Christopher Lantz

Destroy the Financial District, Godzilla, is an exploitable meme format based on an edited screenshot from the 1994 video game Super Godzilla on the Super Nintendo where a woman tells Godzilla, "Go ahead and destroy the financial district Godzilla. Make the people happy."

The edit was originally posted to the /r/DankLeft subreddit by Redditor u/kevinowdziej in late August 2025. It spread over the next few years, inspiring edits and redraws that both alter the caption and replace Godzilla with other characters and monsters.

rip.so is a "graveyard of dead internet things," with a handsome old-web aesthetic (there's even a <marquee!) with which to enjoy the sites that capital forgot.

The internet moves fast. They were on our desktops one day, the next their servers were dark, their domains squatted, their icons gone from our trays.

— Read the rest

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A Scientology Run or Scientology Speedrun is a trend where a person runs into a Scientology center to see how far they can get into the building before being kicked out. The trend was popularized on TikTok in late March through April 2026 and was started by TikToker @5.0arrodo. The original video inspired others to film their own Scientology runs, also inspiring online discourse as the videos went viral.

Microslop is a slang term and meme, a portmanteau of "Microsoft" and "slop," that was popularized online in early January 2026 as a way to mock Microsoft for its push toward AI in its products. The term itself has existed online for far longer, as early as 2005, but its widespread usage to poke fun at Microsoft's proclivity for AI did not emerge until the mid-2020s during the rise of artificial intelligence, particularly after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella complained in a blog post about the use of the slang "slop" for AI in late December 2025.

Anthony Joshua Smiling at Jake Paul Before Punching Him refers to an image captured during the Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua Boxing Match in December 2025.

Google.ai is a new front-end for Google's AI services. Currently, it's free, ad-free, and delivers uncluttered answers to questions. It won't work this well for long, though. It's destined for enshittification, but how soon? I asked Google.ai to give me its own enshittification timeline, and here's what it said:

Stage 1: User Seduction (Current – 2026)
In this stage, Google prioritizes providing immense, "surplus" value to users at its own expense to achieve massive adoption and lock-in. — Read the rest

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When a third of San Francisco lost power on Saturday, the city's fleet of autonomous Waymo vehicles apparently didn't know what to do. Videos posted across social media showed the driverless cars frozen at intersections with dead traffic lights, long lines of human drivers stuck behind them. — Read the rest

The post Waymo's driverless cars froze all over SF during the blackout appeared first on Boing Boing.

We Saw You From Across The X And Really Dig Your Vibe refers to a phrasal template that captions an image of a couple, husband and wife or a group of people who are imagined to approach the meme's viewer at a bar, club or another setting due to them really "digging their vibe "and offering them a drink. The catchphrase was coined on Twitter in late 2020 and has since been used in various image caption memes.

Slop, referring to polished but uncanny, derivative or mediocre AI-generated content, is Merriam-Webster's word of the year. The top U.S. English dictionary chose the term to reflect what website users search the most.

Here's its definition: "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." — Read the rest

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Washington, D.C.'s most patriotic sandwich has been vindicated. Sean Dunn, better known as the "Sandwich Guy," was acquitted Thursday after being charged with assault for tossing a Subway sub at a federal agent during Trump's occupation of the capital. It was, by all accounts, the most consequential deli-related legal battle since the case of the stolen lunchbox. — Read the rest

The post Hero tossing hero of the Republic goes free appeared first on Boing Boing.

The "Everyone is 12 Now" Theory refers to an internet theory about American politics and society that's based on the belief that everyone in the country has the worldview of a 12-year-old.

Piri Res, of the American Food Atlas, has released version 5.3 of their amazing guide to regional delicacies.

Cataloging 77 different food regions across all 50 States, Piri Res' map is not intended to be a guide to what people eat daily. — Read the rest

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Drew Struzan's gift for accurate likenesses and dazzling impressionistic compositions made his art perfect for Hollywood, and he created hundreds of famous paintings for movies. Struzan's death at 78 was announced on his Instagram page yesterday.

"It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that Drew Struzan has moved on from this world as of yesterday, October 13th," read the announcement, posted by his manager. — Read the rest

The post Drew Struzan, master of the movie poster, dead at 78 appeared first on Boing Boing.

AI Actress Tilly Norwood refers to one of the first AI-generated actresses that was created by the AI talent studio Xicoia and promoted during a panel at the Zurich Summit.

Announced only a few weeks ago but long in coming, AOL's dial-up internet service dies today. The "final screech" is nigh, writes Rob Wile, lamenting the modem's last gasp.

At its peak, AOL counted more than 20 million users and in 2000 became part of the largest corporate deal in history when it merged with Time Warner in a deal that gave the combined companies a value of approximately $350 billion.

