Toys R Us is back, at least in the sense of private equity rediscovering the skin of something it gutted long ago and deciding to wear it again. But this isn't the first time that the famous toy shop was haunted. — Read the rest

The post The haunted Toys R Us is now an unhaunted REI appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Hive AI is a workspace that combines documents, whiteboards, and databases with AI assistance, and a lifetime subscription is $79 (MSRP $619).

Productivity apps tend to pick one lane. A notes app is great for writing but terrible for visual brainstorming, and a whiteboard tool falls apart the second you need a structured document. — Read the rest

The post Your notes, your whiteboard, and your to-do list walk into one app appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Learn prompting, agentic coding, and app automation in Claude with the Claude AI Professional E-Degree, now $19.99 (reg. $159).

Asking an AI chatbot one question at a time works fine, but it leaves coding agents, app integrations, and automation unused. — Read the rest

The post Teach yourself to make Claude do the boring stuff for $20 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Youbooks uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama to draft nonfiction books up to 300,000 words, and it's $49 (reg. $540).

Plenty of experts have a nonfiction book's worth of knowledge and no free time to write it. Youbooks is an AI book generator that turns your idea, notes, and research into a full manuscript, and a lifetime subscription is on sale for $49 (reg. — Read the rest

The post Youbooks turns your notes and podcast transcripts into a nonfiction book for $49 appeared first on Boing Boing.

When I was in Japan earlier this month, we visited the village of Kurokawa Onsen, which has over 25 Japanese hot-spring bathhouses you can walk to. It was an incredible experience.

You can read all about the spas at Kurokawa Onsen with a Google search, so I will instead tell you about the fantastic cat I met in the village. — Read the rest

The post Kurokawa Onsen has 25 hot springs, but I'd go back just for this cat appeared first on Boing Boing.

Local Wikipedia shows you Wikipedia articles about things that are a half-hour or less walk from the address you enter in the search field. 

I entered Golden, Colorado, where I lived in my early years, and read an article about the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, which "contains over 800 quilts dating back to the 19th century."  — Read the rest

The post Local Wikipedia shows you articles about everything within a half-hour walk appeared first on Boing Boing.

People hoping to see mummies at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, were instead treated to a small sign that said, "We have removed human remains from this display as a mark of respect."

The museum had removed the remains of an ancient Egyptian priest, a mummified hand, a mummified head and a mummified foot. — Read the rest

The post Glasgow museum pulls its mummies, citing lack of consent from the dead appeared first on Boing Boing.

I promise I would never take time out of my day to write about something as mundane as a football team changing its logo unless it was whipping up a frenzy. Most NFL logos feature cool animals in profile, but the Falcons have taken theirs a step further. — Read the rest

The post The Bird Reich: The new Atlanta Falcons logo is uncomfortably familiar appeared first on Boing Boing.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted Dwight Eisenhower's 30-inch globe—a priceless World War II artifact—moved into his office. The recolation was botched, reports the Washingon Post, which received photos of the now-ruined antique. Hegseth's aides dropped it after deciding to do it themselves after they "eschewed the services of specialist movers."

— Read the rest

The post Priceless Eisenhower globe broken after Hegseth orders it moved to his office appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: With VoiceType, you can speak 9 times faster than you type. Get a lifetime subscription for $24.99 (MSRP $154).

When efficiency is the goal, you want to speed up the most laborious part of AI prompting: typing. With VoiceType AI, you can dictate your words to the AI-powered software with 99.75% accuracy. — Read the rest

The post Don't let typing slow down your AI prompting — switch to voice dictation for $25 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

So. BioWare, the legendary RPG studio that created the Mass Effect series, was shut down just yesterday, taking with it an in-development Mass Effect 5. In my coverage of the initial event, I lamented that we'd never see the project again thanks to its unceremonious death. — Read the rest

The post Mass Effect 5 trailer leaks the day after studio closes appeared first on Boing Boing.

Greetings, all. I'll be your psychopomp this evening, the keeper of the crypt, the mistress of the dank, the lightning rod of this sterling dungeon, if you will. I ask you now to picture something horrid, something ghastly, but all too real…

Imagine: sometime in the future, October in the city of New Orleans. — Read the rest

The post New Orleans artistic haunted house heralds horrors of the Deep South appeared first on Boing Boing.

When I was in Japan earlier this month, one of my travel companions introduced me to the wonderful world of Umaibo, a puffed corn snack that you can buy in all convenience stores throughout Japan.

I wasn't expecting them to be so much fun to eat, but after trying one, I could not resist having at least one or two every day on the trip. — Read the rest

The post I couldn't stop eating these 16-yen corn puff sticks in Japan appeared first on Boing Boing.

The most famous person who hid in an attic in the Netherlands from the Nazis during World War II is Anne Frank, whose diary became a posthumous literary sensation.

But there was another Jewish author, also hiding in a Netherlands attic, who also found a way to create literary art while in concealment. — Read the rest

The post The Underwater Cabaret, a magazine made by a poet hiding from Nazis appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Uncensored Library is what you might call gamizdat: forbidden literature hidden inside a game. A Minecraft server (or downloadable map) housing a massive and beautifully-designed neoclassical library, it's packed with books, essays and other writings banned in authoritarian regimes. — Read the rest

The post Uncensored Library hides forbidden literature inside Minecraft appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 with faster solution loads and full Visual Studio 2022 compatibility for a one-time $29.97 (reg. $499.99).

