Boing Boing, May 31, 2025
Sonic booms, meerkats, and Musk mayhem
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Happy Saturday! Here's today's stories: Ever wondered what it sounds like when a meerkat purrs? Meet Minky, the adorable rescue who sounds just like a cat. Meanwhile, retired F-4 Phantoms are getting an unexpected second act launching satellites into orbit. Plus, Elon Musk's White House drama takes a physical turn with confirmation of a shoving match, and the UK's annual cheese-rolling competition proves once again that humans will risk life and limb chasing dairy products down a hill. We've also got first impressions of the divisive new Elden Ring spinoff that's raising eyebrows among Souls fans.
Watch these baby birds chirp for food in live nest footage
Popkin / 10:01 am PT Sat May 31, 2025
This 12-hour video of BBC's live wildlife cameras lets you peek into a day in the life of different birds sitting sweetly in their nests. If you've ever wanted to spy on a bird, this is your chance to do it for 12 hours straight. Birds are surprisingly chill when they don't think anyone is watching them.
Some of the owls featured barely move throughout the video, as if they're in a state of deep meditation. The nest of little baby birds has a lot more energy, though. At 8 hours and 45 minutes into the video, you can see them all open their cute little beaks in unison for a feeding.
Who needs to watch something filled with action when you can witness a pigeon sitting still all day long? By hour 10, you may start to feel a strange kinship with the birds — a mutual understanding built on wanting someone to feed you snacks, and the occasional twitch, will likely develop.
See also:
Watching birds up close and personal
I tried the Shelfy fridge purifier — Here's how it keeps my fruits fresh and saves me money
Popkin / 9:58 am PT Sat May 31, 2025
I recently got a review unit of a Shelfy for my fridge, and I love how it eliminates food waste and offers many other cool features. The Shelfy is a fridge purifier that keeps fruits and vegetables fresh longer and helps eliminate pollutants, bacteria, and bad smells. It's a small, rechargeable rectangular device with one simple button. You can place it in your fridge by simply setting it on a shelf or in a drawer — no installation required. It reduces food waste by keeping your food edible longer, which lowers grocery costs.
Shelfy's technology uses LED light to activate a special tungsten trioxide-coated filter. Unlike HEPA filters that only trap contaminants, this washable filter creates free radicals that destroy pollutants, bacteria, viruses, and odors.
I've had strawberries for a week in my fridge since setting up my Shelfy, and they look and taste just as fresh as when I purchased them. Usually my berries start becoming overly-ripe after just a few days, and I like that I can take my time eating them.
Shelfy connects to your WiFi and comes with an app that provides information about the inside of your fridge — how often you open the door, the temperature, when your fridge needs cleaning, and more. Setup took about 5 minutes and was self-explanatory. I love that I can check these things so easily through the app. As someone who can be forgetful, this app helps me stay on top of proper grocery storage. I love knowing that I'm saving money and helping to cut down on food waste with Shelfy.
See also: Get inspired for cleaning your fridge with these Trader Joe's leftovers recipe ideas
Annual UK Cheese rolling contest is completely bonkers
Gail Sherman / 9:52 am PT Sat May 31, 2025
People have been gathering at Coopers's Hill, in Brockworth, England, for hundreds of years to chase a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down a steep 200-meter slope. The annual event is complete pandemonium as the racers' plans immediately go out the window at the start, and everyone turns into a cartoon character. As often happens, Ozzy Man has the most entertaining take on the event.
The Tewkesbury Borough Safety Advisory Group, a local public safety agency, released a statement prior to the event declaring it unsafe and voicing concerns over the strain on local resources. As it is an unofficial event, there are no organizers for the group to coordinate with. Surprisingly, Gloucester Live reports that only two participants were taken to the hospital.
