A 5-milliliter ampoule of the world's most precise water sells for $159 — about $120,000 a gallon, Signore Galilei writes. It is Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (VSMOW), and labs buy it because water's freezing point varies based on its elemental isotopes. — Read the rest

The post The world's most precise water costs $120,000 a gallon appeared first on Boing Boing.

United States Senator for the state of Ohio Bernie Moreno says he lived in fear for his granddaughter's safety whenever Rep. Max Miller had custody of her. Moreno spent those same two years not telling the public that Miller was unfit for Congress. — Read the rest

The post Bernie Moreno "held his breath" for two years before warning Congress about Max Miller appeared first on Boing Boing.

Trump's family business sued Capital One for allegedly closing its accounts over "woke" politics. Capital One responded by telling the court about its anti-money-laundering team's findings.

Capital One has not accused the Trump Organization of committing money laundering. It says the accounts were closed after months of analysis by its anti-money-laundering team, which identified transaction patterns among those flagged by federal banking guidance. — Read the rest

The post Trump Org's "woke debanking" lawsuit produced an anti-money-laundering filing appeared first on Boing Boing.

Inshoku Yojo Kagami, or "Mirror of the Physiology of Drinking and Eating," is a nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock print of a man eating fish and drinking sake, with his torso cut away to show the crew of tiny workers keeping him going. — Read the rest

The post Japanese prints show tiny workers running the human body appeared first on Boing Boing.

This is the cutest bedtime routine I've seen in a long time! Sit back and enjoy watching all of the sweet beasts who live at Alyssa's Animal Sanctuary tuck themselves in for the night! In the video, you first see Alyssa, owner and operator of the sanctuary, ringing a triangle to alert the animals that it's bedtime. — Read the rest

The post Goats, pigs, and chickens tuck themselves in every night appeared first on Boing Boing.

It's been a while since I added a furry musician to my dream animal supergroup, which includes Lulu the Lab mix, an amazing guitarist; this Dachshund percussionist, with a mean tail-on-trash-can; and Yupia, a horse who plays guitar with his muzzle. — Read the rest

The post Virgil the goat is a terrific caprine percussionist appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you have functioning eyes and you've been on the Internet lately, you've no doubt stumbled across Jimothy, the pride of Seattle. It is a truth universally acknowledged that raccoons are cute as hell, but Jimothy — or so this feral Seattle raccoon has been dubbed — has managed to take a step beyond and go ultra-mega-viral thanks to his short spine syndrome, which is basically exactly what it sounds like. — Read the rest

The post Infamous raccoon Jimothy can now accompany you in Skyrim appeared first on Boing Boing.

A former National Park Service ranger is touring visitor centers with flyers containing the history the Trump administration removed from the walls.

Melissa Dalley quit the National Park Service in April. Now she visits Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier as a civilian, telling strangers about exhibits, signs and brochures that have disappeared while the Trump administration reviews park history for material that "inappropriately disparage[s] Americans." — Read the rest

The post Former NPS ranger shares the history Trump removed appeared first on Boing Boing.

The conspiracy theorist overseeing U.S. health policy wants to rehabilitate nicotine.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called nicotine pouches "probably the safest way to consume nicotine," while wellness influencers promote the addictive drug for focus, energy, and relaxation. — Read the rest

The post RFK Jr. praises nicotine as tech companies hand it to workers appeared first on Boing Boing.

Pushball is a sport that uses a ball six feet three inches across. The Massachusetts inventor Moses G. Crane came up with it in the 1890s because he couldn't follow American football, a small brown ball moving across a mostly brown field. — Read the rest

The post Students once played a sport with a ball taller than they were appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sand men were buskers who sculpted the beach just off the Atlantic City boardwalk and worked for tips. They built in high relief out of saltwater-soaked sand, life-size and bigger: a slain soldier beside his fallen horse, Christ on the cross, lions and snakes, a mermaid. — Read the rest

The post Life-size sand sculptures once lined the Atlantic City boardwalk appeared first on Boing Boing.

The computer component price crisis, driven by AI datacenters snapping it all up for the slop trade, has crushed few so hard as the gamers. The laptop I bought my son for $600 last year is currently $955 at the same shop. — Read the rest

The post PC and console prices still going up appeared first on Boing Boing.

The renaissance of pocket point-and-shoot cameras proceeds apace with Kodak's EC35, inexpensive at $35 and good enough to take to the party. If the Charmera and its blind-box business model represents a digital extravagance, and the $100 Snapic was simply too cool for school, the EC35 is the real deal shoved back in your pocket. — Read the rest

The post Charmera too modern for you? Kodak's $35 film camera puts 1990 in your pocket appeared first on Boing Boing.

You may be aware that cops have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public, and that you have a constitutional right to record what they do. Cellphone video proved that police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck for nearly 10 minutes, and the right to record it is why the footage helped convict him of his murder. — Read the rest

The post A printable one-page Guide to Recording Law Enforcement appeared first on Boing Boing.

