Boing Boing, February 03, 2025
All our posts from the past 24 hours
Howdy, Cosmic Cowkids! Today's roundup is a kaleidoscope of chuckles and chills. We've got a psychedelic revolution brewing with the power to heal. Prepare for cuteness overload as a furry friend unleashes its playful side. Antarctica reveals a cosmic face, while Mexico dials Trump's number. A United Airlines jet's fiery descent brings drama to Houston. Cobra Kai bids farewell, and we've got a Bad Lip Reading of Trump's second act. Civilization VII earns its stars, and German hunters channel their inner Bambi. Take a whiff of the corpse flower's pungent perfume in Brooklyn. Trump and Musk chat about USAID's fate, while a judge slights our herbal tea obsession. We'll rescue terrified hikers from Scotland's peaks, even if they initially ignored help. Learn about the electric smiles of 19th-century France and the vagus nerve's role in healing. Embrace your innie's quirks with Severance's Macrodata Refinement. And don't miss Ronald Reagan's timely trade war warning aimed directly at Mr. Trump. Plus, Nintendo stumbles in a legal battle with a tiny Costa Rican grocery store.
Your support helps us connect you with the strange, wonderful, and important stories of our time — thank you for joining our journey of discovery!
How the Black psychedelic revolution can heal and liberate
Allan Rose Hill / 11:25 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
"Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full-scale societal healing, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and power—the 'Promised Land' as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr.," writes Dr. Nicholas Powers, poet, journalist, and English professor at SUNY Old Westbury.
Powers is the author of a new book—Black Psychedelic Revolution—an exploration of why Western psychedelic culture is so white even though Black and Indigenous people have such a rich history of psychedelic medicine and ritual dating back thousands of years. Indeed, hallucinogens such as psilocybin, ayahuasca, and iboga are rooted in the native traditions of Mexico, South America, and Africa.
From a description of Powers's book:
In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to one's self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whiteness—and he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.
Powers unpacks how the Drug War, racist policing, mass incarceration, and community gatekeeping intersect to sideline POC—specifically Black people—from the psychedelic movement. He asserts the need for a full-stop reclamation and revolution: one that eschews psychedelic exceptionalism, breaks down raced and classed constructs of "good" vs. "bad" drugs, realizes healing, and lives into a free, strong, and independent Blackness.
Jane C. Hu interviewed Powers for The Microdose. When asked to imagine a "better" future that psychedelics could help manifest, this was his response:
I would like for psychedelics to be woven into our culture on two levels: a medical model level, and then also the spiritual and philosophical level — psychedelics being used not only for therapy, but to cure the sickness in the heart of man. I'd like us to accept that nature has shaped us all, and blessed and cursed us with an incredible ability to have empathy and imagination, but also an incredible ability to be violent. That's just who we are, and maybe by accepting that we are the dominant species on the planet, we're coming to a turning point where the narcissism of small differences that can erupt into war is something we can't afford any more, because our technology has gotten to the place where it could lead to the destruction of life. I think it's interesting that LSD and the atomic bomb were both basically created a few years apart — that humanity acquired these two amazing, powerful tools. The fact that psychedelics are still illegal while we have tens of thousands of nuclear missiles across the world just seems like an incredible failure.
The use of psychedelics for healing can also be expanded. Psychedelics have been used with soldiers who have seen violence, and I think that could be extended to children, teens, and young adults who have dealt with gang violence and homicide. They're similar forms of violence. And apart from immediate physical violence, there's a lot of stress that comes from poverty, like housing and food insecurity, that are forms of trauma people from poor and working classes experience and need to deal with, even if later generations are more upwardly mobile. Psychedelics are just one way to free oneself from these invisible chains we're dragging around, to realize that all of us, in some way, have suppressed parts of ourselves and integrated those parts into our subconscious. The psychedelic version of Martin Luther King Jr's dream, to follow the logic of integration, is to integrate not only the outcast but also the stranger inside of ourselves.
Puppy looks "cute and innocent" with his plushie — until his frisky side kicks in (video)
Carla Sinclair / 11:18 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
A fluffy young golden retriever takes "puppy love" to a new level when he gets a bit too frisky with his oversized toy.
"Started off all cute and innocent..," says the caption of his hilarious TikTok video as the pooch carries a huge stuffed animal across the room. "…Then this." (See video, posted by kevin_and_dug.)
"A dog's humping behavior can begin in puppies 3–6 weeks of age, most commonly during play," says an article by PetMD, and "can occur when dogs are excited, such as during play or after greeting another dog. Some dogs may perform this behavior when they see their favorite dog friend or person." Or, as the article forgot to mention, their favorite plushie!
