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I have been sucked into Cabin in the Woods, a YouTube channel that presents Bigfoot videos with the tone and pacing of a serious documentary series, while frequently veering into the kind of paranormal speculation that makes me pause the video and stare at the wall. - Read the rest The post This Bigfoot YouTube channel is entertaining woo in documentary drag appeared first on Boing Boing.

Solvej Balle's incredible story of a woman trapped in time continues in Book II of On the Calculation of Volume.Book I introduces us to Tara Selter, an antiquarian bookseller who becomes trapped on November 18th. Every day she wakes up, it is once again November 18th. - Read the rest The post I just finished "On the Calculation of Volume II" appeared first on Boing Boing.

What did the sky look like yesterday? This interactive web project called What Color Was The Sky invites visitors to revisit a moment in time through a blend of science, data, and imagination. Rather than showing a simple weather report or satellite image, the project transforms atmospheric conditions into a poetic portrait of the sky, creating a more emotional way to think about the places we inhabit. - Read the rest The post This website turns yesterday's sky into a poetic memory appeared first on Boing Boing.

Verba Prima is a website dedicated to the opening lines of books. Its archive contains thousands of first sentences from notable literary works. It's a simple way to explore how famous authors chose to begin their stories.You click "next chapter" to jump from one opening line to the next. - Read the rest The post Verba Prima collects thousands of literary opening lines appeared first on Boing Boing.

Another Day is a web experiment that lines historical events up by date. It pairs a moment that still feels recent in our shared memory with an older event, and the two often sit closer together on the calendar than you'd expect. - Read the rest The post The shootings at Kent Stateare now closer tothe end of World War Ithan to today appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Orange Menace described roadside bombs as "a bomb that goes on when you're driving your little around," which is not how English, bombs, cars, or presidents are supposed to work.A roadside bomb is horrifying enough without Grandpa Pudding Brains turning it into Mad Libs from the VA waiting room. - Read the rest The post Grandpa Pudding Brains explains roadside bombs in nightmare toddler English appeared first on Boing Boing.

The PocketMage is a retro-styled e-ink PDA ("personal digital assistant," remember?) with a clamshell case, a tactile QWERTY keyboard, and a "wizard-inspired" operating system built for notes, journaling and calendars. At under 4 by 3 inches, it actually fits in a pocket, unlike similar gadgets such as the chunky PicoCalc and the tablet-sized Alpha. - Read the rest The post PocketMage, an e-ink PDA inspired by wizards appeared first on Boing Boing.

Pixel Skylines collects background graphics from old video games that depict city skylines. The simple, grid-like design of skyscrapers lends them to representation as pixel art (faves that age me: 1987's Double Dragon, below, and 1988's Robocop, above) so that genre naturally dominates the set. - Read the rest The post Collection of pixel-art skylines from old arcade and video games appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Convert, edit, and unlock PDFs into Word, Excel, and more with AcePDF Converter & Editor for $23.99 (MSRP $99.99) with promo codeEXTRA20until July 19, including OCR and batch tools in a lifetime license.Working with PDFs can get frustrating fast, especially when you just need to make a quick edit, pull text from a scan, or convert a file into something usable. - Read the rest The post Stop PDF headaches - convert, merge, and edit files in minutes with AcePDF for a one-time $24 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Russian villagers have begun buying horses instead of cars as the country's gasoline crisis deepens, The Moscow Times reported Monday, citing claims by horse breeders there. Demand for workhorses has risen severalfold in recent weeks, sparing about 1,000 animals from slaughter. - Read the rest The post Russians returning to 1 horsepower amid gasoline shortages appeared first on Boing Boing.

A federal judge in Florida dismissed with prejudice a copyright lawsuit brought against Taylor Swift by self-published poet Kimberly Marasco, ruling (not for the first time!) that the material Marasco claimed Swift stole is not protected by copyright at all.Marasco alleged that more than a dozen songs from Lover, Folklore, Evermore, Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department lifted from poems she wrote between 2017 and 2021. - Read the rest The post Poet's copyright lawsuit against Taylor Swift tossed again appeared first on Boing Boing.

Knockoff is "Amazon, without the knockoffs": a browser extension for Chrome that filters out the gibberish factory brands that are typically favoried over quality products in the online retailer's search results. What's left, creator Josh Pigford writes, is "brands with a reputation to lose" rather than HORUSDY or PHRXXI or whatever. - Read the rest The post "Knockoff" browser add-on filters junk brands from Amazon results appeared first on Boing Boing.

