the only vehicle built to carry someone lying flat was the hearse. David Oks traces the whole expensive mess back to that arrangement: funeral homes ran cars that carried patients and coffins alike and barely charged, because "the family that called you for the ride to the hospital was likely to also call you for the funeral." - Read the rest The post Why an ambulance ride can cost $12,873 - blame the hearse appeared first on Boing Boing.