Boing Boing, May 28, 2025
Doom-running gadgets, Dutch feminist erotica, and an 8-year-old's library kindness
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Happy Wednesday! Today's stories show the playful persistence of retro gaming enthusiasts who've managed to run 1993's Doom on everything from pregnancy tests to pharmacy signs (there's a fascinating reason why this particular game). Plus, a groundbreaking graphic novel reimagines 16th-century Netherlands through the lens of two women's dangerous alliance, and a heartwarming tale of a young library patron who replaced a missing Clifford with not one but two stuffed dogs. We've also got David Lynch's estate sale featuring 450+ items from his personal collection, and scientists confirm what you might have suspected about sex and sleep.
Real Skate Stories on street skating legend Natas Kaupas (video)
Jason Weisberger / 11:54 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Natas Kaupas is the artist behind some awesome decks, the star of 80s and 90s skate movies, and one of the most innovative street skaters ever. Real Skate Stories shares an awesome documentary:
I ran across this video not long after directing a friend to the Natas 720 fire hydrant in Venice from "Streets of Fire". That mindblowing trick is still just incredible, and at 50 something, my buddy wanted a photo of himself near the hydrant.
Scientists confirm sex makes you sleep better and wake up happier
Ellsworth Toohey / 11:22 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
If you're looking for a natural way to improve your sleep, research points to an enjoyable solution: sex before bedtime.
A new study from Central Queensland University found that on nights when participants had sex or masturbated, they experienced less nighttime wakefulness (16 minutes) compared to nights without sexual activity (23 minutes). Sleep efficiency – the percentage of time in bed actually spent sleeping – improved from 91.5% on no-sex nights to 93.4% after partnered sex.
Yes, participants went to bed about 30 minutes later on nights they had sex, but it didn't reduce their total sleep time. The real benefit showed up the next morning – after partnered sex, people reported feeling significantly more ready and motivated for the day compared to mornings after no sexual activity.
The researchers discovered something else intriguing: When couples shared a bed, their REM sleep patterns synchronized – whether or not they had sex. This suggests simply sleeping next to your partner might influence your sleep patterns.
"The findings support previous subjective evidence indicating sexual activity resulting in an orgasm has positive outcomes on subsequent sleep behavior and mood the following day," concludes lead researcher Michele Lastella, PhD.
Key takeaway: While the sleep improvements were modest, the study suggests sexual activity before bed could contribute to both better sleep quality and improved next-day energy.
Bruised peaches: things that are too good to be true
Mark Frauenfelder / 11:02 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Bad cars are lemons. Good cars are peaches. There's a special kind of lemon that appears on the surface to be a peach, which Uri Bram calls an "internally bruised peach."
On his Atoms vs Bits blog, he cites three examples:
if you meet someone implausibly attractive and also single, there's arguably a higher chance they're a bruised peach than someone who is single for very obvious reasons. The flip side of this is that if you're single and people don't understand why, it might be better to convey to them a legible reason for it.
if you find an apartment that's priced way under market and in a great location and with lots of space (etc etc etc), you should worry that it either 1) has a hidden but terrible flaw, 2) is a scam
I have lots of friends who seem like they "could" earn a lot more money than they do, based on their skills and pedigree. The more such skills a person has, the more I suspect they actually couldn't in practice earn more money than they do, because of some invisible internal anti-making-money-trait.
Obviously, a bruised peach is in the eye of the beholder, but now I have a new way of categorizing things.
David Lynch estate auction: 450+ personal items for sale
Mark Frauenfelder / 10:28 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
David Lynch's collection of stuff will be sold at a live auction in Los Angeles of June 18. It's going to be a mob scene.
Take a look at the catalog of 450 items. I want his La Marzocco GS/3 Home Espresso Machine ($2,000-$3,000)!
His gorgeous mid-century furniture collection is included in the auction, as well as tons of camera equipment, books, power tools, clothes, hats, shoes, and even Lynch's own hand-made wooden shop tools.
If I had the money, I'd buy every single thing listed!
This stunning collection offers a rare look into his creative universe and the "Lynchian" style that defined his art and iconography and a new wave of contemporary cinema, featuring personal artifacts and film-related items from David Lynch's home including props, musical instruments, fine art, furniture, home decor, tools from his home woodshop, paint supplies from his home art studio, and more. Also featured are significant memorabilia celebrating Lynch's status as a visionary of the 20th and 21st century renowned for his surreal, haunting, and uncompromising masterpieces Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet, as well as objects reflecting his commitment to the philosophy of transcendental meditation the basis of his establishment of the David Lynch Foundation.
