In the 18th century, William Blackstone wrote the seminal "Commentaries on the Laws of England," which contained one of the foundational definitions of property: "that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe." (more…)

Devo founder (and vintner) Gerald Casale sent us a photo of this counterfeit "Dump on Trump" quarter passed off to his wife at a Los Angeles grocery store yesterday:Yesterday my wife paid cash for some groceries and, as both of us always do when we have pocket change, put the change in a bowl in our kitchen. Later she noticed that one of the quarters in the bowl showed Trump’s profile with a slogan “Take a Dump On Trump”. We’re not sure but she thinks she must have received it when she bought groceries at our neighborhood Whole Foods in Santa Monica. If you saw this coin in reality there’s no way you think it’s not real until you notice Trump’s head in place of George Washington. And here's a news report about a woman in Amarillo, Texas who also was lucky enough to receive a Dump Trump Quarter!(Thanks to Jeff Winner of the wonderful Raymond Scott Archives for the tip.)

https://youtu.be/V8PFyZM2II4Donald Bell, Make:'s former Projects Editor and now a freelance writer for Autodesk, has recently launched a weekly YouTube show, called Maker Update. Every Wednesday morning, Donald presents a recap of his online explorations in making and the maker movement. He covers promising new tools and technologies, some of his favorite projects from sites like Instructables, Thingiverse, and Make:, and he includes a calendar of upcoming Maker Faires from around the world.As someone who also covers this same territory, I've been surprised at how many cool things Donald has introduced me to. The shows always have a nice mix, all delivered by a talking head Donald in a very straight-forward, likeable, and lighthearted manner. He's only 8 episodes in, but I've already become a big fan and now count Maker Update as part of my weekly must-see maker TV.

I was so happy to learn of Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen: A Collector's treasury of America's great recipes that I pulled over to the side of the road to order a copy. One of my favorite podcasts, Stuff You Missed in History Class, had a chat with Victoria Price about her father, the famed Vincent Price. The entire podcast is wonderful. They briefly mention the Price's A Treasury of Great Recipes, which is one of my favorite cookbooks. At the end of that segment Victoria says something along the lines of, "...and they just re-issued the second book." I slammed on the brakes! I pulled over to the shoulder, shook my head in shock and then clearly thought: "Re-issue?" Within moments a hardcover copy of the 1969 edition, with its dust jacket was on the way. I could have had the re-issue for $5 less. The Price's earlier Treasury is a pleasure to just sit and read! In addition to amazingly delicious, and fairly easy, recipes from the greatest restaurants on earth, it is a cookbook that shares an adventure. You get to see the world's restaurants and meet the people that make them great with Vincent Price! I couldn't wait!Come into the Kitchen offers up Mary and Vincent's favorite American foods, by historic period in time. Some of the earlier recipes take some cooking tools we don't much use any longer, and probably were not a whole lot easier to find in 1969, but you certainly get a feel for how regionality and availability of foodstuffs has changed over the several hundred years this catalogs. Covering the 'Early American' through the 'Modern' period, with stops in the 'Young Republic,' 'Antebellum,' 'Westward Empire' and 'Victorian America,' the Price's share a huge number of dishes I'd like to try, and a few I would not.Chicken Pudding, an 'Early America' favorite, is one I'm planning to try soon. Just as soon as I can locate a chicken pudding dish. The recipe throws this off like I should have a few around. Chicken pudding seems to be an early pot pie. Yorkshire pudding tops it. Fishballs à la Mrs. Benjamin Harrison can be found in the 'Victorian America' section and sound quite delicious. A deep-fried cod and potato mash-up. Perhaps I'll make this for the kid. She is on a no spicy food kick and this is pretty much cod, potato, bacon and butter. While not a recipe section, one that I found super interesting is at the back of the book: the Price's offer a primer on wine drinking. Everything from opening wine, to looking at wine, drinking wine and then... directions for making wine. Yep, home-brew.I really love the art work. This book alternates between pictures of American kitchens in history, a few photographs of the dishes themselves, and a lot of really cute illustrations by Charles M. Wysocki. I thought our readers might enjoy the 1969 depiction of a computer from the Modern Age of recipes. I'm quite fond of the motorcyclist. If you have, and love, the Price's Treasury of Great Recipes, you will certainly want this cook book. If you don't want to take a chance on the used book vendors judge of quality, the re-issue is just great and you may save a few bucks.Come Into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969 edition) via AmazonMary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book reissue via Amazon

