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In April, Mike Johnson promised "exact punishment" for congressional predators. With Ohio's Max Miller facing domestic-abuse allegations, Johnson has settled on "let the process play out."The comparison is not exact. Johnson's April remarks came after Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales resigned, and Gonzales had admitted an affair with a staffer. - Read the rest The post "Exact punishment" in April, "not my business" in August: MAGA Mike Johnson's ethics policy appeared first on Boing Boing.

Black lung among veteran Appalachian miners is back to 1978 levels, at the same time the Trump administration has put stronger silica-dust protections on hold.After a century of mining, accessing Appalachia's remaining thin coal seams requires cutting through far more quartz-rich rock. - Read the rest The post Trump says coal is "a great business." One in three veteran Appalachian miners has black lung appeared first on Boing Boing.

A new law in California requires AI generators to sign their work. The first phase of its transparency law requires difficult-to-remove provenance data to be embedded in the slop.California has begun requiring generative AI services with more than 1 million monthly users to embed machine-readable provenance data in images, audio, and video they create. - Read the rest The post California makes AI companies leave fingerprints on their slop appeared first on Boing Boing.

Manuel Bravo makes video tours of ancient places, and his "Virtual Rome" reconstructs the city as it stood in the second century AD, when its buildings were at their height. The camera flies over the rooftops, moving the way drone footage does, so the views are ones no Roman ever had. - Read the rest The post Fly over ancient Rome as it looked in the second century appeared first on Boing Boing.

Unpublished author Dylan Reed createda service that cryptographically seals manuscript draftsas evidence that a human wrote them.Vellumproof stamps each version with the time, then cryptographically links it to its predecessor. If you slip a draft in later or alter its date, it will break the chain of hashes. - Read the rest The post The startup selling proof that a human wrote your manuscript appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nanit's flagship product is a camera bolted above a crib, logging the exact moment a baby's eyes open and close and scoring each night's sleep from zero to 100. The firm that built its brand identity described the job, per Sapna Maheshwari in The New York Times, as "transcending the negative connotations of 'surveillance.'" - Read the rest The post Baby monitors now want to predict who your kid will become appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:UmanWrite is anAI writing platformthat humanizes AI-generated content, checks it against AI detectors, and adapts to your voice, now $79 for the Unlimited Plan, down from $1,799.Anyone who has leaned on AI to draft an email, blog post, or school assignment knows the results can read a little stiff, a little robotic, and sometimes a little obvious. - Read the rest The post This AI writing tool humanizes your drafts before anyone notices a bot wrote them appeared first on Boing Boing.

When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz five months ago, experts predicted oil could spike to $150 or $200 a barrel. It has barely topped $100. According to Roge Karma, writing in The Atlantic, the reason may be China, which abruptly cut its oil imports by half. - Read the rest The post China cut its oil imports in half. No one knows why. appeared first on Boing Boing.

This just in from reader Theophrastvs:"here's a portentous calendricular note/post for today (only) Bradbury ~May 1950 wrote a short story about robotic assistants doing the daily choirs for an apparently extinct humanity and it's dated to occur August 4, 2026:"

The BraunSammlung is a museum of Braun's industrial design in Kronberg im Taunus, up one flight in a building Atlas Obscura describes as a German strip mall. Braun's headquarters is around the corner, and a nonprofit association runs the museum in collaboration with the company. - Read the rest The post A German strip mall hides a museum of Braun's design history appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:ThisLuminar Neo lifetime bundlepairs a full AI-powered photo editor with a landscape editing video course in addition to a number of LUTs and presets, now $79.99, down from $332.Look, we have all done it. You take four hundred photos on a trip, come home excited to relive the memories, and then realize half of them are backlit, blurry, or have a stranger's elbow photobombing the frame. - Read the rest The post This AI photo editor turns your blurry vacation pics into gallery material appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Tower of Baa-Goat is a 31-foot brick tower in Windsor, Illinois, with a ramp spiraling up the outside of it, and goats live in it. Dave and Marcia Johnson built it in the late 1990s, Marcia told the Atlas Obscura podcast, after Dave saw a photograph of the goat tower at South Africa's Fairview winery in a British wine magazine. - Read the rest The post The world's largest goat tower was built by accident appeared first on Boing Boing.

With president Donald Trump's war with Iran quagmired (media lost count weeks ago of the number of times we've won or that a deal is near; he's called off "major" new strikes 7 times in as many weeks by one count), military brass are out of ideas for making progress. - Read the rest The post U.S. Central Command asks for ideas on beating Iran appeared first on Boing Boing.