Erotic feminist graphic novel explores freedom in Dutch Golden Age
Ellsworth Toohey / 9:10 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Sex, slavery, and rebellion collide in Raging Clouds, a lush graphic novel that reimagines 16th-century Holland as a powder keg of female desire and defiance.
Korean artist Yudori makes her English-language debut July 15 with this Fantagraphics hardcover about Amélie, a brainy merchant's wife stuck in a brutal marriage, and Sahara, the enslaved woman her husband brings home like a souvenir. But instead of becoming rivals, these women find dangerous common ground. Publishers Weekly praised Yudori's art for bringing "16th-century Europe to life with a crisp line that turns elegant and sinuous."
Don't expect your typical girl-power victory lap. "A lot of feminist narratives focus on successful women, how they overcame all odds," Yudori told Publishers Weekly. "But it's also important to talk about women who failed, who tried hard and didn't get what they wanted. There's so much more to history than who gets named."
Though she's never visited the Netherlands, Yudori drew from her global perspective: "It takes research and conscious empathy to imagine life from someone else's perspective, and I feel like that's what I've been doing my whole life."
"Women had a lot of respect in the Netherlands compared to other European countries around the same time," Yudori explained to PW. "But also responsibility. There was an expectation that women, no matter their class, would work." Sahara's mysterious background is intentional — as Yudori puts it, "She could explain herself, but she chooses not to. There's a kind of beauty in taking control of what you let people know."
Faith in humanity restored — young library patron replaces missing stuffed animal
Gail Sherman / 8:29 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Several months ago, a beloved stuffed animal from the La Farge Branch of the Santa Fe Public Library disappeared. Clifford the Big Red Dog, a mainstay of the children's play area, was missing, and the library's young patrons missed him enormously. The dedicated staff put up missing posters for Clifford, offering a reward of 100 gazillion dollars.
Alas, Clifford did not return. However, a few days ago, the library posted a wonderful update on their Facebook page:
And then this week, a new Clifford stuffie appeared at the library, along with Biscuit the Dog, and a lovely note from a very kind 8 year old girl. We are all overjoyed, and NOT CRYING AT ALL.
The note accompanying the stuffed animals reads, "I donated Clifford and Biscuit to this Library because you lost the Clifford that used to live here and my Clifford did not want to leave Biscuit and so I gave both of them to you. Enjoy!" The world is a dumpster fire right now, but this generous little soul exists, so at least everything isn't terrible.
Support your local (or this) public library!
Plastic bag used to irrigate soil in oddly satisfying video
Popkin / 8:25 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Watch as a farm uses a clever plastic bag technique for irrigation. In this oddly satisfying video, a water-filled tube of plastic slows the flow of water, giving soil more time to absorb the moisture.
As water moves through the bag, it creates a rolling motion across the soil. This simple yet effective technique helps conserve water while reducing waste. Not only is it environmentally friendly, but it's also mesmerizing to watch.
There's something surprisingly calming about seeing these water-filled bags roll across the soil. Maybe it's a sign I'm getting older, but I could watch this for hours with the sound off and never get bored.
See also: George Orwell on the real meaning of Animal Farm: get rid of the pigs
Tom the Dancing Bug: Super-Fun-Pak Comix, feat. Secret-Secret Identity Man, Darthfield, and MORE!
Ruben Bolling / 8:00 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
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How Doom became the test app for every hacked gadget
Rob Beschizza / 7:57 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Mac Schwerin reports on the use of 1993's Doom to illustrate the computing power of random gadgets with screens, from alarm clocks to pregnancy tests: "The Monster-Slaying Game You Can Play Almost Anywhere."
Doom's most entertaining developments happen in the shadow of the franchise, where fans resurrect the original game over and over again on progressively stranger pieces of hardware: a Mazda Miata, a NordicTrack treadmill, a French pharmacy sign. These esoteric achievements quickly became a meme. Now they look more like a legacy.
The New York Times even embedded Doom, replete with 1990s shareware ordering information, in its feature. The secret sauce is not just the game's success and relative simplicity. It was designed to be portable and moddable, and it's been open-source for nearly thirty years.
