Boing Boing, May 30, 2025
Killer robots, sacred frogs, and Trump's latest linguistic misadventure
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Happy Friday! Today: China's hidden "kill switches" discovered in US solar farms raise alarming national security concerns, while researchers reveal why female frogs remain unheard (spoiler: loud male frogs won't let them get a word in). Plus, Trump confuses "transgenic" with gender politics, an 88-year-old science surplus store fights for survival, and del Toro brings Canadian horror to Toronto's big screen. A YouTuber shares his costly romance scam cautionary tale, and France announces a smoking ban with a very French exception: café terraces are still fair game.
Jello brain Trump once again misunderstands words (video)
Jason Weisberger / 11:34 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
It would appear everyone around convicted felon #47, Donald "Two Dolls, Five Pencil" Trump, that he is misunderstanding the word transGENIC.
Surround yourself with yes people and find yourself misinformed. Also, babble like a child and make up words along the way, and more often than not, you'll end up saying dumb stuff. The Trump Administration has already issued ridiculous executive orders around gender. Here, Trump thinks "Genic" means "gender."
Here is the government genetics glossary, until Trump orders it updated to damn those mice!
Transgenic refers to an organism or cell whose genome has been altered by the introduction of one or more foreign DNA sequences from another species by artificial means. Transgenic organisms are generated in the laboratory for research purposes.
Guillermo del Toro bringing horror film festival to Toronto
Séamus Bellamy / 11:15 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
Guillermo del Toro has been pretty vocal on social media about his love of Toronto over the past few years. Having shot The Shape of Water and, most recently, Frankenstein, in and around Toronto, he's become something of a fixture in the city's downtown core. When he's in town for a project, you've got a better chance than not of seeing him scoping out new reads at bookstores like Vinegar Syndrome, Monkey's Paw or The Beguiling.
As part of what can only be an excuse to shop for more books at rock-bottom prices, thanks to the weak Canadian Dollar, del Toro will be hitting the city once again this summer. And this time, he's bringing the spooky with him. Well, the spooky other than his normal spooky.
…the Guadalajara-born director and longtime Toronto resident never shies away from his passion for the city and Canada at large.
Now, he's taking things to the big screen with a brand-new horror film festival running from July 9 to 13, entitled From Rabid to Skinamarink: Canadian Movie Madness, and it's all taking place at the TIFF Lightbox.
The showcase features a lineup of films by Canadian filmmakers handpicked by del Toro himself, including David Cronenberg's Rabid (1977), Vincenzo Natali's Cube (1997) and Kyle Edward Ball's directorial debut Skinamarink (2022).
Expect everything from creepy camp to downright bone-chilling as Guillermo del Toro explains and breaks down the tropes, tactics and thrills that make a great horror flick.
Being as I'm back in Canada for a while, this is a huge win… provided I can score tickets. I'll be marking June 13th on my calendar: It's the date they go on sale for the general public. Those with a Toronto International Film Festival membership can snag their tickets a few days earlier, on June 11th.
What's more, on July 8th, del Toro will be hosting a free outdoor screening of The Shape of Water at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. It takes a lot to get me into T.O., but this outta do it.
American Science & Surplus in peril: 88-year-old beloved curiosity shop asks for help
Ellsworth Toohey / 11:04 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
An 88-year-old temple of scientific wonders and glorious oddities is fighting for survival, and they're asking the community of "Surpies" who love them to help keep the lights on.
American Science & Surplus — that magical emporium where you might find mule-branding kits alongside telescopes and "wooden German wig heads" — has launched a GoFundMe campaign to rescue the business from closure. Owner Pat Meyer, who started as a nervous 16-year-old employee back in 1984 and loved the place so much he bought it in 2012, is facing the perfect storm of economic pressures.
"Rising operational costs, the increased pressure from online retail giants, software issues and soaring shipping rates have pushed our small business to the brink of closure," Meyer explains in the campaign, which has raised over $113,000 of its 200,000 goal.
The funds would help relocate their warehouse (about $130,000), update software ($25,000), replenish inventory ($50,000), and keep their beloved staff employed while reorganizing the business.
If you've never wandered through one of their three physical locations (in Park Ridge, IL; Milwaukee; and Geneva, IL) or browsed their delightfully quirky catalog, American Science & Surplus has built its reputation on "Incredible Stuff, Unbelievable Prices" — a wonderland where surplus industrial equipment, scientific oddities, and educational toys create a browsing experience unlike any other retail store.