Previously: Doggo going potty sneaks into pool — then splashes around with no intention of getting out (video)
Massive alien face spotted in Antarctica snow
Allan Rose Hill / 10:09 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
This astonishing extraterrestrial face was spotted in a Google Earth satellite image of Antarctica. Visit 72°00'36.0"S, 168°34'40.0"E and pledge your allegiance to the Cosmic Rulers of Pareidolia.
As one r/StrangeEarth commenter points out, "This looks eerily like Rudolf Steiner's depiction of Ahriman, the cold satanic force of materialism and nihilism."
Mexico has Trump's number
Jason Weisberger / 9:41 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
Fox News will report that Mexico has caved in, but anyone paying attention knows that Mexico agreed to nothing new, and convicted felon #47 has backed down.
Everyone except conservative media understands that Trump got suckered into giving Mexico and we, the US consumers, a month's pause in which his ill-conceived tariffs will be negotiated away. The now-open stock market is puking all over his Saturday announcement, and Trump appears to be backing down on Canada, too.
"Surging 10,000 troops to the border is something Biden got them to do in the past w/o tanking the stock market," added attorney Marcy Wheeler. "Given that @Claudiashein got concessions by giving Trump what Mexico has already given the US, I gotta wonder whether Trump's tantrum was just about shorting the stock market."
"It seems like the trick to negotiating with Trump is to realize he doesn't have any idea what the current facts are," saidWashington Post columnist Catherine Rampell. "'Oh you want 10,000 troops?' says world leader who already deployed 15K. 'Great 10k it is.'"
"Ooof! Mexico, Canada and Wall Street call Trump's Tariff bluff," said MSNBC's Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee. "NOW he wants to talk to Canada, delay tariffs on Mexico for a month and Wall Street is telling him real time his tariffs are 'dumb.' Ahh, the price of eggs, cars, avocados…"
Team Trump is easily duped, but so are their voters. Trump doesn't care how much damage they create, as long as Fox says he did it right. Trump neglected to mention the other concession he has given Mexico: the US must stop pouring illegal guns into Mexico.
"Most recently, the Mexican Attorney General of the Republic and the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) made an effort to trace the origin and number of firearms in Mexico coming from or through the United States," the report continued. "Mexico's Secretariat of Foreign Relations found that 70-90% of traced firearms originated from and passed through the U.S. The ATF and U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated a lower rate of 68%."
In Trump's readout of the call, the White House neglected to mention that the new president agreed to stop U.S. guns crossing the border, CNBC confirmed.
United Airlines plane catches fire, forcing passengers to evacuate in Houston (video)
Carla Sinclair / 9:11 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
Passengers aboard a United Airlines flight were forced to evacuate right before takeoff in Houston, Texas yesterday after the plane's engine caught fire.
In a montage video circulating online, black smoke billows out from under a wing as one person in the plane says, "Oh my God," while another says, "Please, please, get us out of here!" Later in the video, passengers stand on the tarmac at George Bush Intercontinental Airport as shuttle buses approach the scene. (See footage, posted by Diario AS.)
"Passengers deplaned on the runway via a combination of slides and stairs and were bused to the terminal," said a statement by United, via the Daily Beast, who reported that an engine caught fire "and let out black smoke during takeoff." Fortunately, no injuries were reported, and the travelers, who were trying to get to New York City, were eventually booked on another United Airlines flight later in the day.
Previously: United Airlines returns woman's lost suitcase… four years later
Cobra Kai is coming to an end
Jason Weisberger / 9:06 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
Netflix's fantastic series, which brought The Karate Kid to streaming, will hold one last All-Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament.
What started out as a fantastic homage to the Valley turned out to be a superb drama with characters you love. I've avoided watching any of Season Six so that I can binge all three parts together. Daniel and Johnny's relationship growth, or lack thereof, is always fun, and every character they've brought over from the films has been used wonderfully. Of course, Cobra Kai never dies, so there will always be chances of another sequel.
Bad Lip Reading of Trump's second inauguration
Jason Weisberger / 7:59 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
This is the only version of the anointing of the Orange Menace that I have seen.
This is likely far more entertaining and easier to stomach than watching footage or clips from the inauguration. I find it strange that I now see W as giving off a weird, warm charm, but it is an illusion.
Civilization VII gets good reviews, mostly
Rob Beschizza / 7:45 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
I gave up on Civ a few versions back: the historical features and flourishes didn't evoke "guide human civilization" as a game any more for me. Just more themed elaborations of complicated game systems I didn't have time to figure out. But reviewers say that Civilization VII is a rehaul and I might give it a try! Here's Ars Technica's Samuel Axon, who describes it as "a great launching point."
Systems-wise, Civilization VII is the most complete pre-expansion package we've seen in a long time. There are plenty of refinements and additions I'd like to see, but my general impressions are positive. This is still the best recent 4X game out there.
Just reading "Worker units have been replaced by a centralized city management screen" has me perking up.
As in all prior titles, you select a leader to play as when you start a new game, and that leader has unique bonuses or mechanics that affect how you would optimally play the game. But whereas leaders were tied to specific civilizations before, now they're not. You can play as Benjamin Franklin, King of Persia. Those concerned with historical accuracy won't love this change, though the developer clearly designed the leaders to have some mechanical synergy with historically appropriate civilizations; these pairings are even given special labeling in the civilization-selection screen.
People who play a game whose point is to fictionalize history yet expect historical accuracy are among the dumbest people history has ever known.
I want a strategy game that takes us to turn 1 of Civ. From the proverbial Monolith to the first move.
German hunters at the national deer-calling championship
Rob Beschizza / 6:58 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
German hunters know how to call a deer to its doom, and the best of them competed this weekend in the country's prestigious deer-calling championship. The AP's Daniel Niemann:
The hunters used specially made ox horns, triton snail shells, glass cylinders, the hollow stems of the giant hogweed, and a number of artificially produced instruments to amplify the sound and resonance. A stag's vocalizations are not only very diverse, but also vary according to age, state of mind and duration of the rut, during which they become increasingly hoarse, as well as the mood of the herd, according to the organizers.
Here's some footage from the event. They are "imitating the rutting calls of red deer," specifically.
Here's more from a previous year.
Crowd gets whiff of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's corpse flower
Rob Beschizza / 6:46 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Amorphophallus gigas, a close relative of the famed corpse flower and apparently plenty stinksome in its own right, has bloomed for the first time since it was established there in 2018. The carrion scent attracts pollinators.
It has hundreds of flowers, both male and female, inside the bloom, and it can take years between blooming events, said gardener Chris Sprindis, who first noticed the inflorescence, or cluster of flowers, around New Year's Eve. The bloom will last only a few days before it collapses.
"So this is the first time it's happened here," Sprindis said. "It's not going to happen next year. It's going to be several years before it happens again."
In 2001, our own Rusty Blazenhoff visited a corpse flower and reported on the unique experience — "The Alameda corpse flower is trending and I actually got to see it on the day it bloomed!" — and has reported on the one in San Francisco too. Popkin posted video of another example; rare as they are, they can't so much as twitch without international attention. Here's a GIF of one blossoming.
The plant's latin name, Amorphophallus titanum comes from Ancient Greek amorphos, "without form, misshapen" + phallos, "phallus", and titan, "giant."
Trump "agrees" with Musk on shutting down USAID and has "signed off" on it
Rob Beschizza / 6:30 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
Elon Musk, in his vague but now clearly powerful role as head of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, spent the weekend gaining access to government computer systems, cutting off access to federal workers, and shutting down USAID, the federal agency that distributes aid to foreign countries. President Trump "agrees" with this, Musk announced, and CNN reports that he has "signed off" on it.
"With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down," Musk said in a X Spaces conversation early Monday. … USAID workers were emailed shortly after midnight that they should not come into their Washington office, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
"At the direction of Agency leadership, the USAID headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C. will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025. Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will work remotely tomorrow, with the exception of personnel with essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership," said the email, of which CNN has obtained a copy.
Even if you agree with getting rid of any given pork-stuffed federal agency, consider two things: first, USAID functioned as one of the subtler arms of American power and may have gotten results cheaper than the less subtle ones, and second, the method of getting rid of it involves Elon Musk's "people" gaining direct access to the nation's finances and related computer systems.
Judge rules herbal tea purchase doesn't count as damages, personally attacks our entire lifestyle
Ellsworth Toohey / 4:29 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
In what might be the most personal attack on our coping mechanisms since Marie Kondo demanded we throw away our comfort clutter, a federal judge in Illinois just ruled that stress-shopping doesn't count as legal standing.
As reported by Courthouse News Service, our hero Faizah Siddique tried taking on Big Debt Collection after I.Q. Data International came for her about an apartment lease dispute. Like any reasonable human being dealing with debt collectors, she self-medicated with chamomile tea and fired off an angry letter. Then she did what Americans do best: sued them in federal court, citing her tea and postage expenses ($10.90) as proof of concrete harm.