My friend Dave Rosser, the NOLA-based guitarist for the Afghan Whigs (and the Gutter Twins, and Mark Lanegan, etc.), was just diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer. Dave is a brilliant musician, a true gentleman, and a total laugh riot. Now he has a long, hard road ahead of him and the medical expenses he faces are absolutely overwhelming. There's a GoFundMe campaign to help Dave with those bills and the Afghan Whigs have just announced two very special benefit performances to support their much-loved bandmate. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Afghan Whigs's dark soul-rock masterpiece Black Love, they will play the album in its entirety in New Orleans on December 10 and Los Angeles on December 14. Tickets go on sale tomorrow (Friday 11/3).“Dave Rosser has been my close friend and bandmate for over a decade now,” Afghan Whigs singer Greg Dulli commented. “By doing these shows for him we hope to ease any financial stress he may face as he pursues treatment to combat his illness. 100% of the proceeds from these shows will go to his medical care. I’m hopeful that folks will come out and show their support for Dave who will be performing with us.”The New Orleans show will take place at The Civic Theatre on Saturday December 10th and feature performances from: The Afghan Whigs, Mark Lanegan, Ani DiFranco, Morning 40 Federation, King James & The Special Men, and C.C. Adcock & The Lafayette Marquis along with special guests.The Los Angeles show will take place on December 14th at The Teragram Ballroom featuring sets from: The Afghan Whigs, Mark Lanegan, Moby and Carina Round.Tickets for both shows will go on sale this Friday. If you can't attend one of the performances, please consider contributing to Dave Rosser's medical fund. It's a better musical world with Dave Rosser in it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq1LaGP0WWY

Drone filmmaking pioneer (and Boing Boing Video contributor!) Eddie Codel shares word on his Flying Robot International Film Festival and a fun day of workshops and demos on aerial imagery!Event #1The Flying Robot international Film Festival returns to San Francisco's Roxie Theater on November 17th for the world premiere screening of the 2016 FRiFF drone shorts program. Join us for a delightful evening of the planet's most incredible short drone films. FRiFF received 180 submissions from over 40 countries across 8 categories this year.A couple dozen of the best as selected by the FRiFF jury will be shown. The world premiere screening will be followed by a short awards ceremony honoring the best selections in each category, hosted by the Internet's Justin Hall.Details and tickets can be found on the Flying Robot site here.Event #2Please join us in San Francisco on November 19th from 11am-7pm for the first ever Flying Robot Aerial Imagery Day, part of the 2016 Flying Robot international Film Festival. The day will be chock-full of presentations, demos and workshops focused on various aspects of drone-based aerial imagery. Whether you're brand new to aerial photography or you're a master flying pixel tamer, there's something here for everyone. Subject areas include aerial photography, cinematography, 3d mapping/photogrammetry, color grading, 360 & panoramic aerial photography, FPV systems, live streaming and drone building 101... to name a few.This event will be a lightly structured day of fun and learning. We will provide a stage for presentations, an enclosed drone cage for demos and breakout areas for workshops. If you have an aerial imagery project or presentation you would like to share, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you!Details here.

Remember the scene in Back to the Future Part II where Marty visits the Biff Tannen Museum and watches Biff on the screen? Here are the parts that were left on the cutting room floor. Does Biff remind you of Trump? Duh, says Bob Gale, writer of Back to the Future II. From a 2015 Daily Beast article:“We thought about it when we made the movie! Are you kidding?” he says. “You watch Part II again and there’s a scene where Marty confronts Biff in his office and there’s a huge portrait of Biff on the wall behind Biff, and there’s one moment where Biff kind of stands up and he takes exactly the same pose as the portrait? Yeah.”Of course, in the movie, Biff uses the profits from his 27-story casino (the Trump Plaza Hotel, completed in 1984, is 37 floors, by the way) to help shake up the Republican Party, before eventually assuming political power himself, helping transform Hill Valley, California, into a lawless, dystopian wasteland, where hooliganism reigns, dissent is quashed, and wherein Biff encourages every citizen to call him “America’s greatest living folk hero.”“Yeah,” says Gale. “That’s what we were thinking about.”(via /r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!)

