Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup delivers everything I want from a fantasy detective story. Wonderful characters, fantastic world-building, and a mystery worth solving.

Bennett tells the story from the point of view of Din Kol, an altered human whose misshapen talents left him useless to most regular sources of employment for altered humans in the Empire. — Read the rest

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TL;DR: SwifDoo PDF Pro lets you edit, convert, translate, sign, and run OCR on PDFs without paying a recurring subscription. A lifetime Windows license is $29.97 with code SAVE5.

Adobe Acrobat isn't the only way to wrangle PDFs anymore. SwifDoo PDF Pro covers editing, conversion, OCR, and document signing for a one-time fee of $29.97 (reg. — Read the rest

The post SwifDoo PDF Pro handles your PDF headaches for $30 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Victoria Gordon, operator of a cleaning service, found a 35-year-old Mars Bar while plowing through a hoarder's house in Scunthorpe, England. Shocked by its enormity, she posed it with a contemporary bar and took a photo. The old bar, from 1991, was 62.5g, while a 2026 model is just 40g. — Read the rest

The post 1991 Mars Bar highlights shrinkflation and inflation alike appeared first on Boing Boing.

Britain's Minstry of Justice has so far spent £85,300 removing a mural painted on a wall at the Royal Courts of Justice in London by Banksy, just one of several similarly costly removals.

The spending was disclosed to the BBC through Freedom of Information requests and is likely to reignite debate over whether Banksy's work is vandalism or valuable public art.

— Read the rest

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We're big fans of the classic Blackwing pencil (here's a 24-year-old post by Mark Frauenfelder from the depths of the Blackwing Dark Age), and its makers recently posted a video showing how they are made.

Now you know how Blackwing pencils are made. — Read the rest

The post How Blackwing pencils (and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk) are made appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nearest Pint is an interactive map of Britain showing pub density by parliamentary constituency, with each color-coded according to the number of pubs per 10,000 drinkers, which is to say, the population. At the top of the chart is Liverpool Riverside, with 23.73 pubs for every 10,000 people, closely followed by the Cities of London and Westminster, with 21.7 pubs per 10,000 people, and Manchester (21.6), then Bristol, Edinburgh and Brighton, about 21 per 10k. — Read the rest

The post UK pub density map appeared first on Boing Boing.

On February 10, 1355, two Oxford students named Walter de Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield complained about the wine at the Swindlestock Tavern. The vintner, John de Croydon, dismissed the complaint. One of the students threw his drink in de Croydon's face, and by one account beat him with the quart pot. — Read the rest

The post A complaint about bad wine left 93 dead and Oxford paying for 470 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1860s San Francisco, the city routinely poisoned or trapped stray dogs. The city exempted Bummer and Lazarus by name. Bummer was a black-and-white Newfoundland who lived on the sidewalk outside Frederick Martin's saloon on Montgomery Street, and he was an exceptional rat-killer. — Read the rest

The post San Francisco exempted two stray dogs from its own laws appeared first on Boing Boing.

Doi Toshitsura was a feudal lord in Edo-period Japan who studied snow for about twenty years. His 1832 book of woodblock prints, Sekka Zusetsu, has eighty-six drawings of what he called "snow flowers" (sekka), plus a dozen more copied from a 1779 Dutch natural history book. — Read the rest

The post A Japanese lord spent 20 years drawing snowflakes under a microscope appeared first on Boing Boing.

1999 A.D. is a short film the appliance maker Philco-Ford made in 1967 to show what family life would look like at the end of the century. It opens with a boy named Jamie, who builds a sandcastle version of his family's house on a Southern California beach. — Read the rest

The post This 1967 short film got video chat and online banking right appeared first on Boing Boing.

Luke Howard was an industrial chemist in London. He studied clouds as a hobby in the early 1800s. In his Essay on the Modification of Clouds, he gave the standard cloud formations the names we still use today. Cirrus is the Latin word for a wisp of hair, cumulus for "convex or conical heaps," stratus for a "horizontal sheet." — Read the rest

The post One hobbyist named cirrus, cumulus, and stratus back in 1803 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Microsoft Visio Professional 2024 helps turn workflows, networks, floor plans, and other complicated ideas into polished diagrams. Get a lifetime Windows license for $44.97 (reg. $579.99).

Some ideas are much easier to understand once you stop trying to explain them in a wall of text.  — Read the rest

The post Turn complicated ideas into clear diagrams with Microsoft Visio 2024 for $45 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Ask questions about PDFs, generate summaries, edit documents, and convert files without juggling multiple apps. PDNob Pro is $49.99 for life (reg. $349.95).

AI has finally made its way into one of the internet's least cooperative file formats: PDFs. PDNob Pro PDF Editor can summarize, translate, and answer questions about your documents while handling all the editing tools you'd expect, and right now, you can get lifetime access for $49.99 (reg. — Read the rest

The post This AI PDF editor can answer questions about your documents for $50 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Save big on tools you'll actually use with this Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows license, now only $19.97 (MSRP $229).

From building a budget to crafting the perfect presentation to get your point across and drafting documents, it's pretty rare to find a suite of apps that can help you tackle a full workday. — Read the rest

The post From Word to Excel, score seven Microsoft Office apps for just $20 (MSRP $229) appeared first on Boing Boing.

A metal that has never been recorded before turned up in a grain of sand from Hiroshima Bay. Writing in Science Advances, Luca Bindi, Hans-Rudolf Wenk, Mario Wannier, and Teresa Salvatici report the discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast, sealed inside a glassy bead that formed during the airburst of 6 August 1945. — Read the rest

The post A new alloy turned up in a grain of sand from Hiroshima Bay appeared first on Boing Boing.

