Matt Kenneally is a British photographer known for his “timeslice” style of photography. The concept involves taking multiple photos of a scene over an extended period of time, taking “slices” from each one, and splicing them together to create a single visual timeline of light and form.
Commodity money is form of currency where a commodity dictates its value. This is different to representative money we use in our day-to-day lives like coins and banknotes, as this is a proxy for value (ie. a 100 US dollar bill represents the value of 100 US dollars but the ink and paper used to create them are not worth 100 US dollars).
One example of commodity money is cigarettes:
People left their surplus clothing, toilet requisites and food there until they were sold at a fixed price in cigarettes. Only sales in cigarettes were accepted – there was no barter […] Of food, the shop carried small stocks for convenience; the capital was provided by a loan from the bulk store of Red Cross cigarettes and repaid by a small commission taken on the first transactions. Thus the cigarette attained its fullest currency status, and the market was almost completely unified.
A commonality between commodity money and representative money is that both currencies are subject to economic changes such as inflation and deflation.
The notion is widespread that for a long period of time and in a large economic area cigarettes served as currency in Germany after the recent war. Probably the most explicit statement of this belief, which the writer finds erroneous, is the following: “In Britain it [the cigarette] never, even at the height of the American occupation, went so far as to replace the existing metal or paper coinages. In occupied Europe it did.” While we examine here only the German case, it is probable that situations similar in many respects existed elsewhere.
In order to understand the role played by cigarettes as money, it is essential to examine the historical background of the problem. Up to the fall of 1946 American cigarettes were not considered either as a general measure of value or as an instrument of exchange.2 The Reich- mark (henceforth RM) was still reasonably stable, black market trading was limited, and the worst period of Germany’s economic decline had not yet begun. Although the price of cigarettes was very high, it was fixed by the general laws of supply and demand.³
Usually cigarettes were sold for Reichmarks, which at that time could be exchanged by American and British soldiers for pounds or dollars. Consequently, a soldier could sell part of his ration, have all the money he desired for his non-military expenses, and still save his whole paycheck. Large dollar and pound profits were made in many cases.
The folks at Omni Calculator have created a White Christmas Calculator that can tell you your chances of snow on Christmas Day depending on location.
If you want to improve your chances of having a white Christmas experience, we will show you which city you should choose as your destination. Finally, we will let you know whether you will be able to build an igloo! The white Christmas calculator provides data for 200 places across the USA and Canada. Put on the tree lights (ensuring you’ve got the perfect coverage with the christmas tree decorations calculator), decorate the house, prepare delicacies and look forward to spending a marvelous white Christmas with your friends and family!
The downside, as the quote suggests, is that it only works for the USA and Canada so UK hopefuls will have to rely on the Met Office and a lot of luck, as white Christmases are getting rarer over time:
As of Thursday 15 December, bookmakers estimate the chances of a white Christmas this year at no better than 35% for the places they are taking bets on. The best chance of a white Christmas is in Edinburgh.
The Met Office climate scientist Prof Lizzie Kendon said: “As our climate warms, our winters in the UK are becoming warmer on average which is already leading to a reduction in the number and severity of cold extremes we experience.
“Although this trend will continue under further global warming, the UK can still expect to experience cold spells of weather due to the natural variability of the British weather. Although becoming less frequent, days below freezing known as ice days will still be possible in the future although they will be rarer.”
Fruit Quake! The soft drink brand has chosen an “artificial fruit cake” flavour for Christmas 2022. It will be available for this month only so grab one while you can and let me know how it tastes in the comments!
"Joker" but it's Goofy and Winnie the Pooh (fan animation)
Perfect casting, both in character choice and voice acting. I don’t think I need to see Joker but I would love to see more scenes adapted with Goofy, Winnie, and the Disney gang.
Update – 29th Jan 2024:long story short – Atlas Obscura retracted this article—and many other—as the interviews were faked! Like AO, I’m gonna keep this up but mainly because it gets traffic every Christmas and Mele Kalikimaka is a real song that really is nonsense. Welcome to the desert of the real and all that!
So, what does it mean? “Nothing,” says Holton. “It’s basically gibberish.” Technically, it’s a borrowed phrase: a term in a foreign language, in this case English, transferred into Hawaiian using what linguists call the rules of phonotactics, or sounds available in that language, Holton explains.
“Hawaiian has just eight consonant sounds and nothing like a consonant cluster, where multiple consonants come together to form a new sound, like in the English word ‘strength,’ which starts with three consonants and ends with a four-letter cluster,” Holton says. He adds that the two syllables in “Christmas” became five in “kalikimaka” because of the Hawaiian language’s syllable structure: A consonant sound must be accompanied by at least one vowel sound. “When you borrow an English phrase into another language, it has to follow the rules of the receiving language, which adapts and integrates the word to fit more easily,”says Holton. In the case of “mele kalikimaka,” no one knows for certain who made these linguistic decisions.
