When we got to rounding up our favorite books for our annual Gift Guide, we found that there were simply too many this time to throw in the Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukah/Yule/Solstice/Nonspecific Winter Celebration/New Year/Chalica hopper along with the tech and toys.
It's almost as if 2016 made the traditional way of learning more about our world — and of sharing dreams of other worlds — somehow more enticing. — Read the rest
Vertigo has tapped Cecil Castellucci (previously) and Marley Zarcone to reboot Shade, a Steve Ditko character last rebooted as a weird 1990s comic book about a transdimensional alien shape-shifter poet who used a "madness vest" in his quest to stem the tide of insanity leaking from Earth into his dimension; in Castellucci's capable hands, the new Shade is a fugitive who steals the madness vest in her escape to Earth and finds herself in the body of a Megan Boyer, a comatose mean girl who was about to have the plug pulled on her.
Graphic novelist and sometime Boing Boing contributor Gene Luen Yang has joined the ranks of the small number of brilliant comic books artists and writers (Alison Bechdel, Ben Katchor, Junot Diaz, and Ta-Nehisi Coates) to be given the prestigious Macarthur genius prize, which is awarded to "individuals who show originality and dedication in their creative pursuits."
The U.S. Supreme Court today delivered a damaging blow to the Fourth Amendment "by making it even easier for law enforcement to evade its requirement that stops be based on reasonable suspicion," as a New York Times editorial puts it.
Justices ruled 5 to 3 [PDF] that a police officer's illegal stop of a man on the street should not prevent using against him any evidence obtained from a search connected to that stop. — Read the rest
NY Magazine has a great collection of essays from a bunch of writers, performers, athletes, directors, and photographers about the incident or realization that made them answer their calling.
— Read the restI wore that [cardboard Howdy Doody] magic set out. We had a dusty storage room in our little house, and I would sit in the dusty storage room in the afternoon and just work the things over and over again, for my own edification.
It's that time of year again! Welcome to Boing Boing's 2015 Gift Guide, where you'll find toys, books, gadgets and many other splendid ideas to humor and harry your friends and family! Scroll down and buy things, mutants!
Ta-Nehisi Coates's longread in the Atlantic, "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration" is a stupendous piece of serious journalism, tracing the long history of system racism in America to the present day condition: America imprisons more people than any other country in the world; it imprisons more people than at any time in its history; and it imprisons black people, especially black men, at a rate that beggars belief.
The White House has released the list.
As tensions rise in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, yet another black victim of police brutality, I've noticed that some well-meaning (usually white) people have a tendency to quote Martin Luther King, Jr.
While it may be earning less media coverage now, the movement is still very much alive both in physical spaces and online.
Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Case for Reparations is an important, compelling history of the post-slavery debate over reparations, running alongside the post-slavery history of US governmental and private-sector violence and theft from the descendants of slaves in America. Coates's thesis — compellingly argued — is that any "achievement gap" or "wealth gap" in American blacks is best understood as an artifact of centuries of racial violence and criminal misappropriations of black people, particularly visited upon any black person who expressed ambition or attained any measure of economic success. — Read the rest
Yesterday, Washington Post sinecurist Richard Cohen wrote that "conventional" Americans "gag" at interracial marriages. His editor, Fred Hiatt, offered a squirmy apology, but Cohen himself is 'hurt' by accusations of racism. To those who see Cohen's critics as suffering from a 'reading comprehension' problem–Cohen's a Tea Party critic, don't 'cha know!– — Read the rest
Trayvon Martin, 17 (above), was shot to death on February 26 while walking to his dad's girlfriend's house from a convenience store just north of Orlando, Florida. He was unarmed, wearing a hoodie, and carrying some Skittles and iced tea he purchased at the mini-mart. — Read the rest
Jeremy sez, "Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood features bestselling writers, punk-rock stars, artists, political thinkers, and regular guys tackling all the topics conventional fathering guides won't touch: the brutalities, beauties, and politics of the birth experience; the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers; our fraught relationships with Star Wars and Star Trek; the tests faced by transgendered and gay fathers; the emotions of sperm donation; and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration. — Read the rest
Above, BoingBoing.net after receiving the kanyelicio.us treatment. (Via @GreatDismal)
Related reading, on a more sober note: "It's Kanye's Fault," by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic: "It's virtually impossible to be a black person and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past. — Read the rest