Microsoft's professional developer tools usually come with a recurring subscription, and the charges continue for as long as you keep writing code. — Read the rest

The post Visual Studio Professional 2026 drops to $30 and opens your 2022 projects as is appeared first on Boing Boing.

Playdate (previously) is a delightful handheld console with a 1-bit display (for an original Mac-like aesthetic) and a peculiar hand-crank control in addition to the regular controls. Unlike other game machines, it comes with "seasons" of curated games, encouraging people to share their experiences, and season three is upon us. — Read the rest

The post Playdate Season 3 launches with an adorable frogs and abominable dungeons appeared first on Boing Boing.

London's Victorian Era Exhibition in 1897 featured a wide variety of modern innovations, the weirdest of which was a lamppost that doubled as a vending machine, dispensing coffee, cocoa, milk, tea, and a concoction called "fluid beef." Called the Pluto Lamp, this monstrous hybrid was installed throughout London. — Read the rest

The post In 1897, London had lampposts that sold coffee, tea, and "fluid beef" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Talk about a game that keeps on giving. Cyberpunk 2077 fans once again have cause to celebrate — or, if your game is heavily modded, cause to curse CD Projekt RED for their apparent refusal to keep their hands off their excellent sci-fi RPG. — Read the rest

The post Cyberpunk 2077 adds dual-wielding and more in third "final update" appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you need any more proof that private equity ruins everything it touches, look no further than the curious case of EA. Electronic Arts has long had a reputation for being the greediest game publisher around, going to great pains to monetize its games to the fullest extent possible and touting a list of killed studios Ted Bundy would be jealous of. — Read the rest

The post EA shuts down BioWare, the studio behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Learn 12 languages with AI speaking practice and no penalties for mistakes with a Promova Premium Plan subscription on sale for a one-time $79.99 (MSRP $299.99).

Most language apps run on streaks and push notifications, and Duolingo's owl has turned that guilt into a meme. — Read the rest

The post Practice ordering in Spanish with an AI before you try it on a waiter in Madrid — Promova is a flat $79.99 appeared first on Boing Boing.

When I was in Fukuoka, Japan, last week, I stopped by Rakusuien garden, a small strolling garden with a koi pond, a waterfall, a picturesque bridge, and meticulously tended plants. It also has a tea house, but on the day we went, there was no tea ceremony. — Read the rest

The post A box of free acorns at a Fukuoka garden put me in a great mood appeared first on Boing Boing.

Whenever I go to Japan, I like to shop at Daiso. It's kind of like a dollar store in the U.S., except the stuff is good.

It was started by Hirotake Yano, who was born in Beijing in 1943. He had an interesting background. — Read the rest

The post Japan's Daiso is like a dollar store, except a thousand times better appeared first on Boing Boing.

It's been a little while since I've sat down and written about a hyperspecific corner of the Internet that brings me joy. Whether that's because I haven't been looking too hard or because the Internet is slowly being drained of joy is anyone's guess. — Read the rest

The post Good Trailcams collects the animal kingdom's most candid moments appeared first on Boing Boing.

An underground monorail, non-existent bizarrely skinny killer whales, directions to extinct attractions, guide maps that bear no resemblance to reality. AI-generated Disney theme park guide books are flooding the market, filled with hallucinated slop that would drive a trusting tourist insane with misinformation. — Read the rest

The post AI-written Disney guidebooks send tourists to rides that don't exist appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH a Simpsonian Donald Trump brings his friend Musky the Clown to meet his boss, Mr. Putin

-"Back in 2012 Bolling — noting that the comic was more widely read than ever yet generating less money than ever — started a subscription membership called The Inner Hive. — Read the rest

The post Tom the Dancing Bug: A Simpsonian look at Trump, Putin, and Musk! appeared first on Boing Boing.

I have little faith in polls, and I hate prediction markets, but I can't help peeking at PressAudit's 2026 midterm tracker.

The founder, Paul Renshaw, created this midterms page that shows prediction market odds from Polymarket and Kalshi on who is likely to control Congress. — Read the rest

The post I hate prediction markets, but I keep peeking at this midterm tracker appeared first on Boing Boing.

One of my favorite publishers of beautiful books, Beehive Books, has a Kickstarter for Death Is a Room: Illustrated Gothic Tales by Women Writers.

It has nine Gothic horror stories by women writers, including Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Susan Glaspell. — Read the rest

The post A book of Gothic horror stories designed as a nine-room boarding house appeared first on Boing Boing.

This is George Lucas' vision. Forget the sequel trilogy or The Acolyte somehow managing to be one of the most expensive TV shows ever made and still ending up mid: Secondhand Movie Co.'s recreation of the original Star Wars with nothing but a metric ton of cardboard and a dream is where it's at. — Read the rest

The post Star Wars on a ten-dollar budget appeared first on Boing Boing.

If vibe coding is absolutely going to stick around, I'd rather have it used for goofy video game mods rather than, say, critical infrastructure. I categorically do not want Claude anywhere near the government or cybersecurity… but maybe, just maybe, things like ViceBounce are fine. — Read the rest

The post Vice City mod makes an entire GTA game bounce to your favorite song appeared first on Boing Boing.