Boing Boing, June 04, 2025
Space bombers, Musk's meltdowns, and an epic French cowboy
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Happy Wednesday! Today: Ukraine wreaks havoc on Russian airfields using hobby drone software, while Tesla sales plummet in Quebec as ex-fans turn on Elon. Meet Theo Lawrence, the unlikely French artist making authentic country music waves, and watch cockatoos master public water fountains with surprising sophistication. Plus, a mind-bending 1939 novel written entirely without the letter 'e', and Pornhub bids au revoir to France over privacy concerns. Meanwhile, Mike Johnson defends Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" as Musk and Bernie Sanders find themselves unlikely allies in opposing it.
Research reveals cold plunges reduce muscle growth by up to 20%
Ellsworth Toohey / 11:16 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Ice baths after weightlifting may prevent muscle growth, disrupting the gains lifters hope to achieve.
A study from Maastricht University tracked what happens in muscles after cold plunges, revealing that icy water significantly reduces blood flow and protein absorption — key factors in muscle recovery. The researchers monitored 12 men who exercised one leg, then submerged it in 30-degree water while keeping the other leg in warm water as a control. The cold-plunged leg showed markedly decreased blood flow and protein uptake for hours afterward. This aligns with a 2015 study where cold plungers developed muscles that were 20% smaller than non-plungers after three months of training.
"It looks like it's not a great idea" to use ice baths after lifting weights, said lead researcher Milan Betz, as reported in The Washington Post. While cold plunges might offer other benefits, like mental resilience, the science suggests skipping the ice bath if building muscle is your goal.
Empty souls, empty heads: Rich idiots dropping $400 on Labubu dolls
Ellsworth Toohey / 10:56 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Nothing reveals the hollow core of celebrity culture quite like watching A-listers desperately scramble to attach dolls to their $20,000 handbags.
As Harper's Bazaar breathlessly reports, the fashion victim brigade is crazy for Labubu — a fuzzy devil doll that looks like it was designed by typing "fuzzy devil doll" in ChatGPT.
The desperation to be part of this trend is so thick you could spread it on toast. Kimora Lee Simmons (Who this? — editor), is now adorning her Birkin with a Labubu. Rihanna has succumbed to a terminal case of try-hard, sporting a pink "Lychee Berry" version that makes her Louis Vuitton look like it's being attacked by kawaii rabies. Celebrity stylist Raz Martinez (Who this? — editor) says he held out until succumbing to "months" of TikTok algorithm manipulation.
The Erewhon crowd is paying up to $400 for the privilege of announcing to the world that they're the type of person who names their sourdough starter and considers "vibes" a personality trait. Welcome to 2025, where having a personality has been replaced by having the same mass-produced charm as everyone else on your Instagram feed.
Pop Mart's marketing genius lies in convincing people that attaching a nine-toothed gremlin to their designer bag is somehow an act of joyful rebellion against our "difficult political climate." Nothing says "fighting the system" like dropping half a rent payment on a plushie that'll get tossed as soon as the next vapid celebrity trend takes hold.
1939 novel "Gadsby" — The remarkable story written without the letter 'e'
Ellsworth Toohey / 10:21 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
In 1939 Ernest Vincent Wright wrote an 50,000-word novel without using a single letter e.
Wright's Gadsby tells the story of a determined 50-year-old who rallies young people to revitalize their dying town of Branton Hills. Wright had to perform linguistic gymnastics to write the novel without using the most common letter in English. He couldn't use simple words like "the," "he," or "she." Numbers one, three, five and everything between six and thirty were off-limits. To write in past tense without "-ed" endings, he relied on creative constructions like "did walk" instead of "walked." He transformed famous quotes — Keats' "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" became "a charming thing is a joy always."
"This story was written, not through any attempt to attain literary merit, but due to a somewhat balky nature, caused by hearing it so constantly claimed that 'it can't be done,'" Wright wrote in his introduction, allowing himself the luxury of using the banned vowel.
To prevent accidental "e" usage, Wright physically tied down the E key on his typewriter. Despite this precaution, four forbidden "e"s slipped into the published version — the word "the" appears three times and "officers" once.
Wright self-published Gadsby. Most copies were destroyed in a warehouse fire. Original editions now command up to $7,500 from collectors. Wright died the same year his novel was published.
His linguistic feat inspired Georges Perec, who wrote his own e-less French novel La Disparition in 1969.
Watch: Wild cockatoos figure out how to operate water fountains
Ellsworth Toohey / 9:05 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Thirsty cockatoos in western Sydney have mastered the art of operating public drinking fountains, displaying problem-solving skills previously unseen in wild birds. Watch the video.
The parrots figured out how to twist and hold fountain handles with their feet while drinking from the spout, according to research published in Biology Letters. Through motion-triggered cameras, scientists documented 525 drinking attempts over a month-long period, with a 41% success rate.
"Even though crows may be just as smart, they do not have the physical tools parrots have at their disposal to manipulate objects," explains Vladimir Pravosudov, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, as quoted in Science. "The way they can use both their beaks and feet makes them more equipped for this type of behavior."
The skill appears limited to western Sydney's cockatoo population, where these bright white parrots take turns at the fountains near their roosting sites. While the birds have successfully spread their garbage bin-opening techniques across 40 suburbs, fountain operation remains a local specialty. Barbara Klump, lead researcher from the University of Vienna, suggests this limitation might stem from different fountain designs across the city – some use push buttons instead of twist handles.
"They're so innovative and good at problem solving that they seem to eventually figure out a solution," Klump told Science. "In a weird way, cockatoos constantly surprise me, but I'm also never that surprised."
Fox News: Donald Trump "is furious" with Elon Musk (video)
Carla Sinclair / 8:56 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Although Donald Trump has uncharacteristically stayed mum so far after Elon Musk called his Big Beautiful Bill a "disgusting abomination," turns out he's "furious," according to Fox host Brian Kilmeade.
"The Elon Musk thing caught the President by surprise," he said on Fox and Friends this morning. "And I hear he's furious!" (See video, posted by Republicans against Trump.)
Reality Check: Trump is always furious. Not one day has passed in the last 10 years in which the miserable billionaire has come across as a happy gentleman. Therefore, Kilmeade's intel is correct. It's like saying there's a 50 percent chance of rain.
Previously: Mike Johnson slams Musk for calling Trump bill "disgusting abomination" (video)
Scientists decode the universal language pattern in 40,000 stories
Ellsworth Toohey / 8:46 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
A study analyzing 40,000 stories reveals what Aristotle intuited centuries ago — narratives follow a common, predictable structure consisting of three key elements.
Using computer analysis, researchers Ryan Boyd, Kate Blackburn, and James Pennebaker revealed how language patterns evolved across novels, short stories, romance novels, movies and other narratives. Their findings, published in Science in 2929, identified three consistent components that form narratives: At the beginning, articles and prepositions dominate as authors set the stage. The middle sees a rise in "cognitive tension words" like "think" and "realize" as characters grapple with conflicts. By the end, pronouns and auxiliary verbs increase as the action resolves.
This pattern held true regardless of genre, length, or even quality — highly-rated books and movies followed the same structure as poorly-rated ones. However, the researchers found that non-fiction formats like newspaper articles and TED talks deviated from this pattern, particularly in how they handle cognitive tension.
"We find that all different types of stories — novels, films, short stories, and even amateur writing — trend toward a universal narrative structure," the researchers write in their report. Rather than constraining creativity, they suggest this structure may provide an optimal way for humans to process and share information through stories.
They've created a website where anyone can analyze the narrative patterns of hundreds of published books and movie scripts, or upload their own texts for analysis.
[Via Futility Closet]
Hitman creators take on James Bond franchise with new game announcement
Grant St. Clair / 8:30 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
It's hard to imagine a better match of developer and IP than this. Fresh off the heels of the confusingly marketed but absolutely excellent Hitman: World of Assassination, developer IO interactive has announced its next project, a licensed game starring venerable superspy James Bond. Details on 007: First Light are thin on the ground — we literally only have one teaser image — but even just that pairing is enough to excite.
IOI are masters of stealth and atmosphere, and more than a few levels from World of Assassination felt ripped straight from James Bond themselves. That dazzling opening sequence in Dubai comes to mind — if you know, you know. It'll be interesting to see what changes to the formula arise from swapping Agent 47's red tie for Bond's tux — and which Bond, if any, this is based on — when the game is fully revealed. As far as I know, Bond doesn't murder people for money… not officially, anyway. All his murders are incidental.
Listen to spectacular new Cree version of Led Zeppelin's classic "Immigrant Song" by Cree Métis band Bebe Buckskin
Jennifer Sandlin / 8:09 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Bebe Buckskin's recently released Cree version of Led Zeppelin's 1970 rock classic "Immigrant Song" is fantastic — and well worth a watch and listen. Bebe Buckskin, who was born Dani Ghostkeeper and describes herself as a "Cree Métis blues-rock mama," was raised on the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement in northern Alberta, Canada. The Calgary Herald reports that she was surrounded by fiddle music growing up, and when she started playing music she gravitated toward blues, R&B, and soul.