According to Bart Huges, the Dutch librarian attended medical school in Amsterdam "but was refused a degree due to his advocacy of marijuana use." In 1964 he published a scroll arguing that trepanation - drilling a hole in the skull - "could be used to enhance brain functionality by balancing the proportion of blood and cerebral spinal fluid." - Read the rest The post In 1964, a Dutch librarian drilled a hole in his own skull to get permanently high appeared first on Boing Boing.

According to the science of transient lunar phenomena, observers have reported brief lights, colors, and hazes on the Moon for at least a thousand years, and astronomers still cannot fully explain them. The British astronomer Patrick Moore coined the term for a 1968 NASA catalog of reported lunar events. - Read the rest The post For 1,000 years people have seen strange lights on the Moon appeared first on Boing Boing.

By 1987, Kowloon Walled City held an estimated 33,000 residents on 2.6 hectares - "approximately 1.2 million inhabitants per square kilometer (3 million per square mile)," according to Wikipedia, making it one of the most densely populated places on Earth. The 1898 convention that leased the New Territories to Britain excluded the old Chinese fort, leaving an enclave claimed by two governments and governed by neither. - Read the rest The post In 1987 Kowloon Walled City packed 33,000 people into six and a half acres appeared first on Boing Boing.

According to the record of the 1452/1453 mystery eruption, a volcano erupted somewhere on Earth powerful enough to inject about 11 megatons of sulfur into the stratosphere - "roughly one-third that of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora" - and no one knows which volcano it was. - Read the rest The post A volcano froze crops worldwide in 1453 appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you've ever stepped on a LEGO piece, you already know they have the ability to strike fear into anyone's heart. Despite this, though, their potential for horror has never been properly explored... until now.Animator George Coley's fan trailer for Yellow, a LEGO horror film that looks worthy of A24, is as darkly hilarious as you'd expect a LEGO horror film to be. - Read the rest The post LEGO horror trailer Yellow looks ready for A24 appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Waymo in San Mateo reportedly ratted out two teenagers for drinking and shooting Orbeez from the back seat, proving the driverless future still has a hall monitor.Nobody is defending underage drinking or shooting projectiles from a moving car. The point is that the car was not just a car. - Read the rest The post Teens discover their robot taxi is a narc appeared first on Boing Boing.

CoreCivic just sold two of California's largest immigrant detention centers to the federal government for $1.5 billion, then apparently got hired to keep running the place.CalMatters reports that CoreCivic sold the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County and the California City Detention Facility in Kern County to the Department of Homeland Security on July 2. - Read the rest The post ICE buys the cages, private prison company keeps the keys appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tradd Moore is one of those cartoonists whose pages, filled with riotous color and ridiculously-cool eyeball kicks, can genuinely drop your jaw. In Silver Surfer: Black it's cosmic psychedelia. In Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise it's fever-dream magic. Either way, his pages don't reel out a story so much as sequentially detonate one. - Read the rest The post Tradd Moore's first creator-owned comic is coming from Oni Press appeared first on Boing Boing.

English spelling is not broken so much as visibly injured. A video by Airlearn Language Show explains how the printing press, the Great Vowel Shift, dead gods, French-Italian beef, Dutch typesetters, and Renaissance Latin nerds left English looking like it staggered out of a tavern with "Wednesday" in one pocket and "colonel" in the other. - Read the rest The post Why English spelling looks like it lost a bar fight with history appeared first on Boing Boing.

California is finally doing something about the tiny fridge panic caused by "sell by," "best by," "use by," and whatever other cryptic prophecy your yogurt cup is trying to deliver.Food labels have been doing haunted-house work for years. You open the fridge, see a date, and suddenly the almond milk is a moral question. - Read the rest The post California makes food labels less stupid appeared first on Boing Boing.

Camel racing in the Gulf states once ran on child jockeys - "usually boys around the age of four," according to Wikipedia. "Often, the boys would be starved to be as light as possible," and "there was an active child slave trade for camel jockeys." - Read the rest The post Camel-racing robots wear perfume so the camels accept them appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 2021, a Reddit user named "Sparta123" posted to r/tipofmyjoystick trying to recall a farming game like Harvest Moon, "with the premise involving a man who kills his wife and tries to hide the body while working as a farmer." Nobody could name it. - Read the rest The post The internet spent years hunting a game that never existed appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Swiss company Energy Vault spent years pitching a novel idea: store surplus electricity by using it to stack heavy blocks, then recover the power by letting them fall. Boing Boing covered the skeptics in 2021. The company kept building, and there's now a 148-meter tower in Rudong, Jiangsu doing exactly that with a nearby wind farm. - Read the rest The post China built a 40-story tower that stores wind power by stacking concrete appeared first on Boing Boing.

An Idaho court dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by businessman Michael Boren, now a top federal official, against a retired conservation officer who criticized his private airstrip.Seventh Judicial District Judge Darren Simpson threw out Boren's suit against Gary Gadwa on June 26, ruling that Boren "failed to show good cause" to keep it alive. - Read the rest The post Idaho conservation officer beats Trump official's defamation lawsuit appeared first on Boing Boing.

Pudu Robotics and a Shenzhen state tourism company say they're building what they call the world's first full-scenario robot-serviced hotel, on the West Artificial Island of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link. The pitch is that a machine handles every job in the building. - Read the rest The post A Shenzhen hotel plans to use a fully robotic staff appeared first on Boing Boing.

The automated license plate reader has become one of the densest surveillance layers in the United States. TechSpot reports that these AI camera networks now log around 20 billion license plate scans every month, from more than 100,000 readers nationwide, the vast majority sold by Flock Safety. - Read the rest The post License plate cameras scan 20 billion vehicles a month, and cities are pulling the plug appeared first on Boing Boing.

Five friends in San Francisco decided that walking was overrated and concluded that furniture deserved a night out, too. This video shows the group gliding down the street while relaxing on a couch that had somehow been mounted across two scooters. - Read the rest The post Five friends ride a couch on two scooters through San Francisco appeared first on Boing Boing.

Popular Information and Public Notice report that CNN and CNBC have been heavily promoting Kalshi prediction markets while inconsistently disclosing that Kalshi is not just a questionable source but a business partner.CNN and CNBC are not just glancing at Kalshi the way a reporter might glance at polls, weather maps, or bond yields. - Read the rest The post Prediction market pays news networks to launder gambling as analysis appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Pay $19.97 once (reg. $600) and getlifetime access to 1,000+ online coursescovering today's most valuable career and creative skills.While you probably don't need another monthly subscription, everyone can benefit from having additional skills. Luckily, this offer gives youa ton of skill-building courses for a one-time payment. - Read the rest The post Your next hobby, side hustle, or promotion could start with one of the 1,000+ courses in this $20 platform appeared first on Boing Boing.

Microsoft's XBox division today announced that it would lay off 3,200 workers and cut loose four of its studios, part of the latest wave of job losses to hit the game industry. Kotaku acquired email outlining the layoffs, half of which are immediate and the rest to take place "later." - Read the rest The post XBox announces layoffs appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Winamp Skin Museum impresses right away with its no-nonsense presentation: the whole browser window flooded with tiled images of the skins. You can click through to use them-yes, Winamp is implemented in the browser!-or just download it. There's a search bar. - Read the rest The post You know exactly what the Winamp Skin Museum really whips appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:You have until 11:59 p.m. PT on July 5 to getWindows 11 Profor only $10.49.Microsoft sellsWindows 11 Profor $199. The Home version is cheaper, but that's because it's worse. If you want the best OS for Windows, there's a narrow Windows today when you can get Windows 11 Pro on sale for only $10.49, but you only have until 11:59 p.m. - Read the rest The post Until the end of the day on July 5, you can get Windows 11 Pro for a one-time $10.49 payment appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Get the enSili Mac Bundle and grab 27 native Mac apps for $30.Mac users tend to collect weird little utilities like trading cards. A clipboard manager that actually remembers things. A font wrangler that doesn't make you cry. Some doohickey that frees up the RAM macOS hoards like a dragon. - Read the rest The post We found one lifetime license that can replace 27 subscriptions, and it's only $30 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Teleport back to simpler times with thisKyocera DuraXE Epic E4830flip phone, now for just $111.99 (MSRP $269.99).Missing the simplicity of the '90s? If you're feeling nostalgic for the days before big tech took over, a simple flip phone is a great way to unplug. - Read the rest The post Want to cut back on screen time? Start with this $112 old-school flip phone (MSRP $269.99) appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Get a2TB FileJump Cloud Storage lifetime subscriptionon sale for $59 (reg. $467)Google One charges $9.99 a month for 2TB of cloud storage, every month, with no end date in sight.FileJumpruns on the opposite model: pay once for 2TB and keep it forever. - Read the rest The post 2TB cloud storage, yours forever on sale for $59 appeared first on Boing Boing.