Id had programmed Doom to be easily modifiable by players. Four years after its debut, the company took the radical step of releasing the game's source code to the public for noncommercial use; an international community of fans suddenly had access to the guts of the game, and could retrofit it to all kinds of hardware. "It was not only a gracious move but an ideological one — a leftist gesture that empowered the people and, in turn, loosened the grip of corporations," David Kushner wrote in his book "Masters of Doom."
Wall Street guys are calling him President TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out
Rob Beschizza / 7:47 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Wall Street was turned upside-down by President Donald Trump's tariffs, but now we've been through a few rounds of him posting then withdrawing threats and trying to shake down foreign governments, things are settling down. They have a nickname for him, "Taco," to remind them where the puck always ends up. "Trump Always Chickens Out."
Most credit Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong for coining the term. The New York Times noted that it happened again in recent days, with Trump's announcement of 50% tariffs on Europe causing major indexes to sink on Friday. But on Sunday he announced that he would delay those tariffs amid a new round of trade talks ― leading to major gains when the markets reopened on Tuesday. Ted Jenkin, president of Exit Stage Left Advisors, told the New York Post there's now a simple strategy on Wall Street based on those shifts.
For retail investors this boils down to "buy the dip." It might be best they don't know what the house makes of them.
Quora's desperate Christian baby questions and the rise of rage bait
Grant St. Clair / 7:00 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Atheists, imagine you're going skydiving with a Christian baby. Suddenly, the baby tells you he won't open his parachute until you renounce atheism and accept Jesus as your lord and savior. What would you do?
If your response to that question was anything other than "what the hell?", you might be part of Quora's target audience.
As has been well-documented by others before me, Quora has been struggling to actually turn a profit since its inception, largely because there's no real way to monetize Internet strangers asking other Internet strangers questions. Combine that with its well-publicized data breaches and you have a recipe for desperation — aside from its notoriously aggressive email marketing, how exactly do you get users to spend time on the website, looking at ads and responding to monetized questions? The answer Quora has settled on, unsurprisingly, is rage bait.
And thus we arrive at the caper of the Christian baby. That skydiving one was the earliest example I could find, but Christian baby questions — and others of that ilk, precision-engineered to be so bizarre and rage-inducing that they simply demand an answer — seem to be the shovel with which Quora has decided to dig itself out of its grave. You'll find literally hundreds of these posted ad nauseum by Quora power users, each more outlandish than the last and crafted that way for the sole purpose of getting angry clicks and driving up traffic.
Take, for instance, another example:
Atheists, imagine a Christian baby breaks into your house and walks into your refrigerator and refuses to leave until you renounce atheism and accept Jesus as your lord and savior. What would you do?
Thousands were delivered this question, whether through those aforementioned newsletters the site foists on you or simply seeing it in their feed — and hundreds answered, in many cases taking the bait hook, line and sinker. The amount of people smugly reminding the original poster that babies can't talk or, you know, be Christian, is staggering — and, indeed, exactly the intended result.
Quora hasn't collapsed just yet, so one can only assume this unorthodox strategy is bearing at least some fruit. For the sake of babies everywhere, though, I can only hope they settle on a new grift soon — this would be funny if it wasn't such a searing indictment of the modern Internet and its pathological need to always be right.
The semicolon defended by its advocates
Rob Beschizza / 6:32 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
A study found that semicolons are in steep decline; I remain loyal.
Its dectractors can be quite virulent. It is sometimes taken as a sign of affected elitism. Adrian Mole, the pretentious schoolboy protagonist of Sue Townsend's popular novels, says snobbishly of Barry Kent, the skinhead bully at his school: "He wouldn't know what a semicolon was if it fell into his beer." Kurt Vonnegut (whose novels are not entirely free of semicolons) said semicolons represented "absolutely nothing" and using them just showed that you "went to college".
The prevailing emdash—a shibboleth of the millenial writer, especially with a casual exclamation mark!—is a poor replacement.
I get the antipathy to semicolons, which tend to make writing more complicated and ideas harder to unravel. But one hatred tends to speak for another:
American journalist James Kilpatrick denounced the semicolon "girly", "odious", and the "most pusillanimous, sissified utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented".
Even Cormac McCarthy used semicolons, if rarely. Roslyn Petelin, writing professor at the University of Queensland, explains what they're good for.
