It is kind of hard to imagine that it's taken until 2020 for the identity of the woman on the cover of Black Sabbath's heavy metal masterpiece, Black Sabbath, to… Read the rest of the article: Witchy woman on the cover of Black Sabbath's eponymous first album finally identified

According to a piece on Deadline, 70s prog rock behemoths, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, are having a movie made from their 30-minute sci-fi song suite, "Karn Evil 9", from 1973's… Read the rest of the article: Emerson, Lake & Palmer's prog rock epic, "Karn Evil 9," to be made into a film with Daniel Wilson penning the screenplay

"Two men, one highly detailed resin fantasy village, and five days to paint it." If you're a fantasy tabletop gamer, you likely know about Tabletop World, two Croatian terrain makers… Read the rest of the article: Two well-known YouTube game crafters paint up an entire tabletop fantasy village in five days

The UK's Far Out Magazine has posted the playlists of 27 songs that Lou Reed was listening to when he died in 2013 of liver disease. Reed continually kept his… Read the rest of the article: The 27-song playlist that Lou Reed made just before he died

In this video on Pask Makes, he fashions a really lovely utility knife out of brass using nothing more than common shop tools like a saw, drill, hacksaw, router, files,… Read the rest of the article: Making your own utility knife in brass using common shop tools

The wonderfully talented artist and illustrator, Michelle Rial, posted this D & D character alignment chart to her Twitter feed. I need a new hobby pic.twitter.com/bRn5QJ4u90 — Michelle Rial (@TheRialMichelle)… Read the rest of the article: D & D character alignments as Valentine's Day conversation hearts

This is so amazing. Watch what happens when a blacksmithing anvil is lowered into a large vat of pure liquid mercury. Update: One of our readers posted the link to… Read the rest of the article: Watch how a heavy anvil floats in a vat of mercury

Here are seven of my favorite DIY/maker tips published this year in my weekly newsletter, Gareth's Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales. Etching Metal with a 9v Battery Etching is easier… Read the rest of the article: Seven top tips from makers so far this year

On Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me, Michael Shelly interviews the legendary bass player, Carol Kaye. Unless you're a hardcore music nerd, you may not know who Carol Kaye is. You… Read the rest of the article: An interview with legendary bass player Carol Kaye

The fine folks at Boston Dynamics, busy building our future robotic overlords, have loaned Adam Savage a Spot robot for the Tested team to play with. For his first project,… Read the rest of the article: Adam Savage builds a steampunk rickshaw to be pulled by a Boston Dynamics robot

I have never taken the idea of large-scale colonization of Mars very seriously, at least not for the foreseeable future. Nothing about these two videos changes my mind. When thinking… Read the rest of the article: First city on Mars? No thanks

In this clip from Late Night with Seth Myers, comedian Maria Bamford talks about how she tried to take out a restraining order against "the unregistered sex offender in the… Read the rest of the article: Comedian Maria Bamford tried to get a restraining order against Donald Trump

Here is another fabulous list of important records, this one organized around the theme of "most drug-addled." As with the avant-garde list, this author's choices are ripe for debate. The… Read the rest of the article: Fifty of the most drug-drenched albums of all time

It's hard to wrap one's head around the fact that, this year, Black Sabbath's eponymous debut album turns 50. It's also hard to wrap one's head around the seismic impact… Read the rest of the article: “What is this that stands before me?" Fifty years ago when rock and roll turned seriously dark, heavy, and metallic

Would you guess the sound of ricocheting bullets on a Saturday morning cartoon? When isotopic geochemist, John Andrew Higgins, posted this to Twitter, people thought it was fake, a joke.… Read the rest of the article: What does a big chunk of ice sound like being dropped down a 450 foot hole in Antarctica? You can't image how cool!

James Floyd Kelly runs the excellent Tabletop Engineer channel on YouTube and Bexim's Bazaar, a monthly tabletop gaming magazine (to which I often contribute a game-crafting column). Like me, Jim… Read the rest of the article: Crowdfunding an old school gaming zine as part of Kickstarter's Zine Quest 2 campaign

Imaging walking into the Toby Jug Pub in Tolworth, England on February 10, 1972 expecting to see a folkier, more mellow David Bowie and encountering Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders… Read the rest of the article: On this day, in 1972, Ziggy Stardust touched down on planet Earth and began jiving us that we were voodoo

I love when poly-nerds (their term) get together to enthusiastically jam on ideas and share their mutual love of playing brain tennis. In this Tested video, Adam Savage sits down… Read the rest of the article: Adam Savage and Numberphile's Matt Parker discuss math-love and Matt's latest book, Humble Pi

Ever since reading Gary Fine's Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds, in 1983, I have been keen on the idea of using RPGs as a learning tool, for sandboxing… Read the rest of the article: Using D&D in therapy to get kids to open up

Why DO outhouses classically have crescent moons on their doors or their sides? Is is an ancient hold-over from when boys outhouses had suns on them and girls had moons?… Read the rest of the article: The real reason why outhouses are often depicted with crescent moons on their doors