Venezuela's currency is on track to inflate by 720 percent this year. Why? The drop in the price of oil hurt Venezuela's economy, and President Nicolás Maduro thought he could solve the problem by printing more money. It didn't work and now people are starving.From The Independent:When the price of oil on the global market collapsed by two-thirds in 2014, Venezuela had little else to fall back on, so a natural reaction would have been for the bolívar to collapse. But Mr Maduro, who succeeded Hugo Chávez following the revolutionary leader's death in 2013, instead tried to control the exchange rate, creating a massive black market for currency.Figuring out scams to get dollars and then sell them for bolívars became hugely lucrative business for Venezuelans, setting off a feedback loop that drove the inflation rate higher and higher. In one of Caracas richer neighbourhoods, the owner of a tiny kiosk selling newspapers, cigarettes and snacks told the Washington Post that every evening he quietly stuffs a plastic bag full of the day’s earnings, around 100,000 bolívars (about £42) in notes of 10, 20, 50 and 100 bolívars. Venezuela has one of the highest crime rates in the world, and he said carrying that much cash frightens him.

See more at Juxtapoz!

From TED-Ed:You work at the college library. You’re in the middle of a quiet afternoon when suddenly, a shipment of 1,280 books arrives. The books are in a straight line, but they're all out of order, and the automatic sorting system is broken. How can you sort the books quickly? Chand John shows how, shedding light on how algorithms help librarians and search engines speedily sort information.

Vegan shoe company Keep's $97 Ramos midtop sneaker was designed by Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, and will ship in February, with all proceeds going to Planned Parenthood, a vital woman's health organization under sustained assault from Republicans, who use lies about the rare abortions the organization performs to enrage and focus its low-information base, without any regard for the millions of women who rely on PP for basic health services (and the much smaller number who use PP for abortion). (more…)

Five Star Christmas Tree Co is providing the easiest way yet to decorate for the holidays. This company will actually deliver a Christmas tree or wreath straight to your front door for a reasonable price.This direct to your door service includes your choice of Fraser fir trees, ranging from 3 to 7 feet tall. So whether you live in a studio apartment or a multi-room house, you can get the perfect sized tree without trudging around in the cold or having to deal with pine needles in the car.Five Star Christmas Tree Co even includes earth-friendly pickup and tree-cycling when the Christmas season is over. The best part is that Christmas Tree Co’s prices are comparable to your neighborhood tree lot, and are currently an extra 50% off. Choose from a 22” wreath complete with pinecones, holly berries, and a bow ($29.99), as well as three different tree sizes: 3-4’ ($39.99), 5-6’ ($69.99) or 6-7’ ($79.99). Order yours today - this is a limited time deal!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb5bB7HogWIMichael Samuels of Sonic Geometry is Kickstarting a set of polyhedral sound controllers that let users shape sound and light into a multimedia performance. Originally a Master's Thesis project at Berklee School of Music, the prototypes are scheduled for release next year. (more…)

Vinyl Divas is a comprehensive collection of vintage classical music divas, and it ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous to the sublimely ridiculous. Includes lists by artist name, collection based on themes, and even vanity albums by self-published divas. The fashion, the makeup, the styles, the taste both good and bad... prepare to go down a rabbit hole of 20th century nostalgia. (more…)

NASA issued a public $30,000 bounty "for fecal, urine, and menstrual management systems to be used in the crew’s launch and entry suits over a continuous duration of up to 144 hours." From the competition brief:Current space suits are worn for launch and entry activities and in-space activities to protect the crew from any unforeseen circumstances that the space environment can cause. A crew member could find themselves in this suit for up to 10 hours at a time nominally for launch or landing, or up to 6 days if something catastrophic happens while in space.The old standby solution consisted of diapers, in case astronauts needed to relieve themselves. However, the diaper is only a very temporary solution, and doesn’t provide a healthy/protective option longer than one day.What's needed is a system inside a space suit that collects human waste for up to 144 hours and routes it away from the body, without the use of hands. The system has to operate in the conditions of space - where solids, fluids, and gases float around in microgravity (what most of us think of as "zero gravity") and don't necessarily mix or act the way they would on earth. This system will help keep astronauts alive and healthy over 6 days, or 144 hrs.Space Poop Challenge (HeroX)

Wonderful work from two local businesses in Nixa, Missouri. (via /r/funny)And while we're at it, here's a fine selection of other creative billboards.

