Heavy Metal Balloon Boy is in a metal band. Here's a song about his adventure Matthew Williams

horror Finding Pennywise the Clown in your backyard is serious business Seamus Bellamy

follies of the mad men Revisiting the horrifically sexist Battleship game cover from 1967 Mark Frauenfelder

fake news Hollywood sex scandal predators go unnamed and unashamed in this week’s tabloids Peter Sheridan

disability "Monster Imagery Taught Me I Was a Monster": Riva Lehrer on Beauty, Deformity, Disability Mark Dery

fake news Punctuation inflation has infected the tabloids! Peter Sheridan

media Ferocious bipedal dog-like beast prowling American forests! says tabloid Peter Sheridan

books Read: Strategic Dog Patterning, a story from "Why I Hunt Flying Saucers" Hugh AD Spencer

media Stories from the alternate universe inhabited by the tabloid magazines Peter Sheridan

books Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye: A Novel Mark Frauenfelder

offworld Explore the legacy of Sonic the Hedgehog in these truly weird minigames Leigh Alexander

fiction The Man Who Sold The Moon Cory Doctorow

Drones and the rise of the high-tech assassins Andrew Cockburn

The surprising history of hippy crack Linda Rodriguez

The charley horse from Hell — why you should work at a standing desk Gammy Hamhock

A short history of jokes about squirting Christopher Miller

Excerpts Dr. Mütter's Marvels: intrigue and innovation at the dawn of modern medicine Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

israel Smoke, Slingshots, and Spongebob: the Middle East crisis in photos Rob Beschizza

DRONES How Dan Shapiro created the most-backed game in Kickstarter history Mark Frauenfelder