In September 2015, President Obama raised the ceiling of refugees, many of them Syrian, who would be welcomed to the United States in the coming year from 70,000 to 85,000. While a wonderful humanitarian move, it also posed huge problems for the already-overwhelmed, byzantine systems in place to process refugee applications admissions. That's when the White House's crack tech team, the United States Digital Service, stepped in to help. The US Digital Service was born out of the disaster of Healthcare.gov, when the White House called in top-notch geeks from Silicon Valley and elsewhere to fix the disastrous Obamacare website. This year, they focused on how to get more refugees through the door. For a Webby Awards exclusive feature, I commissioned the talented journalist Lauren Smiley to tell the story of the US Digital Service and their sprint to bring in 85,000 refugees. From Lauren's feature:When the photo of a Syrian toddler washed up on a Turkey beach appeared in his newsfeed, Jason Wu was getting restless. It was September of last year, and he’d just left his job as a product manager at Facebook’s Silicon Valley HQ—in some ways, exactly the kind of job he’d wanted back as a UC Berkeley computer science student. But at 29, having been ensconced in cush startup culture of T-shirt swag and free meals surrounding the challenging technical work, he was starting to mull a new question: “To what end?” Considering the options, he didn’t want to join one of the many mobile app companies proliferating in the valley that solved the problems of the same wealthy young people who make them. “I wanted something that was pretty different than what was being offered over there.”He says “over there,” because he’s sitting in a conference room in Washington, D.C., where he works at the startup created by the White House: the United States Digital Service. Once Wu applied and was accepted, he signed up for its refugee project. “If I were one more person at Uber, how much of an impact would I make?” Wu says. “Versus one more person on a refugee program?”"HOW A SMALL TROOP OF TECHIES LED THE U.S. SYRIAN REFUGEE SURGE" (Webbys)(Image above from Brandon Stanton's incredible Humans of New York photos of Syrian refugees)

This year has seen some interesting movement in the world of hoverbikes, hovering platforms that can support a standing human, and drone prototypes large enough to carry people. EUKA has an overview of 8 noteworthy examples. (more…)

Unsatisfying, by Parallel Studio, is about "unsatisfying situations: the frustrating, annoying, disappointing little things of everyday life, that are so painful to live or even to watch." [hats tipped: Bert Froeba and @Outstarwalker]Join the Unsatisfying Challenge Here : unsatisfying.tv/Direction Animation and illustration : Parallel StudioSound Design : Zelig SoundMusic : Samuel BarberSpecial Thanks to : Hugo Leick

That kitchen drawer full of plastic takeout utensils is about to get some new company thanks to The Chork, a chopstick-fork combo making a major fast-food rollout on November 10. (more…)

The grand prize winner of Japan's 2016 Good Design Award went to a world map, designed by Tokyo-based architect and artist Hajime Narukawa.From Spoon & Tamago:Narukawa developed a map projection method called AuthaGraph (and founded a company of the same name in 2009) which aims to create maps that represent all land masses and seas as accurately as possible. Narukawa points out that in the past, his map probably wasn’t as relevant. A large bulk of the 20th century was dominated by an emphasis on East and West relations. But with issues like climate change, melting glaciers in Greenland and territorial sea claims, it’s time we establish a new view of the world: one that equally perceives all interests of our planet.

