Boing Boing

I have a few different mechanical pencils. The ones I commonly use have lead thicknesses of 0.7mm and 0.5mm, both of which are fine for everyday notetaking. But when my daughter and I fire up the DOSBOX DOS emulator on my Macbook Pro to play Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981) only one […]

Impeached president Donald Trump held a small campaign rally without social distancing and not many masks, at North Carolina's Smith Reynolds Airport. "It's very simple to remember: If Biden wins, China wins," lied @POTUS. And then, moments later, the line changed. "If Biden wins, the rioters, anarchists and looters win," Trump lied. And then, the […]

Cory just kicked off his first Kickstart and I just kicked in! It's for the audiobook edition of Cory's third "Little Brother" novel, Attack Surface. You can read the details on the Kickstarter page and on his website, Pluralistic: I have a favor to ask of you. I don't often ask readers for stuff, but […]

The drug spice has been chemically altered to circumvent the UK's laws against it, and the new version is causing havoc in the streets. It's also being blamed for a threefold increase in unnatural deaths among UK prisoners. Via VICE: Responding to a series of bans in the 2010s, Chinese chemists repeatedly tweaked the molecular […]

In the U.S., 32 states currently have either restrictions or an outright ban on driving with a smartphone in your hand. Whether you're talking, texting or looking up directions, using your phone while you drive is distracted driving — and no matter how skilled you are, it can lead to lapses or even a tragic […]

From the makers of General Jeff's "Old Rebel" Session Papers, comes this six pack of Smoke-A-Dope pre-rolled cones ($5). Introducing Smoke-A-Dope, the new Trolling Papers that let you ridicule and dishonor the awful president by burning an effigy* of him. Because he deserves it… Let's smoke this dope out of office! *Remember, kids: burning an effigy is strictly a symbolic act, […]

Over at Wirecutter, my friend and colleague James Austin has a wonderful new guide that covers everything you need to run a remote/online Dungeons and Dragons campaign with your friends while still keeping a social distance from everything but goblins (it's always goblins). Most importantly, the article includes this wonderful passage: The real world is […]

A gentleman aggressively borrowing THE plot device from a beloved children's novel is surprised people want to win a candy factory. Fast Company: David Klein, who sold his stake in Jelly Belly in 1980 and now runs a company called Spectrum Confections, announced last week that he will give away a candy factory to one […]

Since he was a kid, Destin Sandlin from Smarter Every Day has wondered what would happen when a baseball went supersonic. So he build a supersonic baseball cannon. You may recall he built a similar gun to stress test a golf ball: Image: YouTube / Smarter Every Day

When you're the king, someone is always coming for your crown. Nowhere is that more true than in the tech sector, where a perennial favorite like Adobe and their insanely popular Creative Cloud app suite have to keep innovating to stay on top of the digital media creation software game. Keeping abreast of changes and […]

Last week when Trump arrived in Wilmington, North Carolina for an appearance, The Animals classic 1964 hit "House of the Rising Sun" blared from the loudspeakers. The Animals' Eric Burdon heard about that and is A-OK with that use of the traditional folk song his band made famous. From Burdon's Instagram post: Even though nobody […]

On August 21 at the US Smithsonian's National Zoo, Mei Xiang gave birth to a beautiful panda cub. You can check out the Zoo's Giant Panda Cams but for an immediate dose of panda joy, Zoo curators Michael Brown-Palsgrove and Laurie Thompson and panda keeper Marty Dearie selected their "Top Ten Panda Cub Cam Moments." […]

This is from the 7 Sep 2020 issue of my new newsletter, The Magnet. Sign up for it here! (Before reading further, please draw a simple bicycle without looking at a reference image.) Ten years ago, Andrew Neher invited me to draw a bike from memory for his Bike Drawings website. I asked my wife and daughters to participate, […]

This essay from Moneyness by JP Koning is from 2019, but I just came across it. It's about Starbucks stored value accounts, which come in the form of physical cards but also as smartphone and smartwatch apps. In 2019 customers were holding about $1.6 billion in stored value.

