When I say scammers are using the hantavirus, I don't mean they're engineering devious biological weapon attacks (although I'm sure they would if they could.) It feels like it's barely been any time at all since a hantavirus outbreak left a Dutch cruise ship stranded and quarantined. — Read the rest

The post Scammers are already using the hantavirus to fleece people appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: The Claude AI Professional E-Degree is on sale for $19.99 (MSRP $49) through June 14 and includes hands-on training for prompting, automation, integrations, workflows, and practical Claude AI productivity skills.

Every once in a while, the internet collectively decides one AI tool is suddenly the main character. — Read the rest

The post Claude AI is having a moment — this $20 course helps you keep up appeared first on Boing Boing.

Cicada 3301 is the name of "three sets of puzzles posted under the name '3301' online between 2012 and 2014." The first appeared on 4chan on January 4, 2012, and ran for nearly a month; a second came in 2013, and a third in 2014. — Read the rest

The post An anonymous group posted internet puzzles to recruit code-breakers, then vanished appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Yuba County Five were five young men from Yuba County, California, "each with mild intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions," who went missing after a college basketball game on February 24, 1978. Their car "was found abandoned in a remote area of Plumas National Forest, on a high mountain dirt road far out of their way back to Yuba County." — Read the rest

The post Five men left a basketball game in 1978 and drove into a mystery appeared first on Boing Boing.

New York, baby! Greatest city in the world! Or at least it is for a few hours this morning, because it's playing host to a massive inflatable bust of Elon Musk that appeared unannounced in Times Square.

The inflatable, which is a shockingly good likeness, depicts a shirtless Musk giving his usual gormless, dead-eyed grin, albeit sporting a few new tattoos. — Read the rest

The post Giant inflatable Elon Musk appears in Times Square, protesting Grok's lack of limits appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1932, a 22-year-old John W. Campbell — later the Astounding editor who shaped midcentury science fiction, and, as has been well documented, an open fascist — published "The Last Evolution" in Amazing Stories. It's narrated by the last thinking machine on Earth, recalling how humanity went extinct. — Read the rest

The post In 1932, John W. Campbell imagined machines outliving humanity appeared first on Boing Boing.

A worn copy of a 1912 pulp magazine, graded just 2.0, sold for $58,560 this month because Tarzan is on the cover. All-Story No. 94, from October 1912, contains "the First Appearance of Tarzan" — Edgar Rice Burroughs' introduction of Tarzan of the Apes — and this rare U.K. — Read the rest

The post The first Tarzan pulp sold for $58,560 at a record-setting auction appeared first on Boing Boing.

Kryptos is a sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn on the grounds of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Dedicated on November 3, 1990, it carries four encrypted messages. "Of these four messages, the first three have been solved, while the fourth message remains one of the most famous unsolved codes in the world." — Read the rest

The post A sculpture at CIA headquarters has kept a coded message secret for 35 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

Grant Sanderson's new 3Blue1Brown video starts from a 1940s question — how far can you compress text? — and arrives at why it matters for AI.

The bridge is from Claude Shannon's information theory: "prediction and compression are mathematically equivalent," two sides of the same coin. — Read the rest

The post How Claude Shannon used his wife as a language model in 1950 appeared first on Boing Boing.

While shopping for groceries in Estonia, customers at the Viimsi Shopping Center in the town of Haabneeme can come face-to-face with a piece of ancient history: this gigantic Ice Age boulder estimated to be around 10,000 years old. The stone was uncovered during excavation work for the building's foundation and presented developers with an unusual challenge. — Read the rest

The post Estonian supermarket built around a 10,000-year-old Ice Age boulder appeared first on Boing Boing.

Let's give it up for the next year, people: the announcement teaser for the hotly anticipated RPG The Elder Scrolls 6 was revealed eight years ago today at E3, an event that has died in the intervening time. Another couple months, and Bethesda will be hard at work remastering it. — Read the rest

The post The Elder Scrolls 6 teaser is now eight years old and counting appeared first on Boing Boing.

With Wolfenstein on ice for the foreseeable future after that weird 80s one, the very specific "cathartic Nazi-killing simulator" crown seems to be up for grabs. As seems to be the trend with gaming lately, however, now is the time of the indie game, where teams you've never heard of are delivering sleeper hits left and right. — Read the rest

The post Indie Nazi-hunting game looks a bit like a playable Inglorious Basterds appeared first on Boing Boing.

I don't suppose I could ask you to take a few minutes off doomscrolling to enjoy some good news today? It may just be because it's June, the month I legally get to tell the straights to shut up, but I'm somehow feeling pretty damn good right now. — Read the rest

The post Sam Bentley's June good news video is out and it's genuinely heartening appeared first on Boing Boing.

AHOY Comics is launching its first Kickstarter, and it's doing so with a project that sounds right in Mark Russell's wheelhouse: a satirical science fiction drama about UFO cults, conspiracy thinking, and the human need to find meaning in the unknown. — Read the rest

The post Mark Russell's new graphic novel explores the strange comfort of cults appeared first on Boing Boing.

Dementia Donnie has a bold new theory of diplomacy: drop $250 million worth of bombs on people, then announce they are "really in submission" even if they have not noticed.