De Silva says there’s not even a linguistic need for the phrase: “Hawaiian words could easily be chosen. Hauʻoli, meaning happy, and ʻahaʻaina, meaning festival, would accurately capture the sentiment, and be more respectful of the Hawaiian language and culture.”
I’ve gone this far in life without hearing the song and I think I’ll keep that up. Just say Merry Christmas or ‘Hauʻoli ʻahaʻaina’ if that’s acceptable.
A Mountain of Entertainment | Mr. Garvey's Mountain Survival Skills | Paramount+
The “Mr. Garvey Is Your Substitute Teacher” comedy sketch is one of my favourites of all time so I was delighted to see him return to promote Paramount’s streaming service, Paramount+. As a side note, I was also thrilled to see Krumm from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters for the first time in about 27 years (excluding my rewatches of a VHS recording of one episode from 1995).
Jenkem caught up with Brazilian skateboarder Vitoria Mendonça as she skated around Wall Street.
She’s got an impressive and powerful style, and she’s a kind soul, too, which goes a lot further than you would think when it comes to moving up in the industry. We met up with her during her stay in New York as she checked out some of the most iconic spots in the city.
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE - Official Trailer (HD)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is be the sequel to the critically acclaimed Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and we have a new trailer which looks epic. That’s how you should make a trailer without revealing the entire plot in 150 seconds.
All we know so far is that Miles Morales goes on an adventure across the ‘Spider-Verse’ with his new team of Spider-people but not everything can agree on how to deal a new threat. Go get ’em, tiger!
I wrote about the most expensive McDonald’s pickle in the world in August and while looking at my analytics, noticed an article for the search term “most expensive pickle in the world” that’s a little different.
Back in 1999, The New York Times reported on ‘The $44,100 Pickle Jar‘, a pickle jar that was sold on eBay for—you guessed it—$44,100:
”DID you hear about the guy who bought an old pickle bottle for $30 at Brimfield and sold it on Ebay for $32,000?” That was the buzz at a flea market in Adamstown, Pa., earlier this month. It was almost the truth.
The pickle bottle wasn’t bought at Brimfield, the popular antiques market in Massachusetts, but it was sold on Ebay, the Internet auction site. The pickle bottle actually cost only $3, and it sold for $44,100.
The seller, Richard Rushton-Clem of Lewisburg, Pa., picked it up at a plain old tag sale in western Massachusetts last summer. ”I used to have an antiques shop in Kennebunkport, so I realized it was an unusual bottle,” he said. ”I figured it was worth $300 or $400.”
Mr. Rushton-Clem kept the pickle bottle (a term that among bottle collectors is interchangeable with the more familiar ”pickle jar”) on a windowsill for eight months. Then he asked the proprietors of the Rollermills Antique Center in Lewisburg to sell it for him on Ebay. It was listed as an ”early blown glass cathedral pickle bottle,” with a minimum bid of $9.99. The reserve, which is not disclosed to prospective bidders, was set at $275.
eBay was only 4 years old at the time, but had gone public a year ago so wicked and wild auctions were becoming the norm. In fact, that same year (1999), a man had put one of his kidneys up for auction (also reported by NYT). But why was this pickle jar so coveted? Peachridge Glass examined the jar back in 2012:
The pickle pictured above is a mid-sized, 11″ Willington cathedral-style pickle jar from Willington CT, circa 1850’s. It has an iron pontil but most important, it is the very rare amber color; less than 5 known examples in this color as the bottle usually occurs in green. This example is in mint condition with 3 arched panels – the 4th panel is plain (for the label). This exceptional pickle sold for a record $44,100 on March 31, 1999 on eBay.
[…]
According to Jim Persing, the man who runs Rollermills Internet, a consignment service run by the antique center, the response was immediate. “An hour after we put the bottle on eBay, a guy called, all excited, and asked me to tell him more,” he said. “After I answered his questions, he told me we had something really rare, the 11-inch amber Willington pickle bottle.” The bottle was made in Willington, Conn., in about 1850. “By the end of the day,” Persing said, “we were at $2,500, and the bottle was in a locked case.”
Within days, bottle collectors from four different states had visited Rollermills to see the pickle bottle. First on the scene was John C. Mosman of Waterbury, Conn. (eBay name: Pickleman). Mosman described the bottle as a must-have piece because of its color, provenance and condition. “Amber is the rarest of all the colors,” he said in a post-auction interview, “and Willington is the only glass house who made Gothic cathedral pickle jars in the amber coloration.” In addition, he said, the jar was in perfect condition. “This was the top example of what you’re going to get in that size,” he said.
