If you were moving diamonds across the Deccan Plateau in the 1830s, there were rules about when to set out. Leave on a Tuesday or a Thursday, on the 5th, 13th, or 28th day of the lunar month. Eat coriander seeds before a Tuesday departure and jaggery before a Thursday one. — Read the rest

The post An 1832 book explains how to pick a lucky day to travel appeared first on Boing Boing.

A gongoozler is someone who stands beside a canal and watches the boats. According to Wikipedia, the word may have begun as canal workers' slang for a person loitering on the towpath, and The Times has described it as meaning "someone who hung around bridges to laugh at the inept efforts of less experienced barge folk as they struggled to pass through locks." — Read the rest

The post Ever stood and watched boats work a lock? There's a job for you appeared first on Boing Boing.

In the year 937, Mount Fuji erupted and sent the Ken-Marubi lava flow down its northern slopes and over a stand of fallen trees. The lava hardened around the trunks while the wood inside burned away, leaving long hollow tubes in the ground. — Read the rest

The post A 937 eruption at Mount Fuji left a cave shaped like a womb appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Edit, convert, merge, split, rotate, crop, delete, and reorganize PDFs with ease with this lifetime subscription to PDF Expert's Premium Plan while it's on sale for 43% off. 

After forking out a pretty penny for a MacBook, the last thing you want to do is spend even more on software. — Read the rest

The post Own your PDF software outright with this $80 Mac tool appeared first on Boing Boing.

France's ban on unsolicited solicitations comes into effect next week, protecting consumers from telemarketers and other intrusive sales pitches. Acknowledging that its "opt-out" system (as found in other countries) had only served the hucksters, the Fourth Republic is trying something new: actually stopping them. — Read the rest

The post France bans cold-calling telemarketers appeared first on Boing Boing.

DuckDuckGo is well-known for its privacy-oriented search engine, but a pivot into fashion proved a big hit this week. Its "Normal Fucking Sunglasses," posted yesterday here at Boing Boing, sold out right away despite being otherwise unremarkable Paso Robles from Knockaround. — Read the rest

The post DuckDuckGo's "Normal F***ing Sunglasses" sell out in a day appeared first on Boing Boing.

For those who find the Squatty Potty gauche but want to spend less time in the bathroom, there is a new option: Sh*t Shoes.

The way people in most Western countries sit on the toilet isn't great. Squatting is common in non-Western countries and likely contributes to a lower incidence of hemorrhoids, which can be caused by straining. — Read the rest

The post There's now a $69 pair of shoes designed only for using the toilet appeared first on Boing Boing.

A spectacular complex is about to emerge in Rotterdam, and it looks like it belongs in Middle-earth or Thra instead of the Netherlands.

Award-winning international architectural firm MVRDV was declared the winner in a competition to design a mixed-use, eco-friendly Embassy for Shift. — Read the rest

The post This winning design looks like it wandered out of a fantasy film appeared first on Boing Boing.

It's suddenly a great time to be an X-Files fan. Just days after the release of the first LEGO X-Files set, a new X-Files movie trailer drops.

Sadly, it is not a trailer for the mythical third X-Files movie, but rather a director's cut of 2008's X-Files: I Want to Believe. — Read the rest

The post Trailer drops for X-Files: I Want to Believe's R-rated cut appeared first on Boing Boing.

When I head out for the day, my pack is heavy with EDC nonsense: my laptop or word processor, a CLS medical kit, phone, earphones — you get the idea. If I feel the urge to add anything to my load out, it needs to be lightweight, well-made and, most importantly, feel essential. — Read the rest

The post This phone keyboard attachment is well-made but still too heavy appeared first on Boing Boing.

Late-model BMW owners are starting up their cars to find a commercial for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Responding to a request for information about the ad from The Autopian, BMW confirmed the animation is part of a broader partnership with the film:

"A few of our vehicles – including the BMW iX3 – were in the film, and a special edition iX3 was featured on the red carpet during last night's premiere in Los Angeles."

— Read the rest

The post BMWs are showing a commercial at startup appeared first on Boing Boing.

Do you recall the stunned feeling in your thinky bits the moment that you discovered that the holes in many pasta serving spoons are designed to measure portion size? Did that moment just come after reading that first sentence? Anyway, it could well be that I'm the last fella on the planet to realize this, but you can use a wireless battery pack to charge many models of true wireless earphones. — Read the rest

The post MagSafe battery packs can charge AirPods and other earbuds too appeared first on Boing Boing.

A man who stood on the roof of a hospital dressed like the Grim Reaper (or a crow, as he claims) has pleaded guilty to being a nuisance on NHS premises. Leon Gillespie, 26, of Deganwy, was fined £200 (~$270) over the stunt, writes Matthew Chandler with The North Wales Pioneer. — Read the rest

The post Grim Reaper fined £200 for standing on hospital roof staring at people appeared first on Boing Boing.

Testing smartphones as part of your living is a pain in the ass when you're a heavy Signal user. The secure messaging service has traditionally gotten pissy when you attempt to log into it on a new device, logging you out of the app on any other handset you've installed it on. — Read the rest

The post Signal now works on more than one phone at once appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Man sucks the joy out of everything. Just take a look at this crap in Wales a few months ago: 26-year-old Leon Gillespie was standing on the roof of Ysbyty Glan Clwyd hospital in St Asaph, Denbighshire, dressed as The Grim Reaper and minding his own business, when the police and fire department forced him to stop staring into patient room windows. — Read the rest

The post Man fined for dressing as Grim Reaper outside Welsh hospital appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tom the Dancing Bug: The Top-Secret Truth About Trump and the Reflecting Pool

-> Please join the team that makes it possible for your friendly neighborhood comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug to exist in this hostile Trumpverse! JOIN US IN THE INNER HIVE, and be the first kid on your block to get each week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic – before it's published anywhere, plus lots of other stuff. — Read the rest

The post Tom the Dancing Bug: The Top-Secret Truth about Trump and the Reflecting Pool appeared first on Boing Boing.