It is obviously unfair to dismiss the entire contents of a book for a single tin-eared statement, but the clunker that comes near the end of The Earth and I by Gaia-theory originator James Lovelock is a doozy. The inexplicable passage follows a dozen essays by journalists, a Nobel Prize winner, and several Ivy League professors, who make a pretty good case for both the insignificance of human beings in the universe and their unique ability to end life as we know it here on Planet Earth. In an attempt, then, to give his shell-shocked readers a sliver of hope by celebrating the success of the Montreal Protocol, which banned chlorofluorocarbons in 1989, Lovelock crows about how these ozone-destroying compounds were replaced by hydrofluorocarbons, which, he writes, “are far less harmful to the planetary environment.” Somewhere between the time Lovelock wrote those words and the publication of his book, hydrofluorocarbons were added to the Montreal Protocol’s list of banned substances – eliminating “less harmful” hydrofluorocarbons is expected to keep our warming planet’s temperature from rising by a full half-degree Celsius. The inability of even an authority like Lovelock to keep pace with current events points out how quickly both the science and politics of climate change are a changing. In this light, understanding the holistic view of the planet’s processes – from the weather above us to the meaning of the geological history below our feet – has never been more important. The Earth and I delivers on these topics and more, while Jack Hudson’s engaging illustrations lure us in and invite the eye to linger. Many readers may well be tempted to do just that, but they shouldn’t – at last report, Greenland and Antarctica were melting at alarming fast and irreversible rates. The Earth and I by James Lovelock (editor) and Jack Hudson (illustrator)Taschen2016, 168 pages, 8.5 x 10.9 x 0.8 inches (hardcover)$23 Buy a copy on Amazon

https://youtu.be/nQZRA7wft1IThe lawyers of Hutson and Harris wrote and performed a song that explains how eating or throwing away your pot in front of a cop turns a misdemeanor possession charge into a felony offense of evidence tampering.

Xeni and Mark got me addicted to fermenting vegetables. These fermentation locks make fermenting a variety of things at once simple.Using home-brew style fermentation locks with my wide mouth Bell jars is a pain, I constantly knock the tall bubble chambers off the bungs in my jar's lid. These simple, easy to clean airlocks sit flat on top of the jar and work without added water. Just screw them on and away you go.Easy Fermenter Wide Mouth Lid Kit 3 Lids, Extractor Pump & Recipe eBook, via Amazon

I just bought another Amazon Dash Button for my growing collection of wireless one-push product ordering buttons. (This time, I got the button for Amazon Basic Batteries.) Dash Buttons are usually $5, but you can get one for $1 if you use the promo code CYBERDASH. You'll also get a $5 Amazon credit after your first press.

Mark Wilson of Fast Company cooked a piece of salmon in a $1,500 toaster over called June, which has a built-in camera, temperature probe, Wi-Fi, and artificial intelligence. He says the the oven isn't very good.[June] required nearly $30 million in venture capital to create. It was the brainchild of the engineer who brought us the iPhone’s camera and Ammunition, the design firm that gave us Beats headphones....But the June's fussy interface is archetypal Silicon Valley solutionism. Most kitchen appliances are literally one button from their intended function. When you twist the knob of your stove, it fires up. Hit "pulse" on a food processor and it chops. The objects are simple, because the knowledge to use them correctly lives in the user. If you get the oven temperature wrong, or the blend speed off, you simply turn it off and try again. The June attempts to eliminate what you have to know, by adding prompts and options and UI feedback. Slide in a piece of bread to make toast. Would you like your toast extra light, light, medium, or dark? Then you get an instruction: "Toast bread on middle rack." But where there once was just an on button, you now get a blur of uncertainty: How much am I in control? How much can I expect from the oven? I once sat watching the screen for two minutes, confused as to why my toast wasn’t being made. Little did I realize, there’s a checkmark I had to press—the computer equivalent of "Are you sure you want to delete these photos?" — before browning some bread.