Meyer's GoFundMe page tells the story of his first day on the job, when he nearly dropped two $500 telescopes but managed an impressive catch with his right hand and foot. Four decades later, he's trying to pull off an even more impressive save.
The response from longtime customers has been heartwarming. "I have fond memories of this place from my elementary years, where I bought parts for my science fair project and won top prize," wrote donor Peter Upapong. Another supporter, Bryan Schuder, recalled "reading through the latest catalog, searching through the many pages of curious illustrations and planning out how I'd spend my next report card money."
If you're a "Surpie" or just appreciate the increasingly rare joy of a genuinely weird and wonderful independent retailer, you can find their GoFundMe campaign by searching "Keep American Science & Surplus Alive."
In an age of algorithm-driven sameness, places like American Science & Surplus remind us of the value of the unexpected, the surplus, and the wonderfully unnecessary. That giant suction cup you never knew you needed until you saw it? It would be a shame if there was nowhere left to find it.
Here's a video about the fundraiser.
Chinese kill switches found in American energy infrastructure
Séamus Bellamy / 10:45 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
As we work half-assed with one hand tied behind our backs on not killing the planet, solar power has become an important part of energy infrastructure solutions around the world. You'll find panels doing their photovoltaic thing on the rooftops of houses and bolted to the roof racks of RVs. Perhaps most importantly, energy producers and governments have been building vast solar farms spanning hundreds of acres. Utility-scale solar farms can produce enough juice to power a city.
You know, unless the Chinese government decides to make the panels inoperable during a hostile action against the USA.
Chinese "kill switches" that could allow Beijing to cripple power grids and trigger blackouts across the West were found in equipment at US solar farms earlier this month, raising fears that China could manipulate supplies or 'physically destroy' grids across the US, UK and Europe. US energy officials re-assessed the risk posed by small communication devices in power inverters – an integral component of renewable energy systems that connects them to the power grid.
US experts found rogue communication devices in some solar power inverters not listed in product documents, Reuters reported citing sources.
Using these devices to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, could destabilize power grids, damage energy infrastructure and trigger widespread blackouts. The discovery has sparked concerns that Beijing could potentially disrupt power grids in Western nations, given the heavy reliance of renewable energy systems on Chinese-manufactured components.
So yeah, that's a problem. Provided the folks reporting on this issue are correct, were we in a conflict with China — or even just for s*&ts and giggles — it would be possible for National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China to turn off our juice by pushing a big, red button. Doing so could create relatively minor issues, such as creating brownouts or disrupting traffic lights, ATM machines and grocery stores. You know, chaos. It could also be used as a precursor to a larger attack on American infrastructure and population centers. And it's not just in solar panels. According to the Economic Times, other electrical hardware made in China, such as inverter systems and batteries, have proven compromised by hidden parts and devices squirrelled away in their guts.
In many cases, utility companies have strong firewall protections to keep their infrastructure from being screwed with remotely. But if we're just finding weird kill switch and cellular hardware inside of energy tech now, it begs the question: what sneaky shit have we missed?
11,000 public domain photographs of America's forgotten roadside attractions
Mark Frauenfelder / 10:41 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
The United State Library of Congress has a collection of 11,000 of John Margolies's roadside America photographs featuring novelty architecture from 1969-2008.
According to Bill Guerriero's excellent new Britannica article, Margolies (1940-2016) would "'rent the biggest, most comfortable and foam-padded American car,' preferably a Cadillac, and listen to Top 40 radio stations as he explored the American roadside."
Margolies preferred photographing in the morning, when the light was soft and diffused, noting in Roadside America: "I love the light at that time of day; it's like golden syrup. Everything is fresh and no one is there to bother you." He used a Canon FT 35-mm camera and Kodachrome 25 ASA color film, which requires slightly longer exposure times but yields rich saturated colors. He aimed to produce straightforward images that emphasized a structure's form and limited visual distractions, and he intentionally excluded people and parked cars from his photographs. In a 2011 interview with Forbes magazine, he explained: "I insisted there would be no cars, no people, and no litter and that the sun had to be out. I was interested in…[every photo] having the same visual characteristics."
Here are a few photos from the massive collection:
See also: Foster Beach, shot in a series of images by Boing Boing reader Bill Guerriero, and shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool.
How explosives, dynamite, and vision carved Mount Rushmore into history (video)
Jason Weisberger / 10:36 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
The story behind Mount Rushmore is more interesting than Mount Rushmore itself!
