Black Bear Boards Horror Title ‘White Elephant’ Starring Nick Jonas & Kathryn Newton — Cannes Market
#News #BlackBear #CannesMarket #WhiteElephant

https://deadline.com/2026/05/black-bear-white-elephant-nick-jonas-kathryn-newton-cannes-1236898291/

I love it when the universe aligns albeit only slightly and very briefly ;)

#WhiteElephant #ElephantInTheRoom

The thread about the “Galloping Sausage”; promising a lot but delivering a little

On this day (July 31st) in 1930, the curious LNER (London & North Eastern Railway) locomotive No. 10000 left Waverley station in Edinburgh at the head of the up Flying Scotsman. Hush Hush, as it was known, was an experimental prototype, fitted with a high-pressure water tube boiler: technology that ultimately proved more trouble than it was worth.

This engine known as “Hush Hush” on account of the great secrecy that surrounded its design and construction; it was kept covered in sheeting whenever prying eyes were around to try and conceal what secrets lay beneath. Its internal company class name was the more mundane W1. The LNER and its designer hoped that its efficiency would make it the next great thing.From some angles it looked undeniably cool: sleek and furutistic.

From other angles it looked like the mutant offspring of a wide-mouthed frog and a white pudding (it was painted light grey, initially). A great, wallowing, temperamental, steam-powered sausage.

The great technological secrete beneath its sausage-like exterior, and the reason for its curious appearance, was the custom-built water-tube boiler. These sorts of boilers were usually for high-end marine applications, so its construction was contracted out to the Yarrow & Co. shipyard in Glasgow. Without turning this story into a lecture about boiler design, in simple terms a traditional steam locomotive boiler is of the fire-tube type; hot combustion gasses go along tubes through a pressurised tank of water to hear it. By by its nature this structure has many built-in weaknesses where the tubes penetrate the boiler. In a water-tube boiler, it is the small tubes that contain the water, under pressure, heated by combustion gases from the outside. This allowed operated at 450psi vs. the usual 180-200psi of a typical railway fire-tube boiler of its time.

Because it works at a higher pressure, the steam is hotter within a water-tube boiler, therefore its potential do do work is greater. In theory, compared to a lower-pressure boiler, it can produce more power from the same amount of fuel (or the same amount of power for less fuel) and therefore will be more efficient. The theory was all well and good, but at the business end the engineers did not understand how to exploit the high pressure steam in a “compound” system (that is, one where steam is used first at a high pressure to drive one set of pistons and then at lower pressure to drive another, to extract as much of the work from it as possible.)

No. 10000 was the brainchild of the LNER’s Chief Mechanical Engineer, Nigel Gresley; not usually a man associated with making engineering mistakes. Gresley, coincidentally and relevantly for this sites main themes, was an accidental son of Edinburgh: his family were from Derbyshire, but he entered this world early on a visit by his expectant mother to see a gynaecologist in the New Town.

A cross-sectional illustration of “a Unique New Engine” with “a War-Ship Boiler” was printed in the Illustrated London News in January 1930. It shows just how tight a squeeze things were on the inside. One of the only design efficiencies that No. 10000 ended up having was a 14% smaller fire grate than a comparable locomotive.

A water-tube boiler has no steam dome, so that familiar feature of a steam locomotive was missing. To accommodate the unusual size and profile of the water-tube boiler, the engine’s outer casing was carried all the way to the maximum permissible height, with the safety valves and whistles were recessed into the side. The odd-looking front end was designed to scoop air into the casing, to pre-heat it before entering the firebox, and to throw exhaust smoke clear of the cab

With no visible chimney or dome and that big, silvery, pudding of an outer casing, No. 10000 looked odd enough. But as the boiler had to hang further back than usual it needed an extra pair of wheels for support, on a double-articulated rear truck, giving a highly unusual 4-6-2-2 configuration (4 leading wheels on a bogie, 6 driving wheels, 2 trailing wheels on a Cartazzi axle and then a futher 2 wheels trailing on a separate Bissel truck). No. 10000 was never officially named – name plates to christen it “British Enterprise” were optimistically cast – but these were never fitted, and it was probably a good thing on account of the technical headache and operational embarrassment that it turned out to be. As well as “Hush Hush”, the less than flattering nickname of “Galloping Sausage” was unofficially applied.

