Boing Boing Digest, October 13, 2025
The world's first garbage-powered music, a daring avatar fighting game, and rescuing senior pups in style
Happy Monday! Today, we’re featuring a photo series of people wearing sweaters that blend perfectly into their surroundings, plus a heartwarming story about a butterfly wing transplant at a Long Island nature center. We also explore why wine experts repeatedly fail at distinguishing good wines from bad ones in blind taste tests. On the quirky history front, discover the medieval fruit called “open arse” found in an ancient Roman toilet, and meet Eddie on Wheels, the rescue dog who inspired a nonprofit ranch for senior pets.
This artist builds musical robots from trash that “make dirt sing”
Jennifer Sandlin / 12:00 pm PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
I’m fascinated by artist and musician Petr Válek, also known as “the VAPE.” Previously, here at Boing Boing, Popkin highlighted one of his musical contraptions created with a spoon, metal bowl, marbles, sticks, rocks, and more. I recently came across a short documentary about Válek and wanted to share it, as it offers a fascinating glimpse into a truly unique artistic genius.
A bio of Válek on the Vašulka Kitchen Brno Center for New Media Art’s website states that Válek, who lives in Czech Republic, trained as a stonemason and worked as a nurse in a home for the elderly. He’s been passionate about creating art since childhood, and has engaged in painting, drawing, illustrating, and music. He now builds “mechanical and electro-mechanical musical instruments or self-propelled kinetic objects, constructed from found household items.” The bio describes some of these objects and what Válek creates from them:
Crumpled pots spin on prepared turntables, and pieces of boards, colanders, slicers, wires and springs are assembled with electronic devices. At the same time, Válek’s musical set is always also a visual installation: he sometimes paints the instruments or incorporates “decorative” elements into them. Some objects lose their musical functionality completely, turning into bizarre, injured toys, generating vague and chaotic unrest. Even then, they do not cease to be an integral part of the sound performance . . . Lately, he has been creating mobiles – kinetic sound apparatuses composed of small “disturbances,” objects animated by small engines which move inside resonant vessels, or just across the table or floor, and make stochastic noise by hitting walls or crashing into each other.
The documentary about Válek was directed by Marek Mrkvička and is entitled “Amplified Silence.” Mrkvička provides this overview of the documentary:
A portrait of the artist Petr Válek that highlights the beauty of noise through his electrified constructions as well as everyday objects. The amplified sensitivity to various sounds inevitably leads to an intense experience of silence, of which noise is an integral part.
In the documentary, you can see Válek performing as what Vašulka Kitchen Brno calls “Der Marebrechst,” which they explain is a kind of “bizarre noise musician and crazy inventor, regularly publishing short ‘tutorial’ videos recorded in his home studio, or in nature on Youtube or more recently on Facebook.” In the documentary Válek excitedly demonstrates his clashing, fighting musical ‘robots’ made out of trash, and marvels at the “beautiful sound” created by dropping metal plates onto his wooden floor.
Vašulka Kitchen Brno provides some insight into Válek’s philosophy of art and music:
Válek approaches sound from the perspective of the visual image, and image and sound are increasingly intertwined in his idiosyncratic poetics. As a musician, he wasn’t satisfied with conventional instruments and devices, and transformed their form and function according to his own ideas. At first, for example, by repainting the surface, but he later interferes with their construction, mastering a peculiar style of hardware hacking and circuit bending which always reveals the inverse side of objects, showing the insides of devices and connecting their interfaces.
In the documentary, Válek provides a great example of this kind of meaning reversal when he reverently discusses building and playing a synthesizer with creaky legs that produces silence. He explains: “I tried to make a synthesizer, but I don’t know how the components work, so I built a dummy synthesizer at least. But then I realized it actually works. It produces silence.” One person commenting on the documentary on YouTube wrote about this quote, stating “This is… beautiful. I don’t know why but this strikes something deep within me.” Indeed, Válek resonates strongly with many of his fans. Another wrote, “I love his art so much. He makes dirt sing.”
I find Válek’s art and music beautiful, haunting, and deeply disruptive, in the best way. If you don’t know him, go check out his work and the documentary, I think you’ll be intrigued. And see more of Petr Válek’s work on his YouTube or Instagram.
