This clown was clearly a big hit, or rather, a kick!

It seems that a robotic party clown didn't get Asimov's First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. — Read the rest

The post Robo-party clown ignores Asimov's first law of robotics appeared first on Boing Boing.

The 17th-century English antiquarian John Aubrey recorded a love charm called moulding cockle bread. A young woman would climb onto a table, lift her skirts, and, in Aubrey's words, "wabble to and fro with the Buttocks as if they were kneading of Dough with their Arses." — Read the rest

The post How a raunchy love charm became an innocent nursery rhyme appeared first on Boing Boing.

When the U.S. Army approached Hershey's in 1937 for an emergency ration bar that should taste like a boiled potato, Colonel Paul Logan handed over four requirements. It had to weigh four ounces, pack a lot of calories, survive temperatures up to 120°F — and taste only "a little better than a boiled potato." — Read the rest

The post The Army told Hershey to make a chocolate bar that tasted bad appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Stanford Law study put AI tutors up against actual law professors, and the machines won. Sixteen professors wrote answers to 40 contract law questions, then graded a stack of answers blind, not knowing which came from a colleague and which from a large language model. — Read the rest

The post AI beat law professors in 75% of blind matchups, Stanford finds appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Orange Menace promised cheap gas and no new wars, then delivered expensive fuel and canceled flights.

American Airlines says it is temporarily suspending some August and September routes because jet fuel costs are punishing for carriers amid the war in Iran. — Read the rest

The post Trump's war in Iran cancels summer vacation appeared first on Boing Boing.

Raw Story reports that LindellTV correspondent Alison Steinberg confronted Pelosi with the old MAGA claim that Pelosi turned away the National Guard on January 6. Pelosi answered with the efficiency of someone who has heard enough pillow-adjacent nonsense for one lifetime: "Shut up again," "you're speaking lies," and finally, "Get away from me." — Read the rest

The post Nancy Pelosi has no time for Mike Lindell's hallway goblins appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1969, IBM wanted to show off Ted Nelson's early hypertext system at a conference, and Nelson secured permission to demonstrate it using an unlikely text: Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire, which consists of a 999-line poem buried under the deranged commentary of its self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote. — Read the rest

The post Could a Nabokov novel have been the 'father of all hypertext demos'? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tesla's Full Self-Driving is so ready for the future that some of the people who trained it reportedly will not get in the car.

Reuters interviewed nine former Tesla data labelers and one former self-driving engineer about FSD. Seven of the nine labelers said they would not trust the system to drive them. — Read the rest

The post Tesla FSD is so good its trainers won't ride in it appeared first on Boing Boing.

Making a direct Pokémon-inspired game in 2026 is a pretty risky move. It's common knowledge that Nintendo will defend even the smallest perceived attack on their copyright with lethal force, and their army of ninjas has sunk many fan projects and inspired indie games. — Read the rest

The post Retro Pokémon-inspired indie game looks very cool, but not long for this world appeared first on Boing Boing.

This is where I would clown on Supermassive Games for taking more than a decade to craft any sort of followup to Until Dawn, the interactive 90s horror pastiche that put them on the map. Notice that I said would, because the newly-announced Until Dawn 2 is not, in fact, being developed by Supermassive Games. — Read the rest

The post Until Dawn gets a surprise sequel announcement appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mike Mignola's wonderfully strange Lands Unknown universe keeps getting stranger.

Dark Horse Comics has announced Uri Tupka and the Devils, a new 104-page graphic novel that continues the adventures of Mignola's wandering theologian, heretic, and lodestone for all manner of supernatural trouble. — Read the rest

The post Mike Mignola throws Uri Tupka to the devils appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ask anyone who knows me: I've got the memory of a frigging goldfish and not in that happy Ted Lasso kinda way. Being able to pretend that I'm a functional human being means leaning on paper planners, sticky notes and some tech that goes easy on distractions. — Read the rest

The post The E Ink device that keeps you on schedule without the rabbit hole appeared first on Boing Boing.

Yeast survived for millenia inside a mummy, and can still be used to make bread.

About 5300 years ago, a Tyrolean man died after being shot in the shoulder with an arrow. His body was so well-preserved in the Alpine ice on the border of Italy and Austria that it was initially believed to be that of a recently deceased hiker. — Read the rest

The post Scientists use yeast from body of Ötzi the Iceman to make "very very good" sourdough appeared first on Boing Boing.

As Grant St. Clair reminded us recently, some good things are still happening in this world. And I'm here to share another little sliver of joy bringing me some comfort in these trying times. If your algorithm hasn't yet served up "Tiny Grandma" to you, we're about to remedy that. — Read the rest

The post "Tiny Grandma" brings joy to the world appeared first on Boing Boing.

Over the past few years, Apple TV+ has churned out some of the best episodic science fiction television that we've seen in decades. For All Mankind, Invasion, Pluribus, Star City, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Murderbot and Sugar, to name a few. — Read the rest

The post Will the new season of Silo stack up to the first two in the series? appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Save videos from Netflix, Disney Plus, YouTube, TikTok, and more to watch anytime you want with a lifetime subscription to Keeprix All-in-One Streaming Video Downloader for $95.99, 40% off the regular price of $159.99.

