Boing Boing

Boing Boing

Home
Podcast
Notes
Archive
About
Boing Boing, June 5, 2026
A jamming satellite, conscious chatbots, brine-free water
 • Boing Boing
A satellite has been jamming GPS over Europe
For years, GPS receivers scattered across Europe — from Svalbard to Spain — kept registering the same brief, total signal blackout at the exact same…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
The YouTube channel with 77,000 videos of red and blue rectangles
In early 2014, internet sleuths found a YouTube channel called Webdriver Torso that had uploaded more than 77,000 videos.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
Ted Chiang argues an LLM chatbot is as conscious as Microsoft Word
Science fiction author Ted Chiang’s case against AI consciousness in The Atlantic runs through how a language model actually works.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
New solar-power desalination device leaves no brine
University of Rochester researchers have built a solar-powered desalination device that doesn’t leave behind brine — the concentrated saltwater that…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
Why autism symptoms can ease during a fever — and how to mimic it
Parents and caregivers have long reported that when some autistic people run a fever from an infection, their autism-related symptoms ease for a while.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
‘They’re Made Out of Meat,’ rewritten as a dialogue about LLMs
Max Leiter rewrote Terry Bisson’s 1991 story “They’re Made Out of Meat” — the one where two aliens are aghast that humans think with meat — as a…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
HowToBasic’s omurice attempt ends in familiar, egg-covered ruin
I’ll stop posting about HowToBasic when his one joke stops being funny, damn it.
 • Grant St. Clair
Domino’s Pizza picked a fight over a video game nobody asked about
The Wendy’s Twitter account and its consequences have been a disaster for online discourse.
 • Mark Frauenfelder
Fall, the movie about not falling, gets a sequel about an even bigger fall this fall
If you want to end up in the hospital, take a shot every time you see the word ‘fall’ in this post.
 • Grant St. Clair
At Disney World, you’ll soon be able visit Monsters, Inc.’s city to celebrate H.U.M.A.N. Day
Disney is currently at work transforming the former Muppets Courtyard at its Hollywod Studios in Orlando into Monstropolis, the city of monsters from…
 • Mark Frauenfelder
180 religions dropped from Pentagon’s approved list of faiths
There are no atheists in foxholes.
 • Séamus Bellamy
© 2026 Happy Mutants LLC · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start your SubstackGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture