Boing Boing, May 29, 2025
Deep tech privacy, political gaffes, and a $10 Japanese horror hotel
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Happy Thursday! Today: Meet the privacy consultants who help wealthy clients disappear (including one who hides data in hollow nickels), plus inside Japan's most terrifying budget hotel where $10 gets you prison-style accommodations. Meanwhile, a tech founder shares his bizarre 55-day stint working for Trump's DOGE department before getting fired, and Slovakia puts bear meat on the menu despite conservationists' protests. In social media drama, The New York Times doubles down on claims about Chinese women's "nimble fingers" while Representative Nancy Mace gets caught running sock puppet accounts praising herself.
Meet the extreme privacy experts who help wealthy clients disappear
Ellsworth Toohey / 11:40 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
The Atlantic's Benjamin Wallace reports on the world of extreme privacy consultants — people who help clients vanish from the digital landscape.
The piece focuses on Alec Harris, CEO of HavenX, whose own privacy measures include 191 virtual debit cards, multiple phone numbers, a house purchased through a trust, even fake dog toys in the yard to throw off would-be intruders.
Harris learned many of these techniques from Michael Bazzell, a former cop who became the guru of digital disappearance before mysteriously vanishing himself. Bazzell's approach to privacy was so thorough he'd remove license plates at night and hide backup data in hollow nickels behind electrical plates in friends' homes.
But the article reveals the costs of this lifestyle — both financial (tens of thousands per month for some clients — "strong privacy is a luxury good" ) and psychological (the constant "cognitive overhead" of maintaining multiple identities).
The average person concerned about privacy but unwilling to live like they're in witness protection can start with the basics: use a password manager, enable two-factor authentication, be mindful about what you post online. You won't achieve Harris-level invisibility, but you'll be better protected than most.
Tech founder writes about being fired from Trump's DOGE after 55 days
Ellsworth Toohey / 11:08 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
Tech entrepreneur Sahil Lavingia's 55-day adventure inside Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ended with an unceremonious pink slip after he spoke to the press. The Gumroad founder details his short-lived government career in a blog post titled "DOGE Days." The saga reads like a Silicon Valley optimist crashing into the federal bureaucracy's brick wall.
DOGE, it turns out, is Trump's rebranded version of Obama's United States Digital Service, transformed via executive order in January 2025. Lavingia joined in March as an unpaid Veterans Affairs (VA) advisor, hoping to modernize veterans' services through better software.
"I just knew I wanted to write code for the federal government," he says, citing VA's massive footprint — $350 billion yearly impact and 473,000 employees.
But government tech reality hit hard. Lavingia couldn't even install basic programming tools on his locked-down government laptop. "I was constantly constrained by my restricted government laptop, which made it difficult to write and run code," he writes. "I couldn't install Git, Python, or use tools like Cursor, due to government security policies."
The administration's layoff rules shocked him too. Unlike tech companies that cut underperformers, government RIFs (Reductions in Force) start with newest hires regardless of skill. It's "brutally deterministic," Lavingia notes — a bizarre system where seniority trumps talent.
Despite these obstacles, he managed to build an AI-powered contract analysis tool and modernize the VA's internal version of ChatGPT.
But his time ended abruptly on May 9th after giving an interview to Fast Company. "Soon after publication, my access was revoked without warning. My DOGE days were over."
"I built several prototypes, but was never able to get approval to ship anything to production that would actually improve American lives – while also saving money for the American taxpayer."
Inside Japan's $10 hotel: Guest reviews reveal horror movie-like conditions at Sanwa
Mark Frauenfelder / 10:17 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
Years ago, Carla and I spent a five weeks in Kobe, Japan. Carla had a gig there, and I was just tagging along. It's a lovely city, and I mainly remember walking through lush green hills filled with roaring cicadas. We stayed in a tiny room at the Kobe Washington Hotel. Carla's employer paid for it. I just looked it up and it's only $41 a night, including breakfast! (example menu item: "It has good saltiness! Excellent seasoned boiled egg").
I had no idea that nearby stands a more economical option: The Sanwa Hotel ($10 a night). Guests of the Sanwa have uploaded photos of the hotel and its rooms. After looking at them I would be hard pressed to choose the bottom of Buffalo Bill's pit in the The Silence of the Lambs or a room at the Sanwa. In the pit's favor, there's complementary lotion. In the Sanwa's favor, there's free reading material and a television set in every room. I can't make up my mind.