Anime User Interfaces collects depictions of computer screens, keyboards, dashboards and other gadgets depicted in Japanese animation (and a few others, such as Wargames' NORAD big boards, as a treat.) Spotted via Hacker News, which links to an interesting article explaining why glowing lights in analog animation and film SFX have such a weird magic. — Read the rest

The post Gallery of anime user interfaces appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Marnameh is a short Persian book, written in the late fifteenth century, that explains the meaning of seeing a snake. It runs through the thirty days of the Zoroastrian calendar, most of them named for a divinity or figure, and gives the omen attached to a snake sighting on each one. — Read the rest

The post A 15th-century Persian book says what a snake sighting means appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ballots for a special election in England's Clacton-by-Sea are the longest ever produced in U.K. electoral history despite¹ only one major party contesting the race. The vote, scheduled later this month, was triggered by the showy resignation of Clacton's current member of parliament, Nigel Farage. — Read the rest

The post Clacton-by-Sea voters get the longest ballot in UK election history appeared first on Boing Boing.

Of the studies on mixing alcohol and energy drinks funded by Red Bull or written by researchers with financial ties to it, 95% found no added risk. Roughly 80% of independent studies found the opposite, The Examination reports.

At a February 2011 hearing in Suffolk County, New York, Dutch researcher Joris Verster likened blaming energy drinks for alcohol-fueled injuries to blaming shark attacks on ice cream sales. — Read the rest

The post Red Bull paid for the studies saying vodka Red Bulls are fine appeared first on Boing Boing.

A report this week that China has begun mass-producing specialty chips key to the AI boom set off a selloff that erased $1 trillion in market value from other chip manufacturers, according to the Guardian. The same week, the Federal Communications Commission banned humanoid robots from China, alleging they could steal data or surveil US citizens. — Read the rest

The post A chip report out of China erased $1 trillion in market value appeared first on Boing Boing.

A lightbulb in a Livermore, California fire station has burned for more than 120 years, past a million hours, and it is the stock proof that manufacturers once colluded to make bulbs burn out. It is also barely lit: the nominally 60-watt lamp draws four watts, according to electronics blogger Maurycy's post on tungsten filaments. — Read the rest

The post The lightbulb that's burned for 120 years draws four watts appeared first on Boing Boing.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Paul Adams sexually abused all six of his children for at least seven years before he was caught. He killed himself after being charged, but not before investigators realized that bishops and other officials at the Church of Latter Day Saints had long been aware of what he was doing to his children. — Read the rest

The post Arizona Supreme Court: clergy don't have to report child abuse confessions appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: FastestVPN gives 15 devices access to over 900 servers around the world, and a lifetime subscription is only $40.

Most VPNs bill you every month and tap out at five or six devices before they start booting you off the account. — Read the rest

The post One of the most popular VPNs just put their PRO lifetime plan on sale for $40 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Carved into the Hathor temple at Dendera in Egypt is a relief that looks a great deal like a lightbulb: an oval bubble with a snake curling inside it, held up by a pillar. A fringe theory holds that this is evidence of ancient Egyptian electric lighting, based on the resemblance to incandescent bulbs, cathode-ray tubes, and Crookes tubes. — Read the rest

The post The Egyptian temple carving that looks like a giant lightbulb appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Little Debbie delivery driver sold more than $17,000 worth of cargo at flea markets and billed grocery stores for deliveries that never happened, say police in Pennsylvania. WTAE reports that James Powell, 39, of Valley Grove, West Virginia, faces forgery, theft and fraud charges. — Read the rest

The post Little Debbie delivery driver made $17k selling them from his truck at flea markets, say cops appeared first on Boing Boing.

One of the oddest things about the Trump era is media blithely accepting the euphemism "prediction markets" to refer to online gambling sites such as Polymarket and Kalshi. We do this because the UI is complex and we're easily bamboozled by the structural distinction between contracts and wagers. — Read the rest

The post New York sues Kalshi as "illegal gambling operation" appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Dumber Mini (formerly Dumbdroid) is a candybar dumbphone with a T9 keypad, a small touchscreen and a stripped-down Android fork called DumberOS. It preorders for £149 (about $190) and they plan to ship it for Christmas. It embraces the simple aesthetic of old-fashioned Nokia-style featurephones (compare to the svelte minimalism of Light Flip) but it also lets you install smartphone apps. — Read the rest

The post Dumber Mini aims to be the perfect candybar dumphone appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Add fresh tools to an old PC for just $32.97 with this lifetime license to Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows, on sale now through August 9.

Sometimes it's best to go back to basics. Whether you're trying to finalize a budget, write a report, or organize your schedule, Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows can help. — Read the rest

The post Get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more for life for less than $5 each with this Microsoft Office license appeared first on Boing Boing.

Physicist Rhett Allain wants to retire the messy-bedroom explanation of entropy. Disorder, he writes in Wired, "doesn't mean messiness or chaos" — it counts the ways a system's parts can be rearranged without changing its overall state.

He uses dice instead. — Read the rest

The post The messy-bedroom explanation of entropy is wrong appeared first on Boing Boing.

Delish food editor Brooke Caison explains why tomato sauce turns plastic containers orange. Cooked and canned tomatoes are loaded with lycopene, a heavily pigmented antioxidant that repels water. Plastic repels water too, so the pigment bonds to the container.

Hot leftovers make it worse. — Read the rest

The post Why tomato sauce stains plastic, and the 30-second fix appeared first on Boing Boing.

The smallest production car ever made shipped without a reverse gear. When a Peel P50 driver needed to turn around in a tight spot, they got out, grabbed the handle bolted to the back of the car, and dragged it around by hand. — Read the rest

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