If you search for “Microsoft Excel” in Apple's App Store, the top result is a $30 “Office Bundle," advertised as a way to "create Word, Excel and PowerPoint Documents." In reality, it's just a bunch of templates for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but that's not made clear in the description. The $30 purchase price is split between the publisher (2/3) and Apple (1/3). 'It turns out that the App Store is filled with scam apps like this.From How-To Geek:Let’s be blunt: these customers were ripped off, and Apple pocketed $10 each. And you’ll only see these comments if you scroll past the two five star reviews that mention the word “app” numerous times. Both of those reviews, by the way, were left by accounts that haven’t reviewed any other apps in the Store.Search for other Office applications and you’ll find more template bundles, disguised as official applications to varying degrees.There are also several $20+ applications that put Microsoft’s free online version of Office into a dedicated browser. Then there are the actual “apps” capable of opening and editing Office files, many of which use terms like “Microsoft Word” in their names. They appear to be slightly modified versions of open source applications, but we’re not about to buy them to find out.

Crowd Supply (previously) is an extremely effective platform for funding open source hardware development, boasting twice the success-rate of Kickstarter and Indiegogo; it is also the birthplace of the proclamation of user rights, an outstanding document that lays out the rights of users to explore their hardware, use it independent of any subscription, use it with any other service or hardware, use it indefinitely without fear of remote kill-switching, to transfer it to others, to freely discuss it, to use it privately, and to be informed of security issues. (more…)

Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Ding dong! The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead. Most news articles say the cause of death was simple: the election of Donald Trump. But they've only got a tiny part of the story. Now more than ever, it's critical we share the real story: creative and strategic grassroots organizing can take on concentrated wealth and power and win. I've got an op-ed in The Guardian today with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and actress Evangeline Lilly (Lost, The Hobbit, etc) Check it out and please share!" (more…)

Co-starring the digital resurrection of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin?

The OECD's 2011-2015, 33 country, 215,942-person study of computer skills paints a deceptively grim picture of the average level of computer proficiency around the world -- deceptive because it excludes over-65s, who research shows to be, on average, less proficient than the 16-65 cohort sampled. (more…)

The Trump election gave real legitimacy to Europe's fascist parties, including France's Marine Le Pen of the National Front; and in the absence of real, left-win alternatives for populist discontent, the only real opposition to these authoritarians is coming from the hard right parties, which are swinging even further to the right to try to gain back some of their supporters. (more…)

In order to get permission to add an extra 20 floors to Trump Tower's plan, Donald Trump had to promise to build public amenities, "including access to restrooms, an atrium, and two upper-level gardens." (more…)

Ryan Shapiro, the punk Freedom of Information Access ninja, is crowdfunding a warchest to fund his inevitable lawsuits against the Trump government when he subjects it to the same relentless bombardment of transparency requests he visited upon the Obama administration. (more…)

With the passage of the Snoopers Charter earlier this month, the UK has become the most-surveilled "democratic" state in the world, where service providers are required to retain at least a year's worth of their customers' browsing history and make it searchable, without a warrant, to a variety of agencies -- and no records are kept of these searches, making it virtually impossible to detect petty vendetta-settling, stalking, or systemic abuses (including selling access to criminals, foreign governments, and institutionalised racism). (more…)

Fastbees.net posted video of a large fishing spider hunting bees. As long as it doesn't move too quickly, it can grab the relatively small insects and sneak off with them. But when it gets skittish: game over. [via]

The trippy and magical world of chemistry is beautifully brought to life in Chemical Poetry, a macrophotographic contemplation of chemistry in extreme closeup. (more…)