Police in Millersburg, Kentucky, pulled over a driver last week after noticing that their license plate looked a bit "off model," as cartoonists say. The individual was also lacking auto insurance and driving on a suspended license. The Millersburg Police Department offered this "pro tip": "Don't forget to draw the registration sticker." (WDRB)

In 1984 The New Yorker published a story written by Janet Malcolm. The story, says Malcolm in the 24 Sep 2020 issue of The New York Review of Books, was "about a disturbance in an obscure corner of the psychoanalytic world whose chief subject, a man named Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, hadn't liked his portrayal and […]

Many children who get Covid-19 are unlikely to show symptoms and very few will die from the disease. But the authors of a new paper in EClinicalMedicine (a journal of The Lancet) say even asymptomatic children are susceptible to a heart inflammation syndrome that can cause permanent heart damage. From The University of Texas Health […]

Using Europe's largest solar telescope, GREGOR, researchers captured these incredible images of details on the surface of the sun. Above is a sunspot while the image below "reveals intricate structures of solar magnetic fields." In this case, the smallest details are around 50 km, which compared to the sun's diameter of 1.4 million km, is […]

I recently re-watched the Spielberg-Tom Cruise big screen adaptation of Minority Report. It still holds up as a great sci-fi film about the dangers of the surveillance state, but it also loses something in the way it strays from the source material. I'm hardly an adaptation purist, but Philip K Dick's original "Minority Report" short […]

In 1912, 4-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing during a family fishing trip in Louisiana. Eight months later, a boy matching his description appeared in Mississippi. But was it Bobby Dunbar? In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the dispute over the boy's identity. We'll also contemplate a scholarship for idlers and […]

Everyday carry items have to clear new hurdles these days. Because while the number of items we might like to have with us at all times keeps growing, we still only have two hands. And bags start getting pretty darn heavy. To make the cut now, an item usually has to serve a few distinct […]

This is me, every morning, turning on the internet to see what new delights await.

YouTuber Ann Reardon of How to Cook That looks closely at viral content channels to learn how they get millions, even billions, of views with some sneaky tricks. Humorously, she's titled her own video using the clickbait formula she reveals in the video: Number + Adjective + Keyword + Promise. And, unlike the ones she […]

Actor John Boyega — he played Finn in the most recent Star Wars trilogy — is the feature of this month's GQ cover story. There are lots of great insights and anecdotes throughout the lengthy interview, especially as Boyega discusses his diasporic experiences in Nigeria, his mental health, Black fashion, and shifting perspectives of racism […]

The New York City rats are hungry. That's not a good sign. From the New York Post: "I saw the little pigeon that was hurt and it was kind staggering and injured and out of nowhere, the rat came and just literally attacked it," [Naquazia] Gresham, 32, told The Post on Thursday. One of her […]

Octavia Butler was the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship — a particularly impressive feat, considering the hurdles that have traditional stood in the way for both women, and Black people, in publishing and elsewhere. 11 years later, she died of a stroke at the age of 58. And despite her […]

After reports of a casket floating in the South River near Annapolis, Maryland, police responded only to find that it was a dock. [103 WRNR via AP] Photos of the slab were posted to the Facebook page of local station WRNR. In the comments, one Allen Rucker shared a local legend. This is no lie, […]

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated just 73 seconds after liftoff. The seven person crew included high school teacher Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian to fly into space. I'll never forget that day nor will anyone who tuned in and watched the tragedy happen in the blink of an eye. Challenger: The […]

Imagine that your jacket changes shape depending on the temperature or your socks can provide additional support with the push of a button. Harvard engineers created a new material using keratin from wool that can be 3D printed in unusual shapes. Even after the material is deformed and "locked" as another kind of shape, just […]

Discovered by journalists with Vesti Yamal TV in Russia, a 164-ft crater in Siberia joins the other mysterious holes (previously, previously) thought to be the result of methane explosions. Record temperatures in the region accellerate the thawing of permafrost, releasing the trapped gases. This is the 17th such feature, called a hydrolaccolith, that scientists have […]

Pretzel discovered bowl hockey as a puppy and has never looked back. Affectionately known as Zuul the destroyer, Pretzel will bat that that bowl until I put food into it or take it away. She is the most snuggly of puppies and sleeps on my head.