Jim Hagenbuch, the publisher of Antique Bottle and Glass Collector magazine, agreed. “No question,” he said. “The amber Willington is the Cadillac of the category.” Willington’s pickle bottles came in three sizes, 8, 11 and 14 inches. According to Norman C. Heckler, who has been a bottle auctioneer for 38 years, the 11-inch version is probably the rarest–only five are known to survive–and this was the first time an 11-inch Willington pickle bottle was offered at public auction. “They just don’t come to the market,” Heckler said.
Now I’m wondering what a Willington cathedral-style pickle jar containing sliced McDonald’s pickles would cost at auction. Move over, enefftees—pickles are the new digital currency!
When it comes to Florida and pies, you’ll immediately think of the key lime pie. But before that took hold, there was another pie that used a different citrus fruit synonymous with the Sunshine State: the sour orange pie.
A lot of modern sour orange pie recipes tend to substitute Seville oranges for the combination of lemons and sweet oranges. Nonetheless, there is no imitation that can match the flavor of Seville oranges – called calamondins in Florida. Sour orange pie offers a brighter, cleaner flavor than key lime pie. The sour orange’s powerfully bitter flavor helps it stand up better to cooking and baking than the sweet oranges. For this reason, it makes a marvelous dessert with a truly unique essence.
[…]
Today, the forgotten southern dessert is undergoing a revival. Calamondins are featuring in more recipes other than those for marmalade. So, have you tried sour orange pie? You can make sour orange pie by substituting the zest in your favorite key lime pie recipe.
But, where do you find sour oranges? They’re quite bountiful throughout Florida, even though they’re mainly for export. Still, you can find sour oranges in specialty grocery stores or your neighborhood. A lot of people tend to grow the fruit tree as a decorative tree in their backyards, unaware that they can use it in dessert recipes.
A Modern Christmas Tree inside the Stahl House. Photo credit: J.C. Buck, via Modern Christmas Trees
Engineer and builder Lawrence Stoecker designed a modernist Christmas tree in the 1960s but it wasn’t until 2011 that his grandson, Matt Bliss, put it into production and launched The Modern Christmas Tree:
“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, and concentric circles of light and shadow danced in a modernist tableau, all over the ceiling.” Wait, what? If you’re accustomed to old-fashioned fragrant evergreen trees, sticky with sap and heavily laden with ornaments and string lights, the spare glow and futuristic lines of the modern Christmas tree will knock your proverbial stockings off. The first thing you might notice about these trees is that they look “Modern” with a capital M—as in postwar, midcentury design. Yet they’re not vintage, and they weren’t manufactured until fairly recently. […] Bliss knew exactly how to pay tribute to his grandfather: The prototype trees from Colorado would become a reality for families all over the world. With his business background, Bliss was prepared to fabricate and produce the trees in quantity and tell their story visually. By 2011 he premiered his Modern Christmas Tree at the Denver Modernism show, where they were an instant hit. At the end of September the following year, Lawrence Stoeker passed away. A week after Stoeker’s death, Modern Christmas Trees was awarded its patent.
I like the design and think it works best for public display but I wouldn’t have one in my house. Reject modernity; embrace tradition! Of course, the modernist Christmas tree has plenty of advantages in terms of storage and time to install but if you’re wanting a beautiful green tree, garnished with lots of colourful baubles, this won’t be for you.
I found this old Geocities site containing over 90 retro Christmas GIFs. It’s not good on the eyes but the GIFs are cute enough, ranging from Cuddling SnowCouple to Disney-themed GIFs featuring Mickey & Minnie Mouse and a Dancing Chrismas Pooh. It’s also worth noting that not all the GIFs are animated so if you wanted to make an e-card (yep, they still exist), the non-animated GIFs would be perfect if that’s the look you’re going for.
The thumbnail may give away the reason behind the McDonald’s McPizza failure but before all that, the question, for me, remains: did they really need to add pizza to their repertoire? The most remarkable thing was that while McDonald’s discontinued serving McPizzas, a franchise owner kept them going until 2017. Oh, and you can still get pizzas from a McDonald’s in Orlando, Florida (the address is 6875 W Sand Lake Rd, Orlando, FL 32819-9349 if you’re in the area and desperate for pizza from the Golden Arches and nowhere else on or near International Drive).
Even after all the Steamed Hams memes in recent years (of which I’ve covered a few), there are new ones popping up that flip the narrative further. The above example sees Principal Skinnernot burn his roast and he and Superintendent Chalmers have an unforgettable and honestly wholesome luncheon, sans steamed hams.
After years of memeing, he finally managed not to ruin his roast. And the luncheon was truly unforgettable.
