The Latest from Boing Boing

Tom Edison Jr's Electric Mule — 1891 science fiction story Alternate title: "The Snorting Wonder of the Plains." As Paul Di Filippo says at Weird Universe, "This cover could hardly be improved upon for macabre glee and impartial offensiveness." Read the story here. Read the rest... Massive wine heist in Napa On Christmas Day, thieves stole 76 bottles of rare wine, worth approximately $300,000, from Thomas Keller's posh French Laundry restaurant in California's Napa Valley. Read the rest... Batca[v|k]e Mike's Amazing Cakes (previously) of Redmond, WA made this detailed, wildly improbableBatcave cake for a client, complete with a cake Adam-West-era Batmobile. Read the rest... Open-carry cop-watchers say they are "pissed off patriots" In Arlington TX, a group of Ron Paul style libertarians have become self-appointed cop-watchers. Armed with guns and video cameras, and sometimes wearing police hats with pig ears, they scan police radios to learn where police activity is taking place and drive to the locations to record the police. Read the rest... Soft robot plays beer pong The engineers at Empire Robotics, the "soft robotics" firm I recently profiled in Businessweek,taught a robot arm outfitted with their Versaball gripper how to play beer pong. A perfect demo for CES. Read the rest... John Cleese: Compaq Portable computer vs. dead fish One of several TV commercials Cleese did for the Compaq Portable 2 computer in 1986. (viaWired) Read the rest... NYPD officer allegedly attacks MTA worker Earlier this week, the NYPD asked citizens for their help in identifying the man in this video, who is suspected of attacking a uniformed female MTA employee. Read the rest... Drones in rural Guyana village The folks at Digital Democracy worked with the Wapichana people in Guyana to build a drone, demonstrating that indigenous people could build and use the devices to monitor illegal deforestation and inform resource management. "We Built A Drone" Read the rest... Marvel Comics Calendar 1981/2015 Mark Anderson kindly scanned this excellent Marvel Comics 20th Anniversary Calendar from 1981 that lines up with the 2015 calendar! "2015/1981 Marvel Desktop Wallpaper Calendar" (via Laughing Squid) Read the rest... WATCH: How we used Slo-mo in 2014 If you're taking things a little more slowly than usual this weekend after a big New Year's Eve, maybe you'll appreciate this montage of great slow-motion shots from films, put together by The Nerdwriter to a soothing and quiet track. Read the rest... WATCH: friends enter The Matrix via their 140-camera array The Pixelist presents The Timefreezers, a fun little montage of some friends messing around with their camera array onstage during downtime in their filming schedule of UK series Got To Dance. Read the rest... LISTEN: Mazzy Star's Seasons of Your Day Before there was Lana Del Rey, there was Mazzy Star fronted by Hope Sandoval. Seasons of Your Day quietly came into the world with little fanfare, so in case you missed it, enjoy. Read the rest... WATCH: Mario Cuomo's 1984 convention speech In memory of Mario Cuomo's remarkable legacy, listen to his inspirational speech. American Rhetoric ranks it as one of the 100 greatest speeches in American history. Read the rest... Digital rights stickers Gavriel designed a digital-freedom-themed sticker pack for Discordia Culture; 25% of proceeds from which go to EFF. (Thanks, Gavriel!) Read the rest... So this is the New Year. As our friends in Death Cab for Cutie put it... Read the rest...