Avatar: The Last Airbender finally gets a fighting game after 20 years
Grant St. Clair / 11:00 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
It does strike me as a little strange that the legendary animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender has yet to get a single good video game despite its twenty-year history and multiple sequel series, one of which is still slated for release in the near future. Who didn’t imagine themselves running around in that setting as a kid, expertly manipulating your element of choice?
Back in the early 2000s, Nickelodeon churned out tie-in games for all its flagship series (perhaps you remember the ten million low-budget SpongeBob platformers). Still, it’s taken until now for someone to take a serious crack at adapting the franchise for a slightly more discerning audience. Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is a surprising announcement, to be sure, but its focus on fast-paced, 1-on-1 fights does promise to fulfill basically every “who would win” fantasy I could ever dream up.
The decision to forego uncanny 3D models in favor of 2D animation is also a promising step. It’s too early to call it, but could this be the franchise’s first good game?
Birds facing forward look ridiculous, and this Reddit forum proves it with photos
Grant St. Clair / 10:30 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Ah, birds, those most elegant creatures, who have captured human imagination for time untold. Who among us hasn’t been awoken by birdsong or imagined what it might be like to soar with one?
Unfortunately, their mystique breaks the second they turn their heads. In my quest to find the most niche corners of the Internet for your enjoyment, I’ve stumbled upon the Birds Facing Forward forum, which documents our avian friends doing just that to hilarious effect. Feast your eyes on the least dignified of the animal kingdom:
This one just kind of feels like a timely metaphor. For something a little less topical, there’s this:
And finally, nature’s indignance at being caged:
So don’t fret: even the most majestic among us have our bad angles.
Breaking Bad fan edit imagines a world where no one notices crime
Grant St. Clair / 10:00 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
A long-running joke among the Breaking Bad fandom is that Hank is the worst detective in the world, continually (perhaps willfully) ignoring clues to Heisenberg’s true identity for five seasons straight. What if everyone in the show was at his level, though?
It’s long been said Breaking Bad fans specifically are weirdly talented at editing, and that trend only continues with Breaking Bad, but no one is careful.
It would have been a much funnier show if no one noticed or cared about any of the crimes around them — and probably a longer one, too! It’s a win-win.
Eddie on Wheels, a beloved wheelchair-bound rescue dog, inspired a non-profit ranch for seniors
Jennifer Sandlin / 9:30 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Every time I see Eddie on Wheels, my heart hurts a little. Not from sadness, but because I’m so touched by, first, how absolutely adorable the little fella was, and secondly, how wonderfully loved, adored, and taken care of he was. Eddie was a rescue doggie with mobility issues — he used a wheelchair to get around — who was adopted in 2018 by his kind human. While his owner only had him for three years, she gave him the best years of his life, which is more than apparent when watching the photos and videos she posts on the “Eddie on Wheels” social media pages.
Sadly, Eddie crossed the rainbow bridge a little over four years ago. However, he continues to bring joy via his videos, which, thankfully, his human continues to post, so we get to still see flashbacks of the ridiculously cute — and extraordinarily grumpy — doggo. I can’t get enough of his silly grumbles, and I have to admit, Eddie’s flat beard is even better than that of my own doggo, Henry Rollins. And if you know Henry’s flat beard, you know that’s some high praise.
Eddie’s spirit also lives on through the work his human continues to do. Eddie’s human created “Eddie’s Ranch,” a non-profit organization that provides a loving retirement home for rescued senior and disabled dogs. They are so very loved, and they share that love with others via visits to nursing homes and other outreach activities. What a wonderful way to spread joy in this world. Thanks, Eddie on Wheels and Eddie’s Ranch!
Learn more about Eddie and Eddie’s ranch on their website, YouTube, and Instagram.
This OnlyFans account might actually save the world
Jennifer Sandlin / 9:00 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
In case you’re late to the, ahem, “action,” the OnlyFans account created in May by the Quick Response Fund for Nature to raise money for engendered species is still up and running. The account, called “OnlyEndangereds,” has posted 23 photos and 10 videos so far, at least according to the info I could gather from OnlyFans without actually signing up.
The Quick Response Fund website explains that the OnlyEndangereds OnlyFans features “cheeky photos and videos of endangered parrots, lemurs, tortoises, and iguanas getting frisky in nature.” They further describe what you’ll see at OnlyEndangereds and what you’ll pay for the privilege:
The account features photos and videos of rare animals such as macaws, ring-tailed lemurs, Aldabra giant tortoises, and blue iguanas “getting it on.” Anyone can subscribe to the OnlyEndangereds account for free and unlock premium #OnlyParrots, #OnlyLemurs, #OnlyIguanas, and more content starting at $3.99.