No. 10000 was tested on the mainline for quite few years, with various tweaks and changes being made to try and improve its performance. In some aspects it showed promise, but these were offset by its heavy coal consumption, high build and running costs, lower power and poor reliability. Its fundamental problem however, was that it was a totally unique design, when every other locomotive on the LNER had a fire-tube boiler; there was reduced commonality and no economy of scale. It was quietly rebuilt with a fire-tube boiler and new outer casing into an approximation of a standard A4 Pacific in 1937 (also designed by Nigel Gresley). In this guise it served the railway for longer than its original form, all the way into British Railways days as No. 60700.

The only major blot on the otherwise unremarkable and reliable service of its second life was an ignominious slow-speed derailment at Peterborough in September 1955 which saw No. 60700 end up sprawled on its side. There were no serious injuries, and the three men on the footplate were thrown clear and unhurt. The damage was not significant and the locomotive was righted, repaired, and put back in service for a further decade before being withdrawn for scrap. Its tender survived into preservation with the A4 Pacific No. 60009 “Union of South Africa“

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KJ Apa, Madeleine Arthur, Josh Brener, Ashley Park, Alexandra Shipp & Justice Smith Round Out Cast Of Holiday Horror Film ‘White Elephant’
#Casting #AlexandraShipp #AshleyPark #JoshBrener #JusticeSmith #KJApa #MadeleineArthur #WhiteElephant

https://deadline.com/2026/04/white-elephant-nick-jonas-movie-cast-1236782717/

'White Elephant': Nick Jonas & Kathryn Newton to Lead Radio Silence’s Christmas Horror Movie!! #KathrynNewton, #NickJonas, #WhiteElephant

https://movizark.com/2026/04/05/white-elephant-nick-jonas-kathryn-newton-to-lead-radio-silences-christmas-horror-movie/

Kathryn Newton And Nick Jonas To Star In Holiday Horror WHITE ELEPHANT

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.fangoria.com/kathryn-newton-nick-jonas-white-elephant/

Nick Jonas & Kathryn Newton Set For Holiday Horror Film ‘White Elephant’ From MRC, Radio Silence & Project X; ‘Clown In A Cornfield’s Eli Craig Directing
#Casting #EliCraig #KathrynNewton #MRC #NickJonas #ProjectX #RadioSilence #RSPX #WhiteElephant

https://deadline.com/2026/04/nick-jonas-kathryn-newton-to-star-white-elephant-1236771896/

TV news show mentioned JAXA's Re-Boot (low sonic boom SST) project[1] this morning.
Wondered if there had been significant progress, only to find that JAXA had released a bunch of concept images[2]🙄.
Meanwhile news show announcer excitedly touted a one-day return trip from Tokyo to Singapore becoming possible on the imaginary jet. Slow news day?🤷‍♂️

1. https://www.aero.jaxa.jp/eng/research/frontier/sst/reboot.html
2. https://jda.jaxa.jp/search.php?lang=j&page=1&keyword=&library=0&category1=386&category2=400&category3=401&category4=&page_pics=20
#WhiteElephant

From Saturnalia to Santa: The Ancient Roots of Holiday Gift Exchanges

Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Yule, Eid al-Fitr, Kwanzaa, and Easter are all very different holidays. And while they might vary significantly in what they honor, how they are celebrated, and who takes part… they do have something in common: gifts. And outside of holidays, we give gifts at birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and graduations—often some of the most significant days in a person’s life.

We’ve been giving gifts for a long time. It’s a practice that predates even the earliest human civilizations.

Of course, this raises a fairly fundamental question: why? What drives this universal human obsession with giving?

Okay, I’m going to temporarily suspend my disenchantment with humanity. That’s right, I will briefly, ever so briefly, set aside my own cynicism. Today we’re going to focus on mankind’s need to give… not mankind’s need to take.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3fiNAEeKaYxUY3HQgKfzjZ?si=nAoT5ccvR0aJXiyRiqpDhg

Gift Giving through Time

What did the caveman put on his holiday wishlist?

A rock album.

Haha. I know, I know. And yes, I’ll be here all night, folks.

Prehistoric humans exchanged necessities—things like meat from the hunt, food that was gathered, and even primitive, crafted tools. Eventually, gifts evolved into more symbolic items, like carved teeth, shells, or bone jewelry.

