Boing Boing

Boing Boing

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UK government spent £85,300 removing a Banksy mural
The Ministry of Justice disclosed the cost through Freedom of Information requests, with no clear breakdown of overtime and security charges.
 • Rob Beschizza
How Blackwing pencils (and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk) are made
Two videos reveal the manufacturing behind the cult favorite $35 pencil and the once-hoarded Japanese chalk, both now back in production.
 • Rob Beschizza
UK pub density map
Liverpool Riverside leads with 23.73 pubs per 10,000 people while East Renfrewshire has just 13 pubs for its 95,000 residents.
 • Rob Beschizza
A complaint about bad wine left 93 dead and Oxford paying for 470 years
The 1355 St Scholastica Day riot began at the Swindlestock Tavern and left the town paying a penny per dead scholar every year.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
San Francisco exempted two stray dogs from its own laws
Bummer and Lazarus killed 85 rats in 20 minutes and earned a formal exemption from the city's stray-dog ordinance in 1862.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
A Japanese lord spent 20 years drawing snowflakes under a microscope
Sekka Zusetsu, an 1832 Japanese book, records 86 snowflakes drawn under a microscope by a feudal lord.
 • Popkin
This 1967 short film got video chat and online banking right
Philco-Ford's 1999 A.D. also imagined a kitchen computer that denied Wink Martindale a cheeseburger for exceeding his calorie limit.
 • Popkin
One hobbyist named cirrus, cumulus, and stratus back in 1803
Luke Howard named the clouds in 1803 after keeping sky journals since he was 10 years old.
 • Popkin
Boing Boing, August 8, 2026
A Hiroshima Bay alloy, GPS gone over New Mexico, and paved-over wetlands
 • Boing Boing
A new alloy turned up in a grain of sand from Hiroshima Bay
The Hiroshima blast alloy, a 7-element metal grain, formed in the fireball of 6 August 1945.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
Four died after a military exercise took GPS away over New Mexico
A GPS jamming exercise 100 miles away preceded a New Mexico medevac crash that killed 4 people.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
The sharpest pictures ever taken of the Sun show it swirling
The Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii captured vortices spaced 50 to 65 km apart, driven by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.
 • Ellsworth Toohey
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