A new analysis from FutureSearch's wealth study of AI billionaires counts 57 AI billionaires worldwide, worth a combined $320 billion - and almost none of that fortune has anything to do with a PhD. Chip designer Chen Tianshi of Cambricon Technologies tops the list at $40 billion, followed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman ($28 billion) and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng ($27 billion). - Read the rest The post 57 AI billionaires are worth $320 billion combined appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mirror life - synthetic organisms built from molecules with reversed chirality, the opposite handedness of every natural protein and DNA strand on Earth - would be essentially invisible to the immune systems of humans, animals, and plants, according to Noema's look at the fight to ban mirror life before it exists. - Read the rest The post 38 scientists want to ban "mirror life" appeared first on Boing Boing.

The original Rattler (see video) at Six Flags Fiesta Texas opened in 1992 and was once one of the biggest wooden roller coasters in the country. In this wild old video, you can see the tracks bend and wobble as the coaster sped along. - Read the rest The post Rare footage shows how rough Six Flags' wooden Rattler coaster was appeared first on Boing Boing.

Twin Pines ice cream was one of many regional dairy brands that once filled American grocery store freezers in the mid-to-late 20th century. Like other small dairy companies of the era, it leaned heavily on simple, memorable packaging to stand out in a crowded local market. - Read the rest The post Twin Pines' vintage ice cream clown is deliciously unsettling appeared first on Boing Boing.

Time and time again, I count myself lucky that The Good Liars are willing to wade into the backwoods of MAGA country so I don't have to. They've made an extremely stable career out of showing up at Trump-centric events and documenting them in their attendees' own words, and it doesn't get much more Trump-centric than the Great American State Fair. - Read the rest The post The Good Liars find state fair MAGA fans who rank Trump over God appeared first on Boing Boing.

Escherllate is a fun browser sketchbook built around tessellation. You draw on a central tile, and your lines instantly repeat across surrounding copies. The result is a living pattern that updates in real time as you sketch.The system makes symmetry feel natural instead of technical. - Read the rest The post This interactive sketchbook turns your drawings into tessellating patterns appeared first on Boing Boing.

This video of a cat and his adorable favorite toy took me on an emotional rollercoaster (with a very happy ending). The video shows a cat named Milo who is deeply attached to a little green pom pom (the kind used for arts and crafts). - Read the rest The post Milo the cat lost his favorite pom pom, so he got 200 more appeared first on Boing Boing.

AI is coming for all our jobs, it seems, even those of phone scammers. What is the world coming to when we can't even get swindled by good, honest (well, not really) humans anymore?The advent of AI has massively improved the scalability of these kinds of scams, to the point where a human doesn't even need to be involved in the process. - Read the rest The post AI scam callers can be broken with a few simple commands appeared first on Boing Boing.

Andrew Judson has read every Caldecott Medal winner and honor book his local library owns, mostly out loud to his daughter, and ranked the worst ones by their words, not their art - since the Caldecott is awarded "based solely on the art," even the most troubling books look gorgeous. - Read the rest The post The worst Caldecott winning book - Rumpelstiltskin appeared first on Boing Boing.

Amber George, longtime spokeswoman of a store chain, saw an advertisement featuring her that she did not remember recording. If there was a moment of confusion, it was soon obvious what Fred's Appliance had done: run old ads through AI to generate new ones featuring her. - Read the rest The post Spokeswoman sues company after it uses AI to make new ads featuring her appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get alifetime subscription to Microsoft Project Professional 2024for $48.99 (reg. $1,129.99).If you're looking for reliable software that'll take care of all your management needs and requirements, Microsoft Project Professional 2024 is a sure bet. Not only does it come from an extremely reputable company, but this software alsohelps you plan, execute, and complete projects efficiently, all on one platform. - Read the rest The post Manage projects like a pro with Microsoft Project 2024 for just $49 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Starlog, the science fiction magazine that ended its 33 year run in 2009, will return this fall with a new print edition, a weekly podcast and a newsletter. And it will be edited by Annalee Newitz!

You've heard of graveyards, where we ceremonially store human remains. But did you know that Ben & Jerry's ice cream company has a Flavor Graveyard for discontinued lines of its popular dairy snacks?