When Los Angeles Police Department officer Daniel Flores recorded his colleagues making racist, sexist and homophobic remarks, the only thing he used it for was an official complaint to LAPD's internal affairs department. For his trouble he now faces 16 felony charges of eavesdropping and recording confidential police communications. - Read the rest The post 16 felony charges for LAPD officer who recorded colleagues making racist, sexist and homophobic remarks appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Jenny Haniver is a dried ray or skate reshaped by hand until it looks like a small dragon or a demon. They go back to the sixteenth century, when sailors and collectors bought them as curiosities. The name may come from jeune d'Anvers, "youth of Antwerp" which British sailors turned into a woman's name. - Read the rest The post These little dragons are dried rays, cut and folded by hand appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Windows 11 Procomes with BitLocker, Hyper-V, Windows Sandbox, Azure AD, and Copilot, and it is on sale for $11.23, down from $199.There is a certain kind of person who upgrades their operating system the way other people change their oil, only when absolutely necessary and with mild resentment the whole time. - Read the rest The post Give your PC an upgrade that BitLocker, Hyper-V, and Copilot can all agree on appeared first on Boing Boing.

Thornwell Jacobs, the president of Oglethorpe University in Georgia, worked out that 6,177 years had passed since the start of the Egyptian calendar, and decided to aim the same distance forward. In 1940 he welded shut a converted swimming pool packed with 1930s objects, with instructions not to open it until noon on May 28, 8113. - Read the rest The post This 1940 time capsule came with its own windmill appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Enjoy 8TB of secure cloud storage with thisDrime Secure Cloud Storage Advanced Plan Lifetime Subscriptionfor just $279.97 (reg. $899).If you're tired of paying monthly fees to essentially rent cloud storage, Drime Secure Cloud Storage offers a solution. - Read the rest The post Get 8TB of secure cloud storage for life for $280 appeared first on Boing Boing.

On June 12, 2009, a man checked into a hotel in Sligo, Ireland under the name Peter Bergmann and a nonexistent Austrian address. He paid cash every night. Over the next three days, cameras around town filmed him leaving the hotel with a purple plastic bag of belongings and coming back without it, using the blind spots between cameras to dispose of whatever was inside. - Read the rest The post A man spent three days erasing himself on camera, then died on a beach appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Sonoran Desert toad is the only animal known to make a psychedelic. Its glands secrete 5-MeO-DMT, the compound users call the God molecule. The toad exists only in Sonora, Mexico - so every gram of "toad medicine" sold comes from there. - Read the rest The post The world's only psychedelic animal lives in a cartel zone appeared first on Boing Boing.

Citing many imagined achievements, the Orange Menace insists he is the most loved, most worshipped person ever.The available numbers are less celebratory. AP-NORC found 33% approval, while CNN found 34%, matching his career low in CNN polling. Trump countered with claims about taxes, employment, the border and foreign policy as proof that better polling must exist. - Read the rest The post Grandpa Pudding Brains says his "REAL Polling Numbers" are his best ever appeared first on Boing Boing.

A 5-milliliter ampoule of the world's most precise water sells for $159 - about $120,000 a gallon, Signore Galilei writes. It is Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (VSMOW), and labs buy it because water's freezing point varies based on its elemental isotopes. - Read the rest The post The world's most precise water costs $120,000 a gallon appeared first on Boing Boing.

Trump's family business sued Capital One for allegedly closing its accounts over "woke" politics. Capital One responded by telling the court about its anti-money-laundering team's findings.Capital One has not accused the Trump Organization of committing money laundering. It says the accounts were closed after months of analysis by its anti-money-laundering team, which identified transaction patterns among those flagged by federal banking guidance. - Read the rest The post Trump Org's "woke debanking" lawsuit produced an anti-money-laundering filing appeared first on Boing Boing.

Inshoku Yojo Kagami, or "Mirror of the Physiology of Drinking and Eating," is a nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock print of a man eating fish and drinking sake, with his torso cut away to show the crew of tiny workers keeping him going. - Read the rest The post Japanese prints show tiny workers running the human body appeared first on Boing Boing.

This is the cutest bedtime routine I've seen in a long time! Sit back and enjoy watching all of the sweet beasts who live at Alyssa's Animal Sanctuary tuck themselves in for the night! In the video, you first see Alyssa, owner and operator of the sanctuary, ringing a triangle to alert the animals that it's bedtime. - Read the rest The post Goats, pigs, and chickens tuck themselves in every night appeared first on Boing Boing.

