Almost half a billion people use reddit each month, so the activity on the site is a snapshot of what the world was doing in 2020. The site's year-end review takes a look at the subreddits that stood out this year, for participation, virality, and influence.
Through a large part of human history, a monarch had absolute power over all his/her subjects. Under England's Queen Elizabeth I, that authority included conscripting the best singers from every social strata for the royal children’s choir, which equated to kidnapping. This power was delegated to the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, who could take any child he pleased to become part of the choir. In 1600, the Master was Nathaniel Giles. It was in that year that he took possession of 13-year-old Thomas Clifton as he walked home from school. On the surface, there wasn't a thing his parents could do about it, as Giles had the power of the throne behind him, and it was his job to fill the choir with promising young singers.
But they made a fatal error by selecting Thomas Clifton. His father was a nobleman, whose connections enabled him to bring the case before the Star Chamber Court. Plus, Thomas couldn’t sing, making it hard to argue that Giles and Evans had been acting in the interest of Her Majesty’s choir.
There are lists of the best Christmas movies here and there, and all are arguable, not only about how "great" they really are, but whether they are Christmas movies at all. Must a Christmas movie be about Christmas, or merely take place during Christmastime? What if there's only one scene that takes place during the season? By now, we've pretty much settled on the fact that Die Hard is, in fact, a Christmas movie, but there are plenty of edge cases in various Christmas movie lists. Gabriella Paiella is of the opinion that The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the greatest Christmas movie, despite the fact that it's three movies, and she makes a point of watching all 12 hours every holiday season. Her first argument is that they were all released to theaters in December, during her childhood, so viewers of her generation will always have that connotation. But there are other reasons to see The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King as Christmas films.
The most obvious is that there are elves. Yes, the elves are tall and lithe and have silky blonde extensions. And one of the main ones is now married to Katy Perry, one is Stephen Tyler’s daughter, one was in The Matrix, and the last one is angry and sexy Cate Blanchett. Sorry, where was I going with this? They’re still elves. But if you’re looking for the traditional Keebler cookie and Santa’s workshop variety short kings, there are hobbits. For more atmospheric holiday touches, the palantir are basically snow globes, Gandalf looks like Santa, and Saruman looks like the weird mall Santa you don’t want to let near your kids.
The residents of Dyker Heights, a small neighborhood in Brooklyn, go all out with Christmas lights every year- so much so that there are companies that arrange bus tours for out-of-towners. The display is not coordinated, and there's no obligation to participate, but if you move to a house there, you'll catch the spirit sooner or later!
Some residents hire professional decorators to put up their lights. Others have been doing it so long that it's second nature. Some are tasteful and understated, while others go with the philosophy that nothing succeeds like excess. And since you aren't traveling for Christmas this year, you may as well enjoy Dyker Heights virtually. Continue reading for more.
An archaeological dig in Qubbet el-Hawa, Egypt, has unearthed ten mummies from a common burial chamber. One of those mummies belonged to a woman named Sattjeni A, as her coffin was labeled. She lived around 4,000 years ago.
Between her bandaged legs, in the lower part of the pelvis and beneath the linen wrappings, the researchers found a ceramic bowl with signs of use, containing charred organic remains. The analysis of the skeletal remains was carried out by a team of anthropologists from the UGR (coordinated by Professor Botella) and it confirmed that the woman had survived a serious fracture in her pelvis, perhaps caused by a fall, which must have caused severe pain.
It is highly likely that, to alleviate these pains, the woman was treated with fumigations, as described in medical papyri of the time describing solutions to gynaecological problems.
“The most interesting feature of the discovery made by the researchers from the University of Jaén is not only the documentation of a palliative gynaecological treatment, something that is quite unique in Egyptian archaeology, but also the fact that this type of treatment by fumigation was described in contemporary medical papyri. But, until now, there had been no evidence found to prove that such treatment was actually carried out,” explains the UJA’s Dr. Alejandro Jimenez, an expert in Egyptology and director of the Qubbet el-Hawa Project. This work has now been published by one of the most prestigious academic journals in Egyptology, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Spracheund Altertumskunde.
The researchers did not say whether the broken pelvis contributed to Sattjeni A's death. It is touching to think that those who prepared her for burial wanted to continue her pain-relief treatment into the afterlife. Read more about this find at Universidad de Granada. -via Strange Company
Army ants are pretty scary. They are numerous, carnivorous, and relentless. But even army ants have enemies and parasites, those other bugs that are brave enough to infiltrate and even imitate army ants. Ze Frank describes what an army ant's day is like, and what enemies they may encounter. It's pure nightmare fuel.
Some years ago, we learned about snapdragon, a Christmas game that involves sticking your hand in a bowl of flaming brandy to snatch a raisin. While it sounds painful and dangerous, the game was a part of Christmas tradition for hundreds of years. The staff at Atlas Obscura got together on Zoom to find out why, by playing the game themselves.