Adam Geitgey offers an alternative take on Apple's new MacBook Pros, which were poorly-received when announced two weeks ago. Geitgey argues that, thanks to the finally-maturing USB-C ecosystem (and there being multiple USB-C ports), it's a miniature interoperative power-toy that hackers will love. For example, you can charge it with a drugstore power adapter: no more $80 bricks to lug around.Universal sharing of accessories between devices is a hacker’s dream. It’s the exact opposite opposite of vendor lock-in. You can just plug anything into anything and it (mostly) works. ...If you get any of the new USB-C compatible monitors (pretty much every vendor has at least one now), you only need to plug one single cable into your MBP: You can then plug all your other devices into your monitor and everything flows over one USB-C to your laptop — power, video, data and even sound. Your monitor is now your docking station and breakout box!...I/O-wise, the new MacBook Pro is possibly the most open device Apple has ever built. There is literally not a single proprietary port on it. You get four universal high-speed ports that can each draw or supply power, send and receive data and transfer video and audio. It’s really pretty neat.(Odd to think, though, that none of the clever mobile tricks he lists will work with iPhones, beacause iPhones don't use USB-C.) I finally checked out the new MacBook Pros in person over the weekend. The 13" model with a function row is an almost-perfect laptop; if you don't need a cutting-edge mobile workstation, it has a lot of juice for such a tiny machine. Did anyone else notice that, at 3 pounds, it's same weight as the original MacBook Air? After all the negative reviews I was ready to hate it, but I loved it.The Touch Bar strikes me as a flashy gimmick, like something Sony would have put on a fancy Vaio before it quit the business. I also checked out the Surface Book; gorgeous, but the need to be a "tablet too" means it comes with the limitations and subtle look-and-feel oddities of the class. If you're wanting a slim Windows/Ubuntu ultra-portable you can really spec out, the Dell XPS series is where it's at—especially the Signature Editions that Microsoft sells, which have faster CPU options.

Lip-reading algorithms have all sorts of real-world applications, and LipNet shows great promise in machine-learning lipreading of constructed sentences from the GRID sentence corpus. (more…)

Cold is easier to deal with than the raging heat of Venus. The Moon and Mars are bathed in dangerous radiation. This means Titan is humanity's best existential insurance policy. Charles Wohlforth and Amanda Hendrix, authors of Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets, explain:It’s cold on Titan, at -180°C (-291°F), but thanks to its thick atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits—just warm clothing and respirators. Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested on the surface, and could consist of domes inflated by warm oxygen and nitrogen. The ease of construction would allow huge indoor spaces.Titanians (as we call them) wouldn’t have to spend all their time inside. The recreational opportunities on Titan are unique. For example, you could fly. The weak gravity—similar to the Moon’s—combined with the thick atmosphere would allow individuals to aviate with wings on their backs. If the wings fall off, no worry, landing will be easy. Terminal velocity on Titan is a tenth that found on the Earth.How will we get there? Currently, we can’t. Oh well. Doom it is, then!

As George W Bush taught us: "fool me twice, we don't get fooled again." (more…)

In my head the lyrics are as sung by Bill Murray.

Unicorn Riot is a media collective that formed in response to the lack of media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tar Sands Blockade; their news comes direct from the front lines of some of the most significant and under-reported conflicts in the world, in the form of unedited livestreams from the conflict zone, and edited highlight reels after the fact. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXuL3io7pQwJoe Corre -- founder of the Agent Provocateur lingerie stores; son of Sex Pistols impressario Malcolm McLaren and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood-- torched £5m worth of punk tat in the middle of the Thames, topped with effigies of Tories including Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron. (more…)

(via Papasan/BBS)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOmyuweolqYThe Auralnauts' wildly successful Star Wars remixes have gone from strength to strength, combining bad lip reading, South Park-ish raunchy humor, and massive dance-parties accompanied by some seriously rockin' tunes. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9t-slLl30EYoda's never been so funky as he is in this amazing 4-minute music video for "SEAGULLS! (Stop It Now)," a masterpiece from the Bad Lip Reading project, whose virtuosity is so great that "lip reading" a puppet doesn't even seem like a cheat. (via Waxy)

You must face the fact that it’s time to start your holiday shopping. Some folks dawdle, then run out on Christmas Eve to buy buy buy.But if you wish to remain firmly seated on your derriere and shop from the comfort of your home, here’s something very 1970s for you: a bracelet using images captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope that twinkle in a starry way.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEzQKsdRrEIt charges via a USB plug-in (included) and if your significant other is a little spacey (pardon the pun) he or she might find this to be a lot of fun.Via Quint at Ain’t It Cool News.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRB1mpEFeCQ&feature=youtu.be(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Pauline Oliveros, the avant-garde composer and accordionist who developed the influential experimental musical theories of "deep listening" and "sonic awareness," has died. She was 84 years old. Oliveros was a collaborator of minimalist and electronic music pioneers Terry Riley and Morton Subtonick and beloved director of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s after its move to Mills College.“In hearing, the ears take in all the sound waves and particles and deliver them to the audio cortex where the listening takes place," Oliveros once said. "We cannot turn off our ears–the ears are always taking in sound information–but we can turn off our listening. I feel that listening is the basis of creativity and culture. How you’re listening, is how you develop a culture and how a community of people listens, is what creates their culture.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJxaD3ofOuohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wrNL063Gyshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0at5DrXpJj8