People involved in the £4B UK curry industry overwhelmingly backed Brexit on the promise of future easing off of visa requirements for curry chefs from south Asia, hoping to reverse the current waves of curry restaurant closures driven by a lack of skilled chefs. (more…)

In 1993, Donald Trump won a lawsuit brought by his investors that alleged he had defrauded them by lying in a prospectus; his defense was that his "perfect prospectus" contained lies, but it also contained enough fine-print cautioning investors about the possibility of lies that it was their own fault that he cheated them. Incredibly, the judge (a pre-Supreme Court Samuel Alito!) bought this. (more…)

Memory foam pillows can supposedly transform the way you sleep, but they often cost over $100 a piece. With such a high price tag, I never thought to risk trying it out. But at just $49.99 for a set of two pillows (under $25 per pillow), I decided to give it a try. The Comfort Bamboo Memory Foam Pillows are made with all natural, multi-layer memory foam, which means they don't make me cough and sneeze all night. They're more dense and firm than your average pillow, and don't flatten in the night. This keeps your body in alignment as you sleep, and tossing and turning at bay. Memory foam has even been said to help prevent migraines and stiff neck problems. While I can't vouch for that, I found these pillow extremely comfortable and at that price, you can't find a better option. You can buy the Comfort Bamboo Memory Foam Pillows for 64% off, just $49.99, in the Boing Boing Store today.Also explore the Best-Sellers on our network right now:PythonPython Programming Bootcamp ($39) SmartwatchesMartian Notifier Smartwatch (76% off)Cord-CuttingGhost Indoor HDTV Antenna (57% off)Music + EntertainmentBrain.fm: 3-Year Subscription ($29)CodingLearn to Code 2016 Bundle (Pay What You Want)

The lawsuit to force the UK government to call a Parliamentary vote before triggering Article 50 (the first and irrevocable step to pulling the UK out of the EU) has prevailed at the High Court. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxeoQlaQWBMMr Volt created this "artifact from somewhere else," machining the housing (with wood veneer!) and programming an Arduino controller to allow him to make rotary dial calls with his giant metal brick, which looks to have the sturdiness of an original black Bell phone (whose logo is displayed at boot-time on the small LCD); it's also an FM radio! (via JWZ)

Last week, artist Michelle Pred celebrated the anniversary of the Patriot Act by dressing up as an old-timey Pan Am flight attendant (she wore her mother's old Pan Am hat!) and handing out "Official Air Travel Replacement Knives" to people waiting for their bags at SFO (she had 50 knives, but it took more than 50 tries to give them away, as more than half of the people she approached refused to engage with her). (more…)

3 NHS hospitals under the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust have been infected by "a virus" that administrators detected on Sunday; the hospitals are on limited operations and turning away patients until the hospitals can "isolate and destroy" the malware. (more…)

Attorneys representing a woman who sued Donald Trump, charging him with child rape, said earlier today the woman planned to speak publicly about the ongoing case Wednesday afternoon. At the time of the scheduled press conference, her lawyer canceled the event saying her client had received many threats. (more…)

On Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover zapped a globular, golf-ball-size object with a laser, and the signal it got back confirmed it was an iron-nickel meteorite fallen from the Red Planet's sky. (more…)

“Sassy Trump Disappointed With Alec Baldwin,” by Peter Serafinowicz. His voice, but they're “All Trump’s Words." More Sassy Trump. [caption id="attachment_475758" align="alignnone" width="1008"] Illo: Rob Beschizza[/caption]

President Obama made his first public comment on the recent FBI/Clinton email hijinks, just days before the election. (more…)

It took most of a week to sign all 2,800 "tip-in" sheets that are being bound into a special, limited-edition version of Walkaway, my first novel for adults since 2009, but it was worth it! You can pre-order one from the good fellows at Barnes and Nobel (hey, indie booksellers: there's some left over for you -- talk to your Macmillan rep!)

"Oh, no! Oh crap! They shot big boy in the ass!"As seen on r/ObscureMedia: "Raw footage of Jonathan Winters improvising during down time on a Big Boy commercial. Winters riffs on superstars, his early days, and his 8 months spent in a mental institution."(Thanks, UPSO!)