A medevac flight that should have taken half an hour ended on the side of a mountain in New Mexico, killing all four aboard. Jeff Wise reports for Wired that a military GPS jamming exercise 100 miles away is part of the reason. — Read the rest

The post Four died after a military exercise took GPS away over New Mexico appeared first on Boing Boing.

The surface of the Sun has been photographed in more detail than ever before, and it turns out to be covered in whirlpools. Victoria Gill reports for BBC News on the most detailed images of the Sun yet, taken by the Inouye Solar Telescope on a high peak in Hawaii and published in the journal Nature. — Read the rest

The post The sharpest pictures ever taken of the Sun show it swirling appeared first on Boing Boing.

NASA created a Martian Dust Limit Working Group this year to figure out how much Mars dust a person can safely breathe, and Leonard David reports for Space.com on the dust hazard and how future astronauts might deal with it. — Read the rest

The post Mars dust is full of perchlorates, silica, and heavy metals appeared first on Boing Boing.

Now you can immerse yourself completely in the uncanny valley by watching Fairgound, a new 24/7 AI slop channel available on Roku. It offers "series, films, and shorts from the world's best AI storytellers" across a variety of genres. [via Cord Cutters]

Fairground AI stands out as a pioneering offering dedicated entirely to AI-generated content.

— Read the rest

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TL;DR: Headway Premium now includes a growing selection of fiction summaries alongside its huge nonfiction library. Get lifetime access for $69.99 (reg. $299.95).

Big news for anyone who loves books but never seems to finish them: Headway now includes fiction summaries alongside its popular nonfiction library. — Read the rest

The post Own Headway for life for $69.99 and finally make waiting in line productive appeared first on Boing Boing.

Osaka ranked seventh and Tokyo tenth in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2026 Global Liveability Index. Japan was the only Asian country with two cities in the top 10. BBC Travel asked residents and planners why, and their answers came down to four rules. — Read the rest

The post Why Osaka and Tokyo keep landing in the world's top 10 cities appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: If you regularly bank, shop, and manage your finances online, this discounted 15-month subscription offers an affordable way to monitor your identity and respond quickly if fraud occurs—grab it now for just $99.99 (reg. $187.35).

With LifeLock Core Identity Theft Protection, you don't have to be a cybersecurity expert to protect your identity thanks to this all-in-one fraud defense software. — Read the rest

The post This $100 subscription helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud appeared first on Boing Boing.

Google has a difficult engineering problem at its enormous Fort Wayne data center: some of the land it wants to build on is protected wetlands.

The search giant's solution is simple: build anyway. In the permitting documents for the not-evil-mastermind-sounding "Project Zodiac," Google's developer, Hatchworks, claims "meeting the project purpose and completely avoiding water resources was not feasible." — Read the rest

The post Doing no "evil," Google proposes paving over protected wetlands for a data center appeared first on Boing Boing.

Los Angeles' stiffest self-proclaimed superhero is fighting a branding problem of his own devising.

Based on the name alone, I had already imagined an incredible origin story involving the ever-popular fateful tumble into a vat of chemicals. His crackling electric baton was named either the Magic Wand or the Rabbit, and Rock Hard's sidekick could only be Rock Steady. — Read the rest

The post Can you guess Rock Hard's branding problem? appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Never lose your wallet or ID cards again with this Gen 3, 1-pack KeySmart SmartCard for just $31.99 (reg. $39.99).

The KeySmart SmartCard is a credit-card-thin, IPX8 waterproof, rechargeable smartcard that works with Apple Find My or Google Find to help you keep track of your belongings. — Read the rest

The post Never lose your wallet again with this $32 smart tracker appeared first on Boing Boing.

Meta is paying for posts that appear to break its own rules, according to an ABC (Australia) New Verify investigation by Lucy Carter. The report cites four accounts that have received payment from Facebook's invitation-only Content Monetization program, including a white nationalist with neo-Nazi links and an anti-vaccine campaigner. — Read the rest

The post Meta pays 16.2 million accounts, including neo-Nazi-linked pages appeared first on Boing Boing.

"From The 'London Times' in 1904" is an 1898 Mark Twain short story set six years in the future, and it describes something very close to the internet. It opens as a murder mystery. Clayton, a hot-tempered army officer, is accused of killing Szczepanik, the inventor of a machine called the telelectroscope. — Read the rest

The post Mark Twain wrote a story in 1898 that describes the internet appeared first on Boing Boing.

De Acupunctura is a 1683 book by the Dutch physician Willem ten Rhijne, and it came out of one of the most roundabout translation jobs on record. Ten Rhijne was living at Dejima, the artificial island off Nagasaki that was the only piece of Japan open to Europeans during the Edo period. — Read the rest

The post A Dutch doctor translated acupuncture through four languages appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Florence Y'all Water Tower stands beside Interstate 75 in Florence, Kentucky, and it says "Y'all" because of a paperwork problem. When it went up in 1974 it read FLORENCE MALL. The developers had given the city the land for the tower on the condition that the mall's name be painted where interstate drivers would see it, and the mall itself was still two years from opening. — Read the rest

The post A Kentucky water tower says "Y'all" because of a legal problem appeared first on Boing Boing.

There's been some speculation about exactly what Primetime, A24's movie about the hit show To Catch A Predator, is going to say. Having seen the trailer, I figure that if you were skeptical of host Chris Hansen's motives and character, this movie shares those concerns and might even be entirely about them. — Read the rest

The post Take a seat and watch the trailer to Primetime appeared first on Boing Boing.