The Sanwa's reviews are mixed:
Kept hearing weird noises and voices at night, I was so tired from my travels, even the tv channels didn't work, what a poor hotel.
The sanitary conditions are extremely poor, there are no baths or showers, and the toilets are extremely poor, so I do not recommend staying here.
i\It was so hot that I couldn't sleep at all, so I went out and drank until the morning and took the first train home.
The room is too small, but the service is poor.
The futons are dirty and the communal toilets are also very dirty. There is almost no control.
Women should not stay here under any circumstances.
Prison style!
Feels like you're in a horror game.
If you want Hepatitis B stay here
Insanely horrifying stay. Deserves no star rating.
The hotel's owner should rebrand the Sanwa as a horror-themed experience, and charge $200 a night.
Man sets world record for backflipping while literally on fire
Popkin / 9:22 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
After watching this video of Ryan Luney beating the world record for backflipping while on fire, I felt a bit sheepish about skipping my YouTube workout video this morning. Backflipping over and over isn't enough for this guy — he has to do it while completely engulfed in flames.
Ryan Luney holds six Guinness World Record titles already. He breathes fire, lights himself on fire, and has achieved the world's lowest standing back somersault. In this video, he wears a fireproof suit and completes seven backflips in 30 seconds.
Luney has someone spray him with a fire extinguisher when it gets too hot to handle. He completed his goal of earning another Guinness World Record with this wild stunt. If Luney was my friend, it would be hard to resist asking him to do this at every party or gathering.
See also: Why beets and kale can catch fire in the microwave
Viral video shows Jordan Peterson struggling against educated critics
Grant St. Clair / 9:17 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
For some reason, mass debate videos have become popular lately — and I don't just mean the ones you can find on certain shady websites. Naturally, pseudo-intellectual sniveler and walking clown suit mannequin Jordan Peterson has been quick to hop onto the trend, squaring off against twenty educated young people to debate his hot takes on religion in a matchup billed as "1 Christian Vs. 20 Atheists." (That'll be important later.)
Peterson acts like his usual duplicitous self — one of his opponents describes his technique best as a "semantic smokescreen." Anytime he's on the back foot, which is often, he'll either deny even the most basic assertions of the other person outright or constantly ask for clarification. At one point, he even denies being a Christian, despite that literally being the title of the video — and rather than call out his hypocrisy, the channel opted to simply change the video's name to make him look better.
While this makes excellent ASMR if you like listening to Peterson struggle to defend even his most fundamental points when pressed on them, it also showcases how utterly his rhetoric fails when leveled against those who aren't already inclined to agree with him. Nobody seems to know what Jordan really believes, least of all himself.
New horror game lets AI clone your voice to terrorize friends
Grant St. Clair / 9:07 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
I can't tell whether it's a creative use of game mechanics or a horrible look into our Skynet-run future, but fresh horror game Mimesis is making waves nonetheless for its incorporation of AI. While the concept of games using AI is in itself nothing new, Mimesis proposes using AI to make what would otherwise be a standard Lethal Company clone more interesting by allowing its enemies to mimic your voice and playstyle. Your friends will have to root out impostors to keep from being brutally backstabbed… that is, if they haven't all been replaced themselves.
It looks more interesting than AI-generated Minecraft, at least. Still, I'm unsure if a fun twist on a co-op formula is worth signing the rights to your voice away — because that is what the Mimesis EULA will entail, lest they wish to get sued into the ground. This is one to watch streamed and not try yourself, I think, although it is sobering to see how far AI use in games has come in so short a time.
Criterion's $400 Wes Anderson box set looks like a prop from a Wes Anderson film
Grant St. Clair / 8:59 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
Meticulous, pastel-toned filmmaker Wes Anderson is nothing if not consistent. His oeuvre is so distinctive that imitations of his visual style were among the first things the generative AI boom latched onto, which says more about his impact than any creativity inherent in plagiarism machines and those who operate them.
It's this singular style and consistency that has prompted the Criterion Collection to release a special box set honoring Anderson – one that honestly looks like it could be a prop from any of his movies. The muted color scheme, the lush patterning, the book-style bindings — all of it comes together beautifully before you've even opened it up to watch the films.