Every penny of proceeds from OnlyEndangereds is used to secure land to protect critical habitats for endangered animals, so you can feel good about seeking out what Carly Vynne, Director of Quick Response Fund for Nature calls the “wild, weird, and wonderfully real” content.
Read more about the OnlyEndangereds project here, and visit their OnlyFans page here. And if you really don’t want to sign up for OnlyFans, you can see a lot of OnlyEndangereds “spicy pics and videos“ on the Quick Response Fund for Nature’s Instagram. You can also watch a hilarious teaser for their OnlyFans page, featuring “hot shell on shell action” and “something different, something with a bushy tail and unsettling stare,” on the OnlyEndangereds YouTube page.
And if you absolutely must see some tortoises going at it, I can share a saucy video I took a couple years ago of some tortoises getting it on at the Phoenix Herpetological Society, just let me know. They are pretty hilarious when they get going!
You can also just skip all of these shenanigans and directly donate to QRFN here.
Corgi in a backpack helps shelter dogs find forever homes
Gail Sherman / 8:30 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Maxine, the corgi (AKA Mad Max Fluffy Road), rides around NYC in a backpack because she has short legs, and it’s adorable. OK, it’s probably more because of the rule that you can bring dogs on the subway “in a bag or other container and carried in a way that doesn’t annoy other riders.” But it is also adorable.
Now her human is using the power of an adorable dog in a backpack to find homes for shelter dogs. Dogs from Best Friends Lifesaving Center have the best day ever while making new friends, trying on hats at the pet store, and inhaling a pup cup. Shorty got a record number of applications within 24 hours of his grand day out video going live.
Hurley also had a fun day out and even went on a bike ride. He ended his day with a snuggle and a nap.
Shelters all over the country are overwhelmed right now, so if you have room in your home and your heart, go find a new friend at your local shelter. If you can’t adopt, take a lucky dog for a walk.
Injured butterfly gets wing transplant
Gail Sherman / 8:02 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
The Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown, Long Island, receives hundreds of calls daily, with many seeking advice on injured wildlife, such as squirrels, birds, or turtles. Last week, they received a call for help with a butterfly with a broken wing. “When a Good Samaritan called to ask if we could help an injured monarch butterfly, we didn’t hesitate. She brought it in, and we got to work,” according to a post on the center’s Facebook page.
They snipped off the damaged portion of the wing. The center has a butterfly house, and they trimmed a wing from a deceased butterfly to fit and glued it into place. After a dusting of cornstarch to dry the glue, the butterfly flapped its wings and was ready to join the other Monarchs in the annual migration to Mexico for the winter.
Monarch numbers have dropped drastically since the 1980s, due to insecticides, climate change, and loss of habitat. Monarchs lay their eggs exclusively on milkweed, which the caterpillars later feed on. The use of agricultural pesticides has caused substantial milkweed loss. Although there is a proposal under review to list Monarchs as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, they are currently not federally protected. Click here for some tips on how to help conserve the species.
Breathtaking new book package celebrates the GOAT comic strip: Peanuts
Ruben Bolling / 8:00 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Abrams ComicArts has just released a huge new prestige book celebrating the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. The Essential Peanuts is 336 pages, and filled with comics, but also packed with commentary from author Mark Evanier; essays, introductions, and quotes from cartoonists, experts, celebrities, and people from the Peanuts orbit; and photos of Schulz and the Peanuts world. It also comes with a sleeve filled with tons of bonus materials, such as a Peanuts comic book reproduction, prints, stickers, postcards, and even an iron-on patch.
Evanier’s text expertly guides the reader through essential strips from Peanuts’ 50-year run. He does a great job of explaining the evolution of Peanuts, from a cute-kids strip (although Peanuts could never be typical nor merely cute, even if Schulz did try), to a psychologically complex and sophisticated meditation on the human experience, to a joyful Snoopy-starring humor vehicle.
I regard the very first Peanuts strip as one of the best in the history of cartooning. Schulz has drawn these cute kids with huge heads, and it proceeds as innocuously as possible for three panels, but ends on a discontinuous gut punch. What a way to start.