It's been a while since I added a furry musician to my dream animal supergroup, which includes Lulu the Lab mix, an amazing guitarist; this Dachshund percussionist, with a mean tail-on-trash-can; and Yupia, a horse who plays guitar with his muzzle. - Read the rest The post Virgil the goat is a terrific caprine percussionist appeared first on Boing Boing.

The conspiracy theorist overseeing U.S. health policy wants to rehabilitate nicotine.Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called nicotine pouches "probably the safest way to consume nicotine," while wellness influencers promote the addictive drug for focus, energy, and relaxation. - Read the rest The post RFK Jr. praises nicotine as tech companies hand it to workers appeared first on Boing Boing.

Pushball is a sport that uses a ball six feet three inches across. The Massachusetts inventor Moses G. Crane came up with it in the 1890s because he couldn't follow American football, a small brown ball moving across a mostly brown field. - Read the rest The post Students once played a sport with a ball taller than they were appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sand men were buskers who sculpted the beach just off the Atlantic City boardwalk and worked for tips. They built in high relief out of saltwater-soaked sand, life-size and bigger: a slain soldier beside his fallen horse, Christ on the cross, lions and snakes, a mermaid. - Read the rest The post Life-size sand sculptures once lined the Atlantic City boardwalk appeared first on Boing Boing.

The computer component price crisis, driven by AI datacenters snapping it all up for the slop trade, has crushed few so hard as the gamers. The laptop I bought my son for $600 last year is currently $955 at the same shop. - Read the rest The post PC and console prices still going up appeared first on Boing Boing.

The renaissance of pocket point-and-shoot cameras proceeds apace with Kodak's EC35, inexpensive at $35 and good enough to take to the party. If the Charmera and its blind-box business model represents a digital extravagance, and the $100 Snapic was simply too cool for school, the EC35 is the real deal shoved back in your pocket. - Read the rest The post Charmera too modern for you? Kodak's $35 film camera puts 1990 in your pocket appeared first on Boing Boing.

You may be aware that cops have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public, and that you have a constitutional right to record what they do. Cellphone video proved that police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck for nearly 10 minutes, and the right to record it is why the footage helped convict him of his murder. - Read the rest The post A printable one-page Guide to Recording Law Enforcement appeared first on Boing Boing.

Anime User Interfaces collects depictions of computer screens, keyboards, dashboards and other gadgets depicted in Japanese animation (and a few others, such as Wargames' NORAD big boards, as a treat.) Spotted via Hacker News, which links to an interesting article explaining why glowing lights in analog animation and film SFX have such a weird magic. - Read the rest The post Gallery of anime user interfaces appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Marnameh is a short Persian book, written in the late fifteenth century, that explains the meaning of seeing a snake. It runs through the thirty days of the Zoroastrian calendar, most of them named for a divinity or figure, and gives the omen attached to a snake sighting on each one. - Read the rest The post A 15th-century Persian book says what a snake sighting means appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ballots for a special election in England's Clacton-by-Sea are the longest ever produced in U.K. electoral history despite^1 only one major party contesting the race. The vote, scheduled later this month, was triggered by the showy resignation of Clacton's current member of parliament, Nigel Farage. - Read the rest The post Clacton-by-Sea voters get the longest ballot in UK election history appeared first on Boing Boing.

Of the studies on mixing alcohol and energy drinks funded by Red Bull or written by researchers with financial ties to it, 95% found no added risk. Roughly 80% of independent studies found the opposite, The Examination reports.At a February 2011 hearing in Suffolk County, New York, Dutch researcher Joris Verster likened blaming energy drinks for alcohol-fueled injuries to blaming shark attacks on ice cream sales. - Read the rest The post Red Bull paid for the studies saying vodka Red Bulls are fine appeared first on Boing Boing.

A report this week that China has begun mass-producing specialty chips key to the AI boom set off a selloff that erased $1 trillion in market value from other chip manufacturers, according to the Guardian. The same week, the Federal Communications Commission banned humanoid robots from China, alleging they could steal data or surveil US citizens. - Read the rest The post A chip report out of China erased $1 trillion in market value appeared first on Boing Boing.