In her savage ruling, Judge April M. Perry basically @'d all of us: "To rule otherwise would throw open the door for plaintiffs to transform even the mildest of emotional harms into concrete injury simply by asserting that they spent money to self-soothe by purchasing scented candles, fuzzy slippers, or crystals." First of all your honor, those crystals are for our chakras.
In other words, your Target stress-shopping sprees may be personally validating, but they're legally worthless. Now if you'll excuse us, we need to go sage our laptop after reading this ruling.
"Terrified" hikers rescued from Scotland's 2nd highest mountain — hours after turning rescuers away
Carla Sinclair / 4:19 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
A couple of disoriented hikers on Scotland's second highest mountain called in for an emergency rescue — hours after calling and then turning the same rescue team away.
The pair was halfway up Ben MacDui mountain last Tuesday night when they panicked, telling rescuers at Cairngorms National Park that one of the campers was suffering from hypothermia. But after rescuers managed to round up a team of volunteers to fetch the hikers, the duo changed their minds, complaining that it would take too long and calling off the rescue.
Until the following morning, that is, when the "terrified" couple changed their minds yet again.
"We were called out twice by the same group," one of the rescuers told the Ross-shire Journal via Advnture. "On Tuesday night, they were camping and contacted us and saying they were a bit terrified that one of them had hypothermia."
"We said we could get them off the hill now if one of them had hypothermia and he said, 'No, no – I don't want to be rescued,'" the frustrated rescuer continued. "If someone doesn't want to be rescued, we can't rescue them, so we left them." But, the park rescuer added, false alarms risk using resources that could otherwise help other hikers who might be in real peril.
From Advnture:
Things didn't exactly go to plan for the hikers though. The following morning (Wednesday, January 29), they became lost on the same plateau they'd camped on, and called mountain rescue for a second time.
Volunteers responded swiftly and were able to pinpoint the hikers' location and escort them safely back to base by 2.30pm.
[CMRT deputy leader Willie] Anderson was irked by the situation, slamming the pair as "completely out of their depth and using the emergency services as a prop, almost."
Previously: Co-workers ditch colleague on Colorado hiking retreat — who falls 20 times and gets stranded
How an 1800s French doctor's experiments with electrocuted faces revealed science of real smiles
Ellsworth Toohey / 3:56 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
Back in ye olden tymes of the 1800s, a French physician named Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne was shocking people's faces with electric probes to figure out how emotions work. His main test subject was some random old toothless dude whose face was conveniently numb to pain. Perfect for zapping!
Duchenne would jolt different facial muscles and snap photos of the resulting expressions, creating what was basically a 19th-century emoji catalog. His greatest hit? Discovering that real smiles use both mouth AND eye muscles — now known as the "Duchenne smile." That's why your favorite billionaire's smile gives you the creeps — he's only using his mouth muscles like some kind of emotion-faking robot.
Duchenne is considered the founding father of modern neurology, inventing muscle biopsies and nerve tests while working from a psychiatric hospital because the medical establishment was all "Sir, you cannot just go around electrocuting people's faces." But his work was so important that famous neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot called him "my master in neurology," and Charles Darwin used his work for his own book about evolution and emotions.
According to Wikipedia, Duchenne believed he was cracking a "God-given language of facial signs":
In the face our creator was not concerned with mechanical necessity. He was able in his wisdom or – please pardon this manner of speaking – in pursuing a divine fantasy … to put any particular muscles into action, one alone or several muscles together, when He wished the characteristic signs of the emotions, even the most fleeting, to be written briefly on man's face. Once this language of facial expression was created, it sufficed for Him to give all human beings the instinctive faculty of always expressing their sentiments by contracting the same muscles. This rendered the language universal and immutable.
Turns out God gave us facial muscles specifically for throwing shade, and it took a French doctor shocking random people's faces to figure it out.
Scientists discover how to hack the vagus nerve to fight autoimmune diseases
Ellsworth Toohey / 3:23 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
The vagus nerve is a busy bundle of over 100,000 information-carrying fibers that runs from the brain stem through the body to connect the brain with major organs including the heart, lungs, and digestive system.
Scientists have discovered they can hack this neural network to calm an overactive immune system, potentially helping millions who suffer from conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and Crohn's disease.
The discovery happened by chance. When researchers at the Feinstein Institutes gave rats a brain inflammation drug, something unexpected happened — inflammation dropped throughout their entire bodies. In a study of 242 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, this little shocker actually worked. After 12 weeks, patients had fewer symptoms and their joints weren't falling apart as quickly. Plus, inflammation proteins took a nosedive.