Then put the cap back on and give it a shake. Voila! Chances are there are enough creamdregs in the carton to properly dairify your coffee; you'll learn to calibrate the penultimate coffee to leave the correct amount in, as your mastery of this technique progresses.

Apparently, Black Friday isn't just a one day affair anymore. Huge discounts are popping up all weekend long, and these 8 are some of the coolest deals we've found. If you don't find anything you like, get 15% off any item in the Boing Boing Store (excluding these special price drops below). Just enter promo code BLACKFRIDAY15 at checkout to save. The code is good until Saturday at midnight! Some exclusions apply.#1 Jamstik Wireless Smart GuitarThe Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar is a MIDI guitar controller, perfect for gifting the guitar player in your life. It performs like a normal guitar, but also digitally connects with Apple music apps and software, for a truly 21st century music experience. The Jamstik is normally on sale for $249.99, but today only you can get it for $149.99.#2 SainSonic Wireless HD Stereo EarphonesThese SainSonic Wireless HD Stereo Earphones deliver quality sound quality without any wires or cords. They come equipped with advanced Bluetooth 4.1 technology, so you can pair them with any Bluetooth-enabled device, and are also resistant to sweat and rain during workouts. The SainSonic Wireless HD Stereo Earphones are usually on sale for $25.99, but today only, you’ll get them for $15.99.#3 Lytro Illum Camera BundleThe Lytro Illum Camera is one of the first cameras to capture the entire light field. That means you can take “living” pictures that you can later go back and adjust. Today, you can get the camera, the quick-adjust shoulder/neck strap, the Global Lytro quick charger with additional power cords for Europe, UK, and Asia, and the Lytro Illum 72mm neutral density ND8 filter with an extra big discount. Instead of the usual $459.99, you can get the entire bundle for just $299.99, today only.#4 Martian Notifier SmartwatchThe Martian Notifier Smartwatch was named a Top 4 Best Smartwatch of 2014 by Consumer Reports, and for good reason. From receiving timely app notifications to being able to snap pictures with your phone camera remotely, this watch is extremely useful (and doesn't cost a fortune). For today only, the Martian Notifier Smartwatch is on special sale, from its usual deal of $39.99 down to $29.99.#5 Bamboo Fiber Double Brushed Sheets: 6-Piece SetMade of a unique mixture of bamboo fiber and microfiber yarns, these Bamboo Fiber Double Brushed Sheets are extremely comfortable and durable. One pack includes 1 flat sheet, 1 fitted sheet, and four pillowcases. Today only, the Bamboo Fiber Double Brushed Sheets are marked down from their usual sale price of $39.99 to just $32.98.#6 6.5-Ft Apple MFi-Certified Lightning Cable: 3-PackThis pack of three Apple MFi-Certified Lightning Cables delivers three cables for less than the price of one. Keep one at home, one in your car, and give one as an incredibly practical stocking stuffer. They are MFi-certified too, meaning they won't fry your Apple products. Today only, these cables are on sale from their usual deal price of $32, to just $21.99.#7 Steamcrate Subscriptions: 3 Month PlanFor one low subscription price, Steamcrate sends you 10 random games each month that are yours to keep forever. Each of the games is guaranteed to range in value from $40 to $700 per crate, and you’ll get popular titles like Mortal Kombat X, Bioshock Infinite, and Batman Arkham Origins. For today only, the regular deal price for the 3 month subscription is being lowered from $28.99 to $19.99.#8 Acesori 5 Piece Smartphone Camera Lens KitThis multifunctional 3-in-1 lens kit will make your smartphone’s camera incredibly versatile. Included are fish eye, wide angle, and macro lenses that all attach to the magnetic ring around your phone’s camera. Today only, the Acesori 5 Piece Smartphone Camera Lens Kit is on sale from the regular deal price of $14.99 to $9.99.