This YouTube documentary is fascinating. I recall hearing bits and pieces of this story, along with various speculations about Gutzon Borglum, so this video helps tie it all together—gold miners with jackhammers, dynamite, and ancient Greek know-how.
Senator Joni Ernst smirks, shrugs off Medicaid concerns with morbid retort (video)
Jason Weisberger / 10:20 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
Iowa Republican Joni Ernst thinks people can go without healthcare as we're all going to die eventually, anyway.
Showing the empathy we've come to expect of a Republican Senator Joni Ernst pretty much told people to suck it up, when hearing complaints about cuts to Medicaid. Lawmakers should be forced to use the healthcare systems they legislate for the rest of us, and not be allowed to give themselves a much better plan.
The Iowa Republican tried to justify the cuts — which are expected to kick at least 10 million people off the health care program — during a town hall event today, an attendee appeared to yell out: "People are going to die!"
Ernst began to respond but then stopped herself, exasperated.
"Well, we all are going to die," she said, smirking as the audience jeered.
Toxic frog masculinity — we can't hear female frogs because males won't shut up
Gail Sherman / 10:15 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
In a situation familiar to female members of many species, female frogs' calls are rarely heard and, as a result, seldom studied. A team from the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil performed a meta-study on existing research on frog calls. Comparing the numbers of studies of male frog calls versus female frog calls produced surprising results.
They found 132 instances of female frog calls over 112 species—numbers that represented just 1.43% of all known species. That meant, the researchers note, that little to nothing is known about the calls of approximately 98.6% of female frog calls. They also found that most of the descriptions were anecdotal, suggesting little was learned from those calls that were studied.
Male frogs use their calls to court female frogs, giving them an obvious evolutionary incentive to be as loud as possible. However, with that in mind, researchers must develop different techniques to gather data on female frogs so their voices can be heard and studied. With over 8,000 known species of frogs and an unknown number yet to be discovered, there is no telling what we have been missing all this time.
Why every movie and TV show follows the same formula
Mark Frauenfelder / 10:11 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
"How is it that we live in an era of apparently unprecedented choice and yet almost every film and TV series, as well as a good many plays and novels, have exactly the same plot?" asks Eliane Glaser in Aeon. "We meet the protagonist in their ordinary world, plodding along, not living their best life. And then an inciting incident changes everything, making it impossible for the protagonist to carry on as normal. They are pulled into a new quest. On the way, they meet someone who shows them a completely different way of being. They ask themselves: have I been living a lie?"
Obvious examples: Breaking Bad, Ozark, Your Friends and Neighbors, The Last of Us.
"Hollywood's storymakers may have grown more sophisticated about the method of delivery," says Glaser, "but they are still providing the same drug: the shake-up that leads to enlightenment."
Why don't we get bored with the the formula? "Every film opens with a fresh premise. The inciting incident always feels surprising, to the protagonist and to us alike: it's a wild card that comes out of nowhere."
Eerie footage shows Antarctic ice hole as deep as Statue of Liberty
Popkin / 9:41 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
This cool and spooky video shows what it looks like when a camera is dropped down 93 meters under the ice in Antarctica. PhD student Austin Carter conducted this experiment to collect ice that is estimated to be over 2 million years old. Examining such ancient ice could provide new insights into Earth's environmental history.
There's something primally terrifying about a narrow hole that plunges this deep under the ice. The darkness, the tight confines, and the crushing weight of ice above trigger multiple deep-seated human fears — being trapped, buried alive, darkness, depths, and isolation. The bottom of the hole appears to be the loneliest place on Earth.
Someone on YouTube commented that 93 meters is the same length as the Statue of Liberty (pedestal included). I have a hard time envisioning how big things are when reading the measurements, so this puts it into perspective. My favorite comment on the video compared this hole to "trying to get the last pringle" out of the long, cylindrical container.
See also: Wood ice cream 'surprisingly palatable'
Drawings of bizarre and violent kids' games from 1657
Mark Frauenfelder / 9:29 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
"The Games and Pleasures of Childhood" is a set of 50 engravings published in 1657 by French engraver Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella (1636-1697).
Some of the games depicted in the series are familiar. One drawing shows kids playing paddle ball; another shows four kids blowing soap bubbles (while two kids in the scene punch and kick each other to settle a score); another shows them playing blind man's bluff. There's also golf, darts, archery, and sledding.