A lightbulb in a Livermore, California fire station has burned for more than 120 years, past a million hours, and it is the stock proof that manufacturers once colluded to make bulbs burn out. It is also barely lit: the nominally 60-watt lamp draws four watts, according to electronics blogger Maurycy's post on tungsten filaments. - Read the rest The post The lightbulb that's burned for 120 years draws four watts appeared first on Boing Boing.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Paul Adams sexually abused all six of his children for at least seven years before he was caught. He killed himself after being charged, but not before investigators realized that bishops and other officials at the Church of Latter Day Saints had long been aware of what he was doing to his children. - Read the rest The post Arizona Supreme Court: clergy don't have to report child abuse confessions appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Little Debbie delivery driver sold more than $17,000 worth of cargo at flea markets and billed grocery stores for deliveries that never happened, say police in Pennsylvania. WTAE reports that James Powell, 39, of Valley Grove, West Virginia, faces forgery, theft and fraud charges. - Read the rest The post Little Debbie delivery driver made $17k selling them from his truck at flea markets, say cops appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Add fresh tools to an old PC for just $32.97 with thislifetime license to Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows, on sale now through August 9.Sometimes it's best to go back to basics. Whether you're trying to finalize a budget, write a report, or organize your schedule,Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windowscan help. - Read the rest The post Get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more for life for less than $5 each with this Microsoft Office license appeared first on Boing Boing.

Physicist Rhett Allain wants to retire the messy-bedroom explanation of entropy. Disorder, he writes in Wired, "doesn't mean messiness or chaos" - it counts the ways a system's parts can be rearranged without changing its overall state.He uses dice instead. - Read the rest The post The messy-bedroom explanation of entropy is wrong appeared first on Boing Boing.

Delish food editor Brooke Caison explains why tomato sauce turns plastic containers orange. Cooked and canned tomatoes are loaded with lycopene, a heavily pigmented antioxidant that repels water. Plastic repels water too, so the pigment bonds to the container.Hot leftovers make it worse. - Read the rest The post Why tomato sauce stains plastic, and the 30-second fix appeared first on Boing Boing.

The smallest production car ever made shipped without a reverse gear. When a Peel P50 driver needed to turn around in a tight spot, they got out, grabbed the handle bolted to the back of the car, and dragged it around by hand. - Read the rest The post The smallest car ever made had no reverse gear appeared first on Boing Boing.

Carved into the Hathor temple at Dendera in Egypt is a relief that looks a great deal like a lightbulb: an oval bubble with a snake curling inside it, held up by a pillar. A fringe theory holds that this is evidence of ancient Egyptian electric lighting, based on the resemblance to incandescent bulbs, cathode-ray tubes, and Crookes tubes. - Read the rest The post The Egyptian temple carving that looks like a giant lightbulb appeared first on Boing Boing.

When police reached the Harlem brownstone at 2078 Fifth Avenue in March 1947, the doors were wired shut and the foyer was packed solid with old newspapers, folding beds, half a sewing machine, boxes, and parts of a wine press. A patrolman finally broke in through a second-story window and dug for five hours before finding Homer Collyer's body. - Read the rest The post Two brothers filled a Harlem brownstone with 140 tons of stuff appeared first on Boing Boing.

On June 11, 1994, a user posting anonymously through a remailer to the Pink Floyd newsgroup on Usenet told fans that the band's new album had "a central purpose and a designed solution" buried in it. Study the artwork, the lyrics, and the music, the poster said. - Read the rest The post In 1984, an anonymous poster said a Pink Floyd album hid a prize. Nobody ever found it appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 2018, I won the coveted "every word more horrifying than the last" award for the headline "Spiders Blamed After Broken Siren Played Creepy Nursery Rhymes Randomly To British Townsfolk." I expect to win this award a second time, thanks to famed singer Boy George's latest antics turning out to have an amazing contextual backdrop. - Read the rest The post Boy George's Pro-Israel AI Slop Reggae Song was Promotional Stunt for Playing Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar appeared first on Boing Boing.

An author's debut novel scored $2.4m in licensing deals after Minotaur/Macmillan acquired it, but they unraveled after "questions were raised" over exactly who, or what, wrote it. Deadline reports "there are apparently fingerprints, or something that raised the flags of AI censors," a description that illustrates how well the entertainment industry understands the technology at hand. - Read the rest The post Unpublished novel's $2.4m deal pulled over AI concerns appeared first on Boing Boing.

YouTube terminated the channels of several popular ASMR artists this week, telling them their content violated its policies against sexual material. 404 Media's Samantha Cole reports that those banned include ItsBunniiASMR, Slight Sounds, Nananightray, Roseasmr, Simoneasmr and Janina Wilhelmsen. - Read the rest The post YouTube crackles down on ASMR content appeared first on Boing Boing.