Among our most cherished modern traditions linked with Halloween is the custom of pumpkin carving. The pumpkin is a plant native to North America and one of the world’s oldest domesticated plants. Typically orange, with ribbed skin and sweet, fibrous flesh, the pumpkin formed an important part of pre-Columbian diets. Yet when this particular winter squash is hollowed out, a pair of eyes and a twisted grin are cut into its thick shell, and a lit candle is placed behind them, it transforms into a glowering Jack O’Lantern. How did a New World vegetable, albeit one that is by definition a fruit (it is the product of seed-bearing, flowering plants), combine with a custom of carving originating in the British Isles to become an essential part of contemporary Halloween traditions? Where did the tradition of pumpkin carving come from? The history of pumpkin carving at Halloween is generally associated with a ghostly figure known as “Stingy Jack” or “Jack O’Lantern”. He is a lost soul resigned to wandering the earth and preying on unsuspecting travellers. In Ireland and Scotland, people placed vegetable carvings, typically using turnips, which depicted faces on their doorstep in order to frighten this spirit away. According to this interpretation of the pumpkin carving tradition, immigrants to North America continued the custom of placing jack-o’-lanterns outside. However, instead of using small, tricky-to-carve vegetables, they used more visually appealing, much bigger and more readily available pumpkins. Who was Stingy Jack? In the Irish version of a tale that is common to multiple oral traditions, Stingy Jack, or Drunk Jack, tricked the devil so that he could purchase a final drink. As a result of his deception, God forbade Jack from entering heaven, while the Devil barred him from hell. Jack was left instead to roam the earth. Pumpkin carving appears to originate in part from this Irish myth. The story is linked to the natural phenomena of strange lights that appear to flicker over peat bogs, swamps and marshes. What can be explained by modern science as a product of organic decay was once attributed by various folk beliefs to ghosts, fairies and supernatural spirits. These illuminations have been known as jack-’o’-lanterns and will-o’-the-wisps, after the figures said to haunt the areas with a light. Methane (CH4) also called Marsh Gas or Ignis Fatuus, causing a dancing light in swampy ground known as Will-o-the-Wisp or Jack-o-Lantern. Observed 1811.Image Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo Another folk tale originating in Shropshire, recounted in Katharine M. Briggs’s A Dictionary of Fairies, features a blacksmith named Will. He is punished by the Devil for squandering a second chance to enter heaven. Provided with a single burning coal to warm himself, he then lures travellers into the marshes. Why are they called Jack O’Lanterns? Jack O’Lantern appears as a term for a carved vegetable lantern from the early 19th century, and by 1866, there was a recorded link between the use of carved, hollowed-out pumpkins resembling faces and the season of Halloween. The origin of the name Jack O’Lantern draws from the folk tales of the wandering soul, but probably also draws from contemporary naming conventions. When it was common to call unfamiliar men by the name “Jack”, a night watchman may have assumed the name “Jack-of-the-Lantern”, or “Jack O’Lantern”. What does the Jack O’Lantern symbolize? The custom of carving faces to deter figures like Jack O’Lantern may have built on much longer traditions. Vegetable carvings may have at one point represented war trophies, symbolising the severed heads of foes. An older precedent exists in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain which inspires the modern Halloween holiday. Samhain commemorated the onset of winter, when the souls of the deceased walked the earth. During Samhain festivities, which took place on 1 November shortly after the harvest, people may have worn costumes and carved faces into whatever root vegetables were available in order to ward off the wandering souls. The American Jack O’Lantern Though the pumpkin is native to North America, most English colonists may have been familiar with pumpkins before they settled there. Pumpkins travelled to Europe within three decades of Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas. They were first mentioned in European writings in 1536 and by the mid-16th century, pumpkins were being cultivated in England. While pumpkins were easy to grow and proved versatile for different meals, colonists also recognised the vegetable’s visual appeal. This helped establish the vegetable as a fixture at harvest festivals by the time Irish immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries helped popularise the traditions of Jack O’Lanterns in America. Pumpkins and Thanksgiving Thanks to its vibrant and outsized physical appearance, the pumpkin is the subject of pageantry, competitions, and seasonal decorations in the United States and elsewhere. This is especially the case during the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which takes place on the fourth Thursday of November. A traditional aetiology for pumpkin feasting at Thanksgiving recalls the harvest celebration between the Pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts and the Wampanoag people in 1621. This is despite the fact that no pumpkin was eaten there. According to Cindy Ott, author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon, pumpkin pie’s place in Thanksgiving meals was only assured in the 19th century. Pumpkins at Halloween The popularization of Halloween as an entertainment event happened around the same time as the development of Thanksgiving. Halloween had long been a fixture on European calendars under the name of All Hallow’s Eve. This was a holiday which blended the traditions of Celtic Samhain and the Catholic holidays of All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day. As the historian Cindy Ott notes, existing rural harvest decorations were folded into the scenery as foils for more paranormal spectacles. Pumpkins became central to these backdrops. Party planners, she records, advised using pumpkin lanterns, which the popular press had already turned into props in picturesque visions of country life. Boys scaring their friend on his way home with a Halloween pumpkin prank 1800s. Hand-coloured woodcutImage Credit: North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo Themes of death and the supernatural continued to figure in Halloween carvings on pumpkins. In an October 1897 issue of Ladies Home Journal, the authors of a Halloween entertainment guide expressed how, “We are all of us the better for an occasional frolic, and Halloween, with its quaint customs and mystic tricks, affords opportunity for much innocent merriment.” Pumpkins and the supernatural The associations between pumpkins and the supernatural in fairy tales have also helped to cement its status as a Halloween icon. The fairy godmother of Cinderella turns a pumpkin into a carriage for the title character, for example. Meanwhile, a pumpkin has a prominent role in Washington Irving’s ghost story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, first published in 1819. The role of a smashed pumpkin found near the last traces of the character Ichabod Crane has helped transform the pumpkin into an essential Halloween fixture, while the headless horseman in the tale has commonly been rendered with a pumpkin on his neck.