More recently, she has been exploring her Métis/Cree heritage in her music, as evidenced by her new version of "Immigrant Song," which is sung in Cree. She describes her version of the "iconic battle cry, reimagined in Cree":
Gritty, raw, and powerful, this track fuses the thunder of classic rock with the soul of Indigenous resistance. It's more than a cover — it's a reclamation. A celebration of culture. A voice rising from the boreal forest and mighty muskeg with a fire that won't fade.
It's a compelling reimagining of the classic Zeppelin song that American Songwriter describes as a "howling, brooding, repetitious representation of mythical conflict." While originally written by Led Zeppelin with a focus on Norse mythology, the song's imagery of a land of ice and snow, midnight sun, and hot springs; along with its "bashing percussion," which, to American Songwriter, symbolizes a collective heartbeat that "belongs to the soldiers" and portrays "their feet running over land, axes above their hands," all translate beautifully to a Cree context.
The song absolutely rocks, and the video is stunningly gorgeous — go watch and listen!
Hear more at Bebe Buckskin's Instagram or website.
Witcher 4's PS5 demo pushes console graphics to new heights
Grant St. Clair / 8:00 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Months after the initial reveal of The Witcher 4 filled certain kinds of gamers with blinding rage, CD Projekt Red has returned once again to pull the curtain back on its actual gameplay. Fair warning: if you got mad about the cinematic reveal, be warned that this demo contains almost ten minutes of playing as a woman.
For everyone else, the fact that this demo is apparently running on a base PlayStation 5 is nothing short of jaw-dropping. As this game and GTA 6 have proven, there's still plenty of power to be squeezed out of these consoles that sadly probably won't be fully tapped before the end of their lifespan.
The gameplay itself is nothing too groundbreaking, mostly showing off Ciri walking around a few stunning environments and eventually getting pulled into a cutscene. The forests look frigid, the cities look bustling, and the cloth physics are nice and flappy — but at no point is a sword drawn. Still, though, if you're counting the seconds to release like I am, it's that much more to get excited about.
Tom the Dancing Bug: A busy, busy day at the airport
Ruben Bolling / 6:00 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
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Slop-eds: Washington Post to use AI editor for opinion page content
Rob Beschizza / 4:43 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
The Washington Post is going to license Substack posts and use AI to polish content from "nonprofessional writers", reports the New York Times. Owner Jeff Bezos's plan to have his newspaper's opinion page support "personal liberties and free markets" has evolved, in predictable form, to something more commercially appealing: an inexpensively-generated deluge of slop. Best of all, they can replace both professional writers and editors.
Amusingly, one of the Substack newsletters The Washington Post wanted to bring on board was The Contrarian, recently founded by a former WaPo columnist who resigned and posted a scathing attack on the newspaper and its owner for bending the knee to Trump.
What that shows is that the people working on setting up this new "slopinion page" are unfamiliar with the WaPo opinion section as it is and its recent operations. Perhaps, then, some kind of DOGE-like group of technicians given free reign to delve in and burn it all down.
It's mostly machines reading it anyway.
Tesla sales collapse in Québec
Rob Beschizza / 4:10 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Sales of Tesla electric vehicles have "collapsed" in Québec, Canada's largest and most Francophone province, according to data from its vehicle registration authority. Only 524 Teslas were registered in the first quarter of the year, down 85 percent.
While the drop is precipitous, it should be noted that auto sales are generally lower in the first quarter of the year than later in the year. Though confined to one region of Canada, the collapse mirrors similar issues in Europe, where Tesla sales fell by nearly 50% in April despite overall EV demand continuing to grow.
Demand for EVs is growing all the while, making clear that the problem is Tesla—and its increasingly-disliked owner. "Quebec is the most anti-Elon Musk province in Canada," writes Matthew Renfrew.
"According to a study by the Angus Reid Institute, 17% of Canadians have a favourable opinion of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, including just 10% of people in Quebec, where positive sentiments towards Musk are lowest," Renfrew posted in April.
The province where Musk is most favoured is Saskatchewan (31%).
Sadly, Saskatchewan isn't helping.
Saskatchewan has doubled the cost of registering or renewing an EV's plates, from $150 to $300. Earlier this year, Alberta added a $200 tax for EVs on top of its provincial renewals
Business Insider points out, though, that Tesla was frozen out of Canada's EV rebate program in retaliation for Trump's tariffs. To drivers, the bottom line is the racing line.