There are a few caveats: it doesn't include his two most recent movies, Asteroid City or The Phoenician Scheme, and its price tag (a cool $400) means you might need to be Wes Anderson to afford it. Still, in today's increasingly MCU-ified film industry, the fact that there are any working filmmakers with a style distinctive enough that even a logoless box evokes their work is worth celebrating.
Video reveals the beauty of alien world sunsets
Popkin / 8:51 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
This ethereal video imagines what sunsets and sunrises look like in other parts of the universe. Although we can't know exactly what the sky would look like during these times of day in places thousands of light-years away, the video creates visualizations based on what is known about these locations. I want to fall asleep with this video projected on my wall.
Here are some fun facts about what sunsets are like on other planets in our solar system:
Venus has a super-thick, toxic atmosphere filled with sulfuric acid clouds. Light gets heavily scattered and absorbed. Sunsets here would look like a prolonged orange dimming before the planet plunges into total, sulfurous darkness.
On Uranus, sunsets are turquoise. Thanks to methane in the atmosphere, the planet filters out red light and reflects blue-green.
Sunsets on Mars are blue — the opposite of Earth! The Martian atmosphere is full of fine dust that scatters red light away and allows more blue light to pass through directly.
See also: My ears smile when I listen to Cylobian Sunset
Lost treasures: $30,000 book features rare 18th-century goldfish art
Popkin / 8:46 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
Histoire Naturelle Des Dorades De La Chine (1780) contains forty-eight stunning engravings of goldfish. This was the first monograph on goldfish ever published in Europe. These images were created by French court engraver François-Nicolas Martinet.
Goldfish haven't always been the low-maintenance, fairground prizes we know today. Long before they became symbols of childhood boredom, they were prized by emperors and admired for their rare beauty. These bright, ornamental fish were once symbols of status in China. They were bred from common carp, after a natural mutation gave them their golden color.
The 48 hand-colored plates in the monograph depict 88 types of ornamental fish in soft washes of gold, blue, and green. These dreamy engravings are now in the public domain (yay!). Few copies of the book remain today. One rare edition sold at Christie's in 2022 for over £27,000.
Bear meat on the menu in Slovakia
Rob Beschizza / 8:35 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
Tuck in! Authorities in Slovakia have approved brown bear meat for consumption, apparently just to own the libs (and the bears, obviously).
The state-authorised slaughter has been criticised by conservationists and opposition politicians, including in the European Parliament. The brown bear is listed as a "near threatened" species in the EU by the World Conservation Union. However, Slovakia's government is forging ahead with the plan and this week announced that meat from culled bears would be sold to the public to prevent waste. From next week,organisations under the environment ministry can offer the meat for sale, provided all legal and hygiene conditions are met.
"Bear meat is not commonly eaten in Europe," the BBC adds, helpfully. Mmmm, trichinella! Here's some tips on what to do if you're having Ragù di Paddington tonight.
The European Union Food Safety regulation requires all bear meat to be tested for Trichinella larvae before it can be sold and the US' Centre for Disease Control Prevention stipulates an internally cooked temperature of at least 70 degrees centigrade to kill the parasite. Freezing, smoking or drying the meat does not make it safe.
NYT stands behind claim Chinese women better at making iPhones because of their small, nimble fingers
Rob Beschizza / 7:21 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
The New York Times ran an article titled "Is Trump's 'Made in America' iPhone a Fantasy?" which received criticism for indulging said fantasy with vaguely-reported numbers ($2000 iPhone? Which iPhone?) and sourcing to dial-a-quote analysts. But the bottom falls out with this paragraph:
Young Chinese women have small fingers, and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said.
If this is stupid on its face, the weaseled attribution to "supply chain experts" makes it worse. They're giving a source anonymity to say that Chinese women have the small, nimble fingers that electronics manufacturing calls for. Is the source the year 1972? The bizarre claim is quickly refuted by a perusal of the science.
one study found that the average Chinese person has a hand size approximately equal to that of the average German. An analysis of hand size around the world, though it didn't include China, found that even the largest average differences in women's hand size between countries was negligible.
And even if it was true, there doesn't seem to be a lick of evidence — or, for that matter, even anyone online making the claim — that small hands are preferable for manufacturing small devices. The closest thing we could find was a paper that found that surgeons with smaller hands actually had a harder time manipulating dextrous operating tools, which would seem to contradict the NYT's claim that small hands are an advantage for small specialized movements.