As someone who was born in the 60s and grew up in 70s, it’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there what a pop culture phenomenon Peanuts was at that time. Every kid loved Snoopy, had Peanuts paperbacks on their shelves, and could recite the TV specials by heart. And yet, especially at that time, at the height of its popularity among children, it’s remarkable that it was a comic mostly about a sad and lonely boy who couldn’t do anything right: Good ol’ Charlie Brown.
As cleverly implied by the book’s cover, it’s fitting that the term “goat” meant loser in Charlie Brown’s time, but it now means the Greatest Of All Time.
I especially liked the essay by astronaut Mike Massimino, exactly my age, who in 1969 became a NASA, New York Mets, and Peanuts fanatic at exactly the same time I did. He went to make NASA his career, and I followed Peanuts into cartooning. Massimino even had the same Snoopy astronaut doll I did as a kid. I have a specific memory of taking mine to McDonalds once. He was able to take his with him on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2009 on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
This book is a beautiful and fitting commemoration of a profound and hugely important part of American art. It’s great fun to read, and it’s a wonderful memento for the bookshelf or coffee table of any Peanuts fan.
Below is the slipcase cover. You can purchase the book at this link.
PREVIOUSLY:
“Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz”
The original Charlie Brown Christmas Special promo from 1965, with an additional scene
“Open arse” — medieval Europe’s rotting fruit delicacy found in Roman toilet
Ellsworth Toohey / 7:56 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
A 2,000-year-old Roman toilet in Switzerland yielded an unexpected discovery: 19 large seeds from a fruit medieval Europe was obsessed with, but which has now vanished so completely that professional botanists often can’t identify it.
The medlar was politely named, but for 900 years it went by “open-arse“—a reference to its distinctive bottom, reports the BBC. The French weren’t more delicate, calling it “monkey’s bottom,” “donkey’s bottom,” and “dog’s bottom.” Despite the crude names, it appeared in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Henry VIII planted medlars at Hampton Court. By the 1600s, they were as common as apples across England.
The fruit’s strange appeal came with a catch: medlars had to rot before you could eat them. Fresh off the tree, they caused violent diarrhea. But after weeks decomposing in sawdust, enzymes transformed the hard, bitter flesh into something sweet with the texture of baked apples and a flavor like over-ripe dates mixed with lemon. This process, called “bletting,” made medlars one of the only winter sources of sugar in medieval times.
The medlar disappeared from British shops in the 1950s when tropical fruits became cheaper. But near the Caspian Sea, where it originated 3,000 years ago, the fruit remains popular in markets across Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Wine experts can’t tell good wine from bad, decades of research shows
Ellsworth Toohey / 7:41 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Wine experts can’t tell good wine from bad — and they’ve been exposed repeatedly for decades. In 1976’s famous Judgment of Paris, French wine connoisseurs blindly rated California wines superior to French ones, shattering the assumption that only France produced excellent wine. Replications in 1978, 1986, and 2006 confirmed the result, yet the wine establishment continues to peddle expensive expertise that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
The emperor has no clothes, and the evidence keeps piling up. In 2008, writer Robin Goldstein created a fake Milan restaurant called “Osteria L’Intrepido” and paid $250 to submit a wine list to Wine Spectator for their Award of Excellence. According to Cremieux in the essay “The Myth of the Sommelier,” every single wine on that list had been previously panned by the magazine itself—including bottles they’d rated as “not clean,” “like turpentine,” and “swampy.” Wine Spectator gave the non-existent restaurant their award anyway. Meanwhile, massive fraud cases went undetected for years: Rudy Kurniawan sold home-blended counterfeits, and 18 million bottles of mislabeled “Pinot Noir” fooled the experts completely.
The numbers tell the real story. California Grapevine tracked 4,000 wines across fourteen competitions and found that 1,000 wines won gold medals in one competition but failed to place in any others. Research at the California State Fair found that only 10% of judges consistently rated identical wines—poured from the same bottles—within the same medal range. As Cremieux concludes, “The best wine is the one you like — period.”
Handheld retro consoles look just like the Nintendo DS
Rob Beschizza / 7:06 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Of the companies making handheld consoles fit to play old games, Ambernic likes to stay close to its inspirations. The Ambernic RG DS is its latest, and it looks for all the world like a Nintendo DS. With two screens and a stylus for $100, it promises plenty of cheap old-school gaming action when it becomes available to gamers.
It’ll come in red, blue and white, or with a transparent casing certain to delight Gen Xers and prisoners. Specs aren’t out, but the guesswork on Reddit is convincing and it seems unlikely it’ll run 3DS games.