From NPR:
Currently, autoimmune diseases are usually treated with drugs that suppress the immune system. Some of these drugs are given by infusion, and can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. They also increase a person's risk of infections.
Vagus nerve stimulation might offer a way to augment or replace drug treatment, doctors say.
"Neural signals have the ability to reflexively control aspects of the immune system that frankly, nobody had thought about before," says Dr. Kevin Tracey, president of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health on Long Island.
Tracey co-founded SetPoint Medical, a company that hopes to market a vagus nerve stimulation system for autoimmune diseases.
It's still not clear whether vagus nerve stimulation will be as effective as drug treatment, says Dr. Andrew Ko, a neurosurgeon at the University of Washington in Seattle who implanted SetPoint stimulators in patients with rheumatoid arthritis as part of a study.
The FDA is currently reviewing this inflammation off-switch and should decide by the end of 2025 whether we can all get one.
Embrace your innie with this Macrodata Refinement program from "Severance"
Ellsworth Toohey / 2:20 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
At Lumon Industries, numbers don't just represent data — they trigger emotional responses in the workers who sort them. The company's Macrodata Refinement (MDR) program tasks employees with organizing arrays of numbers based on the feelings they evoke.
Workers face "a sea of numbers that seems to stretch endlessly in all directions," according to Lumon's internal documentation. Their job? Identify and sort number clusters into four distinct emotional categories: WO (melancholy), FC (joy), DR (fear), and MA (rage).
"Over time, certain clusters of numbers will start to make you feel a certain way," explains the company's onboarding materials. Workers must distribute these emotionally-charged number sequences evenly across five bins until reaching 100% refinement. The work requires a delicate balance of technical precision and emotional intelligence.
Lumon, which began as "a small topical salve company" has become "the world's leading pioneer in biotechnologies." The Macrodata Refinement program suggests the company is pushing boundaries in how humans interact with and process information.
"All of us are thrilled you've become a part of Lumon Industries," reads the welcoming message to new refiners. But given the emotional labor involved in sorting numbers by their capacity to trigger joy or despair, one has to wonder what being "part of the Lumon family" truly entails.
This simulation of the MDR system featured in Severance was created by Daniel Shiffman (The Coding Train).
Ronald Reagan warns against trade wars — as if speaking directly to Donald Trump (video)
Carla Sinclair / 1:50 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
A video clip of Ronald Regan warning against trade wars has resurfaced, and it's as if he were speaking directly to Donald Trump.
"Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies," the Republican president said in a 1988 radio address, after reminding his listeners of the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, which led to the "the worst economic catastrophe in our history," aka the Great Depression.
"We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends — weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world — all while cynically waving the American flag," Reagan continued, cautioning against the likes of Trump and his fellow red-capped RINOS.
"The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion; it is an American triumph, one we worked hard to achieve, and something central to our vision of a peaceful and prosperous world of freedom."
On Sunday, Trump admitted that Americans will feel "some pain" after announcing tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. But the billionaire president assured reporters that "people understand that." Replace the word "people" with "my fellow plutocrats" and I'd say Trump is finally speaking a truth.
(See Reagan's full 5-minute speech, courtesy of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, or just the video clip here, posted by Meidas Touch.)
Previously: Watch MAGA vendor's excitement fade as he learns how Trump's tariffs affect his business
Nintendo just lost a trademark fight with a tiny Costa Rican grocery store
Ellsworth Toohey / 1:36 am PT Mon Feb 3, 2025
Gaming giant Nintendo just lost a trademark battle to a teeny grocery store in Costa Rica. José Mario Alfaro González had the audacity to name his San Ramón de Alajuela shop "Super Mario." Never mind that in Costa Rica, "super" is just what everyone calls their local grocery store, and that the owner's actual name is Mario.
Nintendo's lawyers came charging in like an angry Bowser Jr., anyway, claiming they owned all the rights to "Super Mario," probably including the air molecules that form those words.
González's lawyer pointed out that Nintendo's 45 trademark categories didn't include anything about selling actual food to actual humans.
From The Tico Times:
"We knew these big companies have vast resources to fight, and we had to think carefully," said Edgardo Jiménez, Alfaro's legal representative. "We even considered changing the supermarket's name to avoid a lawsuit."
Costa Rica's National Registry agreed, telling Nintendo to go jump in a warp pipe.
Nintendo hasn't commented on their loss, but we imagine someone's throwing blue shells around their legal department right about now. As Jiménez put it, with what we assume was a victory-lap smirk, "We refuted all of Nintendo's arguments, demonstrating their errors and our rightful claim."
Those "smiling" photos are horrifying :-(