UK photographer Nick Stern's "You Are Not Banksy" series recreates many of Banksy's iconic, humorous graffiti images. I've always thought that Banksy recreations made excellent cosplay (as this old post… Read the rest of the article: Recreating iconic Banksy images as photos

Erik "Possum Man" Stewart was one of my oldest, dearest friends. He died last week, of a sudden and freak cerebral hemorrhage. It happened while he slept, and his housemates… Read the rest of the article: RIP, Erik "Possum Man" Stewart

John Scalzi's new novel Redshirts starts from a a well-worn, but clever premise: what if the characters in a hackneyed genre story realized that they were trapped by the poor… Read the rest of the article: Scalzi's Redshirts: existentialist comedy space opera

Long-term unemployed workers say they were bussed to London to act as stewards for the Queen's Jubilee, told they would be paid for the work and cared for while in… Read the rest of the article: Austerity Jubilee: unemployed workers tricked into being Jubilee stewards, denied toilets, left to camp in the rain

Today I appeared in a group presentation of Tor Books authors — Charlie Stross, John Scalzi and me — and Macmillan USA's Executive Vice President for Digital Publishing and Technology… Read the rest of the article: John Scalzi, Charlie Stross and I explain why Tor Books went DRM-free

Just look at it. This Is A Banana (Thanks, Brian!)

In The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal recalls the otherworldly howl of a 56K modem negotiating its connection, and quotes our pal GlennF in his 1998 explanation of that characteristic anthem of… Read the rest of the article: Why the modems screamed

Peter sez, The Canadian federal government recently announced that they are cutting $9.6 million from the budget of Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Canada's national archives. This will seriously undermine… Read the rest of the article: Petition to save Canada's National Archive

Chris sez, "The budget bill currently before the Canadian Parliament (Bill C-38) does a bunch of things that don't seem to have much to do with the budget–including completely gutting… Read the rest of the article: Austerity obliterates ecology: Canadian budget to make environmental impact statements optional, class eco-groups as money-launderers

Jonathan Chaffin has discovered the true purpose of crowdfunding: producing cthulhoid tiki mugs. The project is funded and more-than-funded, but there's still time to stump up for a $40 horror… Read the rest of the article: Cthulhu tiki mug

Runa from the Tor project, which oversees production of the anti-censorship/anti-surveillance technology, sez, "We have managed to determine exactly how Ethiopia blocks Tor and we have developed a workaround. We… Read the rest of the article: Tor vs Ethiopia

My latest Publishers Weekly column is "Publishing's Virtue," a look at the relative moral uprightness of trade publishing, especially when compared to the record labels and movie studios, with their… Read the rest of the article: Publishing's hidden virtues

An essay by Matt Stoller called "Profit-Driven Surveillance and the Spectrum of Freedom" on Naked Capitalism looks at the way that analytics, real-time tracking, and the for-profit prison and debt… Read the rest of the article: Innovative dystopias

In this long interview with Wired, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman talks about the relationship between science fiction and economics. Krugman says he was inspired to pursue economics by Asimov's Foundation… Read the rest of the article: Paul Krugman on science fiction's relationship to economics

Rob Reid writes in the WSJ, praising publishing for getting behind ebook publishing by licensing books for electronic formats, rather than boycotting e-readers, as the music industry boycotted MP3 players… Read the rest of the article: How book publishing learned from music's digital mistake

A reader writes, "Yet another voice calling attention to the ever narrowing access to information in Canada as the Harper Government repeatedly thumb their nose at the Canadian Access to… Read the rest of the article: Austerity obliterates transparency: budget cuts mean cuts to Canada's Freedom of Information

A reader writes, "Canadian heritage documents that used to be accessible through inter-library loan will be no longer accessible. If you want to access documents of Canada's history, be prepared… Read the rest of the article: Austerity obliterates history: Canadian heritage docs no longer available through interlibrary loan

Teresa Nielsen Hayden's evil spelling test is back, with more "words that trip up good spellers, arranged in an order that's intended to increase their difficulty." The origin of the… Read the rest of the article: Hard words for good spellers: the evil spelling test

WE ENCOURAGED PEOPLE TO LEARN TO PROGRAM AND JUST LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED (via JWZ)

I remain skeptical of high-priced novelty USB drives (because today's beautifully made, high-capacity USB drive is tomorrow's beautifully made, laughably low-capacity USB drive, and gadgets with close-in obsolescence horizons should… Read the rest of the article: R2D2 USB drive cufflinks