Engadget’s Jackson Chan pointed out that it’s not the first DS clone to arrive this fall: check out the Ayn Thor, offered for a much pricier $249 and with hardware to patch.
AYN Thor: Exclusively 6” OLED Dual Screen Gaming Handheld
Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU | Customized Full HD 6” AMOLED Touch Screen | 3.92” AMOLED Touch Display (Bottom Screen) | Android 13 | 6000mAh Battery | Hall Sticks |
Dumbwaiters and milk doors: Lost home features that seem useful today
Popkin / 7:00 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Ever wonder why your grandmother called her refrigerator an “icebox”? A YouTube video explores historic home features that have disappeared from modern architecture, revealing the clever solutions our ancestors used for everyday living. From dumbwaiters that transported items between floors to milk doors where deliverymen left fresh bottles, these features show how homes functioned differently from today.
The term “icebox” literally describes early refrigerators that required large blocks of ice at the bottom and top to maintain cold temperatures. Homeowners had to replace melted ice regularly. Other lost features include butler’s pantries for food preparation, transom windows for ventilation, coal chutes for heating fuel delivery, picture rails for hanging artwork, knob and tube wiring, wash basins, and servant quarters that reflected the social structures of their era.
While some obsolete features, like ice-dependent food cooling, aren’t missed, others, like dumbwaiters, seem practical for today’s multi-story homes.
See also: I finally grew enough strawberries to make ice cream
Texas man convinced his county to ban “hello” for being too satanic
Popkin / 6:30 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Once upon a time in 1997, a campaign was started by one very religious man to replace the word “hello” with the less satanic greeting “Heaveno!” Canales campaigned to change his town’s official greeting and was successful. He even had a website dedicated to “Heavano!” which is archived here on the Wayback Machine.
Being upset that the word “hello” contains the word “hell” is one very particular hill to die on. Canales dedicated the last few decades of his life to fighting for his cause. He passed away in 2014, and the heavano movement fizzled out.
From Weird Universe:
“Leonso Canales of Kingsville, Texas began his campaign to replace the greeting “Hello” with the less satanic “Heaveno” in 1988, but he got really serious about it in 1997 when he placed ads in the local paper showing the word “Hello” scratched out and replaced with “Heaveno.” That same year, his campaign received official support when the commissioners of Kleberg County voted unanimously to designate “Heaveno” as the county’s official greeting.”
See also: God is Disappointed in You
Dolly Parton shuts down death rumors: “I ain’t dead yet!”
Gail Sherman / 6:00 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Dolly Parton’s sister, Frieda, posted a request for prayers for her on Facebook. Then, a ghoulish AI-generated photo surfaced of Reba McIntyre at Dolly’s deathbed. Dolly had recently canceled shows at her Las Vegas residency due to health issues, so fans were understandably freaked out.
Still reeling from the loss of Jane Goodall and suffering from the general state of the world, the thought of losing another badass force for good was too much to bear. Thankfully, Dolly took to social media to say, “I ain’t dead yet!” The country star and national treasure took a break from filming commercials for the Grand Ole Opry to address her health.
During her husband’s lengthy illness and subsequent death, Dolly, like many caregivers, put her health concerns on the back burner. Now she has some catching up to do, but she insists it’s “nothing serious” and she is “not done yet.”
Framework users complain over its support for far-right firebrand
Rob Beschizza / 5:15 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Framework makes repairable technology and established an ecosystem of easily-upgraded modular components to go with their ultraportable laptops and tiny desktop PCs. But support for a project from David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and disliker of muslims, immigrants, and the other usual suspects, has users upset. From the conflagration at Framework’s community page:
Omarchy is authored by David Heinemeier Hansson, also known as DHH, probably best known as the author of Ruby on Rails but also a racecar driver, apparently. DHH is also a right-wing conspiracy nut, who seem to believe in the great displacement theory [and] was also involved in the recent upheaval in the Ruby community, where Rubygems, a core component of the Ruby ecosystem, was the victim of a hostile takeover, which DHH supported. Even if you would decide (questionably) to ignore the man and take only his technical merit, the recent Rubygems drama should give anyone pause. So my question is: where does Framework stand around this?
Framework framed its support on “big tent” grounds.
We support open source software (and hardware), and partner with developers and maintainers across the ecosystem. We deliberately create a big tent, because we want open source software to win. We don’t partner based on individuals’ or organizations’ beliefs, values, or political stances outside of their alignment with us on increasing the adoption of open source software.
