The Latest from Boing Boing

WATCH: 1980 interview with John Lydon and Keith Levene "The Sex Pistols was going to be the absolute end of rock and roll, which I thought it was. Unfortunately the majority of the public, being the senile animals that they are, got that wrong." Where did the name The Sex Pistols come from? Who thought that name up? "Some animal. I can't remember. It doesn't matter." Read the rest... LISTEN: demo versions from Clash's London Calling httpa://youtu.be/RASP8FvQzag The Clash will always be my favorite band. So it is nice to listen to these early drafts of the songs on London Calling. Open Culture has a bunch of them, including songs that never made it on the double LP, like "Heart and Mind" (above). Read the rest... Music: "Carnival Time," Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias Everybody's having fun. Read the rest... Woman arrested on drug charges "A woman was arrested in Ocala, Florida, on Saturday after police say they found marijuana and prescription drugs in her car. " Read the rest... Restaurant wine priced at "thirty-seven fifty" = $3,750 "A New Jersey businessman ordered a bottle of wine [Screaming Eagle Oakville] he was told cost "thirty-seven fifty" for the table, and wound up learning a valuable lesson in sales when he found out that the actual cost was $3,750." Image: @DistrictWino Read the rest... WATCH: suspicious roadblock This video reminds me of the time I was driving with my friends from Boulder to Las Vegas. I was 18 years old. Read the rest... Secret Headquarters swag: esoteric gifts for comics nerds From Secret Headquarters, east LA's amazing, wonderful comics emporium: "For the past 9 years, we have been making comic related t-shirts and other apparel, and with the holiday season steadily approaching, these would make some killer gifts for niche comic fans." SHQ Cobra Shirt 100% Cotton - Hand printed in Atwater Village Imagery inspired the classic World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets mail order "instructional booklet"! Read the rest... A history of functional toy cameras Written by pop-culture authors Buzz Poole and Christopher D. Salyers (who is also a toy camera collector), Camera Crazy is an attractively photographed collection of functioning toy cameras, which were popularized in the 1960s when the plastic 120 film “Diana” hit the market for only $1 a pop. Read the rest... Weirdo video genius Liam Lynch goes to space: The Adventures of The Sweet Electric Liam Lynch, the eccentric composer and genius web video auteur behind Lynchland, has created a trippy new series following android rock group "The Sweet Electric." Every single character is played by Liam. Read the rest... Seeker's Quest Necklace from our sponsor Shana Logic! Our dear sponsor Shana Logic says, "You'll love wearing this beautiful handmade necklace that pays homage to your favorite wizardly sport!" The Seeker's Quest Necklace features a golden snitch with stunning silver wings hanging on a silver chain. Read the rest... Crowdfunding a documentary on Joybubbles, blind hacker and phone phreaker Kickstarting a film about Joe Engressia, Jr. (1949-2007), a blind telephone hacker who legally changed his name to Joybubbles after declaring himself "the age of five forever." Read the rest... Watch: NASA webcast of 3 International Space Station crew members returning to Earth Three ISS crew members are scheduled to depart the orbiting laboratory this Sunday, November 9 after spending almost six months aboard. Read the rest... Squirrel caught orange-handed in post-Halloween pumpkin binge Photographer unknown. [HT: Heather Beschizza] Read the rest... Starbucks bans employees from wearing engagement rings But tattoos and piercings are OK. Read the rest... Irish teacher rejected due to their "alcoholism nature" A 26-year-old teacher from County Kerry was turned down for a job in South Korea because of"the alcholism nature of your kind", reports the BBC: "This reply was a first." Read the rest... Soul-crushing office-speak spreads James Gingell leans in to note that management jargon has evolved into an everyday workplace dialect full of bullshit like "deliverables," "upskill," "learnings," "drill-down," "value-add," "moving forward," "enablers and barriers," and "quick wins." He wonders: perhaps this pidgin terminology is filling a legitimate language vacuum? Read the rest... Ironic spirit animals The rhetorical device of spirit animals is nothing new, writes Megan Garber, and a concept that comes most directly from Native American spirituality. Read the rest... Retro-computing and grieving Paul Ford has written a haunting, beautiful essay about his voyage into the emulation of extinct, obsolete computers and the way that this has allowed him to come to grips with the death of an older friend and father figure, who helped him through a very difficult period of adolescence through their shared love of computers. Read the rest... Billy Corgan, cat lover Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan sure loves cats! (PAWS Chicago Magazine, thanks Gil!) Read the rest... Neil Gaiman: How I learned to stop worrying and love the duplicator machines To celebrate the release of my new book, Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, I've invited some of my favorite creators and thinkers to write about their philosophy on the arts and the Internet. Today, Neil Gaiman, author of the just-published Hansel and Gretel(with Lorenzo Mattotti), has granted kind permission to reproduce his introduction to Information Doesn't Want to Be Free. -Cory Read the rest... Eye of the Beholder on Commodore 64 Taking 16-bit games of the 1990s and remaking them to run on the 8-bit hardware of the 1980s is a niche activity, for sure. Read the rest... Planet formation around HL Tau, 450 light years from Earth "In a vast disc of dust and gas, dark rings are clearly visible," reports the BBC's Jonathan Webb. "Gaps in the cloud, swept clear by brand new planets in orbit. Read the rest... WATCH: incredible dark-sky timelapse of Moab Utah Over the past decade I have visited the Moab, Utah area seven times and have fallen in love with the entire southern Utah landscape. I created this video love letter to let Moab know how much I appreciate the beauty of her landscape and the dark skies above. By Ron Risman Read the rest... We listen to sad music to feel nostalgic If sadness is an unpleasant emotion, then why are we at times so drawn to sad music? By Dan Ruderman Read the rest... EMERGENCY! Protest FCC sellout on net neutrality across the USA! Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Internet users! It's time to get angry and get active. The FCC just leaked their net neutrality proposal -- and it's TERRIBLE. Read the rest... Welcome to Night Vale scouting badges For girls: Radiation Immunity; Surviving in Nature; Controlling Plants With Minds; Advanced Knife Fighting Techniques; for boys: Invisibility. Read the rest... Pennsylvania passes a "Gag Mumia" law to silence prisoner's voices The "Revictimization Relief Act" allows suits against offenders whose "conduct...perpetuates the continuing effect of the crime on the victim," but the fact that it was aimed at silencing jailed activist Mumia Abu-Jamal was never made a secret -- the governor signed it into law saying that it "was inspired by the excesses and pious hypocrisy of one particular killer." Prison Radio's running an Indiegogo campaign to fight the law and to keep on airing recordings of American prisoners -- America having the highest incarceration rate of any nation on Earth. Read the rest... $100K life-size T-Rex skeleton replica It's 40' long from nose to tail, is composed of 190 bones, is billed as "museum grade" and comes with an assembly crew that will stage it in any "anatomically possible" pose. Read the rest... Brazil's amazing, underground hot-air balloon subculture An exquisitely researched and endlessly fascinating long article tells the history of Brazil's centuries-old baloeiro craft, whereby painstakingly handmade paper balloons are lofted trailing ladders of pyrotechnics and long banners, powered by melted-down candle-stubs from churches and graveyards, cheered on by sometimes violent gangs who labor over them for months before releasing them. Read the rest... Web site helps you split almost anything fairly Carnegie Mellon researchers have built Spliddit, a web site which gives users "provably fair" ways to divide things of value. Dividing a cake using the “I cut, you choose” method is the classic example used to illustrate envy-free approaches. Read the rest...