Reason Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward received a commemorative Johnson-Weld 2016 Libertarian Party Presidential Campaign plate in the mail.https://twitter.com/kmanguward/status/801153109393285120Yoni Mazuz wonders:https://twitter.com/yonatron/status/802193778182332416The Libertarian moment of enlightenment is when you realize it's a giant ashtray.

Fidel Castro, the former president of Cuba and leader of the Caribbean nation's Communist revolution, has died, state TV announced tonight. He was 90. His brother Raúl Castro, who is the current President of Cuba, announced Fidel's death on state television tonight. "The historical leader of the Cuban Revolution died on the night of Friday, November 25, at 22:29 hrs., and his remains will be cremated, in accordance with his will," said the Cuban president.BBC:Fidel Castro ruled Cuba as a one-party state for almost half a century before handing over the powers to his brother Raul in 2008.His supporters praised him as a man who had given Cuba back to the people. But his opponents accused him of brutally suppressing opposition.[caption id="attachment_496098" align="alignnone" width="2000"] A woman carries a portrait of Cuba's former president Fidel Castro during a May Day rally in Istanbul, Turkey, May 1, 2016. REUTERS[/caption]The funeral details for Fidel will be announced in the coming hours, said Raúl. Fidel was last seen on November 15, when President Tran Dai Quang of Vietnam visited the longtime Cuban leader's residence.[El País]

When the film The Babadook came out in 2014 I watched it, lights out, dark room, and felt the lick of terror roll up the back of my neck. It’s a remarkable accomplishment for both the director, Jennifer Kent, and the leading actress, Essie Davis, neither of whom I’d heard of before. The monster is Mister Babadook, and he comes to life when the single mother in the film reads a large pop-up book, whose artwork would not be out of place in a German Expressionist film like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, to her son. The boy pulls it off his shelf and asks her to read it. She asks him where he got it, and he replies, “On the shelf.” And then Mr. Babadook shows up and we get some classic horror cinema at its finest.Much like everyone’s first thought upon seeing the Evil Dead—I want that book!—or Hellraiser—I want one of those boxes!—lots of us thought “I want that Babadook book!” The book is central to the film’s plot and in a Rolling Stone article director Kent explains the unique role the book played in the creation of the film:“… illustrator Alex Juhasz’s designs for Mister Babadook, the sinister pop-up book that plants the first seed in the young boy’s imagination, also played a major role in the look of the film: Rather than design the movie and commission a prop to match, Kent modeled the film on the sharp edges and small imperfections of Juhasz’s work. ‘The book felt handmade and raw, and that’s how I wanted the energy of the film to feel,’ she says. ‘We created that world as much as possible first, and the production design then had to mirror that’.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKa5Eeb9QdAThe director and the book’s designer decided to try a crowd-funded experiment to see if people just thought they wanted it, or if they really wanted it. I purchased my copy on November 24, 2014, for $80—the selling price during the crowd-funded campaign. The director wrote to the purchasers of the first 2,000 books:“To all our incredible fans (and especially to you, the first 2000 owners of our special edition Mister Babadook book …)“Thank you for being such solid supporters of this book and of the film. We are thrilled that The Babadook has received so much love and support from around the world. I never thought when we were shooting this film that so many people would see it, let alone give us the opportunity to put this special book into print. This is all happening because of the support from each and every one of you, and I will never forget that.“I have written some more story pages for this special edition, and I’m going to be working with Alex Juhasz (our brilliant illustrator) over the coming months to create some very beautiful pop ups to go with that extra bit of Babadook story. You will be owning pages not even seen in the film. It is special for Alex and I to now be able to create this ‘stand alone book,’ and I believe it is going to be a very special book to own.“In order to show my appreciation for your support, I have made a decision to sign each and every book that is sold in our campaign. So not only will your copies be numbered, they will also be signed. Thanks again to you all.”And then they went to work.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe3RU4lsF90In an article in The Creators Project we learn more about what was required to create a product from a film prop:“Since its premiere at Sundance in January 2014, the film’s fans quickly rallied for the production of the pop-up book seen on screen. ‘We didn’t know how the film would do,’ says illustrator Alexander Juhasz. ‘So when I made the book for the film, we were joking about how if it became a big hit, people might want the book in their home.’ … requests to get the book made—bordering on demands—were heard loud and clear. …“Once it came time to prepare the limited edition book for production, the team brought on paper engineer Simon Arizpe. Juhasz had to recreate all of the original artwork and reverse engineer much of what was made for the film. ‘We had to rethink a lot of stuff for the design and format to work. In the film, the book ends abruptly, so we had to add some content. But we wanted to keep the integrity of the original—all of images that are in the movie are in the book, except maybe for one, I think,’ explains Juhasz. Arizpe adds: ‘Between the three of us, we figured out what we wanted each page to do. Alex gave me his art and I would mess around with it to make it move.’ Once the prototype was completed, it was sent off to the printing house, where the paper is die cut, then folded and glued by hand.”The print run was just 6,000 copies (only the first 2,000 are numbered and signed) and they sold quickly. It took two years for the purchasers to receive the book—it just arrived at the end of this October. It’s hard to imagine anyone not being thrilled with the enormous pop-up book that not only exactly replicates the main prop in the film, but goes further with the story.The easiest place for you to obtain Mister Babadook is on eBay, where copies are selling for between $300 and $600. You might get lucky and snag an unsigned copy for just over $200 if you keep your eye on things. If your means are more modest, and you want to include watching the film in your purchase, you can buy it at amazon.com in a deluxe edition Blu-ray with a single pop-up inside the front cover.Whatever your choice, I would strongly suggest that you do not read the book aloud. If you foolishly ignore my advice, don’t look up at the ceiling, because Mister Babadook is keeping his eye on you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7Wn5UemHUYou’re sitting in a movie theater in the 1920s. Some nutsy cartoon is playing before the main feature and the characters are chasing one another around … what’s that wild music you hear? It came from a Fotoplayer. Roll tape …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z360xuG6UCY