Some of the pastimes are strange, dangerous, and violent. One card has the kids lining up to jump over a big campfire. Another shows them in a riotous slug fest. The weirdest one has them holding one another upside down to fart in each other's faces.
Public Domain Review has scans of the cards and a short article about the series.
NYT describes a struggling, drug-addled Elon Musk
Jason Weisberger / 9:22 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
The New York Times paints the picture of Elon Musk that Musk himself has shown the world: abusing drugs, questionable parenting, and abhorrent ethics.
We've seen enough videos of a freaking out, twitching, oddly talking Elon "Pedo Guy" Musk. Social media is replete with them. Stories about his awful parenting come from his children and their mothers struggling to get him to behave responsibly or to abide by their agreements. This stuff is so widely understood that even the New York Times can now expose it.
Mr. Musk's drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.
At the same time, Mr. Musk's family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews.
Darth Maul's new show will be about how boring the Empire is
Grant St. Clair / 9:15 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
"It truly is a show about bad guys versus worse guys […] This is a guy who knew that the Empire was coming, and he was part of that […] But now that he's seeing it, he's like, 'is this what he had in mind? 'Cause this isn't what I thought it would be. This is a little scary.' […] Maul comes from a time of swords and sorcery and magic and knights, and now all this color is being sucked out of the universe by this mechanized Empire, and Maul's like, 'is this right?'
It's a compelling pitch, and not wholly dissimilar from the way Disney has treated the more fantastical elements of the Star Wars universe. Knowing Maul's endpoint already, though — getting killed again by Obi-Wan on a kids' show, for good this time — means the showrunners will have their work cut out for them making the hardcore audience care about any other conflict that befalls him.
YouTuber tells how he was "scammed beyond belief"
Mark Frauenfelder / 9:06 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
A YouTuber named Steve bares his soul, recounting the sad tale of how he fell for a romance scam in the Philippines.
As Steve walks through a jungle, he films himself explaining how a woman he fell in love with was a con artist who took advantage of his "euphoria" to deceive him. She ended up with a car, sari-sari (neighborhood sundry store), and a lot of money by tricking him into thinking she was single and wanting to marry him.
Steve admits he was a fool and that he expects commenters will have fun telling him how stupid he was. But he says he will tolerate the insults because he wants to warn others to be more cognizant of situations that seem to good to be true.
Streamer transforms Peggle into brutal roguelike experience
Grant St. Clair / 8:45 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
Every game under the sun seems to be hopping on the roguelike trend lately — God of War is doing it, Elden Ring is doing it, and now it's come for… Peggle? Streamer DougDoug, known for both his coding expertise and his frankly inadvisable levels of audience participation, has jury-rigged what would ordinarily be a quaint bubble-throwing puzzle game for kids into a procedurally-generated exercise in masochism.
Suffering for fun has been in vogue since the Roman Empire — at least this way no one's actually dying.
France to ban outdoor smoking, except for café terraces
Rob Beschizza / 8:37 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
France, maintaining character, has yet to ban outdoor smoking. But it's coming soon, officials there say, with one key exemption: café terrraces.
"Tobacco must disappear where there are children," Catherine Vautrin said in an interview published by the regional Ouest-France daily on its website. The freedom to smoke "stops where children's right to breathe clean air starts," she said. The restrictions will enter into force on July 1 and will include all places where children could be, such as "beaches, parks, public gardens, outside of schools, bus stops and sports venues," she said. Violators could be fined up to 135 euros ($154), she said.
More than 6 in 10 French people support a ban. Alain Delon is dead! Times are changing. The immolation of Notre Dame was credited to a discarded cigarette; on the other hand, French scientists confronted by the Covid pandemic enthusiastically commenced research into whether nicotine was an effective treatment. My favorite moment, though, is Serge Gainsbourgh chain-smoking his way through an emotional tribute on childrens' TV. You just don't get that sort of joy on CBBC.
World's largest earthquake simulator tests 10-story building
Gail Sherman / 8:20 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
The University of California, San Diego, has the largest outdoor shake table, or earthquake simulator, in the world — the only one capable of testing a 10-story building. The shake table can support 2000 metric tons, or 4.5 million pounds, or about the weight of 1300 cars. Two years ago, it was used to simulate a 7.7-magnitude quake on a ten-story wood-framed building.