— Read the rest

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Maru, the incredibly limber cat who would sit wherever he fit, sadly passed away on September 6, 2025, just four months after he celebrated his 18th birthday. His loving humans put together a beautiful tribute to his memory, showing how his surviving siblings Hana and Miri were coping with the sudden absence of their beloved brother. It turns out that both cats prefer going to places where Maru used to nap rather than their own.

Hana and Miri are more often in the places where Maru used to be.

Maru kept sitting where he was fitting right until the very end. Rest in Peace, lovely boy.

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The post A Loving Tribute to Maru the ‘Liquid Cat’ That Shows How His Feline Siblings Are Coping in His Absence was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Another yacht was attacked and sunk by orcas off the coast of Portugal, probably for playing the Doobie Brothers or Christopher Cross at a high volume.

It is also possible that the whales refuse to let anyone drink rosé in their territorial waters. — Read the rest

The post Orcas still hate yacht lifers appeared first on Boing Boing.

I sure love living in a system that allows self-absorbed billionaires to waste endless resources on crowbarring tech no one wants or cares about into our lives. After the Metaverse was an abject failure and a good chunk of Meta AI staff were laid off, Facebook boss and skinsuit enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg is back with the next innovation that'll totally change our lives, no really, for real this time. — Read the rest

The post Zuckerberg's Meta AI glasses repeatedly fail live demo; embarrass him onstage appeared first on Boing Boing.

It's been called the GTA 6 of indie games, and after all the time it's spent in development and the hype it's built up as a result, it feels hard to agree with that description of 2D bug Soulslike Hollow Knight: Silksong. — Read the rest

The post A tiny indie game brought down Steam, Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation appeared first on Boing Boing.

Who would have thought that outsourcing your thinking to an unreliable electric box could make you stupid? According to a recent study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, folks who use AI regularly to help them write essays, books, and the like are getting dumber :

Students who repeatedly relied on ChatGPT showed weakened neural connectivity, impaired memory recall, and a diminished sense of ownership over their own writing. — Read the rest

The post Study shows artificial intelligence use makes you stupid appeared first on Boing Boing.

Target, stagnant for years, set out to please the Trump administration and right-wing activists by ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Unfortunately for Target, the Trump administration and right-wing activists don't shop at Target. Everyday people shop there, many of them black, women and LGBTQ+. — Read the rest

The post Target CEO resigns after boycotts and "plummeting" sales appeared first on Boing Boing.

Last year I wrote about Joe Dever's Combat Heroes, the wild apogee of the 1980s gamebook boom. Whereas Choose Your Own Adventure offered branching paths and Fighting Fantasy introduced role-playing elements, Combat Heroes implemented grid-based free-movement dungeon crawlers. In books! — Read the rest

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Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" who concealed explosives in his kicks but was subdued before he could detonate them, will spend the rest of his life in prison. But soon travelers will be free after 24 years removing footwear at U.S. — Read the rest

The post U.S. ends "shoes off" policy for air travelers appeared first on Boing Boing.

When a Washington Post reporter logged into a Zoom interview recently, the only other attendee was an AI bot. After nine awkward minutes of talking to the silent digital note taker, she gave up and left.

These AI assistants are invading virtual workspaces in such numbers that they sometimes outnumber humans. — Read the rest

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Much of the internet is a cesspool, but the one reliable source of happiness is a cute animal meme. Sharing cute animal content is the human equivalent of pebbling, when penguins gift pebbles as a sign of affection, according to a study by researchers at Concordia University in Montreal. — Read the rest

The post Doggos FTW: cute animal content is a sign of affection appeared first on Boing Boing.

Filmmaker Travis Bible created a clever short video using Google Veo 3 showing how deepfakes can deceive people we care about, such as parents and grandparents. He also wanted to test how AI programs are evolving to become increasingly realistic, which, of course, was the point of his video.

I made this video for my parents. And maybe yours too. The internet already had a truth problem. In the wrong hands, AI video generators could throw gas on the fire. …But what about your parents? Or your grandparents? So I made this video to warn my parents about AI scams (And to test out Veo 3 to see first hand how these programs are evolving )

Bilbel was inspired to do this after a specific incident.

The other day I saw a video of a grandma who thought PS3 Grand Theft Auto was the news. And then Google released Veo 3 which looks about hundred times better than that … so yeah … we’re pretty much cooked. But maybe this video can help us boil a little slower. 

demonflyingfox makes fun of influencers attempting “Impossible Challenges” with a series of hilariously absurd AI-generated videos created using Google Veo 3.

A Wall Street meme led to a Presidential meltdown yesterday. Here's a recap of how the 'TACO' theory took hold in the financial world.