Happy May Day! Here's Jonathan Coulton's happy song to celebrate it. (NSFW unless you are wearing headphones) Link (Thanks, Jesse!)

A Boing Boing reader says: "Remember Jonathan Coulton's cover of 'Baby's Got Back' you posted last year? Some genius has taken it to it's natural extension and synced Sir Mix a Lot's original video with the new version. The results are hilarious." — Read the rest

This week, musician Michael Hearst launched an ambitious new project: 80 covers of 80 songs from the 1980s, with a new one released every week.

Over the next 80 weeks (!!), 80 From The 80s will feature guest appearances by an impressively wide range of musicians—including Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson of Magnetic Fields; John Linnell of They Might Be Giants; Tanya Donelly of, well, Tanya Donelly (also Breeders and throwing Muses); John Cameron Mitchell, creator of Hedwig & the Angry Inch; Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls and Neil Gaiman's Divorce; and of course, Jonathan Coulton. — Read the rest

I grew up when Pluto was a planet. But, as you no doubt know, 18 years ago, on August 24, 2006, poor Pluto was downgraded from a regular ol' planet planet to a dwarf planet. KCRA explains that:

the International Astronomical Union voted to strictly define a planet, which ultimately downgraded Pluto from the ninth planet from the sun to a dwarf planet — causing controversy both scientifically and culturally.

EricICX has won the 2022 Tetris World Championship, beating competitor Fractal in the final match. Game 3 (of 4 in the match) was really the highlight. Tetris Interest describes the action, which was made even better with Jonathan Coulton's song "Still Alive" from Portal playing in the background:

The crowd applauded in Game 3 when Fractal applied lotion to his hands in the middle of his game.

The Maximum Fun podcast network (home to such shows as Judge John Hodgman (previously), Oh No Ross and Carrie (previously), and Sawbones) has just launched its most ambitious project to date: a science fiction sitcom about life in a domed city in a monster-haunted wasteland called Bubble, and it's hilarious.

I had the pleasure of meeting comedian Cameron Esposito earlier this year on the JoCo Cruise (a mind-blowingly fun geek cruise produced by Jonathan Coulton). She was the MC for a variety show one night on the ship, and introduced me on stage so I could tell my story about forgetting my bitcoin password. — Read the rest

I'm excited to be going on Jonathan Coulton's JoCo Cruise this year. We've been asked to bring some games with us, so I'm bringing the Tenzi dice game plus the variation deck.

The basic rules are simple – everyone starts out with 10 dice and the goal is to roll your dice as fast as you can until all of them show the same number. — Read the rest

The Museum of Mathematics recently hosted James Grime's talk "Star Trek: The Math of Khan." He debunked a common stereotype about the show's security detail: redshirts are not the most likely crew to die.

Len Peralta writes, "Ken Plume, John Robinson and I have been releasing different celebrity readings of our book There's A Zombie In My Treehouse just in time for Halloween. We've been releasing one track a day for the past week and a half up until Halloween. — Read the rest

Knox College psychologist Frank T McAndrew was curious about the nature of creepiness so he and student Sara Koehnke surveyed 1,300 people to identify "the building blocks of creepiness."

If there's a kid in your life who loves princesses, consider getting them a very different sort of children's book: The Princess Who Saved Herself.

As per the book description, it is "the story of an awesome kid who lives with her pet snake and plays rock 'n' roll all day to the huge annoyance of the classical guitarist witch who lives down the road. — Read the rest

Nikole Dieker explains an aptly-named project: The Right Thing.

Maggie Vail and Jesse von Doom are the co-executive directors of CASH Music (Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders) a non-profit organization that brings an open-source approach to music distribution and production. CASH focuses on educating around those ideas through online resources, stakeholder events, and face-to-face workshops, as well as offering a software platform. — Read the rest

Angela and Aubrey Webber are the musical group The Doubleclicks, bringing geeky music to nerdy folk. The sisters never intended to form a band, but when Aubrey joined her sister Angela in Portland a few years ago, her cello coupled with Angela's singing caused enough of a stir for them to join forces and write songs about Dungeons & Dungeons, the Curiosity rover, and not dissing the geek girl. — Read the rest

Since January 2009, Jonathan Mann has posted a song every day. Not five days a week: seven days a week. There is no rest for the wickedly productive. While he makes his living by writing and performing bespoke songs for organizations, Jonathan never stops creating for himself — and his fans. — Read the rest

Marian Call is an Alaskan chanteuse who found an audience after winning a Firefly-related song contest in 2007. She has run her music career as an independent grassroots effort ever since. She connects with her fans constantly and directly, both through social media and crowdfunding, and sleeping on their floors during tours and house concerts. — Read the rest

Glenn Fleishman heads to Portland for the second XOXO festival, where a maker's heart can leave the body, be shared among kindred spirits, and know that it will be cared for.

Alan sez, "Two items here on the same theme:
Ruben Bolling, comic author of Tom The Dancing Bug, contributor to JoCo Funnies, etc. has a raffle posted on his blog. If you donate to the American National Red Cross through a page he has set up, you will be entered into a drawing for a personal comic from Bolling;

Greg Pak, creator of the 'Code Monkey Save World' visuals and co-conspirator in the recent Kickstarter with Jonathan Coulton is offering free CMSW stickers to people who make a donation to any recognized organization helping tornado victims."