Next month, the team will run an earthquake simulation on a ten-story cold-formed steel building using historic data from actual earthquakes. The table moves with six degrees of freedom to replicate an actual earthquake's movement directions. The results are captured by thousands of sensors placed throughout the building, including non-structural elements like fire sprinkler systems.
Cold-formed steel is light, strong, environmentally friendly, and less expensive than hot-rolled steel. However, due to safety concerns, cold steel structures are currently limited to 65 feet, or six stories, in height. A successful simulation could allow for taller cold-steel-framed buildings.
The project is a joint effort of UC San Diego and Johns Hopkins University. The upgrade to the shake table that made tests of this magnitude possible was funded by a National Science Foundation grant, funding that is now under threat.
New Banksy found in Marseille
Rob Beschizza / 8:09 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
Yesterday, a new work by Banksy—a lighthouse formed by the shadow of a street bollard and the phrase "I want to be what you saw in me"—was posted to the British artist/collective/persona's Instagram page. The hunt was on to find it; withing a day, it was tracked down to a tunnel in Marseille.
A false shadow appears to have been drawn on the pavement from a nearby bollard, giving the illusion that the lighthouse is itself a silhouette of the mundane street furniture. Its location was initially a mystery, but BBC Verify has confirmed it as Rue Félix Fregier in the southern French city. An image of the art circulating online shows a blurred person riding a scooter in front of the piece, with a graffiti tag seemingly reading "Yaze" further along the wall.
Banksy comes and goes, but always leaves something interesting. Some recent incidents, though, are not so heartening. In 2023, a Stop sign embellished with drones was stolen by a masked man, who was soon arrested. In 2024, someone defaced a mural painted in south-east London, to the dismay of locals. On the other hand, Ukraine's postal service issued a stamp featuring the disemvowelled FCK PTN!
Last year, Banksy released a series of nine animal-themed artworks across London, each one posted on consecutive days. The final piece depicted a gorilla lifting a shutter at London Zoo, releasing the inhabitants. Those not wanting to hunt anything down can check out to Basquiat × Banksy at The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.
Lawsuit over Clean Girl aesthetic dismissed
Rob Beschizza / 7:36 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
An intellectual property battle between two Clean Girl influencers is over, per a filing by one of the parties. Both women reviewed identical junk from Amazon in their identical off-white minimalist homes: an advertant image of gentility sold to a declining middle class inadvertantly living in it. Mia Sato reports on a case that was "eerie and borderline comical"—and alarming to anyone in the influencing biz.
But the case was significant: it appears to be the first suit of its kind tackling influencer industry content, and the litany of allegations could have had the defendant, Alyssa Sheil, on the hook for millions of dollars in damages. Sydney Nicole Sloneker (née Gifford), the plaintiff and fellow Amazon influencer, said Sheil violated her copyright when Sheil posted similar-looking photos and videos that promoted the same products. Gifford also alleged trade dress infringement and misappropriation of likeness, among other claims, stemming from Sheil's content that looks uncannily like Gifford's — or perhaps the other way around.
Looks like we'll never know who was copying who. It's like a horror story. At first the whole thing is ridiculous: so what if another influencer has a similar beige table, or similar black-framed pictures on the wall, or reviews the same junk? Then: wait, wait, they have the same tattoo?
Horror story told in Yelp reviews
Rob Beschizza / 7:03 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
Strip Mall is a short story by Leigh Alexander (previously) about a small town's run-down shopping drag, told entirely through Yelp reviews. There's the praise and the angry rambling you'd expect to read about venues in a deteriorating mall—and then there's something else.
It's a nice place with a good machines. But, since I stopped coming here, I don't feel so angry. Maybe because of the bad taste in the water, I developed agoraphobia so I only do home workout now, try LoriFit App with 30% discount using code YUJIN30
It's indescribable in the sense that to describe it would spoil a five-minute read; a disquieting counterpart to the joys of Yelping with Cormac.
Hiker's death turns out to be magic mushroom hallucination
Rob Beschizza / 6:20 am PT Fri May 30, 2025
Two hikers reported that a third member of their party died on Cascade Mountain in the Adirondacks, but it turned out they were just high. The two hikers, that is, not the guy who wasn't dead. The BBC reports on what it calls a "backcountry saga."
None of the hikers were named in the reports, and it is unclear whether they are in any legal trouble following the bad trip. Psychedelic mushrooms are illegal for recreational use in New York, however there have been several bills introduced in the state legislature to legalise it. Its use has been legalised in at least one US state, but it remains illegal across most of the US and is outlawed on the federal level.
