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.

British politician and novelist Ann Widdecombe, a former minister of prisons known for her dogmatic conservative views, was found dead Thursday at her home in Devon, England. Long out of parliament and 78 years old, it was initially assumed she had died naturally, but it soon emerged she was beaten to death and that police had arrested a 26 year-old man on suspicion of her murder. - Read the rest The post UK politician Ann Widdecombe beaten to death in own home appeared first on Boing Boing.

Estonia is the one country that can say it beat fentanyl. By 2018, its overdose deaths had fallen more than 70 percent after fifteen years of raids, new laws, and dismantled labs. Then something worse arrived. Reporting for The New York Times, in a story carried by the Seattle Times, Azam Ahmed finds a chief organized-crime prosecutor who now says, "We wish we still had a fentanyl problem." - Read the rest The post Estonia beat fentanyl, then lost to stronger drugs appeared first on Boing Boing.

A window came off a Ryanair jet mid-flight over North Macedonia on Thursday, and a passenger was partly pulled through the hole before others hauled him back by his seat belt. The flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen turned back after debris - Greek media said it came off an engine - struck and detached one of the cabin windows, decompressing the plane and dropping the oxygen masks. - Read the rest The post Passenger nearly pulled out a Ryanair window in mid-air appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sony announced the RX10 V this week, an all-in-one superzoom camera with a 24-600mm-equivalent ZEISS lens and a 20-megapixel 1-inch sensor. If that's unchanged from the nearly decade-old RX10 IV, the rest of the spec sheet has significant upgrades: a dedicated "AI" chip for subject recognition and tracking that works for people, birds, animals, vehicles and insects; quicker autofocus; and 10-bit 4K/60fps oversampled, uncropped video (up from 8-bit 4K/30). - Read the rest The post Sony updates its decade-old RX10 superzoom appeared first on Boing Boing.

Simply Good's "The Brewer" is a drip machine with a simple pitch to the coffee addict: it has no plastic parts that come into contact with coffee. It's mostly glass and stainless steel, looks like a Moccamaster, is dishwasher safe, and has bloom and pourover functions. - Read the rest The post Coffee machines with no plastics in the brew path appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Get $150 travel data credit usable in 200+ countriesfor just $69.99 (reg. $150) with aloSIM.In a world filled with AI, it doesn't make sense to be fumbling for a pin to swap out your SIM card. The great thing about aloSIM is that it's an eSIM card that effectively doubles the money you put in. - Read the rest The post Earn $150 credit with this $70 eSIM appeared first on Boing Boing.

Hannah Montana Linux, released in 2009, was themed around Disney Channel sitcom character Hannah Montana, the in-world alter ego of Miley Stewart, as performed by Miley Cyrus. The bizarre and extremely memey distribution had not been updated since-until now! Developer Noah Cagle this week announced Hannah Montana Linux v26.0, bringing nearly two decades of enhancements to functionality, user experience and security. - Read the rest The post Hannah Montana Linux updated after 18 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

It can be so hard to keep kids entertained during the summer break. There's only so much swimming, trips to the trampoline park, and sleepovers that parents can afford both spiritually and financially. Sometimes, you just want to sit your kiddos the hell down in a darkened theater in front of a flickering screen for a couple of hours. - Read the rest The post The first trailer for Buddy isn't, you know, for kids appeared first on Boing Boing.

For a long while now, farmers using John Deere tractors to plow their fields have been getting plowed by John Deere. The storied heavy equipment company decided that selling farmers their hardware to help them in their hard work wasn't making them quite enough. - Read the rest The post FTC deal forces John Deere to share repair tools for 10 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

You may have noticed that it's a bit warm out. As good as the sun can feel after a long winter, the temperatures that the majority of the western hemisphere has been experiencing have been a bit... extra, these past few weeks. - Read the rest The post Watch this classic John Ford western for absolutely free appeared first on Boing Boing.

There's so much shitty stuff happening in the United States, Iran, and Europe that it's easy to forget there's really shitty stuff still going on in Gaza that the United States is complicit in. But hey, that's the 24-hour news cycle and the Trump administration's deal: fill our days with so much terror that we can't keep the bespoke horrors they've unleashed on the world straight in our heads. - Read the rest The post Israeli soldier shot an unarmed Gaza aid driver, witnesses say appeared first on Boing Boing.

A parasite that usually causes about 50 illnesses a year in Michigan has now sickened nearly 1,000 people there, part of a nationwide spike that hasn't been traced to a source.According to a state-by-state map at The Hill, more than a thousand Americans have come down with cyclosporiasis, an intestinal infection that can trigger "explosive" diarrhea. - Read the rest The post A parasite is giving 1,000+ Americans 'explosive' diarrhea appeared first on Boing Boing.

European regulators just approved a food additive designed to keep you from gaining weight. It's inulin propionate ester, or IPE, cleared for sale in the EU after 15 years of work by researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Glasgow. - Read the rest The post The EU just approved a food additive that curbs weight gain appeared first on Boing Boing.

Meta has patented a wearable that listens to you all day and guesses how you feel. As 404 Media reports, the device would continuously record audio and surroundings, then use AI to read your emotional state from "sighs, laughter" and other vocal cues, ostensibly to fine-tune workout suggestions. - Read the rest The post Meta patented a wearable that listens all day to guess your feelings appeared first on Boing Boing.

Congo's latest Ebola outbreak has killed 600 people and is now spreading into provinces that had been untouched. Authorities have logged 1,759 confirmed cases since declaring the outbreak on May 15, and new suspected cases have surfaced in Kisangani, in Tshopo province, well beyond the epicenter in Ituri. - Read the rest The post Congo's Ebola outbreak has killed 600 and is reaching new provinces appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Paris Review was partly a CIA front, and one of its founders led a double life to match. In the London Review of Books, Christian Lorentzen reviews a new biography of Peter Matthiessen, the novelist, nature writer, and CIA operative who helped start the magazine as cover. - Read the rest The post The novelist who co-founded the Paris Review was a CIA spy appeared first on Boing Boing.

At the time that this post was written, at least 50 individuals had died in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The deaths were due to a lack of care for people with chronic medical issues like heart disease and diabetes, and, thanks to a shocking lack of oversight, the completion of suicide by individuals under extreme mental duress in custody or who suffered from pre-existing mental health conditions. - Read the rest The post Mexican Government files charges against ICE for murder appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1929, a Moscow newspaper editor discovered that one of his reporters never wrote anything down because his brain was apparently already doing the recording.That is where the popular myth starts to wobble. People talk about photographic memory as if the brain can take a perfect screenshot of a page and retrieve it on demand. - Read the rest The post Photographic memory is not real, but this guy's brain came close enough to scare everyone appeared first on Boing Boing.

SAG-AFTRA president Sean Astin testified before Congress about nonconsensual AI replicas, warning that deepfakes are not just an actor problem but a reality problem.In his testimony, Astin said AI can now make people appear to say things they never said, endorse things they do not believe, or confess to things they know nothing about. - Read the rest The post Sean Astin tells Congress AI should not get to steal your face appeared first on Boing Boing.

Folarin Balogun is eligible to play for the United States because he was born in Brooklyn, which is awkward for Republicans currently trying to make "born in America" mean "terms and conditions apply."

Astronomers keep finding enormous rings of radio light in deep space that nothing in the textbooks can account for. Each is more than 50 times the width of the Milky Way, glows only at radio wavelengths - invisible to optical, infrared, and X-ray telescopes - and is brightest around its edges. - Read the rest The post Astronomers keep finding giant radio rings in space they can't explain appeared first on Boing Boing.