I am addicted to Thinkpads in large part because of the trackpoint (AKA "The Nipple") -- the little wiggly joystickbetween the G, H and B keys that allows me to control fine mouse-movements without bending my hand into the RSI-inducing trackpad position; between that and the amazing, best-in-class warranties, I am a committed Thinkpad user, to the point that I actually bought and returned three different systems this year because (between the new Intel chipset and the new Nvidia cards), I couldn't get any flavor of GNU/Linux to run on them (many thanks to Canonical for eventually getting me running on a Thinkpad extreme). Read the rest

Murray Hunter writes, "I'm a digital rights activist in South Africa - I've written and illustrated a silly, subversive kid's book about the Big Data industry, and a squiggly, wiggly robot sent out to track and profile all the babies. It's not an 'eat your vegetables' kind of book: all I wanted to do was tell a story that could delight young kids (ages 3-5) while also inviting them to imagine for the first time a secret and hidden world of data collection. I don't think it's been done yet, and - well, why not? I've just launched a crowdfunding campaign to publish it in hardcover and thought it might pique the interest of a few happy mutants. Read the rest

Michael Galinsky's 2011 photo-book "Malls Across America" went out of print quickly and now sells for upwards of $1000/copy; Galinsky is now kickstarting a sequel, The Decline of Mall Civilization, featuring 112 pages of images of American malls from 1989. Read the rest

Ben writes, "First featured on Boing Boing in 2010, the fan-supported TV series JourneyQuest has continued for nine years(!) and is now Kickstarting a fourth season. It's an open world with a copyleft license, proving that encouraging sharing, remixing, allowing commercial derivatives, and not treating fans like criminals can still lead to success." Read the rest

Eccentric eyewear maker Scott Urban first kickstarted his "Reflectacles" frames in 2016; the frames used emedded retroreflectors to make them throw back tons of light, making them highly visible (and great for things like night cycling); subsequent iterations beefed up the IR reflectivity, which blinded many CCTV surveillance cameras (they use IR to paint low-light scenes, and their sensors can be overwhelmed if enough of that IR bounces back at them). Read the rest

Donald Trump, a garbage person, promised the credulous dunces in his "base" that he would build a wall along the US southern border at a cost of $12b (the DHS said it would cost $21.6b) and then failed to do so, despite controlling Congress, the Senate and the White House. He blamed the opposition for this failure. Read the rest

The Inverter is a kickstarted, sub-$500, 34mm automatic mechanical watch built around Citizen's Miyota Calibre 9000 movement, augmented with a custom module that makes the watch run backwards, so that it can be mounted so that the movement is exposed (beneath a sapphire crystal), with the back of the watch becoming its "face." Read the rest

A collection of comics all-stars (including Scott Snyder, Kelly Thompson, David Lafuente, Ariela Kristiantina, Jamal Igle, Devin Grayson, Joe Keatinge, Doselle Young, Marguerite Sauvage, Ron Marz, Stuart Moore, Shannon Wheeler, Steven Grant, Roger Langridge, Matt Miner, Ray Fawkes, CW Cooke, Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil, Kelly Williams, Emma Beeby and more) come together for Every Day: An Anti-Gun Violence Comics Anthology to benefit The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Community Justice Reform Coalition; $10 gets you a digital download, $20 gets you a paperback, and if you're a retailer, there are bulk-buy packages so you can stock it in your store. (Thanks, Doselle!) Read the rest

[Editor's note: Xeno Evil is an Oakland artist fighting to save their home; I'm happy to help them with their campaign -Cory]

The historic Vulcan Lofts in Oakland, CA are up for sale and nearly 200 working-class Bay Area artists are at risk of losing our homes. In order to save the Vulcan, we’ve founded a tenant’s union, hired several attorneys, and petitioned the City of Oakland to put the building under rent control. Our hearing with the rent board is coming up very soon and we need to raise $50k in the next month to cover legal costs. Please support us by donating to our cause and sharing our crowdfunding campaign with your network. We love you. Read the rest

Whistleblower and torture-survivor Chelsea Manning (previously) has been summoned before a Grand Jury, seemingly to testify about her "2010 disclosures of information about the nature of asymmetric warfare to the public." Read the rest

Inspired by the success of Judges' Guild, Kickstarter has launched Zine Quest, a challenge to crowdfund an RPG-themed zine ("must either contain an RPG or feature RPG-related content like maps, adventures, monsters, comics, articles, interviews, etc."); there's an impressive array of entrants already. Read the rest

Every year or two, I embark on a round of crazy book-tour travel where I change cities every day for weeks on end (35 cities in 45 days on two continents in 2017!), and I'm on a perennial quest for a piece of luggage that is fuss-free: I want to stumble exhausted into my room, late at night, and in a few seconds access everything I need to go to sleep and then get out the next morning. Read the rest

The next tranche of Beehive Books' Illuminated Editions are being crowdfunded now: three gorgeous, slipcased, deluxe illustrated hardcovers, including a new edition of Crime & Punishment, illustrated by Dave McKean, well-known for his work on Sandman (he also did the original cover for my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town); the books are $100 each, and are superb. The other two titles are The Blazing World, illustrated by Margaret Cavendish; and Peter Pan, illustrated by Brecht Evans. Read the rest

The marvellous Jonathan Coulton (previously) is crowdfunding for his next album, Some Guys, "An album of 70s soft rock covers that sound exactly like the originals" (America, Stephen Bishop, Gilbert O'Sullivan, 10cc, Bread, Eagles and more) -- he's raised more than $100K already with 12 days to go (I just backed him). $10 gets you a digital download, $15 adds a CD, $25 gets you a signed CD, $30 gets you vinyl, $40 gets you signed vinyl, and it goes up from there. (via Judge John Hodgman) Read the rest

This month, for the first time in a generation, America's public domain grew, as the 20-year freeze created by the 1998 changes to copyright law finally thawed. Read the rest

Burbank's amazing quarter-century institution Dark Delicacies is a horror book-, memoribilia- and clothing-store that is a community hub for genre creators, hosting a wonderful stream of events, signings, and even an annual chance to get your photo took with Krampus at a Christmas open-house. Read the rest

In Patients' crowdfunding campaigns for alternative cancer treatments, published by researchers from Simon Fraser University in The Lancet Oncology (Sci-Hub mirror) we learn that thanks to Gofundme, 13,000 people have raised $1.4 million to help 200 desperate cancer patients pay for ineffective homeopathic "treatments." Read the rest