This might be cast as “geek fallacy“-esque reply, where the Framework team assumes that they’re all just doing computer work here and anyone’s views outside of school don’t and shouldn’t matter to the project. Another factor may be the impression, given by mainstream media, that special guys with extremist political ideas can decloak now without it being a big deal. The problem with this framing is that they have products to sell, and customers and users who may think differently. Suboptimal responses haven’t helped.
With all due respect, I think you profoundly misunderstand the nature of my concern here. This is not a “I do not like this distribution” kind of argument. This is a “the people you are sending my money to want me and my friends dead or deported” kind of argument.
This appears to be a fair if heightened representation of Hannson’s views. His politics are expressed in a variety of postings and are summarized as extremely right-wing:
He thinks that even if you were born in the UK, you only count as British if you’re white.
He wouldn’t consider living in London specifically because it has too many people of color.
He uses racist tropes to accuse Asian men of being dangerous predators who attack white women.
He pushes debunked conspiracy theories about immigrants replacing white people.
He finds a march where speakers called for banning all non-Christian religions and ethnically cleansing immigrants “heartwarming”.
Finally — and maybe most alarmingly — he argues that all of the above is normal and not extreme.
Update: Here’s a good overview from Gardiner Bryant:
Bulgarian artist’s robot cartoon warned us 37 years ago
Ellsworth Toohey / 4:50 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
In this 1987 cartoon by Bulgarian artist Milen Radev, an engineer operates a wireless remote control to command a towering robot— but the robot’s mechanical hands grip puppet strings attached directly to the engineer himself. Who’s really in control?
The image appeared in Szpilki (Polish for “Pins”), a satirical magazine founded in 1935 by Zbigniew Mitzner, Erik Lipiński, and Zenon Wasilewski. Its motto: “True virtue is not afraid of criticism.”
From the start, the magazine took a left-wing, anti-fascist stance, warning readers in text and drawings about the threat of war. As reported DESA, Many contributors didn’t survive — concentration camps, the ghetto, and death claimed their lives during World War II.
Relaunched on March 1, 1945, Szpilki reached a circulation of 100,000 copies. The magazine was suspended during Poland’s martial law period in the early 1980s when the government cracked down on the Solidarity movement, which advocated for workers’ rights, civil liberties, and social change. It struggled after 1990, closing in 1994.
Thermal cameras show our noses cool when we are stressed
Rob Beschizza / 4:33 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
You might hide your bout of acute stress from human observers, but thermal imaging cameras won’t be fooled: our noses cool sharply when we’re under pressure, the result of our bodies altering blood flow to the face.
Scientists have discovered that the drop in temperature of a person’s nose can be used as a measure of stress levels, and to monitor recovery. … the researcher who was running the test invited a panel of three strangers into the room. They all stared at me silently as the researcher informed that I now had three minutes to prepare a five minute speech about my “dream job”.
As I felt the heat rise around my neck, the scientists captured my face changing colour through their thermal camera. My nose quickly dropped in temperature – turning blue on the thermal image – as I considered how to bluster my way through this unplanned presentation.
The study involved 29 voluntees and all experienced a drop in schnozz temperature of between three and six degrees, the BBC reported. Recovery is fast but the signal appears to be “a robust marker of a changing stress state.” The academic motivation here is animal rescue and resettlement: “They can’t say how they’re feeling and they can be quite good at masking how they’re feeling,” says Marianne Paisley, a researcher from the University of Sussex.
This will be used to market new but unreliable lie-detection gadgets to law enforcement, I guarantee it.
This 1978 documentary captured North Carolina’s hollerin’ tradition before it vanished
Ellsworth Toohey / 4:19 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
In the flatlands of Sampson County, North Carolina, before telephones connected isolated farms, neighbors communicated across miles using “hollers” — loud, melodic calls in falsetto that carried across open fields. Filmmaker Kier Cline captured this vanishing tradition in his 1978 documentary Welcome to Spivey’s Corner.
Cline’s film featured the National Hollerin’ Contest, held annually starting in 1969 in the town of Spivey’s Corner (current population 576). What began as a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department grew into a cultural phenomenon, drawing thousands of spectators and contestants from across the country.
