On her blog, game writer Laura Michet describes what happened when her insulin pump, a Tandem t:slim X2, started failing once or twice a day in the middle of a Santa Fe vacation. She has type 1 diabetes and has worn a pump for 25 years without one ever quitting on her. — Read the rest

The post What happens when the machine keeping you alive dies on vacation appeared first on Boing Boing.

A study in the journal Science argues that homing pigeons may read Earth's magnetic field using iron-rich cells in their livers, rather than their beaks or eyes. Researchers wiped out those cells in 34 trained birds; under heavy overcast, none could find their way home, while untreated birds all made it back within 70 minutes. — Read the rest

The post Pigeons may navigate using magnetic cells in their liver appeared first on Boing Boing.

In his talk "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People," Maciej Cegłowski takes apart the fear that a self-improving AI will bootstrap itself into a god and wipe out humanity — the Nick Bostrom, paperclip-maximizer scenario beloved in Silicon Valley.

He finds the whole thing "somewhat silly, and full of unwarranted assumptions." — Read the rest

The post Is the AI apocalypse a religion in disguise? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Quanta's "The Dirt That Refused To Die" follows a French lab that sterilized soil with gamma radiation, sealed it in jars, and watched it keep breathing — taking in oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide for six years, with no living cell left inside. — Read the rest

The post Scientists sterilized soil. It kept breathing for six years. appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: This HP EliteBook comes with a range of professional features you can depend on and software compatibility with MS Office and other legacy tools for just $399.99 (reg. $899.98).

When it comes to finding a device that can handle your workload, folks will usually look for a laptop that's durable, reliable, and powerful enough to run multiple apps at once. — Read the rest

The post This HP EliteBook delivers business-class performance for $400 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Over the long weekend, a storage tank of methyl methacrylate in Garden Grove, California, started to warm up — and as the chemist Derek Lowe lays out in a post on the chemistry of the saga, a warming MMA tank is exactly the wrong thing to see. — Read the rest

The post The chemistry behind Garden Grove's runaway chemical tank appeared first on Boing Boing.

"Backrooms," a horror film by Kane Parsons, who directed it at 20, opened to $81 million this weekend — the strongest opening A24 has ever had and the largest ever for an original horror movie.

Parsons, who built the film from his creepypasta web series about endless empty rooms, is by far the youngest director to land the number-one movie in the country. — Read the rest

The post A 20-year-old YouTuber's horror film just broke A24's box office record appeared first on Boing Boing.

Watch a caterpillar go down a tiny slide. This adorable playset was gifted to the lucky little larva by an artist who runs a page called Little Bug Creations, and it's the perfect size for this tiny explorer.

Watching this video makes me want to build a miniature structure for the bugs in my yard to climb on, too. — Read the rest

The post Watch a caterpillar enjoy a tiny playground built just for bugs appeared first on Boing Boing.

America's love of giant roadside attractions has produced many strange sights, but few are as fierce as Betsy, a colossal spiny lobster in Islamorada, Florida. You can see Betsy in these fantastic photos shared by Atlas Obscura. She stands nearly 30 feet tall and stretches about 40 feet long. — Read the rest

The post Meet Betsy, the 30-foot spiny lobster guarding the Florida Keys appeared first on Boing Boing.

This video, shared by Gyu, plays with perspective in a clever way. It shows different foods close up in the palms of a parent and a baby. A blueberry looks normal in an adult's hand, but when you see it next in the baby's palm, it suddenly looks gigantic. — Read the rest

The post Baby's hand makes a cherry look like a giant piece of fruit appeared first on Boing Boing.

When the National Cartoonists Society has its annual conference in August, it will confer on cartoonist Jeff Smith its Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award.

Smith has produced many fantastic comics, including the science fiction thriller RASL and the prehistoric adventure TUKI, but his all-ages fantasy epic Bone is such a massive achievement that it will always be his defining work. — Read the rest

The post Cartoonist Jeff Smith, author of "Bone," is getting comics' most prestigious honor appeared first on Boing Boing.

Have I mentioned today how much I love indie games? I just came off 007: First Light, which — while a very, very good action adventure romp — is still very much the kind of action-adventure romp the triple-A space is full of at the moment. — Read the rest

The post The art is fake, the boss is blind, and the job is yours appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sometimes, all you need for effective horror is a good pitch. David Robert Mitchell understood this with his modern horror classic It Follows, where the monster can be explained in three seconds but the tension lasts for an entire film. — Read the rest

The post Time-traveling dinosaur movie looks like a lot of fun appeared first on Boing Boing.

Strange days when a comedian has more moral backbone than anyone in government. Last anyone heard of comedian and activist Ben Palmer, the Department of Homeland Security had put him officially on notice as a consequence of his latest scheme: a fake ICE deportation hotline people would unknowingly call into and make asses of themselves on. — Read the rest

The post Ben Palmer continues to run fake ICE hotline appeared first on Boing Boing.

In-restaurant statues of Ronald McDonald are largely a thing of the past, McDonalds having stepped back from using its famed mascots in marketing aimed at children. The vintage items fetch hundreds and even thousands of dollars, and sellers are often eager to make clear how pristine theirs are. — Read the rest

The post Desecrated Ronald McDonald statue yours for $2500 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get lifetime access to 1min.AI's Advanced Business Plan for $59.97 (MSRP $540) and use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and more in one all-in-one AI workspace until June 14.

