Wesley Willis was "an American musician and visual artist" from Chicago who, after being "diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989," became a cult figure in the outsider-music tradition. According to Wikipedia, his songs were "partially spoken in an MC style, and partially sung in a nasal and out-of-tune manner reminiscent of punk rock vocals," recorded over "the auto accompaniment feature on his Technics KN keyboard." — Read the rest

The post The schizophrenic Chicago artist who became an outsider rock legend appeared first on Boing Boing.

For three decades, a Hollywood director who wanted to disown a film could take his name off it and replace it with one man: Alan Smithee. According to Wikipedia, the name was "an official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project," coined by the Directors Guild of America in 1968. — Read the rest

The post For 32 years, every director who disowned a film became Alan Smithee appeared first on Boing Boing.

Jerry Gretzinger is 84, and for most of the past six decades he has spent nearly every day adding to a single map — now more than 4,000 hand-painted panels of a place that doesn't exist. In a People Make Games documentary, Gretzinger explains that what he draws isn't up to him. — Read the rest

The post For 60 years, an 84-year-old has let a deck of cards build his map appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Kőbánya cellar system under the 10th district of Budapest is, according to Wikipedia, "the largest cellar complex in the country" — a network of tunnels estimated at 32 to 35 km long beneath 44 to 54 acres. It began in the Middle Ages as an underground limestone quarry that supplied stone for the Hungarian Parliament, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, and the State Opera House. — Read the rest

The post A 20-mile maze under Budapest hid a secret WWII aircraft engine plant appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1913 a party set out to map Crocker Land, "a huge island supposedly sighted by the explorer Robert Peary from the top of Cape Colgate in 1906." Peary had named it after San Francisco banker George Crocker, one of his backers. — Read the rest

The post An expedition spent years looking for an Arctic island that didn't exist appeared first on Boing Boing.

Martha Avila was standing inside her home in Katy, Texas, when a Tesla Model 3 came through the brick wall and killed her.

The New York Times reports that the driver, Michael Butler, told investigators he was using Tesla's automated driver-assistance system when the car left the road and slammed into the home. — Read the rest

The post Tesla's driver-assist nightmare bursts through living room wall appeared first on Boing Boing.

The "Great Moon Hoax" began on August 25, 1835, when The Sun, a New York newspaper, ran the first of six articles "about the supposed discovery of life and civilization on the Moon," falsely attributed to the astronomer Sir John Herschel. — Read the rest

The post In 1835 a New York paper put bat-men and unicorns on the moon appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: flowkey listens while you play piano and gives you live feedback, and it's only $68 for a 5-year subscription with code SAVE15.

Learning piano at home usually feels like a lonely and frustrating process. You sit there practicing for hours without knowing if your hands are in the right position or if you are even playing the notes correctly.  — Read the rest

The post This $899 smart piano teacher just dropped a 5-year subscription for the best price ever: just $68 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: This Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business + Premium Microsoft Office Training Bundle gives you the software you want and the skills to use it for just $105.97 (reg. $409.99).

If you're someone who enjoys the simple things in life, this Microsoft Office Bundle deal may be just what you're looking for. — Read the rest

The post Get MS Office 2024 and a Premium Training Course for $106 during Deal Days appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: For $269.97 (Reg. $2,900), this 10TB Internxt Cloud Storage Lifetime Subscription lets you ditch the monthly cloud storage subscription fees and provides ample storage to play with.

If you've already started saving for Prime Day, don't bother. With Deal Days, Stack Social is here to bring you great savings on the products you need most, like this 10TB Internxt Cloud Storage Lifetime Subscription for just $269.97 (reg. — Read the rest

The post Get 10TB of cloud storage for life for $270 during Deal Days appeared first on Boing Boing.

There are now seven Call of Duty: Black Ops games, which is honestly fewer than I thought. Even so, ask any CoD fan on the street and they'll tell you that the best Black Ops games, if not the best CoD games as a whole, are the first two. — Read the rest

The post Call of Duty shrugs, reheats its leftovers with Black Ops remaster appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tommy Wiseau's 2004 masterpiece The Room is, perhaps, the most infamous bad movie ever made. So much so that the movie about it being made went up for an Oscar, to say nothing of the video game adaptation.

In today's age of remakes and reboots, it was only a matter of time before someone proposed just that, which is how we ended up with The Room Returns. — Read the rest

The post Bob Odenkirk stars in straight-faced remake of The Room appeared first on Boing Boing.

If at any point you've ever doubted that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be the biggest entertainment product since the Epic of Gilgamesh, look no further than this: a thirty-second video showing off the game's cover art and absolutely nothing else has amassed about seven and a half million views in less than 24 hours. — Read the rest

The post Grand Theft Auto 6 opens pre-orders, reveals cover art appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: FastestVPN Pro is $29.97 (reg. $600) for Deal Days, and it covers up to 15 devices with privacy tools, unlimited bandwidth, 900+ servers, and one year of Passhulk Password Manager.

There are two kinds of people online: people who use a VPN, and people who will one day have a deeply annoying reason to start using a VPN. — Read the rest

The post Deal Days has a 15-device VPN for less than $30 appeared first on Boing Boing.

A cyberdeck is a homemade portable computer in the cyberpunk mold (utilitarian, DIY) and NickZero's Ultra Minimal Cyberdeck [instructables.com] is exemplary: just a single-board computer, a tiny keyboard (cf. my "Cormac" board, useful only for writing novels by Cormac McCarthy), a small screen, and a battery laced together inside a 3D-printed shell. — Read the rest

The post Cyberdeck with punishingly minimal 30% keyboard appeared first on Boing Boing.

Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields [airfields-freeman.com] collects America's half-forgotten strips and reconstructs each one's history from old aeronautical charts, topographic maps, aerial photographs, and tips from readers who flew or lived nearby. Every airfield gets its own dated, illustrated entry showing how it appeared, changed, and slipped into history. — Read the rest

The post The obscure airfields of America appeared first on Boing Boing.

When astronomers first observed iPTF14hls in September 2014, they identified it as a supernova and expected it to dim within 100 days. Instead, it kept erupting. Over approximately 1,000 days, its brightness peaked at least five times, varying by as much as 50 percent. — Read the rest

The post A star discovered in 2014 has exploded six times and none of the theories explain it appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Honjō Masamune, forged in the 13th or 14th century and passed from shōgun to shōgun as a symbol of the Tokugawa dynasty, is considered one of the finest Japanese swords ever made. It was designated a National Treasure in 1939. — Read the rest

The post Japan's greatest sword was surrendered to a US sergeant in 1946. Nobody knows where it is. appeared first on Boing Boing.

In February 1985, a 29-year-old woman from Tokyo's Suginami neighborhood sent a letter to the Japanese magazine Book Magazine. "I'm not sure why," she wrote, "but since about two or three years ago, whenever I go to a bookstore I am struck by an urge to move my bowels." — Read the rest

The post In 1985, a Japanese woman wrote a letter about bookstores making her need to use the bathroom. It became a phenomenon. appeared first on Boing Boing.

From 1970 to 1974, the Varosha district of Famagusta, Cyprus, was "one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world," a favorite of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, and Brigitte Bardot. When Turkish forces invaded Cyprus in August 1974, every Greek Cypriot resident fled. — Read the rest

The post In 1974, Turkish forces fenced off a Cyprus beach resort. It's still empty. appeared first on Boing Boing.

John Lahr, writing in the London Review of Books, offers the sharpest piece I've read on Sid Caesar — ostensibly a review of David Margolick's new biography When Caesar Was King, but really a psychological autopsy of American comedy's first TV star and the culture he shaped. — Read the rest

The post Sid Caesar built the writers' room that taught Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, and Woody Allen how to be funny appeared first on Boing Boing.

A study published in Neuroscience by researchers at Spain's University of Zaragoza scanned the brains of 100 young adults and found structural differences in those who hold authoritarian beliefs — on both the left and the right. Right-wing authoritarians had lower grey matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in understanding other people's thoughts and perspectives. — Read the rest

The post Brain scans of authoritarians show reduced grey matter in regions for empathy and social reasoning appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm a huge fan of street art, and this recent piece in Naples, Italy by World Press Photo Award winner and acclaimed photojournalist Eduardo Castaldo is one of the best I've ever seen. The piece, titled "Donald Dump," is a black and white stencil painting of Donald Trump. — Read the rest

The post "Donald Dump" depicts Trump with sludge oozing out of his mouth appeared first on Boing Boing.

I've previously written about the glorious ASMR videos starring King Bumi, a long-snouted, toothless, bushy-tailed, coarse-haired giant anteater who lives at the North Florida Wildlife Center in Lamont, Florida, a nonprofit rehabilitation and education center whose focus is on caring for rare and endangered species. — Read the rest

The post This giant anteater uses his dancing tongue to keep cool in the summer's sweltering heat appeared first on Boing Boing.

Science fiction aficionados and fans of practical effects will want to pour one out today: Brian Johnson, a man responsible for building some of the most iconic sci-fi craft in movies and television history, has died at the age of 87. — Read the rest

The post The man who built the spaceships for 2001, Alien, and Empire has died appeared first on Boing Boing.

With so much going sideways since… forever, it can be hard to recall that some great stuff has happened. This week marked 43 years since Sally Ride strapped her ass to a rocket for NASA's seventh space shuttle mission, STS-7. As mission specialist and flight engineer on Space Shuttle Challenger, she became the first American woman in space on June 18, 1983. — Read the rest

The post Sally Ride flew to space 43 years ago today. She still has the best astronaut name. appeared first on Boing Boing.

A dude who goes by Marketplace Builds on Instagram uploaded this hilarious video of a pink toy car that has been hacked to go much faster than normal. This is the kind of toy car that a kid can drive themselves, usually at snail pace for safety reasons. — Read the rest

The post Man supercharges a child's pink ride-on car, sends it flying appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Indri is the largest living lemur and one of the most distinctive primates in Madagascar. It lives only in the eastern rainforests of the island and is known for its striking black-and-white fur pattern and its nearly tailless body. It makes an alarming sound when communicating with others. — Read the rest

The post Lemur makes an alarming sound when communicating appeared first on Boing Boing.

This powerful storm rolled through near Lorenzo, Nebraska, on June 7th, 2026. It ended up being one of those rare setups that looks almost unreal on camera. It started building late in the afternoon and quickly took on a structure that caught attention. — Read the rest

The post Nebraska supercell near Lorenzo looked almost too perfect to be real appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Old English Wordhord unlocks one medieval word a day, pairing each term with its definition, pronunciation and, often, a manuscript illustration. The site's creator (or should it be wordwyrm?) Dr. Hana Videen frames the project around the fabulous name: "word-hoard describes the collection of words and phrases that a poet may draw upon while crafting tales." — Read the rest

The post Old English word of the day appeared first on Boing Boing.