Possibly the greatest thing we've seen on the internet.This splendid little video was captured at a Halloween rodeo in Laramie, Wyoming on on October 28, 2016. (more…)

In Accessorize to a Crime: Real and Stealthy Attacks onState-of-the-Art Face Recognition, researchers from Carnegie-Mellon and UNC showed how they could fool industrial-strength facial recognition systems (including Alibaba's "smile to pay" transaction system) by printing wide, flat glasses frames with elements of other peoples' faces with "up to 100% success." (more…)

Jonah White made a fortune selling misshapen novelty teeth. He tells his story of how he did it in Mel Magazine:The guy with the Billy Bob Teeth, Rich Bailey, was in dentistry school at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. Within a week, he gave me a lab coat, snuck me into the dental lab and taught me how to make Billy Bob Teeth. Over the course of the next semester, I made about 6,000 pairs of them.We sold them at hundreds and hundreds of state fairs across the country — from Kentucky to Wisconsin to New York. Basically, we found that any outdoor family setting was conducive to good business and highly susceptible to our ruthless Billy Bob Teeth sales team. Our best single day performance was $17,000, but most of these events yielded at least $2,000 to $5,000 per day. Those were great times. Overall, four years after we started, we were earning $2 million a year in 1998. It helped, of course, that we got the deal to make Austin Powers’s teeth, and that later, Miley Cyrus started to wear them. We cut a licensing deal with her and split the profits.See also: Tour of a fake vomit factoryS.S. Adams invented over 700 practical jokes. Here's a great book about them

My favorite set top box company continues to evolve with the Roku Premier. I've written about the Roku a number of times. Every teevee in my house has one, I no longer pay for satellite and take all my video media streamed over it. Matched with Plex, Roku is unstoppable. The new line of Roku units are faster, higher resolution versions of the old. The UI is the same, the same apps are available, everything is just a lot faster. I replaced a Roku 3 with this Premier unit. The Premier is also 4k ready at 60 fps, although I have nothing that'll display that currently. Roku Premiere Streaming Media Player via Amazon

We've already got a wall, and fences, and drones. What we don't have, don't need and can't build is the make-believe wall Trump promises.[via]

Aztec was pretty impressive in 1982. I played the hell out of this. It was one of the few games my Atari 400/800 using friends were jealous of. The video above shows the game in agonizing load-from-floppy-speed. Also, please remember Sneakers.

U2 singer Bono is named among Glamour magazine's women of the year in recognition of his campaigning for womens' rights. The general reception runs the gamut from appalled dismay to despairing laughter. Bono said he was grateful, and that men "have to be involved in the solutions," etc. (more…)

Apple's iOS 10.2 update contains two emoji inspired by David Bowie's Aladdin Sane character. The two emoji are named "Male singer" and "Female singer." See the new slew of emojis at Emojipedia.

Courtesy of cartoonist Gemma Correll.

D’awww!

“That's POTUS!”

Tumblr user Earthsong9405 posted this gorgeous storyboard with the following message:For my Screen Design class, we had to take a fairytale and retell it in however we wanted in storyboard form. I chose the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Just as a heads-up, I’ve replaced the bears with Ursa Major/Ursa Minor, the constellation based on a bear.I could always tell the story myself, but I figured I should let the art do the talking and only answer questions if you’re curious about it. The only hint I’ll give is to pay attention to the faces of the characters.

I love this rosewood case for my iPhone 7 plus. I went with the compass design.I hate thick cases and kind of love the simplicity of the iPhone's design. My daughter gives me grief for the number of screen, and other, repairs I can inflict on a phone. We split the difference on this lovely rosewood and rubber case.The phone sits in a thin rubber cage that does most of the protecting, the wood back is adhered to the rubber, is both decorative and likely adds some additional buffer. There looks to be room in the case for a tempered glass screen protector, so I'm gonna add one soon.I couldn't be happier with this $8 case.FULLLIGHT TECH iPhone 7 Plus Case Unique Handmade Natural RoseWood Back Shell Cover Slim Bumper Protective Wooden Cases for Apple iPhone 7 Plus 5.5" via Amazon

