Boing Boing

Boing Boing

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Boing Boing, June 2, 2026
Breathing dead soil, pigeon livers, record-breaking horror
 • Boing Boing
Pigeons may navigate using magnetic cells in their liver
A study in the journal Science argues that homing pigeons may read Earth’s magnetic field using iron-rich cells in their livers, rather than their beaks…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
Is the AI apocalypse a religion in disguise?
In his talk “Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People,” Maciej Cegłowski takes apart the fear that a self-improving AI will bootstrap itself…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
Scientists sterilized soil. It kept breathing for six years.
Quanta’s “The Dirt That Refused To Die” follows a French lab that sterilized soil with gamma radiation, sealed it in jars, and watched it keep breathing…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
The chemistry behind Garden Grove’s runaway chemical tank
Over the long weekend, a storage tank of methyl methacrylate in Garden Grove, California, started to warm up — and as the chemist Derek Lowe lays out in…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
A 20-year-old YouTuber’s horror film just broke A24’s box office record
“Backrooms,” a horror film by Kane Parsons, who directed it at 20, opened to $81 million this weekend — the strongest opening A24 has ever had and the…
 • Ellsworth Toohey
Watch a caterpillar enjoy a tiny playground built just for bugs
Watch a caterpillar go down a tiny slide.
 • Popkin
Meet Betsy, the 30-foot spiny lobster guarding the Florida Keys
America’s love of giant roadside attractions has produced many strange sights, but few are as fierce as Betsy, a colossal spiny lobster in Islamorada…
 • Popkin
Baby’s hand makes a cherry look like a giant piece of fruit
This video, shared by Gyu, plays with perspective in a clever way.
 • Popkin
Cartoonist Jeff Smith, author of “Bone,” is getting comics’ most prestigious honor
When the National Cartoonists Society has its annual conference in August, it will confer on cartoonist Jeff Smith its Milton Caniff Lifetime…
 • Ruben Bolling
The art is fake, the boss is blind, and the job is yours
Have I mentioned today how much I love indie games? I just came off 007: First Light, which — while a very, very good action adventure romp — is still…
 • Grant St. Clair
Time-traveling dinosaur movie looks like a lot of fun
Sometimes, all you need for effective horror is a good pitch.
 • Grant St. Clair
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