Cline interviewed practitioners like 73-year-old Leonard Emanuel, who explained the origins: “Back then in them days, everybody hollered, just about the whole neighborhood. They’d get up of a morning, get out, feed up, one’d holler, other answer him back.”
The documentary shows four types of hollers: distress calls for help, functional calls for animals or family, expressive hollers for pleasure, and communicative hollers to “touch base with another soul.”
Three-time runner-up Sam Barber tells Cline, “My Dad hollered before me, you know. A way back then the most of the men hollered… That’s the way they had a connection, you know, about over the neighborhood.”
Walmart and Target rumored to pull Xboxes from shelves
Rob Beschizza / 3:58 am PT Mon Oct 13, 2025
Last month, Costco ended sales of Xbox consoles or accessories in the U.S. and U.K. after Microsoft announced price hikes. Walmart and Target are following suit, report workers there on social media, though official sources were quick to state this is not true.
According to Reddit users who claim to work at Target and Walmart, both stores have begun removing their Xbox stock en masse. “On Wednesday, the Target I work for has removed all Xbox games and I’m pretty sure it will be store wide,” u/Jawwaad127 alleged. “All the games have been discontinued and will likely go [on] clearance.”
“My local Target is getting rid of their Xbox section,” u/CodeE1985 posted, attaching photo evidence. “The electronics manager says they will no longer carry systems, games, or accessories. He also said all Targets in the Kansas City area are purging Xbox stock as well.”
Windows Central:
Microsoft has given us a statement, noting that Walmart and Target, at large, are still “committed partners” for Xbox hardware.
“Target and Walmart, among other retailers, remain committed partners for Xbox consoles, accessories, and games.”
Misinformation is generally been worse than ever thanks to AI, bots, and the like, but Microsoft has earned itself plenty of negativity over the last year. Where is all this misinformation coming from? And what will it take to turn the tide?
Microsoft says it’s working on a next-gen console.
We are actively investing in our future first-party consoles and devices designed, engineered and built by Xbox,” The company said in a statement to Windows Central on October 5. “For more details, the community can revisit our agreement announcement with AMD.”
This was in response to an alleged insider reporting that Xbox’s hardware future was “up in the air.” That rumor also built on the brand’s ongoing, public-facing crises and apparent de-emphasizing of its console hardware:
The context: Sony’s PlayStation 5 has outsold the Xbox Series X|S more than 2 to 1, with estimates from July 2025 showing PS5 sales at 78.22 million units compared to the Xbox’s 33.40 million. Meanwhile, everyday gamers are moving to handheld systems—a market already dominated by Microsoft Windows-based devices from many manufacturers and Nintendo’s Switch 2. Sony has belatedly sought to get back in the market while Microsoft faces the uneasy dilemma of how to meld its console and PC gaming eco-systems.
Modern Time Machines finishes dream pop collaboration with “September” songwriter
Mark Frauenfelder / 12:44 pm PT Sun Oct 12, 2025
Carla and I met Ben Golomb at Allee Willis’s former house, where he told us about “Ornamental,” a song he wrote with the legendary songwriter shortly before her passing. We’re happy to share it here.
Willis wrote hits like “September” for Earth, Wind & Fire, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” for Pet Shop Boys, and the Friends theme song. She met Golomb while he was making a documentary about Howard the Duck, a film she’d worked on. Their friendship quickly sparked the idea of writing together, and Willis brought her characteristic quick, decisive creativity to the collaboration.
Just days after their final songwriting session — where they discussed future plans — Willis passed away unexpectedly in December 2019. Modern Time Machines paused work on the song out of respect and grief. They returned to finish it years later after hearing about a documentary on Willis.
In a video about the collaboration, Golomb reflects on Willis’s inspiring energy and her philosophy of acting on creative impulses without hesitation. “Ornamental” became Willis’s final song, now receiving airplay on Detroit radio in her hometown. The track blends Modern Time Machines’ dream pop and shoegaze sound with Willis’s gift for melody — a bittersweet farewell from a songwriter who never stopped creating.
I read Little Brother by Cory and it stuck with me. I’ve been a very casual fan of Boing Boing for I guess almost fifteen years now. I figure it’s time I seal the deal and throw y’all a little cash. 😅
It’s so important to support the content you love. This is how you vote with your wallet and be the change you want to see in the world.
Excited to engage with like-minded folks. I love the blend of intellectual thought, futurism, fun, and humor here. It’s exceedingly hard to find non-pablum stuff. Keep carrying that torch!