New in the Boing Boing Bazaar / Makers Market: tiny spin tops. They're machined one-at-a-time by Franz Tommasi of California and cost just $6.
— Read the restThis spin top is a simple kinetic desk toy that blends a vintage theme with a new design.
UPDATE: Boing Boing reader Jody thinks these are two different flags, and I agree.
Here's a recipe for making a wonderfully caustic goop called Retr0bright that restores the color of of old computer cases and Lego bricks. It contains hydrogen peroxide, glycerine, vegetable gum, and sodium percarbonate. — Read the rest
The Electronic Frontier Foundation drove three deep wedges into the US prohibition on breaking DRM today. EFF had applied to the Copyright Office to grant exemptions permitting the cracking of DRM in three cases: first, to "jailbreak" a mobile device, such as an iPhone, where DRM is used to prevent phone owners from running software of their own choosing; second, to allow video remix artists to break the DRM on DVDs in order to take short excerpts for mashups posted to YouTube and other sharing sites; finally EFF got the Copyright Office to renew its ruling that made it legal to unlock cellphones so that they can be used with any carrier. — Read the rest
I've just posted the podcast reading of Ghosts in My Head, originally published in the July issue of Subterranean Press, with accompanying art by Dave McKean. It's a short-short story about the end-times brought on by advanced neuromarketing.
This high-proof Belgian ale carries warm hints of juniper, nettle, and roadkill. It is $650-$900 a bottle. [Brewdog via Asylum. Thanks, Eris Siva!]
Antique radio tuning dials. [Indiana Radios via Coudal]
Here's the latest trailer for Nidhogg, a trippy but slickly-animated swordfighting game. Think Jordan Mechner on acid. Previously. [Messhof via Indie Games] — Read the rest
The Dream Machine is a point-and-click adventure game made with natural materials: "We decided to steer as far away from all things polygonal as possible, and are actually building all the environments, props and characters out of clay and cardboard."
Here's some remarkable news: a judge in a New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Appeals Court has ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ban on breaking DRM only applies if you break DRM in order to violate copyright law. This is a complete reversal of earlier rulings across the country (and completely opposite to the approach that the US Trade Representative has demanded from America's trading partners). — Read the rest
From the most excellent Vintage Ads LiveJournal group, this smashing look at the alternate Green Giant universe of 1947, in which the GG looks decidedly satanic, and enjoys a cannibalistic corn-cob pipe.
Carlton Mellick, III, the king of Bizarro fiction, has a new one out — a kind of Dungeons and Dragons meets The Matrix. The Kobold Wizard's Dildo of Enlightenment +2 is "an absurd comedy about a group of adventurers (elf, halfling, bard, dwarf, assassin, thief) going through an existential crisis after having discovered that they are really just pre-rolled characters living inside of a classic AD&D role playing game. — Read the rest
Lenore "Free Range Kids" Skenazy's editorial in Forbes aims at the excessive regulatory zeal in kids' product safety — where even the faintest whiff of danger is grounds for a recall:
— Read the rest
Michael Warring, president of American Educational Products in Fort Collins, Colo.,
Estee Longah, a fabulous vintage queen and founder of a semi-pro all-Asian drag troupe called the Rice Rockettes, puts on lavish, highly sexualized performances... They're empowering a population of gay men to experiment with a mode of self-expression that is often taboo and sometimes even non-existent in their own cultures.
Beautiful, old-school Amiga-style pallette cyling with HTML5. [Effect Games via Digital Tools]
An archive of classified U.S. military logs spanning six years, more than 91,000 documents, and 200,000 pages, was today made available by WikiLeaks. The papers show a picture of the war in Afghanistan that is far more grim, and far less hopeful, than previously portrayed. — Read the rest
Observer columnist David Mitchell (half of the comedy team Mitchell and Webb is in fine form today with this column on the absurdity of burqa banning. It was one of those bits of the Sunday paper that had me stopping to read a passage aloud to my wife every ten seconds or so until she snatched it out of my hands and read it herself. — Read the rest
The answer to the tedium of Regency drawing rooms? Jane Austen's Fight Club, natch! "The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club."
Sara sez, "Made by my best friends, a bunch of mormon girls in Los Angeles, this film trailer is exactly what it sounds like. — Read the rest
Click here to tune into the USTREAM webcast for the SRL show now under way in Petaluma, CA (4-6pm Pacific, Saturday July 24, 2010).
And this, friends, is why we do not leave sandwiches in our cars. 17-year-old Ben Story of Larkspur, Colorado, left a peanut butter and jelly in his Toyota one night, and forgot to lock up. A few hours after he crawled off to bed, his parents and neighbors woke up to the sound of a car horn honking—for 45 minutes straight. — Read the rest
Artist Robert Nava created this papercraft model of Stubby, Tor.com's adorable, fanciful rocket mascot. Print and fold yours today!
Build your own Stubby paper rocket!
(Via Super Punch)