True, all of us hesitated before putting our hands into the fire. As the writer of this piece, I took it upon myself to snatch out the first almond. “It’s fine, no pain!” I shouted, showing off the burning nut before popping it in my mouth.
Soon, we were all grabbing at the raisins and almonds fearlessly. While brief bursts of heat did make us occasionally snatch our hands away, the sting faded quickly, and no one got burned. Some early accounts of snapdragon recommended throwing salt on the flames, without any explanation of what it would do. As it happens, pinches of salt tossed on the fire makes the flames pop and flare brilliant gold, for just a second.
While we started the game nervous about dipping our hands into literal fire, it soon became clear that snapdragon is really, really fun. So why does no one play it anymore?
A U.S. Forest Service fire scientist explains why the game works, and we get a recipe for proper snapdragon fire at Atlas Obscura.
Aaron Gage noticed how the lyrics to "Deck the Halls" would fit into Black Sabbath's "War Pigs." Viewers at reddit clamored for the whole song, but he said he didn't want to wear out the welcome, and the rest of the song didn't fit quite a well as this part. I have to say that I agree- once you've heard the joke, there's no reason to drag it out to feature-length. But it's a good joke.
Beginning in the 1940s, Hallmark commissioned renowned artists to create Christmas cards for the company. One of those artists was Salvador Dali. It was a bold move for Hallmark.
Dali made modern art popular and accessible. He’d painted the Christmas-themed interactive ‘Double Dalí’ cover for Vogue magazine’s December 1946 issue. So Hallmark contracted him to create cards in 1948. His images of a headless angel, a glowing but featureless baby Jesus, and three wise men atop snarling camels did not sell. In 1959 they hired him for a second time, a commission for which Dali requested “$15,000 in cash in advance for 10 greeting card designs, with no suggestions from Hallmark for the subject or medium, no deadline and no royalties.” The results (half of which he dashed off in the bathroom of his New York hotel room within an hour of signing the contract) were too racy, avant garde and perverted for Hallmark. They produced just two of the Dalí cards, a nativity scene and a depiction of the Madonna and Child – neither of which sold well. Hallmark swiftly dropped Dalí’s cards from their product line.
Joaquin Baldwin (previously) spent 101 days making this video as his quarantine beard grew out. You see the beard wax and wane as he sings "Better Days" by Radical Face. There's a video explaining how he made this, which is kind of long. The short explanation is that he shot a reference video, sorted the frames by computer to know where his face should be each day, meticulously lined up each shot, and then edited 2,117 still photographs together. It was way more work than he had anticipated. -via Geekologie
Finland is a wonderful country where the sun shines for a few minutes each year and the language is impossible to learn. Finns avoid social interaction whenever possible, rarely smile, drink boatloads of coffee, and aren't at all afraid of the Russians, yet they have been ranked the happiest people in the world for years. We already know that Finns have a great sense of humor about themselves. British author Joel Willans lives in Helsinki and created Very Finnish Problems, a network of websites that pokes gentle fun at the things that make Finland unique.
In a year when there were almost no concerts, no music festivals, and hardly any live music even in small venues like bars, some songs managed to catch our ears. DJ Earworm is back with his annual remix of the biggest 25 songs of the year (in the USA). He calls it Something to Believe In. You'll find a list of the songs at YouTube. -via Metafilter
Between the 1860s and World War I, railroads were built to tie the various communities of New Zealand together. They were heavily advertised with beautiful posters under the auspices of Railways Studios, the creative department of New Zealand Railways' advertising branch. The studio also produced propaganda posters and ads for other products, but the railway posters are their legacy. These travel posters, described as "more beautiful than they needed to be," are the subject of Peter Alsop's new book Railways Studios: How a Government Design Studio Helped Build New Zealand.
Alsop and company’s book is filled with many examples of graphic art that flirts with the finer stuff, although the vast majority of its gems lack attribution since most New Zealand Railways posters were signed “Railways Studios,” if they were signed at all. Take the circa 1929 poster created by an anonymous artist, whose assignment was to promote the Night Express, a roughly 24-hour run on South Island connecting Christchurch and Ivercargill. In that poster, above blocks of text detailing the train’s “Southbound” and “Northbound” timetables, we are confronted by a moody, cloud-filled sky rendered in various shades of blue. Beneath this depiction of heaven hovering over earth, a trio of sheep graze in a pasture. Two appear to be in mid-bolt or about to, but one of the animals stands still, facing the other direction. Only by following the creature’s gaze do we see a pair of train tracks, and only then do we notice the tracks are partly illuminated in yellow, presumably by the headlamp of the Night Express, which the artist has cleverly left out of our field of vision. This is a great painting, no matter what it was selling.
Blob Opera is an experimental generator in which you control four opera voices coming out of cute and colorful blobs. It's a bit limited in lyrics, but luckily it's also limited in letting you mix something out of tune. As you play with it, the generator will eventually offer a button in the lower right to switch to festive Christmas tunes. You can play a quick sample I recorded here. -via Metafilter