Pornhub quits France over "age verification" law
Rob Beschizza / 3:58 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
The parent company of Pornhub, Redtube and other popular smut sites is to suspend service in France today in advance of "age verification" laws kicking in there. The laws would require adult sites to either maintain records of users' identities or integrate with third-party systems that perform this service: "an ineffective mechanism that puts people's data at risk from bad actors, hacks or leaks," claims Aylo.
They say countries should target developers of operating systems like Microsoft's Windows, Apple's iOS or Google's Android, rather than porn platforms. "Aylo is extremely pro the concept of age verification," executive Alex Kekesi told reporters in a video call. But requiring individual platforms to confirm visitors' ages "poses a very serious risk… with respect to your privacy rights", she added.
Culture Minister Aurore Berge bid them au revoir: "There will be less violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France." ("Il y aura moins de contenus violents, dégradants, humiliants accessibles aux mineurs en France.")
Gizmodo reports that France is Pornhub's biggest market after the U.S.
France is Pornhub's second-largest market behind the U.S., according to stats released by the company in 2024. The Philippines, Mexico, and UK round out the rest of the top five countries visiting Pornhub by traffic volume. The top search result on Pornhub in France is "francaise," the French word for "French," perhaps suggesting that French porn consumers have a strict bias toward homegrown content.
Grok now getting into climate change denial
Rob Beschizza / 3:35 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Twitter's Grok chatbot imposed "White Genocide" discussion on unrelated chats, veered into Holocaust denial not long after, and is now "reciting" fringe climate change talking points. It went from responses such as "climate change is a serious threat with urgent aspects" to "extreme rhetoric on both sides" in a few days, reports Politico.
The answers are distinct from what other AI programs such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini say about climate change, said Dessler, who has tested different AI models for years. When those programs are asked about global warming, they echo the scientific consensus that humanity's burning of fossil fuels is heating up planet Earth and imperiling the people who live there.
Grok's abrupt and hamfisted obsessions with right-wing conspiracy theories are often attributed to Elon Musk personally tinkering with its hidden site prompts. This is unverifiable, obviously, though he might now have more time on his hands.
Ukraine used open-source drone software to wreck Russian bombers
Rob Beschizza / 3:17 am PT Wed Jun 4, 2025
Ukraine's surprise attack on Russian airfields wrecked dozens of bombers with more than 100 drones in the country's most spectacular long-range retaliation yet. It got the job done with ArduPilot, an open-source software package more often used by hobbyists.
ArduPilot's original creators were in awe of the attack. "That's ArduPilot, launched from my basement 18 years ago. Crazy," Chris Anderson said in a comment on LinkedIn below footage of the attack.
On X, he tagged his the co-creators Jordi Muñoz and Jason Short in a post about the attack. "Not in a million years would I have predicted this outcome. I just wanted to make flying robots," Short said in a reply to Anderson. "Ardupilot powered drones just took out half the Russian strategic bomber fleet."
The technical innovation in the latest attack is that the drones are much smaller than usual and not dependent for positioning on Starlink, a satellite internet network owned by Elon Musk.
As for ArduPilot, though, "trusted, versatile, and open source," goes the blurb. The adversary appears is using it too: 404 Media's Matthew Gault adds: "Website analytics from 2023 showed that the project was very popular in both Ukraine and Russia."
Mike Johnson slams Musk for calling Trump bill "disgusting abomination" (video)
Carla Sinclair / 5:10 pm PT Tue Jun 3, 2025
After splitting from the Trump Administration last week, Elon Musk dumped on the president's "Big Beautiful Bill," calling it a "disgusting abomination."
"I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore," Musk said about Donald Trump's spending bill, Xitting out his criticism in a morning post. "This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination."
Naturally, Speaker Milquetoast Johnson came running to Trump's defense, telling reporters that the comments made by the former DOGE captain were "very disappointing," and that the tech billionaire was "terribly wrong."
"With all due respect, my friend Elon is terribly wrong about the one big beautiful bill," Johnson announced, suggesting that Musk might just be sore about the EV mandate getting axed. "I know that has an effect on his business, and I lament that…but for him to come out and pan the whole bill is to me very disappointing, very surprising… I just deeply regret that he's made this mistake." (See video, posted by Call to Activism.)
Meanwhile, in a rare twist of events, Musk and Bernie Sanders became allies for the day, with Bernie backing Musk's comments. "Musk is right: this bill IS a "disgusting abomination," Sanders posted, before explaining what makes the bill so disgusting: "We shouldn't give $664 billion in tax breaks to the 1%. We shouldn't throw 13.7 million people off of Medicaid. We shouldn't cut $290 billion from programs to feed the hungry. Let's defeat this disgusting abomination."