But The Times insists it's on the money. Here's Charlie Stadtlander:
Our reporting does not make racial or genetic generalizations, but simply cites experts who have experience with the industrial process in U.S. and Chinese factories.
The story is about why you can't make iPhones cheaply in the West. It attributes to an anonymous source the advantageous dexterity of Chinese womens' fingers. Charlie Stadtlander vouches for the relevance of this unnamed expert's expertise. Expertise in what, Charlie? Racial dactylonomy?
Next up: "simply cites experts" saying child labor is the only way for America to compete. Small nimble everything.
Consider the Radium Girls, women hired to paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials with the radioactive paint that slowly killed them. Given how obviously their circumstances involved wartime labor exploitation, contemporaneous social norms and sexist assumptions, who would now believe that they hired those young, unmarried, ununionized women because only they are dextrous enough to paint watches? "Supply chain experts" it is.
When Foxxconn has the press in for a tour, it's all girls on the line; when the line riots, then we see the boys. The reality is mixed, a reality reflected in tragedy.
Update: John Gruber suggests the quote is simply made up. He's probably right. That slippery attribution is how tabloids fake quotes to launder their own opinions as those of sources—inconceivable for the Times, but you know the thing about that word.
Exactly so! Behold the sausage fingers of one of the 20th century's greatest watchmakers.
Update II: Adam Savage recalls "one of the weirdest movies ever made, Crazy People, starring Dudley Moore and Darryl Hannah. This commercial was part of the movies premise of ad execs saying the truth." Just watch it!
Cyberpunk 2077 sequel in development
Rob Beschizza / 4:32 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
Cyberpunk 2077, with all its neon-soaked open-world chaos, launched in rough shape but ultimately sold 10m copies. A sequel is in development, say the creators at CD Projekt Red. Just the idea of such a thing suggests glorious mishaps both in and out of the game.
"Several weeks ago the CD Projekt Red team responsible for the next big game set in the Cyberpunk universe completed the project's conceptual phase," CD Projekt said in its latest earnings report. "As a result, Cyberpunk 2 – previously known under the codename Project Orion – has progressed to pre-production."
We know next to nothing about Cyberpunk 2, but earlier this month Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith teased some previously unknown details. Pondsmith, who worked closely with CD Projekt on the 30 million-selling Cyberpunk 2077 and was involved in promoting the game ahead of its 2020 launch, was asked about the scope of his involvement with Orion at the Digital Dragons 2025 conference. Responding, Pondsmith admitted he wasn't as involved this time around, but said he does review scripts and had been to CD Projekt to check out the ongoing work.
"Last week I was wandering around talking to different departments, and seeing what they had, 'Oh look, this is the new cyberware, what do you think?' 'Oh yeah, that's pretty good, that works here.' "
The setting being based on a futuristic Chicago was Pondsmith's teaser.
Early greats of web design
Rob Beschizza / 4:12 am PT Thu May 29, 2025
At Cybercultural, Richard McManus looks at the early heydey of web design and "three musketeers" pioneering the discipline long before it was lost to frameworks, adtech and social media: Jacob Nielsen, Jeffrey Zeldman and David Siegel. Back then there were other hazards, such as HTML tables, Flash, and Microsoft.
As 1997 progressed, the schism between the aesthetic approach to web design (personified by Siegel) and the semantic approach (personified by Nielsen) widened. Jeffrey Zeldman found himself in the middle of this. He was a proponent of CSS, but he also wasn't above using new tools that disregarded semantic coding — like Shockwave and Flash. Over the coming years, Zeldman continued to insist that web design could be both aesthetic and standards-compliant. "Images, table layouts, style sheets, JavaScript, server-side technologies like PHP, and embedded technologies like Flash and Quicktime are all compatible with the rigors of accessible site design," he wrote as late as July 2002.
"Zeldman," intones McManus, "would eventually turn his back on Flash."
Nielsen now has a normative online presence but I look at his old site (screenshotted above) and think he should never have taken it down. It was not obsolete, and what's superficially "wrong" with it could be fixed with a few bytes of CSS and a meta tag. It's hypertext brutalism and I just think it's neat.
Which English word has the most definitions?