Tired of paying for more and more streaming services and somehow still never being able to watch what you want to watch? — Read the rest

The post Download videos from any streaming service and keep them forever with Keeprix for $95.99 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Amazon's latest AI shopping "feature" generates fake product images while you type, because apparently searching through the world's largest pile of actual products was too grounded in reality.

Available starting today, the Amazon app will generate images of products as you type words into the search bar.

— Read the rest

The post Amazon uses AI to invent products you can't buy appeared first on Boing Boing.

Dementia Donnie thinks this infographic is impressive.

To celebrate his pool guy coating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool a deep blue, Trump held up a visual aid comparing its 2,030-foot length to the height of famous skyscrapers, under the heading "Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers." — Read the rest

The post Grandpa Pudding Brains unveils "our pool is bigger than skyscrapers" chart appeared first on Boing Boing.

Living under an airport's takeoff path usually means complaining about the noise. A Redditor who goes by I_am_Root01 went the other way and built a ceiling projection that shows every plane passing over his house in real time.

A receiver picks up the ADS-B radio signals that aircraft constantly broadcast, and a projector throws a live map onto his ceiling, each plane labeled with its flight number and type. — Read the rest

The post A hobbyist projects SFO's overhead planes onto his ceiling in real time appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: ChatPlayground AI lets you compare GPT, Claude, Gemini, and more side-by-side in one tab—and lifetime access is $59.97 (reg. $619) through June 14

I don't know what's worse—handling monthly individual subscription fees or navigating a jungle of multiple tabs on your browser. — Read the rest

The post If you're paying a la carte for AI models, this $60 lifetime pass gets you ChatGPT, Claude & more appeared first on Boing Boing.

Meta has backed off a little. After announcing in April that a tool called the Model Capability Initiative would log employees' keystrokes and mouse clicks to train its AI models, the company has now told staff they can pause the data collection for "up to 30 minutes at a time" or request an exemption altogether, according to an internal memo seen by the BBC. — Read the rest

The post Meta backs off tracking workers' keystrokes after they revolt appeared first on Boing Boing.

Don Marti has a rule of thumb: when Meta, Google, and Apple all line up behind a new "privacy" feature, someone should ask who actually benefits. In a post about the browser ad-measurement standard called Attribution Level 1, he argues the answer is Big Tech. — Read the rest

The post When Meta, Google, and Apple agree on "privacy," watch your wallet appeared first on Boing Boing.

It seems global bear populations are letting humanity know we've encroached far enough.

Seems this bear really wanted to explain the rules of the wild.

Previously:
• A bear got into a backyard hot tub and drank a guy's margarita
• Man who moved into bear country demands bear respect zoning laws

The post Bears in Japan also sick of humans appeared first on Boing Boing.

In The Armchair Economist, Steven Landsburg makes the case that burning your own money is a form of philanthropy. Destroy a banknote, he argues, and "all surviving money slightly increases in value," so everyone else gains wealth in proportion to what they already hold. — Read the rest

The post The strange economics of setting your own cash on fire appeared first on Boing Boing.

On the evening of April 15, 1856, an American named Jack Oliver took a slice of watermelon from a Panama City vendor, José Manuel Luna, and refused to pay the dime he owed. Oliver, being American, drew a pistol to settle the matter. — Read the rest

The post A stolen slice of watermelon sparked a deadly 1856 riot in Panama appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1995 the Japanese construction giant Taisei Corporation unveiled plans for the X-Seed 4000, a tower four kilometers tall — a building shaped like Mount Fuji that would have stood 224 meters higher than the actual mountain.

It called for 800 floors, room for up to a million residents in Tokyo Bay, and more than three million tonnes of steel. — Read the rest

The post What happened to the 2.5 mile high building designed to be taller than Mount Fuji? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Raw Story reports that Owens is scheduled to appear at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on a panel called "A Big Family, A Big Reach: New Demographics and Narratives for Media Leaders." Other scheduled panelists include Russian media and political figures under U.S. — Read the rest

The post Candace Owens takes her patriot act to Putin's talent show appeared first on Boing Boing.

Substacker Dean Blundell has a long look at the Epstein-related baggage now sloshing around Bari Weiss' CBS News, and the argument is not that proximity proves guilt. It is that a newsroom built to interrogate power can only get squeamish when the power is all over its own org chart. — Read the rest

The post Bari Weiss' CBS News swims in Epstein-related baggage appeared first on Boing Boing.

California's proposed replacement-tire rules are aimed at reducing rolling resistance, which is exactly the boring technical phrase that matters here. A tire that takes more energy to roll makes a gas car burn more fuel or an EV use more battery. — Read the rest

The post Sticky tires are dirtier than they look appeared first on Boing Boing.

A hiker on Glacier National Park's Grinnell Glacier Trail surprised a grizzly in a noisy snowfield, and the grizzly responded with a fractured-arm performance review.

A 32-year-old man suffered non-life-threatening injuries after a surprise encounter with a grizzly bear Thursday on the Grinnell Glacier Trail in Glacier National Park.

— Read the rest

The post Bear shows hiker who is boss appeared first on Boing Boing.