On November 13, just days after the presidential election, Negativland is releasing their new album, The World Will Decide. The music video for the first single, "Don't Don't Get Freaked Out" is available to view now. They've also got a new Chrome browser extension — interesting! What is The World Will Decide? What's even worth remembering […]

A few years ago, writer David F. Walker and illustrator Sanford Greene worked on a run of Power Fist and Iron Man for Marvel Comics that was utterly delightful. I loved Greene's gritty cartooning, and I loved the unapologetic Blackness of the story (and, for me, the embarrassingly relatable idiocy of Iron Fist's whiteness). So […]

This is my kind of ASMR. From the vaults, Barack Obama speaking at the Cambridge Public Library in Massachussetts, recorded on September 20, 1995. This segment originally aired on the local Channel 37 Cambridge Municipal Television as an episode of the show "The Author Series." In this episode Obama discusses his book "Dreams from My […]

Donald Trump today ordered AG Bill Barr to designate various U.S. cities led by Democratic mayors as "anarchist juristictions," and to defund those "lawless" cities. Seattle, Portland, New York and Washington are all on the Trump hit list. "My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into […]

• At least 260 coronavirus cases are traced to Sturgis motorcycle rally last month, where many didn't wear masks A Minnesota man who went to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota in August has died from COVID-19, said health officials in Minnesota on Wednesday. The Minnesotan who went to Sturgis then died of coronavirus […]

Florian Kohler from Venom Trickshots and Valerie Bedard demonstrate proper technique for jumping a ball. Valerie uses a jump cue, but it is not a requirement. After attempting to jump a ball, this DIY video may also come in handy: Image: YouTube / Venom Trickshots

YouTuber Randomonium decided to build his own invisibility shield after seeing some examples online. Based on his field testing, he was able to make a few improvements. FYI this was the video from Quantum Stealth that inspired him: Image: YouTube / Randomonium

Doctors in Germany treating Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny say he was poisoned with a novichok-class nerve agent. The conclusion sharpens suspicion of the Russian government, which developed the chemical and has used it in the past in similar attacks. Angela Merkel has demanded answers from the Kremlin over the "attempted murder" of the Russian […]

What a shot! A Ranger used a shotgun slug to break two horn-locked bucks free.

People with normal blood pressure, even people with no history of heart disease, can decrease their likelihood of having a stroke or heart disease if they reduce their blood pressure below normal levels. Scientists came to this conclusion in a study of 348,854 participants from 48 trials. The European Society of Cardiology says, "each 5 […]

Mosquitoes spread Zika, West Nile, Chikungunya, Dengue, and Malaria, resulting in 700 million illnesses a year and a million deaths. Even if you don't get sick from a mosquito bite, the blood thinner they pump into your flesh before draining your blood causes swelling and itching. This article in Smithsonian Magazine lists the factors that […]

In every high school there's always one or two guys who look like they're full-grown adults. Maybe they are! Police in Baldwin County, Georgia arrested Abay Holmes, 21, who had pretended to be a homeless 14-year-old and signed up for high school. WMAZ reported that "a woman in Milledgeville took in Holmes and he was […]

Yesterday I drove a new-to-me white 2012 Ford F150 V8 work truck from LA to San Francisco to see my daughter and deliver her bicycle plus other summer beach stuffs that were abandoned in the dead Vanagon. The truck is like a giant living room that never need stop for gas! Electra and I were […]

98 Kōshien is a high school baseball videogame released only in Japan for the PlayStation in 1998. One of the features is the ability to customize the pitchers' windups. This resulted in delightful ballets like the ones seen above and below. (via r/ObscureMedia)

"Boneless chicken wings are just chicken tenders… which are already boneless," explained Lincoln, Nebraska citizen Andrew Christensen at Monday's Lincoln City Council meeting. Here is the entire City Council meeting.

Hypotheses: 1. The seal is lazily circling a large acrylic water donut clearly made for that purpose. 2. The donut is filled with air, not water; the seal levitates.

YouTuber Brainiac75 tackles a question that lights up certain corners of the internet: are bananas and macadamia nuts radioactive? Under certain conditions (like burning them), you can up the radioactivity measurements, but beyond the general radioactivity of potassium, the unburned ones you buy at the store generally do do not have much higher than environmental […]

Icons are almost like road signs around the internet. In one tiny illustration, your eye is immediately attracted to a focal point, informed what to do next, and led to navigate in your favored direction. Whether it's a menu direction, a download function or just a visual representation, icons stand in as a kind of […]

Nick Brett somehow managed to thread the needle in this brilliant shot from the last indoor Bowls championship in Paris. The red team had effectively blocked him from a shot that would hit the yellow jack in the center. It's worth watching the relaxing first three minutes for context, but if you want to skip […]