Choi Eun-hee was one of South Korea's biggest film stars of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978 she traveled to Hong Kong to meet a supposed businessman about a new film company. "In Hong Kong, Choi was abducted and taken to North Korea by the order of Kim Jong Il." — Read the rest
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The Utsuro-bune ("hollow boat") was an object that "allegedly washed ashore in 1803 in Hitachi province on the eastern coast of Japan." According to the legend, "a young woman aged between 18 and 20 arrived aboard the 'hollow boat' on February 22, 1803. — Read the rest
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Tarrare was an 18th-century French showman and soldier who could eat almost without limit and was "constantly hungry." As a performer, he "swallowed corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples." In the French Revolutionary Army, "even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite." — Read the rest
The post The spy who ate live animals,…
On September 15, 1896, the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad crashed two unmanned locomotives into each other at speed as a public spectacle. The Crash at Crush was the idea of passenger agent William Crush, who built a temporary town for the event and charged nothing to watch — the railroad made its money selling tickets on excursion trains to the site. — Read the rest
The post In 1896 a railroad…
In parts of Uttar Pradesh, India, one way to seize a relative's land is to bribe an official to declare them dead. The Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People exists to reverse those declarations. According to Wikipedia, in the region, "many have resorted to bribing officials to have the owner of a plot of land declared deceased and the title transferred to their ownership." — Read the rest…
That One Matt Bors Comic is a book entirely about how a single-panel drawing "conquered the discourse" in the mid 2010s. You know the one! Bors' strip perfectly captured the moment, and the online smart guys who gotcha others' earnest discussions of society's problems. — Read the rest
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TL;DR: A lifetime license for Windows 11 Pro is on sale for $12.97 (reg. $199), bringing updated security, AI-powered Copilot tools, improved multitasking features, and gaming enhancements to compatible PCs.
One of the stranger aspects of modern technology is that a computer can be perfectly functional and still get declared "old." — Read the rest
The post Before you replace that computer, try…
Reading r/tomatoes taught me that "first blush" started life as a gardening term, and now my tomato yield is up because the local birds and mammals have been shut out of the buffet. This article by the Dallas Garden explains the science and how to use it to your advantage. — Read the rest
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MAGA Mike Johnson is doing that thing Republicans do when they stand near Social Security with a wrench and insist they are only here to help.
The 2026 Social Security trustees report says the retirement trust fund is now projected to run short in late 2032. — Read the rest
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Governments can spend decades teaching people to hate each other, and then some restaurant will put up a Route 66 sign and ruin the whole story.
A video from Iranian creator Sharghzadeh shows American-themed bars and restaurants in Iran, the same kind of lovingly silly Americana you find all over the world: neon signs, diner vibes, burgers, cowboy stuff, movie references, and décor assembled…
The Orange Menace was asked if he was worried about the latest inflation numbers, and answered with the sort of accidental campaign ad Democrats usually have to edit together: "No, I love it. I love the inflation."
Inflation is not an abstraction when groceries, gas, flights, and everything else keep getting more expensive. — Read the rest
The post Grandpa Pudding Brains loves the inflation…
CBS LA found the squirrels eating cheesy crackers and ranch dressing, which is funny until you remember these are native ground squirrels that normally burrow into the bluffs above the Pacific. Wildlife experts say the buffet has helped their numbers swell, and while the erosion question is still being studied, a cliff full of overfed burrowing animals does not sound like a long-term…
There is still so much about the Earth that we do not know. Thousands of years of human history are locked in stone. Oceans are awash in secrets that have yet to be whispered. As global warming destroys the world we once knew, new microbes are revealed, causing both wonder and dread in the scientific community. — Read the rest
The post Ancient squirrel droppings unlock Ice Age DNA goldmine…
With hardware prices going through the roof, it's not a great time to be a gamer. Earlier this year, when Valve announced that it's Steam Machine–its Cube-shaped Linux powered desktop gaming machine–was going to be delayed due to a shortage of RAM and storage components, geeks everywhere groaned. — Read the rest
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_The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time_ is one of those watershed moments in gaming that needs no introduction. As the first 3D Legend of Zelda title and one of the first big (kind of) open-ended games, it set the formula that the rest of the Zelda series and countless imitators would follow for decades, at least until that formula was reinvented. — Read the rest
The post Ocarina of Time is…
TL;DR: PowerPresent AI creates complete presentations from prompts, documents, notes, and links, with customizable templates, editable PowerPoint exports, and up to 40 AI-generated decks included for $27.99 (reg. $80) with code POWER30.