Fox News reports that Donald Trump's still thinking of offering Mitt Romney the job of Secretary of State. The catch: Trump wants a public apology.A transition official told Fox’s Ed Henry that some in Trump’s inner circle want the former Massachusetts governor to apologize in order to be seriously considered for the secretary of State.Trump is reportedly considering whether to pick Romney or former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the coveted cabinet position.Giuliani is the preferred choice of Trump’s loyalists and grassroots supporters, while Romney is a favorite of establishment conservatives.Here's Romney, before lining up behind the new power: “Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. He gets a free trip to the White House and all we get is this lousy hat ... There is a dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War, while at the same time, John McCain — who he has mocked — was imprisoned and tortured.”

Even though disgraced Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf has left the building, his most outrageous legal theories live on: on Wednesday, the company filed a motion in a federal court in Utah seeking dismissal of a class action suit by the customers it defrauded -- the bank argues that since customers sign a binding arbitration "agreement" when they open new accounts, that the customers whose signatures were forged on fraudulent new accounts should be subject to this agreement and denied a day in court. (more…)

Before the deregulation bonanza of the 1980s, corporations were expected to use debt and the public markets as the capital of last resort: they would pay "normal" dividends, then use the left over money to increase pay and fund expansion; but after the birth of "shareholder management," companies have acted like homeowners before the financial crisis: borrowing heavily to pay investors, at the expense of expansion and wages -- but unlike homeowners, corporate management gets to duck the bill when it comes due. (more…)

Even though the majority of American workers would like to join a union, America's anemic labor laws scare them away from it -- after all, if you're fired for attempting to unionize, all your boss owes you is back pay, a sum so trifling that business groups call it a "hunting license." (more…)

Last June, a group of business-friendly right-wing politicians staged a legal coup and had president Dilma Rousseff removed, putting convicted fraudster Michel Temer in her office, which he used as an auction-block from which to sell off his country's crown jewels at knock-down prices to his pals, while slashing public services. (more…)

"Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mall for the inauguration," said Anthony Scaramucci, a member of president-elect Donald Trump's transition team."There is no truth in this at all," Elton John's spokeswoman told BBC News.