Most AI setups today start with good intentions and end in tab overload. — Read the rest

The post Why choose between ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini when one $60 platform gives you all three? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Since the 1960s, Britons have been growing up with Quentin Blake's fabulous illustrations to books by Roald Dahl, Joan Aiken, Elizabeth Bowen, Sylvia Plath, William Steig, and even the first Dr. Seuss book that Seuss did not himself illustrate. — Read the rest

The post Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration opens this week in London appeared first on Boing Boing.

Florida has become the first state to sue OpenAI and Sam Altman over alleged harms from ChatGPT.

The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General James Uthmeier, accuses OpenAI of rushing unsafe products into the world, marketing ChatGPT as safe and reliable, and ignoring warnings about how the chatbot could affect children, vulnerable users, and people planning violence. — Read the rest

The post Florida sues OpenAI over ChatGPT's alleged body count appeared first on Boing Boing.

A former model with a messy history around Trumpworld and Jeffrey Epstein has made a new, disputed claim about how Melania Trump met Donald Trump. Just about the only people claiming Epstein didn't introduce the two odious pairs are the pair themselves. — Read the rest

The post A deleted recording blows up Melania's Epstein story appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: A lifetime license to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows is on sale for $19.97 (regularly $229) right now.

Here's something Microsoft would rather you forget: there's still a version of Office that doesn't require a monthly payment to keep working. — Read the rest

The post Microsoft Office 2019 is yours forever for less than the price of dinner appeared first on Boing Boing.

Last April, a powerful spring snowstorm swept across parts of the Alps, triggering dangerous avalanche conditions in multiple regions. In some areas, avalanche danger reached Level 4–5 on Europe's standard scale.

This incredible clip shared by @imlukesnow shows an avalanche protection gallery, also known as a snow shed. — Read the rest

The post Snow sheds let alpine roads survive massive avalanches appeared first on Boing Boing.

At the Svaram Sound Garden in Auroville, simple sculptures combine sound and art in a mesmerizing way. In this video, a visitor strikes a stone instrument with a smaller stone. It produces a clear, xylophone-like sound that makes me wish I could play in this sound garden, too. — Read the rest

The post What does a rock sound like when it's shaped into an instrument? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Just before midnight on Saturday, February 19, 2005, Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone Jr. left Abilene's bar on South Street in Philadelphia and walked toward Petrone's parked Dodge pickup. Nobody has seen them since — or the truck. It was never recovered either. — Read the rest

The post A couple and their pickup truck vanished in 2005, never found appeared first on Boing Boing.

Doug DeMuro has a new video on Cybertruck values, and the short version is that paying $150,000 to be first now looks a lot like lighting $150,000 on fire.

The truck may be bullet-resistant. The resale value is not.

Previously:
• Is a Hearse or Cybertruck the perfect family car? — Read the rest

The post Nothing says regret like a $150k Cybertruck appeared first on Boing Boing.

Bexorg has found a way to make drug testing sound like a deleted scene from RoboCop: remove a dead person's brain, hook it to a machine, and see what experimental drugs do.

Bexorg, a New Haven biotech startup, is using donated postmortem human brains to test experimental drugs. — Read the rest

The post The brain-in-a-bucket drug lab is here appeared first on Boing Boing.

He wanted originalism until the original words got in the way.

Hoping to somehow convince the country that birthright citizenship isn't a longstanding right, Grandpa Pudding Brains got very mad at the court he himself rigged, because it isn't doing exactly what he wants. — Read the rest

The post Grandpa Pudding Brains says the Supreme Court he rigged is rigged appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Rhode Island Trump supporter bought his wife a $640 pink Trump-branded watch, expecting "the integrity of the President of the United States." He got RUMP.

Tim Petit, from Middletown, Rhode Island, treated his wife Melanie to a $640 pink limited-edition Trump-themed timepiece from GetTrumpWatches.com, 

— Read the rest

The post Trump's watch comes with a hilarious typo appeared first on Boing Boing.

There is no laundry in space. That is one of the many indignities suffered by the brave men and women who venture into Earth orbit and beyond. A plasma laundry gun currently in development may change that.

Elisca Hicks, a crew systems operations instructor, explained in a NASA podcast on space hygiene that astronauts change their underwear every two to three days, exercise clothes every five days, shirts once a week, and pants every 30 days. — Read the rest

The post Astronauts may soon finally be able to do laundry appeared first on Boing Boing.

Trump promised cheap gas and no new wars, then delivered expensive gas and a war. Some of his voters have noticed.

The New York Times talked to Trump voters in several battleground states as they filled up their cars. Some still back him. — Read the rest

The post Trump promised cheap gas and no new wars. Thanks, MAGA! appeared first on Boing Boing.

In Jieyang, in China's Guangdong province, a farmer recently dug up this incredible and bizarre yam that had grown into a strikingly realistic hand-like shape. The farmer in the video holds his hand up to the yam for comparison, and it's uncanny. — Read the rest

The post Farmer digs up yam shaped like a human hand in China appeared first on Boing Boing.