The incident was reported by rangers in New York.
Town of North Elba
Essex County
Wilderness Rescue: On May 24 at 9 a.m., Forest Ranger Praczkajlo responded to a call for a reportedly deceased hiker on Cascade Mountain. Two hikers had called 911 to report the third member of their hiking party had died. When the hikers encountered the Cascade Summit Steward, the pair also advised that they were lost. The steward determined the hikers were in an altered mental state. The third member of their party called and was not injured. Ranger Praczkajlo escorted the two hikers, who had ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms, to a waiting ambulance and New York State Police unit. Ranger Praczkajlo escorted the third hiker back to their campsite.
It's been a while, but here it is:
When baby gets attention for crawling, hilarious dog also begins to crawl (video)
Carla Sinclair / 5:12 pm PT Thu May 29, 2025
When a one-year-old baby excited his family by learning to crawl, his Staffordshire bull terrier felt left out. So the hilarious pup began to crawl as well, dragging his legs and torso along the floor.
And even when the baby was done and sat up to play, the doggo kept up the act, even giving the camera a side-eye to make sure the adult in the room was watching him. (See video, posted by smokeythebluestaffy.)
Just goes to show you're never too young to teach a silly dog new tricks.
Via Newsweek
Previously: Dog wildly shakes it when she hears Sir-Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" (video)
Bird brain — clever New Jersey hawk uses crosswalk signal in hunting strategy
Gail Sherman / 3:39 pm PT Thu May 29, 2025
Motor vehicles are among the top five causes of bird death in the United States, killing about 200 million birds in collisions every year. But a juvenile Cooper's Hawk has turned the tables, developing an ingenious method for using cars and traffic signals to its advantage. The hunting strategy, described in a study in Frontiers in Ethology, required surprisingly complex reasoning.
The hawk would spot prey eating crumbs left by outdoor diners at a home near an intersection in urban New Jersey. When a pedestrian pressed the button to cross the street, an audible signal for deaf and hard-of-hearing pedestrians would sound for forty-five seconds. Upon hearing this sound, the hawk would fly to a tree in front of the house, which blocked the prey's view of the hawk and vice versa.
As cars began stopping behind the crosswalk, the hawk seemed to bide its time. Once the queue got long enough—usually about ten cars—the bird sprang into action, swooping down and flying just a few feet above the sidewalk along the line of vehicles. Then, once it reached a certain house, it would make a hard, 90-degree turn and veer into the yard across the street, where prey birds were feeding on the ground.
This strategy was not observed during normal red light cycles when no one pressed the crossing button, as these were shorter and didn't produce long lines of cars. The hawk had learned that the sound indicated traffic would soon back up, creating cover, and then knew exactly when to turn toward prey it could no longer see. The author of the study notes that "Such level of understanding and use of human traffic patterns by a wild animal has never been reported before." The hawk stopped hunting at this location in 2023 when the audible signal ceased functioning and the homeowners stopped leaving crumbs outside.
Rediscover Marvel's forgotten horror gems in new hardcover collection
Ruben Bolling / 3:33 pm PT Thu May 29, 2025
Fantagraphics Books has launched a new line of non-superhero Marvel comic book compilations, "Lost Marvels," with the publication late last month of Lost Marvels No. 1: Tower of Shadows, collecting the full 9-issue 1969-1970 run of the horror comic book series.
It's a hardcover book that reproduces the pages as they would have looked in the original comic book form, complete with "Ben-Day" dot coloring. And the series of comic books are not presented completely: reprints from other, earlier comic book series are omitted, as are two stories adapted from the work of H.P. Lovecraft, "due to legal questions."
Tower of Shadows is fascinating as a real showcase for the very best of Marvel's artists of the Silver Age. Not only are the artists often given a chance to script the stories as well as draw them — something Marvel rarely allowed at this time — but they even eventually draw themselves as the stories' narrators, after a letter to the editor complained about the corny, pun-slinging grave digger narrator of the early issues.
I think the standout is the very first story of the series, "At the Stroke of Midnight," written and drawn by the inventive and psychedelic artist Jim Steranko, whose short-lived stint at Marvel has become legendary.
In fact, it was Steranko's conflict with editor Stan Lee over this story that led to Steranko parting ways with Marvel, except for a brief return three years later to mostly contribute some cover work. Steranko had created a mod, monochrome cover for Tower of Shadows' first issue that Lee rejected (it's reproduced in the book), and Lee rejected Steranko's title for the story, "The Lurking Fear at Shadow House." The two also fought over Steranko's unusual panel design, and dialog.
