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.

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.

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

The post The smallest car ever made had no reverse gear appeared first on Boing Boing.

Chris Graue used the primitive Game Boy Camera to take striking photos of Jupiter, and has now published a tutorial on how to get results from the 1990s novelty gadget. The essential component is a 3D-printable lens adapter.

As with my Super Nintendo Tripod Mount, I teamed up with my friend Drew Van Oort to design this piece.

— Read the rest

The post Astrophography with a Game Boy Camera appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: This refurbished 13-inch MacBook Air (2018) is now just $199.97 (reg. $1,199).

If you're looking for everyday battery life, portability, and the ability to retain your membership in the Apple ecosystem, this refurbished MacBook Air may be just what you're looking for—grab your 128GB one in Gold for just $199.97 (reg. — Read the rest

The post Pick up a refurbished 2018 MacBook Air for just $200 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.

When police reached the Harlem brownstone at 2078 Fifth Avenue in March 1947, the doors were wired shut and the foyer was packed solid with old newspapers, folding beds, half a sewing machine, boxes, and parts of a wine press. A patrolman finally broke in through a second-story window and dug for five hours before finding Homer Collyer's body. — Read the rest

The post Two brothers filled a Harlem brownstone with 140 tons of stuff appeared first on Boing Boing.

On June 11, 1994, a user posting anonymously through a remailer to the Pink Floyd newsgroup on Usenet told fans that the band's new album had "a central purpose and a designed solution" buried in it. Study the artwork, the lyrics, and the music, the poster said. — Read the rest

The post In 1984, an anonymous poster said a Pink Floyd album hid a prize. Nobody ever found it appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 2018, I won the coveted "every word more horrifying than the last" award for the headline "Spiders Blamed After Broken Siren Played Creepy Nursery Rhymes Randomly To British Townsfolk." I expect to win this award a second time, thanks to famed singer Boy George's latest antics turning out to have an amazing contextual backdrop. — Read the rest

The post Boy George's Pro-Israel AI Slop Reggae Song was Promotional Stunt for Playing Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar appeared first on Boing Boing.

An author's debut novel scored $2.4m in licensing deals after Minotaur/Macmillan acquired it, but they unraveled after "questions were raised" over exactly who, or what, wrote it. Deadline reports "there are apparently fingerprints, or something that raised the flags of AI censors," a description that illustrates how well the entertainment industry understands the technology at hand. — Read the rest

The post Unpublished novel's $2.4m deal pulled over AI concerns appeared first on Boing Boing.

YouTube terminated the channels of several popular ASMR artists this week, telling them their content violated its policies against sexual material. 404 Media's Samantha Cole reports that those banned include ItsBunniiASMR, Slight Sounds, Nananightray, Roseasmr, Simoneasmr and Janina Wilhelmsen. — Read the rest

The post YouTube crackles down on ASMR content appeared first on Boing Boing.

NASA's mission to rescue a satellite falling out of orbit suffered a setback when the rescue craft experienced multiple failures. NASA launched Katalyst's LINK spacecraft earlier this month on a mission to boost the Swift Observatory into a stable orbit.

In a blog post, NASA announced that "Katalyst's LINK servicing spacecraft experienced issues with attitude control, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications." — Read the rest

The post Spacecraft sent on rescue mission now spinning out of control appeared first on Boing Boing.

The I Can't Sleep podcast is the perfect way to fall asleep. Wikipedia entries are read slowly, in a soft monotone. Recent episodes have included the entries for Middle-earth, French fries, and concrete.

The show's about page claims that "Sleep researchers will tell you that monotony, predictable voices, and gentle cognitive engagement (the kind that distracts but doesn't excite) are useful for falling asleep." — Read the rest

The post Fall asleep to monotonous Wikipedia entries with this podcast appeared first on Boing Boing.

Avocado flowers perform the duty of both female and male flowers. The gene that controls them has been unchanged for 42 million years.

Each avocado flower opens twice over two days: first in its female phase, when it can receive pollen, and later in its male phase, when it releases pollen. — Read the rest

The post The avocado's sex life has run on the same schedule for 42 million years appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Trump administration arrested a former Olympian, David Hearn, for touching a loose piece of its janky Reflecting Pool liner, indicted him for felony vandalism, and then announced it had "tremendous evidence" of his wrongdoing. The evidence shows something else: the contractor botched the installation, the DOJ lied. — Read the rest

The post DOJ admits the Reflecting Pool "vandal" was the contractor appeared first on Boing Boing.

A 21-year-old Nebraska man set out to film an instructional gun video and accidentally produced a much more persuasive one. Police say the newly purchased 9mm discharged as he demonstrated how to rack it, sending a bullet through his leg and severing his femoral artery. — Read the rest

The post This gun lesson skipped directly to the consequences appeared first on Boing Boing.

Architect of our demise, Senator Mitch McConnell's office released another photograph to prove that he remains alive and recovering. The doubting public responded by identifying his wife's $12 Chico's shirt and opening a textile-forensics lab.

A family friend of billionaire Elaine Chao reportedly considers it implausible that she would willingly wear a $12 Chico's shirt. — Read the rest

The post A $12 Chico's shirt enters the Mitch McConnell proof-of-life mystery appeared first on Boing Boing.

Recently, we shared the story of an airplane evangelist who likes to stand up and start bothering people on flights. It appears the airlines are over it.

Public exhibitionist Whitney Lynn goes on a weird Jesus rant after being told she can not perform her one-woman act. — Read the rest

The post Preacher who loves a "captive audience" meets the person running the flight appeared first on Boing Boing.