Did you know meerkats purr like cats? Listen here
Jennifer Sandlin / 9:50 am PT Sat May 31, 2025
If you've never heard a meerkat purr, your wait is over! Meet Minky, a precious — and incredibly spoiled — meerkat who makes the most adorable noises, including purring exactly like a cat. She lives with her human dad Ruben Lambrechts, who runs a family-operated travel guide service, "I Dream Namibia," and takes cares of orphaned wild animals like meerkats, mongoose, warthogs, and more on a farm outside Windhoek. All of the animals are free to roam around the farm and, judging by the sweet videos Ruben posts, the critters all seem thrilled to be part of the family.
Minky is no exception. Ruben has featured the gorgeous gal in many videos, and she always looks so chill and happy. My favorite videos are where she's snuggling with Ruben or just relaxing, and I especially love all of her cute sounds. In this video, she's making the most content squeaks and grunts. One viewer likened them to "old telegraph sounds," which is weirdly accurate. In another, you can hear her purring! I guess they don't call them "meerKATS" for nothing! (To be clear, though, meerkats aren't related to cats, and are, instead, part of the mongoose family.)
Meerkats actually make at least 10 different kinds of vocalization. According to Perth Zoo:
These super chatty 'kats' will purr to show contentment, growl to let others know they're not happy, and bark to raise the alarm. They'll even make a 'vurruk-vurruk' sound when they're busy searching for food.
How absolutely adorable of them!
See (and hear!) more animals in Ruben's diverse family on his YouTube.
New Elden Ring spinoff strips away what made the original special
Grant St. Clair / 9:45 pm PT Fri May 30, 2025
When Elden Ring: Nightreign — a roguelike, multiplayer-only spinoff of acclaimed RPG Elden Ring — was announced, the general reaction seemed to be "huh?" After all, From Software is most known for its focused, immaculately crafted single-player stories, and the sudden turn into procedurally generated multiplayer felt like a weird left turn at best and publisher meddling from Bandai Namco at worst. With the game having released just today, though, Souls fans have gotten the chance to see what FromSoft has been cooking, and the end product is… fine. It's fine.
While Nightreign plays just like Elden Ring for the most part, there are a few notable departures that take some getting used to as a seasoned player of the original game. Rather than creating your own character, you must choose from a selection of premade "Nightfarers," each embodying a particular Elden Ring playstyle. There's your strong guy, your all-around guy, your magic guy — chances are that however you played Elden Ring, there's a Nightfarer that approximates it.
The open world is gone as well. Upon teaming up with two friends, you're dropped into a procedurally generated island with a constantly shrinking ring around it, similar to Fortnite. The loop itself is simple: explore points of interest and gather gear as the ring shrinks, eventually face a boss at its center, then do it all again before facing the final boss of your match.
It's that simplicity that ensures Nightreign can never live up to its predecessor. Elden Ring encouraged world exploration and build creativity, but Nightreign actively discourages these avenues of self-expression with a literal wall of death. You'll never have time to hit more than a couple points of interest before night falls and the boss emerges, and experimentation becomes pointless when a party wipe means struggling through another hour of trash mobs just to retry a troublesome boss.
Elden Ring's first DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, attracted controversy for its extreme difficulty, but this was tempered by death being essentially consequence-free and the ability to return to most boss fights in under a minute. Neither of these holds true in Nightreign, making each defeat utterly heartbreaking rather than an encouragement to get back up and try again.
With no real build control, I can't recommend Nightreign to theorycrafters. Being co-op only, I can't recommend it to PvPers either. The game's target audience seems to be those who enjoy Elden Ring's core combat but have grown bored of the original game's finite amount of PvE content — provided they're willing to spend days on a particular boss rather than hours. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this isn't a structured, focused Soulslike experience — it's more of an offbeat experiment with the formula, the results of which we likely won't see until FromSoft's next game.
But at least they scored a trailer with Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life."
Musk shoved Scott Bessent in angry fight, White House confirms
Carla Sinclair / 5:30 pm PT Fri May 30, 2025
Remember last month when the White House tried to downplay a screaming match between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent? Turns out the spat was actually a physical fight, in which Musk shoved Bessent, who had confronted the billionaire over his rotten job as DOGE captain.
"Scott Bessent called [Musk] out and said, 'You promised us a trillion dollars (in cuts), and now you're at like $100 billion, and nobody can find anything. What are you doing?"' Steve Bannon explained to Daily Mail, via Raw Story. "And that's when Elon got physical."