The roster of artists includes the cream of Marvel's Silver Age bullpen, including Gene Colan, John Buscema, Marie Severin, and John Romita. Unfortunately, I found "One Hungers," the story written and drawn by Neal Adams, whose artwork I greatly admire, to be pretty much incomprehensible.
But artist Wally Wood, who was one of the founding artists of Mad, wrote and drew some very interesting sword and sorcery comics, before anyone had ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons.
And Barry Windsor-Smith, who contemporaneously was initiating his groundbreaking and hugely successful run on Marvel's Conan the Barbarian series, also contributed some great and imaginative artwork.
It's amazing to be able to see these stories, forgotten mostly because they don't feature the superheroes that have propelled Marvel to become one of the most profitable cultural brands in history. But this run of comic books features work by many of the talented writers and artists who were key contributors to that superhero mythos, freed from the narrow structure of that genre to create some fascinating and innovative horror and fantasy pieces.
You can purchase Lost Marvels No. 1: Tower of Shadows here.
Drug-resistant bacteria loves to chow down on plastics
Séamus Bellamy / 3:30 pm PT Thu May 29, 2025
Far be it from me to let you go a week without something new (but also kinda neat) to fret over. According to a recent Brunel University of London press release, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common infection caused by Pseudomonas bacteria, isn't just a superbug that's proven wickedly resistant to antibiotics – it has a second party trick that has clinicians concerned: it loves to feast on medical-grade plastics of the sort you'd find in a hospital.
From Brunel University of London:
Microbiologists at Brunel University of London show the bacteria can 'feed' on plastic to survive, potentially enabling these pathogens to survive longer in hospital wards and within patients.
The world-first discovery, published in Cell Reports, challenges the widely held belief that pathogens cannot degrade medical plastics. A patient isolate of the common hospital-acquired bacterial infection Pseudomonas aeruginosa was shown to degrade polycaprolactone (PCL) – a plastic often used in sutures, wound dressings, stents, drug-delivery patches and surgical mesh.
Given that the bacteria is responsible for around 560,000 deaths worldwide every year, that's what you call a problem. Pseudomonas is particularly dangerous for those living with an autoimmune deficiency. Given its resistance to treatment, a case of Pseudomonas aeruginosa could kill them. But it's also tricky to deal with for healthy folks, as it can cause problems such as sepsis, UTIs, or skin, lung, and blood infections. Give it plastic to chomp on – the sort found in stents, breast implants, catheter tubing, and some sutures – and Pseudomonas devours it like gravy and biscuits. That's bad enough… but there's more. The bacteria use the mulched medical plastics to strengthen their defenses against treatment.
For now, there's not much that our biggest brains can do about this issue. It's going to take a lot more study and, potentially, solutions beyond antibiotics to sort it out.
Stay healthy and hope for the best.
Caught using AI to hallucinate sources in a report, White House calls it a formatting issue (video)
Jason Weisberger / 2:01 pm PT Thu May 29, 2025
RFK Jr's "Make America Healthy Again" report appears to be riddled with AI hallucinations. Karoline Leavitt calls them "formatting issues."
Found to contain citations that do not exist, and other telltale signs of AI all over RFK Jr's touted "MAHA" report, the White House can't answer questions about it. Karoline Leavitt easily discards answering the question and instead shares an alternate reality about formatting.
A reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt during Thursday's press briefing, "I know this investigation found the MAHA commission report released last week cites studies that appear not to exist. We know that because we reached out to some of the listed authors who said that they didn't write the studies cited. So, I want to ask: Does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?"
Leavitt answered that the administration had "complete confidence" in Kennedy and everyone at Health and Human Services.
"I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report," Leavitt said.
Fortnite lets you command a Super Star Destroyer
Jason Weisberger / 1:52 pm PT Thu May 29, 2025
If you wanted to target the guns as an Imperial Super Star Destroyer bombards a planet, you are in luck.
In all of my Star Wars adventure dreams, I do not recall targeting the guns for a Super Star Destroyer, but someone wanted the experience. By jumping into a semi-random portal that appears mid-way into a match of Battle Royale, you take command of the guns. The Star Destroyer keeps moving on its track across the screen as you destroy everything you aim at. This in-game experience is the same the Godzilla one, without the Godzilla.