1) it separates independent clauses, but establishes a relation between them. It suggests that the statements are too closely connected to stand as separate sentences. For example: "Speech is silver; silence is golden."
2) it can be used to clarify a complicated list. For example: "Remember to check your grammar, especially agreement of subjects and verbs; your spelling, especially of tricky words such as 'liaison'; and your punctuation, especially your use of the apostrophe."
The Financial Times sides with the squiggle: "Semicolons bring the drama; that's why I love them."
Forget the haters and doubters; this under-appreciated punctuation mark is a writer's friend, beloved of Charles Dickens, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. The semicolon — a comma with a full stop for a hat, and sometimes called a super-comma — can sashay into prose and transform it in a way that a full stop, comma or even a dash cannot.
I'd like to take this opportunity to unveil the hypercolon.
What do you use a hypercolon for? To attribute asides; for intrusive thoughts; to introduce lists of things that don't exist; inline footnotes; and to signify inter-process communications in literary contexts.
Chef upgrades from lava to actual lightning in latest cooking adventure (video)
Grant St. Clair / 6:00 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
Cooking with lava? Eugh. So last year. Lightning is what's in right now. Intrusive-thought-following YouTuber Max Fosh, who pioneered the bold cooking style of "shoving a box of curry into molten lava", is back to break new ground in the culinary space again — this time by zapping it with lightning. While renting out a lightning lab in Spain might seem the domain of a mad scientist, for Fosh, it's just a way to make sure his sixth anniversary meal for his girlfriend will be forged by Zeus himself. With varied levels of success. If exploding beef distresses you, you may want to look away.
(Don't worry, he had an actual dinner waiting in the wings.)
Commodore 64 gets true HDMI upgrade for modern TV sets
Rob Beschizza / 4:04 am PT Wed May 28, 2025
It's the "Oh" moment for nostalgic grown-ups excitedly revisiting the computers of their childhoods: how do I plug the damned thing into a modern TV? Though it's nothing an adapter box of some kind can't handle, Side Projects Lab went all the way and created a complete HDMI upgrade for the Commodore 64.
The project was inspired by work by [Copper Dragon], who whipped up a nifty RGB output board. This device worked by reading the inputs to the C64's VIC II graphics chip, which it then used to recreate a pixel-perfect video frames to then produce a quality analog video output. [Side Projects Lab] figured the same interception technique would be useful for producing a quality HDMI output.
There is a HDMI-equipped emulated Commodore 64 called the C64 Maxi, but it costs as much as a current-gen game console.
Live-action adaptation One Piece returns for Season 2
Grant St. Clair / 4:04 pm PT Tue May 27, 2025
I just want to apologize in advance to any Cowboy Bebop fans. Live-action adaptations of anime have never exactly gone well, probably because translating stylized, dynamic action into "some jackass in front of a green screen" is an exercise in misery, but Netflix's One Piece seems to be the exception to the rule. Miraculously, it boasts the direct endorsement of series creator Eiichiro Oda and the anime's notoriously hard-to-please fans, and this warm reception has allowed the series to sail right into a second season.
Given the length of the original manga, the show will probably be caught up by Season 50 or thereabouts.
Mickey Mouse is a mutant — "always a reflection of the culture around him"
Mark Frauenfelder / 1:39 pm PT Tue May 27, 2025
"Mickey Mouse started as a mischievous, rebellious trickster in the late 1920s," writes Justin Papan in his newsletter, "a subversive figure who connected with audiences struggling through the Great Depression."
As the cartoon mouse's popularity grew, Disney softened Mickey: "his rough edges were smoothed over. His design became rounder, more human-like, and his once-relatable charm faded into a blank slate onto which anything could be projected. This shift made him ripe for reinvention—not just by Disney, but by the culture at large."
Papan traces the history of non-Disney depictions of the trademarked rodent in his illustrated essay, from Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's fly-ridden, bloodshot-eyed Rat Fink, to Ralph Steadman's swastika shirted icon, to being immortalized in David Bowie's 1971 song, "Like on Mars" ("It's on America's tortured brow / that Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow. Now the workers have struck for fame, 'cause Lennon's on sale again.")
Papan who worked on Mickey Mouse cartoons for Disney in 2013, writes, "Like Bowie, I view Mickey with both affection and frustration — torn between admiration for his legacy and disappointment in what he has become."