The Learn to Code 2016 Bundle is an extremely cost-efficient way to learn to code online. This is how it works: you can pay anything you want to get two courses that introduce you to Git and AWS. If you beat the average price (currently $19.36), you'll get 9 courses with over 92 hours of instruction. The bundle of courses covers all of the major programming languages that top tier employers are looking for: including HTML5, Ruby, and Python. There are many different specialities you could have as a coder, and this bundle allows you to explore them and decide what you like best. Here are two of the included courses we recommend for any beginner coder:AngularJS - AngularJS helps developers become more efficient, more productive, and deliver rich client-side experiences with every line of code. It's a great skill to have on any coding resume.Python - Python is a fantastic beginner coding language as it's fairly simple to dive into. The versatile language is used for everything from web development to data analytics to game development. There are plenty of way to learn to code: from traditional college to coding bootcamps, but they can cost thousands of dollars. If you really want to learn to code on a budget, this is the best option out there. Click here to pay what you want and learn to code.Also explore the Best-Sellers on our network right now:SmartwatchesMartian Notifier Smartwatch (76% off)Music + EntertainmentBrain.fm: 3-Year Subscription ($29)Cord-CuttingGhost Indoor HDTV Antenna (57% off)PythonPython Programming Bootcamp ($39)

Some 370 economists have written a blistering, evidence-based criticism of Trump that scorches the GOP nominee for his role in promoting “magical thinking and conspiracy theories,” and generally ruining reality for everyone else who's stuck living in it. Eight Nobel laureates in economics co-signed the letter calling him a “dangerous, destructive choice” for the country. (more…)

None of the ongoing federal investigations into Russian cyber-hijinks this election season have found “any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government,” the New York Times reports, citing unnamed officials. Even the hacking of Democratic emails, say FBI and intel sources, is “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” (more…)

Here's Germia's video demonstrating the features of her amazing costume of Pharah from Overwatch.

Bill Dance works hard for his money.

Christine McMillan, 86, received an email from her Internet service provider to let her know that because she had illegally downloaded a copy of Metro 2033 she was now subject to a $5,000 fine. The email was sent via a private company called Canadian Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement. McMillan says she never heard of the game, in which survivors of a nuclear holocaust are tasked with murdering mutants.According to CBC, McMillan is "one of likely tens of thousands of Canadians who have received notices to pay up, whether they are guilty or not."At first, she thought it was a scam."They didn't tell me how much I owed, they only told me that if I didn't comply, I would be liable for a fine of up to $5,000 and I could pay immediately by entering my credit card number."McMillan called Cogeco, her internet service provider, and discovered the emails were perfectly legal under the federal government's Notice and Notice regulations introduced last year under the Copyright Modernization Act.The law requires internet providers to forward copyright infringement notices to customers suspected of illegally downloading content like video games and movies.

Michael Mann's Collateral has one of the simplest and most startling shootouts in movie history. Even though it's short and unvarnished—every bullet fired in a single stationary camera shot interrupted only to see Jamie Foxx's reaction—actor Tom Cruise gets every motion just right.In this video, Larry Vickers, a retired special forces veteran, carefully recreates the scene moment by moment, explaining the rationale behind each action. It's striking how much care Mann and Cruise took to get it right, given Hollywood's usual cartoon gunplay. [via]Here's the original for reference:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDqLOJy0O_A(I also like how Collateral was shot digitally just as the technology matured, giving it a weird, evocative look that's reminiscent of both VHS and 16mm, and now seems perfectly mid-2000s)

Anyone who has ever bought one little thing at a drug store only to walk out with a 12ft "receipt," will dig this one.

This video from 2011 is the perfect thing to cure that post-Halloween hangover.

You may have seen Katie Dippold's iconic Babadook-themed Halloween TBT floating around Twitter over the past few months:https://twitter.com/katiedippold/status/748582543583121408?lang=enWell two days ago, David Sanchez tweeted the perfect response:https://twitter.com/gotham146/status/792589168991997955You can read more about both tweets on BuzzFeed and New York Magazine.

Skunk Bear breaks down the ins and outs of the Amorphophallus titanum, a.k.a. the world’s stinkiest flower.