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Scientists believe that black holes store a mysterious form of energy that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe, reports Phys. Astrophysicists used the DESI instrument installed on the telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in the United States and found that black holes and the mysterious dark energy are inextricably linked. Although this is only an assumption that still needs to be confirmed, it nevertheless brings scientists closer to uncovering the mystery of dark energy. The study was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 13.8 billion years ago, in the first moments after the Big Bang, a mysterious energy triggered the accelerated expansion of the universe. As a result, matter as we know it was created. This energy is believed to have had the same characteristics as dark energy in the modern universe, which is responsible for the accelerated expansion of space. Although dark energy makes up about 70% of the universe, astrophysicists are not exactly sure what it is. Scientists used DESI to look for evidence that dark energy could be stored inside black holes. To do this, they observed tens of millions of galaxies and how quickly they were moving away from each other. They also used this data to infer how the amount of dark energy changed over time. Astrophysicists compared this data with how many black holes have formed after the death of massive stars throughout the history of the Universe. It turned out that the amount of dark energy increased as new black holes appeared. Thus, scientists came to the conclusion that most likely black holes are the source of dark energy. According to scientists, the same strong gravity in the modern Universe as in its beginning exists only in the center of black holes. Perhaps what happened in the first stage of the Universe’s expansion is happening in reverse. That is, during the death of massive stars, when they turn into black holes as a result of gravitational compression, the Big Bang occurs, but in reverse. Astrophysicists say that if black holes store dark energy, they could merge and grow with the expanding universe, causing the cosmos to expand faster. It’s impossible to see this happening directly, but now there’s evidence that it’s happening, scientists say. The new data supports the hypothesis about what dark energy is because its increase over time is consistent with how the number and mass of black holes have also increased. The post Physicists Discover Link Between Black Holes and Dark Energy appeared first on Anomalien.com.

The Treasury Department has released the receipts for federal spending in fiscal year 2024, revealing staggering numbers. While the $1.8 trillion deficit may seem less alarming than a $2.3 trillion shortfall, the Treasury accounted for an extra $500 billion in deficits in the opening days of fiscal year 2025 to achieve that figure. Regardless, neither the Federal Reserve nor the Treasury Department can escape the impact of these numbers. We have now reached a point where permanent stagflation seems unavoidable.The Treasury Department’s final tab for fiscal 2024 shows a $1.83 trillion deficit, setting a near record aside from the unusual pandemic years of 2020-2021. This means the government borrowed $5 billion per day — the equivalent of the FBI’s entire annual budget a generation ago. In the third quarter of this calendar year (the final quarter of fiscal 2024), the deficit equaled 6.3% of GDP, a level only surpassed during World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic.Republicans have failed to convey to the public that the government spending they rely on comes at a painful cost.Despite relatively low unemployment and the absence of a world war, the government took in a record $4.918 trillion in revenue but still amassed a mammoth deficit. This gap is poised to grow in the new fiscal year, meaning that when a recession officially hits, the deficit could become colossal. Although the government collected $479 billion more in revenue than last year, it increased the deficit by spending an additional $617 billion. Imagine what the deficit might look like if revenue starts to decline.In the past, we shrugged off such news, dismissing it as mere red ink on a spreadsheet. But that was when annual interest on the debt cost only $200 billion. Now, we’re on track to spend a record $1.133 trillion — or nearly a quarter of our tax revenue — just on interest. Debt interest is now more costly than every government expense except Social Security, contributing to the crippling inflation consumers face. We’re no longer mortgaging our grandchildren’s future; we’re destroying our own.To cover this interest, the government must sell a record number of treasury bonds each month. With countries reducing their holdings of U.S. Treasuries and buying gold instead, treasury yields are rising unnaturally. Despite a drop in the federal funds rate, rising spending and the resulting debt service push yields higher. This shift has caused gold and treasury yields to surge simultaneously — a rare occurrence, as they typically move inversely. It’s also why the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has climbed nearly a full percent since the Federal Reserve cut rates by 50 basis points. T. Rowe Price forecasts that the 10-year Treasury yield could hit 5% over the next six months, approaching levels seen in late 2007 on the eve of the Great Recession.When yields go up, debt servicing costs increase further, and the Fed has to print even more money to cover both the rollover debt and rapidly accumulating new debt — rising faster this year than last. Under this baseline scenario, inflation is bound to worsen. The global money supply now stands at $89.7 trillion, up by $22 trillion since COVID. After shrinking in 2022-2023, M2 is now expanding rapidly and is currently 38% higher than pre-COVID levels. Consumers are already struggling with high prices, and every market indicator signals a new round of even higher costs.Consumers have exhausted their resources ahead of an impending financial collapse, spending $2.3 trillion in excess savings over the past three years to cope with the cost of living. Currently, cumulative excess savings are negative $216 billion, with U.S. credit card debt and interest rates at record highs.Even without the threat of hyperinflation, these economic indicators always precede a crash. The unprecedented rallies in gold and silver are clear warnings, signaling grave danger. They indicate that the Federal Reserve, in its attempts to curb recession and inflation while printing money recklessly, has lost control, leaving us to face the consequences of both.Republicans have failed to convey to the public that the government spending they rely on comes at a painful cost. It’s not just the $103,700 in debt that each American is responsible for in some distant future. It’s the additional tens of thousands they will pay each year to maintain their parents’ standard of living for the rest of their lives — and that’s assuming things don’t get worse.

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