Jeffrey writes, "Bay area flyers, come talk and fly drones over pizza and beer in our massive 17 foot tall ceiling warehouse! Amateur and professionals are welcome to come and… Read the rest of the article: Bay Area drone-fliers' meetup

Chapter nine of Homeland opens with about 400 digits of Pi. When Wil Wheaton read the chapter, he soldiered through it, reading out Pi for a whopping four minutes! Here's… Read the rest of the article: In which I make Wil Wheaton read out Pi for four minutes

Brad sez, "Trusty Sword, an Olympia, WA-based RPG developer, has posted hundreds of scanned D&D cover art from dndclassics.com [a site where you can buy all the classic D&D modules… Read the rest of the article: Pinterest board full of nostalgic D&D art

A reader writes, "Lewis Carroll's Alice takes an eventful trip on a streetcar in contemporary Toronto in this short stop-motion animated video. The character of Alice from Lewis Carroll's famous… Read the rest of the article: Crowdfunding money to finish animated film about Alice in Wonderland on a Toronto streetcar

By photoshopping a pair of mirror-flipped profile-shots of your face onto either side of a full-on shot, you can make a gimmicked photo that, when curled and placed in a… Read the rest of the article: HOWTO make your own head-in-a-jar illusion

Emily sez, "Working in the blindness field, my husband, Richard and I have many blind friends. We are gamers at heart and have always been dismayed that our friends couldn't… Read the rest of the article: Kickstarting board games adapted for blind people

Joe sez, "There's a new FDA rule that will make it nearly make it financially impossible for small craft brewers to give their grain away to farmers for animal feed.… Read the rest of the article: FDA rules make it nearly impossible for beer makers to give their grain to farmers for feed

Lee writes, "Philadelphia's Hacktory has just announced its Call For Artists for its new Unknown Territory Fellowship and Artist-In-Residency."

Pre-orders have opened for The Peripheral, William Gibson's next novel, which comes out in October 2014. I've been reading this one as Bill worked on it, and it's spectacular, a… Read the rest of the article: Pre-order William Gibson's new far-future novel The Peripheral

Matthew, an odd-jobbing freelance artist, took a job as a frozen-food taster ("trained sensory panelist"), spending long days stuffing fried food in his mouth and rating it on 50-100 attributes,… Read the rest of the article: Life on the frozen-food-tasting line

Yesterday, I reviewed Karl Schoeder's first YA novel, Lockstep, which combines genuinely brilliant techno-social speculation with a driving, exciting adventure plot. Today I'm delighted to present the first two chapters… Read the rest of the article: Excerpt: first two chapters of Karl Schroeder's Lockstep

Once again, the "piracy-stricken" motion picture association has had a banner year, with box office revenue breaking all records (as they've done in most recent years). The biggest gains this… Read the rest of the article: Motion picture industry continues to stagger under piracy with mere record-breaking income

Tim Powers' outstanding fantasy novel The Anubis Gates has been adapted for the stage and it will premiere at Loncon 3, this summer's World Science Fiction Convention. I've been excited… Read the rest of the article: Stage adaptation of Tim Powers' Anubis Gates at this summer's Worldcon

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is one of many Republican legislators who've objected to a new policy at OSHA that requires experts to disclose when they have been funded by parties… Read the rest of the article: Sen Lamar Alexander: if shills have to tell Congress who's paying them, it will "chill speech"

"They Know Everything We Do", a new, exhaustive report from Human Rights Watch, details the way the young state of modern Ethiopia has become a kind of pilot program for… Read the rest of the article: Ethiopia: the first "off-the-shelf" surveillance state

Science fiction radio-host and podcaster Rick Kleffel writes, "Lucius Shepard was one of my guiding lights for reading; he worked in all the spaces I loved best. Here's a link… Read the rest of the article: Interview with Lucius Shepard

Here's a great fashion idea for the next Banned Books Week: burned paper fingernails from Glitterfingersss. Basically, you soak newspaper in alcohol, transfer the ink to your nails atop a… Read the rest of the article: Burned paper fingernails

Glenn Fleishman writes, "Minecraft YouTube videos are fantastically popular, and a core group of producers of these videos have enjoyed a wild ride up the virtual charts. Diamond Minecart, a… Read the rest of the article: Minecraft videos: booming industry with millions of viewers

Matt Hawkins contributed his lovely papercraft Disney characters to the Boing Boing Flickr pool. His description: "Paper sculptures made of painted watercolor paper. I created Goofy and Elliott one facet… Read the rest of the article: Beautiful, watercolored freehand papercraft 3D Disney characters

One year ago today Municipal codes of DC, free for all — liberated without permission: I was lucky enough to get another one of rogue archivist Carl Malamud's boxes of… Read the rest of the article: This Day in Blogging History: DC's liberated municipal codes; Game-design lessons from Disneyland; Blogger-read audiobook of Lessig's FREE CULTURE