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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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.

TL;DR: Voibe AI Voice Dictation is $79.99 (reg. $199) with offline voice-to-text, app-wide cursor support, Apple Silicon optimization, and ongoing updates.

A lot of writing time isn't really writing. In reality, it's waiting for your hands to catch up, deleting the stiff sentence you just typed, and wishing the computer could simply take the thought directly from your brain. — Read the rest

The post Voibe gives Mac users a much faster way to get words down appeared first on Boing Boing.

Gay bars in San Francisco are installing ID and facial scanners and requiring patrons to give it up if they want to get in, with Cydney Hayes in The San Francisco Gazetteer likening the gates to the TSA and Jacob Ogles in The Advocate pointing out the loss of anonymity and safety in LGBTQ+ spaces. — Read the rest

The post Patronscan's "ultimate bouncer" never forgets a face in San Francisco's gay bars appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you visit Itch.io to check out indie and casual games, the website's so good you might never even realize that there's a desktop app (with downloads for Windows, macOS and Linux) to manage and run the games, apps and other interesting things hosted there. — Read the rest

The post If you like indie games, have you tried the Itch desktop app? appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Learn how to use Claude AI beyond basic prompts with the Claude AI Professional E-Degree, featuring four courses, 100+ lectures, and real-world projects for $13.99 with code COURSE30 through August 2.

AI tools are becoming part of everyday work, but knowing how to ask Claude a quick question and knowing how to actually use it are two very different things. — Read the rest

The post AI won't take your job, but someone who knows Claude might — this course is just $14 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Republican support for President Trump's war with Iran remained steady at 71% in June, but has fallen to 61% in July, according to a survey by the Associated Press's NORC Center for Public Affairs. Everyone else overwhelmingly disapproves of the conflict, with support among "independents" falling to 17% and support among Democrats falling from 8% to 4% in the last few weeks. — Read the rest

The post At $4 a gallon again, even Republicans souring on Iran war appeared first on Boing Boing.

TSA staff found five Civil War-era cannonballs in a passenger's checked suitcase at Gulf Shores International Airport in Alabama. Investigators found that the munitions were missing from nearby Fort Morgan; a child supposedly pilfered them and sneaked them into grandma's luggage. — Read the rest

The post Stolen Civil War cannonballs found in luggage appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Vermont pharmacy chain's new AI assistant led not to the efficiency improvements promised but to "delays, incorrect information and privacy concerns." The AI, named "Burt" after the chain's long-dead founder, is said to call excessively, get dosages wrong and suggest inappropriate refills, among other alarming problems. — Read the rest

The post AI assistant named for long-dead pharmacy founder mutters incomprehensibly and "demands that you talk to him" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Picture a vast field of honeycombed polygonal rocks stretching to the horizon in an otherworldly valley. NASA's Curiosity rover did, and the Valle Grande, as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is calling it, is the latest fascinating spot to be imaged by the rover, now in its 13th year of trundling across the Martian landscape. — Read the rest

The post Curiosity rover finds field of honeycomb-textured "polygons" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Casio's CRW-H001 is a tiny retro-style watch for your ring finger, and the newest model has a few smart features to make it an alternative to models from Oura and Samsung.

Added to the tiny gadget is monitoring of the wearer's heart rate, blood oxygen levels and body temperature. — Read the rest

The post Casio's new Ring Watch has a few smart features appeared first on Boing Boing.

A U.S. State Department map of Africa mislabeled every country it depicted during a presentation at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro. The slide was so egregiously wrong that multiple attendees whipped out their phones to get a shot of it; Emily Bass, a writer and AIDS expert, wrote about it at length. — Read the rest

The post U.S. delegation uses AI slop map of Africa at AIDS conference appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Comcast manager allegedly abused underperforming workers by smashing pies in their faces, a lawsuit claims, recording the assaults in camera and ordering other employees to participate in the abuse. If it's not quite so unhinged as Ebay sending a pig fetus and sexually explicit materials to critics, it's certainly not normal. — Read the rest

The post Lawsuit claims underperforming Comcast workers subjected to abusive ritual appeared first on Boing Boing.

A man accused of spray-painting "Nazi" and "Fascist" on 13 Teslas was apparently undone by the feature he neglected to vandalize: their cameras. The cars became stooges for the cops; his takeout order supplied the mailing address.

Irvine police said it had responded to an altercation at the intersection of Michelson Drive and Carlson Avenue, the general area where the 13 Teslas had been vandalized.

— Read the rest

The post The cars he hated became the prosecution's photo department appeared first on Boing Boing.

Wicker is a movie about a fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who, tired of her community's disdain, has the basketweaver (Peter Dinklage) craft her a husband (Alexander Skarsgård) out of wicker. Here's the trailer, just out:

I'm not sure what I expected from this but it really has everything, including Dinklage exactly replicating the Tyrion accent. — Read the rest

The post Trailer for Wicker, starring Olivia Colman, Peter Dinklage and Alexander Skarsgård appeared first on Boing Boing.