Carla Sinclair / 5:09 pm PT Wed May 28, 2025
Which word has the most definitions in the English language? Here's a hint: the word is only three letters long, can be a noun or a verb, and has more than 600 senses (or meanings), according to the Oxford English Dictionary via Mental Floss.
Apparently, the most meaning-full word used to be "set," which boasts over 400 senses. But that word was "set" back to runner-up after "advancements in technology" helped boost the amount of definitions for the new winning word, which is now "run."
From Mental Floss:
As a verb, [run] boasts a record-setting 645 definitions. Peter Gilliver, a lexicographer and associate editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, spent nine months sussing out its many shades of meaning.
This wasn't always the case, though. When the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1928, the word with the most definitions was set. However, the word put later outpaced it, and run eventually overtook them both as the English language's most complex word. Winchester posited that this evolution is partly due to advancements in technology (for instance, "a train runs on tracks" and "an iPad runs apps").
As for the longest word in the dictionary? Here's a hint to help: it's 45 letters long and means a lung disease "caused by inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust," according to Merriam-Webster. Yep, you got it: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
Previously: Redditor's share they're list of most annoying grammatical error's
Trump can't handle being called "chicken"(video)
Jason Weisberger / 12:34 pm PT Wed May 28, 2025
Boo hoo. Convicted felon #47, Donald "TACO" Trump raged at a reporter for asking him about his new nickname.
As we shared earlier, Financial Times analyst Robert Armstrong is credited with coining the term "Trump Always Chickens Out" in response to Trump constantly caving on these tariff threats. Trump just wants to claim success across the board and doesn't like questions.
He was clearly unimpressed.
"I chicken out?" he asked.
"I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from the 145 percent that I said, down to 100, and then down to another number, and I said: 'You have to open up your whole country?
"And because I gave the European Union a 50 percent tax tariff, and they called up and they said, 'Please let's meet right now?
"It's called negotiation!" he added.
Man creates unauthorized Waffle House disaster map, gets served legal papers instead of waffles
Mark Frauenfelder / 12:08 pm PT Wed May 28, 2025
When your local Waffle House locks its doors, it's time to evacuate. The venerable chain is famous for staying open through almost any weather conditions. But when storms are projected to be catastrophic, even Waffle Houses will close until the danger passes.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a map tracking Waffle House closures across the country? While the company prefers to keep this information private, computer scientist Jack LaFond took matters into his own hands. He created a service that scraped data from the Waffle House website to provide this valuable information.
When LaFond shared his website on Twitter, it was an instant hit—with everyone except Waffle House executives. They promptly sent him a cease and desist letter, claiming intellectual property infringement. Though LaFond responded cordially and the company replied in kind, they insisted he take down the site. He complied gracefully. Read his full account of receiving the cease and desist letter on his website.
Nancy Mace: Master of Sock Puppets
Jason Weisberger / 12:03 pm PT Wed May 28, 2025
When Congressperson Nancy Mace (R-SC) isn't confirming that people are in the "right" restroom, she's apparently creating fake social media accounts to praise herself, or cyberstalking an ex.
Wired reports that former employees and contractors claim Nancy Mace had them spend time praising her and lying on her behalf on social media, as well as ordering them to create fake accounts. Reportedly, Mace's expertise with technology is matched with a hobby of creating self-promotional bots to misinform her constituents.
"You need to know that Nancy Mace is quite the—when I use the word 'nerd' or 'geek,' it's always favorable, but a computer nerd or a computer geek," Donehue said in the deposition, first reported by FITSNews, a conservative-leaning South Carolina outlet. "She programs her own bots, she sets up Twitter burner accounts. This is kind of a thing she does. She sits all night on the couch and programs bots, because she's very, very computer savvy. She controls her own voter database, she programs a lot of her own website, she programs Facebook bots and Instagram bots and Twitter bots. It's what she does for fun."
In a post on X, Donehue claimed he stopped working with Mace because, he said, "I don't have time for her constant egotistical bullshit and drama in my life." Donehue did not return a request for comment.
…
Mace's staffers shared a similar assessment to that of what Donehue alleged: the congresswoman was often using rudimentary tools available for anyone with a professional account on social media sites, such as automating comments on her Facebook page for anyone thanking her.
"I never saw her coding shit. Ever," the first former staffer said. "But, I mean, she'd talk about tech a lot."