On Fox & Friends, Trump said Iran is "dying to make a deal" and bragged, "We dropped $250 million of bombs on them last night." — Read the rest

The post Grandpa Pudding Brains says Iran is in submission, they just don't know it yet appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1996, photographer Laszlo Kestay documented a lava field in Hawaii that later earned the nickname "Gates of Hell." At first glance, it doesn't look like a landscape so much as something half-formed and then left to harden mid-motion. The cooling lava has frozen into dense, tangled shapes that people often say look like bodies caught in collapse. — Read the rest

The post These 1996 Hawaii lava photos look like a horror movie set appeared first on Boing Boing.

America is full of dead big-box stores wearing new signs, but none are as evocative of Gen X's coming of age as a place that sold us a DVD player with an unnecessary warranty. This threads thread is a joy.

A Threads post points to a Sprouts in Culver City that still has unmistakable Circuit City bones. — Read the rest

The post Retail archaeology finds the bones of Circuit City everywhere appeared first on Boing Boing.

Melania Trump, who married into the dirtiest, most scandal-slimed money pile she could find herself photographed rolling in, would like everyone to know success is really about independence.

Speaking about "Fostering the Future Accounts," Melania said, "Success is not about how many benefits a person receives. — Read the rest

The post Melania Trump, noted independence expert, explains success appeared first on Boing Boing.

Orcas are attacking boats, bears are enforcing trail etiquette, Santa Monica's squirrels are turning Palisades Park into a snack-funded burrow empire, and now a Florida shark has added teeth to nature's complaint box.

NBC News reports that two staffers from a naval facility in Panama City were swimming off the Florida Panhandle when a shark attacked one of them, leaving the man fighting for his life. — Read the rest

The post Orcas, bears, squirrels, and now sharks have notes appeared first on Boing Boing.

Pasadena police released dashcam video of an officer shooting another officer during what the chief called "horseplay," which is a cute word for people with badges forgetting guns are not props.

The first rule of safe gun handling is not complicated: do not point a firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy. — Read the rest

The post Pasadena cops discover "just joking" does not stop bullets appeared first on Boing Boing.

Electrek reports that solar supplied 12.8% of U.S. electricity in May 2026, beating coal's 12.2% for the first month on record, according to analysis from Ember. Five years ago, coal generated nearly 20% of U.S. electricity in May, and solar was just 5.4%. — Read the rest

The post Coal finally loses to the Sun appeared first on Boing Boing.

Not all fluff is friendly, and there's nobody better than Megalopyge opercularis, or Puss Caterpillar, to teach us that lesson. This caterpillar looks almost unreal at first glance. It's covered in thick, soft-looking fur that makes it resemble a tiny floofy ball of wool or lint. — Read the rest

The post Puss caterpillar is one of North America's most venomous insects appeared first on Boing Boing.

A researcher studying how amphibious creatures communicate was able to trick frog dads, but the moms were not fooled.

When Billie Goolsby, who is hard of hearing, told her chemistry professor at Boston University that she wanted to pursue science, she was told that "people like you don't stay in science or medicine." — Read the rest

The post Robot tadpole fools frog dads, but mom knows better appeared first on Boing Boing.

Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) has announced that it's analyzed sperm whales' pattern of vocalizations and broken it down into a complex phoenetic alphabet, including consonants and vowels. They are now collecting data with unobtrusive underwater devices and using that alphabet framework to analyze their vocalizations in an attempt to decode their language. — Read the rest

The post Decoding whale language could unlock new legal rights for them appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: AcePDF Converter & Editor is on sale for $23.99 with code PDF20 through June 14 and includes lifetime access for Windows and Mac.

PDFs are one of those file types everyone uses and almost nobody enjoys dealing with.

That's why AcePDF Converter & Editor feels so satisfying. — Read the rest

The post PDFs have bullied us long enough — the AcePDF Converter & Editor is a one-time $24 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Choi Eun-hee was one of South Korea's biggest film stars of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978 she traveled to Hong Kong to meet a supposed businessman about a new film company. "In Hong Kong, Choi was abducted and taken to North Korea by the order of Kim Jong Il." — Read the rest

The post Kim Jong-il had a South Korean actress kidnapped to make him movies appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Utsuro-bune ("hollow boat") was an object that "allegedly washed ashore in 1803 in Hitachi province on the eastern coast of Japan." According to the legend, "a young woman aged between 18 and 20 arrived aboard the 'hollow boat' on February 22, 1803. — Read the rest

The post In 1803 a woman in a strange round vessel washed ashore in Japan appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tarrare was an 18th-century French showman and soldier who could eat almost without limit and was "constantly hungry." As a performer, he "swallowed corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples." In the French Revolutionary Army, "even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite." — Read the rest

The post The spy who ate live animals, documents, and possibly a toddler appeared first on Boing Boing.

On September 15, 1896, the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad crashed two unmanned locomotives into each other at speed as a public spectacle. The Crash at Crush was the idea of passenger agent William Crush, who built a temporary town for the event and charged nothing to watch — the railroad made its money selling tickets on excursion trains to the site. — Read the rest

The post In 1896 a railroad crashed two trains head-on for fun and killed two spectators appeared first on Boing Boing.

In parts of Uttar Pradesh, India, one way to seize a relative's land is to bribe an official to declare them dead. The Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People exists to reverse those declarations. According to Wikipedia, in the region, "many have resorted to bribing officials to have the owner of a plot of land declared deceased and the title transferred to their ownership." — Read the rest

The post Lal Bihari was legally dead for 18 years and fought to undo it appeared first on Boing Boing.