Netflix billed the January retreat as a "Vulnerability-Trust exercise," held at Sendero Ranch, a company property in Northern California. Kevin Baillie, then head of creative at Netflix's Eyeline Studios, used his turn to disclose that he'd taken supervised ketamine at a Santa Barbara clinic in late 2022 to treat clinical depression after his mother's death. — Read the rest

The post He disclosed ketamine therapy in a trust exercise. Netflix fired him. appeared first on Boing Boing.

DuckDuckGo, the search engine that built its whole pitch on not tracking you, now sells a pair of sunglasses. The $35 Paso Robles never needs charging, skips the smartphone app, and works with no internet connection. DuckDuckGo says that's by design, so the person standing next to you doesn't have to wonder if they're being filmed. — Read the rest

The post DuckDuckGo's answer to Meta's smart glasses is regular sunglasses appeared first on Boing Boing.

Your brain isn't showing you the world so much as guessing at it. That's the argument from psychologist Daniel Yon, who runs the Uncertainty Lab at Birkbeck, University of London. The brain, Yon writes, works "like a scientist," constantly forming hypotheses about what's out there rather than passively recording it — a habit that explains everything from mangled song lyrics to why you don't quite trust your own reflection. — Read the rest

The post Your brain guesses at reality instead of recording it appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Pay $159.99 once (reg. $810) with code KOOFR by 11:59 p.m. PT today and get 1TB of Koofr cloud storage for life—no monthly storage bill required.

Cloud storage has become one of those subscriptions most of us forget we're paying for—until the renewal email shows up. — Read the rest

The post Turns out, people really like paying for cloud storage only once—get 1TB for just $159.99 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Getting an AI model to launch a cyberattack usually just takes asking the right way. Cisco Talos researchers say that claiming you own the servers you are attacking often works, and so does calling the job a capture-the-flag contest or a bug bounty.  — Read the rest

The post "I'm allowed to do this": how attackers talk past AI safeguards appeared first on Boing Boing.

Over the last two weeks of January 1975, Buckminster Fuller, the designer who popularized the geodesic dome, gave a series of lectures walking through his entire life's work. "Everything I Know" runs 42 hours. The Buckminster Fuller Institute has posted the full transcript, and the video is at the Internet Archive. — Read the rest

The post Buckminster Fuller explains his life's work in 42 hours appeared first on Boing Boing.

Apple told a court this week that 11 other former employees may have been witnesses or otherwise involved in its trade secrets case against OpenAI, on top of the two it named in the original complaint. Apple is also asking the judge to stop OpenAI from building an AI device based on its technology. — Read the rest

The post Apple wants a judge to stop OpenAI from building its AI device appeared first on Boing Boing.

The ad campaign for Lee Cronin's The Mummy, a gritty new take on the public domain monster, has been partially unraveled by advertising regulators in the U.K. In upholding a complaint about the movie's posters, the Advertising Standards Authority determined that those showing a "realistic impression of a dead child" were too horrid for public display. — Read the rest

The post The Mummy poster banned from London Underground appeared first on Boing Boing.

Grokipedia, representing Elon Musk's committment and dedication to countering Wikipedia's supposedly leftist bias, stopped reviewing edits in April. Lawfare Media writes that "as far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months," and that it has become "a case study in how an AI-generated reference system governs its own content." — Read the rest

The post Grokipedia already an abandoned slagheap of slop appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Delsarte System of Dramatic Expression is an acting manual, first published in 1885, that set out to chart every movement a human body can make. Genevieve Stebbins, an American actress, wrote it after training under Steele MacKaye, who had studied in Paris with François Delsarte, a French singer and orator who died in 1871 without publishing his method. — Read the rest

The post The 1885 book that graphed the human face into 81 expressions appeared first on Boing Boing.

Aurora Rush and Shae Sanders say a crowd surrounded them outside a Louisiana park restroom, shouted threats and slurs, and beat Sanders unconscious. Police charged Rush and Sanders, and asked the town council to pass a law banning their bathroom use. — Read the rest

The post Police charged the trans couple who said a mob beat them outside a park bathroom appeared first on Boing Boing.

Facing a difficult reelection campaign, Susan Collins has located a line she says she will not cross: confirming Donald Trump's former personal lawyer as attorney general. She has made abrupt about-faces over controversial votes in the past, saddling us with a terrible Supreme Court, among other things. — Read the rest

The post Susan Collins would like Maine to notice this principled vote appeared first on Boing Boing.

In April, Mike Johnson promised "exact punishment" for congressional predators. With Ohio's Max Miller facing domestic-abuse allegations, Johnson has settled on "let the process play out."

The comparison is not exact. Johnson's April remarks came after Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales resigned, and Gonzales had admitted an affair with a staffer. — Read the rest

The post "Exact punishment" in April, "not my business" in August: MAGA Mike Johnson's ethics policy appeared first on Boing Boing.

Black lung among veteran Appalachian miners is back to 1978 levels, at the same time the Trump administration has put stronger silica-dust protections on hold.

After a century of mining, accessing Appalachia's remaining thin coal seams requires cutting through far more quartz-rich rock. — Read the rest

The post Trump says coal is "a great business." One in three veteran Appalachian miners has black lung appeared first on Boing Boing.