Pablo Defendini (previously) writes, "Fireside Magazine’s editor, Julia Rios, is part of The Mexicanx Initiative, a scholarship fund John Picacio put together for sending Mexicanx and Mexican-American sf/f authors to Worldcon. A few of the Mexicanx Initiative authors decided to create an anthology to commemorate the occasion, and had been planning on subsidizing the cost of printing and shipping themselves. When Fireside got word of this last week, we decided to pitch in, and we put together a Kickstarter campaign to raise the $1500 they needed.

"Well, we blew past our funding goal, and we decided that any money left over would be split evenly among all the participants (Fireside isn't making a cent off this). So now we're trying to reach a stretch goal of $7500 by the end of the campaign this Friday, so that we can not only cover their production costs, but pay every author, artist, designer, translator, and editor who donated their work a SFWA-qualifying pro rate."

Mexicanx Initiative Anthology [Fireside/Kickstarter] Read the rest

In 2008, Universal Music fraudulently claimed that a short Youtube clip of a toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" was a copyright infringement, leading to eight years of litigation and, eventually, a landmark ruling secured by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in which the court found that Universal had a duty to consider fair use before using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to censor other peoples' media. Read the rest

In 1976, Walt Disney World was riding high: the oil crisis was over, tourists were flocking back to Florida, and the successful bicentennial celebration at the Florida Disney resort had been national news. Read the rest

Andy W writes, "An artist/illustrator friend of mine just put an illustration of hers up on RedBubble — two iconic science-fiction television characters sharing a tender moment on the couch." Read the rest

Dani Ochoa, a self-described " girl with too much time on her hands," writes, "I spent way too much time figuring this out." Read the rest

My middle-school used to take us on field trips to the Spaced Out Library, the Toronto Public Library's science fiction reference collection founded by legendary author, critic, editor and activist Judith Merril, who emigrated to Canada after witnessing the police brutality at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. Read the rest

Bed Hog Shop, an Etsy seller from Bethlehem, PA, sells these custom made, $138 Sarlacc Pit baby loungers: " (would also likely be suitable for small pets): "Own your Star Wars fandom and allow the young one to snuggle in awesomeness without the fear of being digested over a thousand years!" (via Geeks Are Sexy) Read the rest

UK Etsy seller Retromend (who specialise in vintage VW-related gifts) sell this Stranger Things-themed Upside Down doormat (coir fibers with rubber backing) for £20/USD27. (via Geeky Merch) Read the rest

A dear friend slipped me these as an Xmas gift; the provenance is unknown, but there's vector art for all your t-shirt, wallpaper and billboard needs. Read the rest

Into the blue again after the money's gone. Read the rest

Last month, James "New Aesthetic" Bridle published an influential essay exploring the prolific and disturbing video-spam that had come to dominate Youtube Kids, in which seemingly algorithmically generated videos endlessly recombined a handful of Disney characters and assorted others engaged in violent, abusive and even psychosexual conduct, over a soundtrack of a few repeated public-domain kids' songs, with all sorts of trickery designed to uprank them in Youtube's play-next, recommendation and search results -- keyword stuffing, duration-stretching and more. Read the rest

From screenprinter Directfraction, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (hipster coffee-shop logo version), and Marx/Misfits. (via Fully Automated Luxury Communism) Read the rest

John H, a prop sculptor, sells handmade, $83 Alice in Wonderland doorknobs, which can either replace your existing knobs or fit around them. Available with painted details or brass finish. (via Geeks Are Sexy) Read the rest

Within science fiction, Jo Walton (previously) is legendary for hosting small, intimate gatherings of outstanding conversation and comradeship. Read the rest

Mari writes, "My daughter loves everything spooky--especially Disney's Haunted Mansion! She loves it so much she's memorized the song and likes to dress up as one of the cast members. Her fave ghost of the 999? The Bride, of course!" Read the rest

Hellen Die admits that her recipe for Alien facehugger pudding-cups "isn't easy": you have to make egg-molds that you cover with pastry and decorate to resemble HR Giger-esque Alien eggs, then use more pastry to sculpt the facehuggers, make a custom pistachio pudding mix with ground up Vitamin B-2 caps, assemble, paint (with food-safe pigments), mix a slip of vodka and B-2, pipe the eggs full of yellow custard, and dust with pop-rocks just before serving for that wonderful fizzing effects. Read the rest

Carbohydrate whisperer Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin (AKA @thePieous) (previously), author of Pies Are Awesome Vol 1 "Pie-Modding": How to Epic-Up Store Bought Pies and Be the Hero of the Party" writes, "I Mucha'd up Eleven with waffles. In pie form. As ya do. I'm incredibly psyched for season 2 - Stranger Things is everything I love in pop culture wadded up, thrown in a blender, and poured out all over my TV set. But, you know, sophisticatedly. " Read the rest