When Shakespeare said "politics makes strange bedfellows," he wasn't kidding around.
Previously: How Musk went from tech hero to "one of the most hated men in America
Musk set to evict residents living near Texas Starbase
Séamus Bellamy / 4:10 pm PT Tue Jun 3, 2025
Hey, did you hear? It's been scientifically proven that dickheads are 80 times more likely to make dick moves. Just check out this case study: According to Gizmodo, Elon Musk's airborne demolitions company, SpaceX, recently won the right to incorporate the land around their (editorial eye roll) Starbase, located in Boca Chica, Texas. If you've never been there, Boca Chica is a little piece of heaven for the overheated proletariat.
At the end of a long road, you'll find drive-on access to miles of beach, warm water, and a little taste of the freedom that many of us seldom have access to. There's a smattering of houses and ranches along the beach access road. They'd been there for decades before Musk's flunkies started building rocket-making infrastructure. Most of them are nothing special, except perhaps to the folks who own them. If Musk has his way, those folks will be kicked to the curb — the gravel shoulder of their road.
It's been less than a month since Elon Musk got his dream town in Boca Chica, Texas, and Starbase is already a nuisance. The SpaceX town has issued a memo to residents about a new zoning ordinance and updated citywide map that could impact how they use their property.
Starbase, Texas, sent the memo to residents who own property within a "mixed-use district" that will allow for "residential, office, retail, and small-scale service uses," according to a copy of the memo obtained by CNBC. The company town is set to hold a hearing on June 23 at city hall to allow for public comment on its new zoning plan "THAT WILL DETERMINE WHETHER YOU MAY LOSE THE RIGHT TO CONTINUE USING YOUR PROPERTY FOR ITS CURRENT USE," the memo read in all caps.
Classy.
Given that SpaceX has already been caught pissing all over the area around Starbase's delicate ecology, ignoring EPA regulations and making sketchy land deals with Texas government officials, it's hard to find any of this surprising.
Could this French artist be country music's next big crossover star?
Bob Knetzger / 4:05 pm PT Tue Jun 3, 2025
There has been a resurgence country and bluegrass music with artists like Beyoncé, Sturgil Simpson, and Billy Strings getting big audiences. Who's next? Maybe Theo Lawrence — who?
This unlikely "American music" creator comes from France by way of Canada (multiple country music?). He's the real deal: great voice, plays guitar and banjo, and writes cool songs. I like this pyromaniac's confession with its chilling and odd harmonies.
But don't take my word for it: check out this excellent interview with Theo from author and musician Kim Field.
"Trump" rants wildly about Fishbone song, "Racist Piece of $***"
Jennifer Sandlin / 3:57 pm PT Tue Jun 3, 2025
It has come to my attention that last night during their "performance" at the Grammy Museum, so-called "rock band" Fishbone dedicated a song to your favorite president, me, TRUMP. The song, "Racist Piece of S***", is just rude! Don't listen to it, even on Spotify, right now! I'm the least racist person I know! The song is really about them, because they clearly hate WHITE people, they even stole the "rock and roll" white people invented! Perhaps they'd like to perform their "song" in El Salvador for a "captive" audience of really bad dudes (who are probably Fishbone "fans"!). I will fly them there for the show. ONE WAY! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Turns out that even though this post sounds exactly like what Trump would babble on about, it's all parody! It's unclear who created the original post, but Fishbone shared it, explaining:
This is parody. I have a theory many people don't read captions and only look at pictures in posts. Which is a problem in general… but I can also assure you this can go viral because of ignorance… let's get some plays!!! Thanks to @wkamaubell and @grammymuseum for having us last night… man that was fun… now come see us on tour on the @lessthanjake Summer Circus with @bitemebambi and @suicidemachinesdetroit starting June 7th in Atlanta… and preorder #stockholmsyndrome
Some folks in the comments had already sussed it out, though, pointing to obvious tells like coherency, grammar, punctuation and more:
"Grammar too good. Not enough random capitalization. But funny!!!"
"I knew it was fake because there are not enough misspellings."
"Use of punctuation is too good to be real."
"It was semi-coherent, so we knew it wasn't real."
I find it hilarious that Fishbone shared it though. Just when I thought I couldn't love them more than I already do (which is a lot!) they go and pull a stunt like this. Do yourself a favor and go listen to their performance of "Racist Piece of Shit" from "An Evening with Fishbone" at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, May 27, 2025.