Few experiences are as humbling as staring at a blank presentation slide while a deadline looms ever closer. — Read the rest
The post This AI tool turns your…
Repair Geek did the useful thing and stabbed a bunch of tires, so the rest of us do not have to discover which can of roadside optimism works after we are already stranded. The testing is impressive.
I am a fan of the liquid Flat Out. — Read the rest
The post Repair Geek tests tire sealants so you don't have to spray hope into a flat appeared first on Boing Boing.
Before refrigeration, keeping things cold meant waiting for winter, cutting up a frozen lake, packing it in sawdust, and hoping a lot of it survived the boat ride.
Veritasium has a great video on Frederic Tudor, the Boston merchant who helped create the commercial ice trade in the early 1800s. — Read the rest
The post Before refrigeration, one obsessive Boston guy sold winter to the tropics…
Diaper Don went to Madison Square Garden expecting New York to love him, got booed on the Jumbotron, and then appeared to take the most expensive little courtside nap in America.
The Nap The booing
So…Sleepy Joe was an insult, but Sleepy Don is game tape? — Read the rest
The post Grandpa Pudding Brains snoozes while New York boos and boos appeared first on Boing Boing.
Gregory Bovino, the trench-coated immigration goon whose public image already looks like authoritarian cosplay with a federal expense account, apparently thinks America needs more of him.
Daily Kos reports that Bovino, formerly Trump's Border Patrol commander-at-large and the face of "Operation Metro Surge" in Minnesota, has launched an exploratory committee for 2028. — Read the rest
The post…
Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted fraudster who made billions disappear in a crypto fog machine, would now like Donald Trump to help him launder the consequences.
Bankman-Fried is serving 25 years for fraud and conspiracy after FTX collapsed into one of the great "oops, all customer money gone" disasters of the crypto era. — Read the rest
The post Sam Bankman-Fried has found one more scam:…
Finally, the day has come when we can stop seeing Persona 5 cross over with every game under the sun. It's hard to pin down the identity of the Persona series properly, but to put it as succinctly as possible, I'd describe them as half monster battler, half social sim. — Read the rest
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When Sega very boldly declared it would revive a few of its classic franchises from the Dreamcast era, I admittedly did not believe them. I'm pleased to admit I was wrong. It may be nostalgia, it may be a vice-Presidential candidate wistfully remembering it: whatever the reason, Crazy Taxi is finally back. — Read the rest
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Truly, my only complaint about Army of Darkness-style shooter _DOOM: The Dark Ages_ is that Doomguy wore too many damn clothes. Apparently, someone at id Software had planted bugs in my house, because his boobs are all the way out in the game's newly announced first expansion. — Read the rest
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More than 700 medieval tunnels called Erdstall honeycomb the ground in Bavaria, with hundreds more across Austria and central Europe. They are tiny — about 1 to 1.4 meters high and no more than 60 centimeters wide — and connected by "Schlupf," squeeze-holes so narrow you have to crawl through one shoulder-first. — Read the rest
The post Hundreds of tiny medieval tunnels no one can explain…
On February 4, 1963, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen sent a routine position report from the Gulf of Mexico, about 200 miles west of the Florida Keys, and was never heard from again. The T2 tanker was carrying 15,260 tons of molten sulfur, kept liquid at around 255°F, and 39 crew members. — Read the rest
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Jehan Azad couldn't stop believing the Navy's "tic tac" UFO sighting was real, and it was wrecking his peace of mind. So he tried to get talked out of it by the best skeptic he knew of: Peter Miller, who won $100,000 in a debate arguing that COVID didn't come from a lab, and whom even his opponents called the world's expert. — Read the rest
The post He hired the world's best debunker to talk…
A self-described technologist describes on the Haven blog how he gives his kids the parts of technology he loved growing up, while keeping the surveillance-economy parts out of the house. His fixes mostly involve going back a couple of decades.
He bought a mini CD boom box and borrows CDs and DVDs from the public library. — Read the rest
The post A landline, a CD boom box, and a Pi-Hole: one…
This optical illusion is melting my brain. The stick figures aren't climbing and descending a staircase, yet my eyes are telling me otherwise. I can usually see through an optical illusion after a while, but this one works a little too well. — Read the rest
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Dan Bowers creates enchanting sculptures from found objects for his wife. He shared photos of the mini artworks in this video on his Instagram page. The video is captioned "I make these little sculptures for my wife to express my affection". — Read the rest
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