"It's a sore subject with him," Bannon added. "It wasn't an argument, it was a physical confrontation. Elon basically shoved him."
This news follows today's New York Times report that the richest man in the world has an intense drug problem. It also comes on the same day that Musk showed up at the Oval Office with a black eye, which he blamed on his 5-year-old little boy. Strange and pitiful just about sums it all up.
From Raw Story:
A physical altercation between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent precipitated the Tesla founder's quick ouster from the Trump administration, according to a report.
The altercation was confirmed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday, the Mail reported.
In a statement, Leavitt said, "'It's no secret President Trump has put together a team of people who are incredibly passionate about the issues impacting our country. Disagreements are a normal part of any healthy policy process, and ultimately everyone knows they serve at the pleasure of President Trump."
Previously: NYT describes a struggling, drug-addled Elon Musk
King of the Hill's new intro sequence fast-forwards through 16 years
Rob Beschizza / 1:26 pm PT Fri May 30, 2025
King of the Hill ran for more than 250 episodes over 13 seasons from 1997 to 2009. A fourteenth season is almost upon us, and the new intro sequence fast forwards through sixteen years in the handsomely-paved alleyway behind Rainey Street in Arlen, Texas. Enjoy! You can scrub one frame at a time in YouTube with "<" and ">".
The show's convincing cast of everday yet peculiar Texans never went out of style. I was wondering why only Boomhauer looks senior-aged, then remembered that the Hills were canonically only in their thirties when the show began.
After years working a propane job in Saudi Arabia to earn their retirement nest egg, Hank and Peggy Hill return to a changed Arlen, Texas to reconnect with old friends Dale, Boomhauer and Bill. Meanwhile, Bobby is living his dream as a chef in Dallas and enjoying his 20s with his former classmates Connie, Joseph and Chane.
My favorite fan canons were that Peggy and Khan are the only MAGAs on the street (Dale would think it was an op, Hank was an old-school moderate Republican fond of LBJ and Ann Richards, Bill just votes R and forgets about it for four years, etc.) and that Bobby was a couples therapist. But guess what: the artist isn't dead.
King of the Hill Season 14 | Credit Sequence Reveal | Hulu by Hulu on YouTube.
Better than an Alamo and almost as good as propane. An all new season of #KingofTheHill drops Aug 4th on Hulu and with #HuluOnDisneyPlus.
Cold War jets find new life blasting satellites into orbit
Jason Weisberger / 12:23 pm PT Fri May 30, 2025
Starfighters International, already utilizing F-104s as a platform to launch satellites into LEO, looks to acquire some retired South Korean F-4 Phantoms.
Wow. What a fantastic use for old planes, and an excuse to keep them flying! The F-4 Phantoms are, perhaps, coming from South Korea, but there appear to be some complications. The platform, however, seems to give Starfighters International a lot more options than their current fleet.
As it sits now, the firm sees its F-104s providing suborbital payload launches, which offer minutes of microgravity, to customers who need to experiment in that environment. This will be via their Starlaunch 1 rocket. The Starlaunch 2 rocket, which the F-4 will presumably carry, will provide LEO access, or at least heavier LEO access than what the Starfighter can provide. A single rocket can carry one payload or over a dozen smaller ones.
Finally, there could also be a hypersonic testing angle that may have potential with a larger and more powerful aircraft like the F-4 as a launch platform. Most famously, Stratolaunch pivoted away from a space launch business model to one focused on supporting hypersonic testing. Of course, this example is on the other end of the spectrum when it comes to mothership size and capabilities, but smaller hypersonic vehicles will also be needed for test and evaluation efforts as the military's demand for these weapons increases.
If Starfighters International can pull off its F-4 acquisition, these aircraft would join just one flight-worthy Phantom in the United States, an F-4D that belongs to the Collins Foundation. We reached out to the nonprofit as to the status of their Phantom. They told us it is in flyable condition, but it has not flown for a number of years due to the cost associated with operating it.