Mammoth Ivory Necklace from the Gravettian Period (~25,000 years ago). Picture by Thilo Parg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The act of giving is pretty much as old as humanity itself. Gifts helped with bonding and trust within a single tribe and could also aid in the formation of alliances between multiple tribes. And that type of generous exchange stuck with us as we settled into the first cities.

In Ancient Egypt, gifts were crucial in certain religious rites. You might give to the gods to win their favor, to the pharaoh to show loyalty, or to the dead for use in the afterlife. In Ancient Greece, the concept of Xenia (“guest-friendship” or “ritualized friendship”) called for giving gifts to travelers, including food, drink, shelter, and a bath. Hospitality fell under the domain of Zeus—someone who was known for disguising himself as a weary traveler to test the generosity of mortals. Better safe than sorry! In Ancient Rome, the festival of Saturnalia was marked by the giving of small or playful gifts—interestingly, this might have been the world’s first instance of “gag gifts.”

As time went by, gifts even took on diplomatic meaning. Royalty and nobility exchanged gold, land, or jewels to show loyalty and forge political alliances.

Wherever you turn in ancient cultures, either in history or mythology, there’s some concept of giving. And yeah, that was bound to make some sort of impact on the development of the modern world.

Giving Gifts at Christmas

With influences from events like Saturnalia and legends of figures like Nicholas of Bari, gift giving was pretty common in Europe as a New Year’s tradition.

At some point, and due to several factors, that tradition was shifted to Christmas. Let’s walk through the logic, shall we?

In the year 336, the Christian church officially decreed that Christmas be celebrated on December 25. It’s pretty common knowledge that the Magi or Wise Men brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to dear old baby Jesus, right? So there’s some of your first ties between Christianity and the exchange of gifts around the end of the year (even if the date was invented to replace pagan customs).

It was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, however, who really drove the point home in the 19th century, viewing Christmas as a wholesome, child-focused, and family-friendly holiday. They made a habit of presenting gifts to staff at this time.

And what do we peasants do when we see royalty acting in a certain way? We imitate. We replicate.

Thanks to the industrial revolution, it was actually possible for less affluent folks to afford purchasing gifts. Toys, books, and decorations were all being mass produced.

Now enter commercialization. Businesses capitalized on the newfound interest, marketing special Christmas items and establishing gifts as a cornerstone of the holiday season. I’m going to change topics now because my temporary suspension of cynicism, which I promised in the opening, forbids me from speaking further in regards to how I feel about the impacts of commercialization on giving.

The Birth of Santa Claus

With so many gifts to give, it’s quite natural that we need someone to do all the deliveries.

So where did our jolly fellow in a red suite come from?

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A poem called “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” was first published anonymously in 1837, but later attributed to a man named Clement Clarke Moore. You probably know it better as “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” It describes a jolly, elf-like figure.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.

And probably the best recitation of this—one of the well-known poems in all of the world—comes from the late Robin Williams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INzqLES5a3I

But I digress.

This poetic description of Saint Nicholas was more or less borrowed from Washington Irving’s 1809 book, A History of New York, which introduced American culture to the Dutch Sinter Klaas.

But no one had drawn Santa yet.

At least, not until 1862, when a drawing by Thomas Nast was first featured in the Christmas issue of Harper’s Weekly.

Looks like it checks all the boxes. Let’s compare to what we were told in Moore’s poem…

• Pipe? Check.
• Rosy cheeks? Check.
• Sack of stuff? Check.
• Plump? Yep.
• Beard? You bet.

I don’t really see a lot of “tarnished in soot” vibe going on here, but I think it gets the general point across.

Thomas Nast’s 1862 Depiction of Saint Nick

Well, it was a big hit. It caught on.

And one beverage company decided to run with it. They thought their product needed stronger associations with cold, winter months, rather than just being viewed as a refreshing drink for the summer.

One of Coca-Cola’s early, 1931 ads, featuring Santa Claus, as further described by Campaign.

Coca-Cola actually has a whole section of their website dedicated to how they helped shape the image of Christmas. “Coca‑Cola did not create the legend of Santa Claus,” they write. “But Coca‑Cola advertising did play a big role in shaping the jolly character we know today.”

So there you have it. More commercialization that contributed to how we think about the holiday season; or more poignantly, who we think about in regards to gifts.

An Exchange of Energy

As [hopefully] spiritual folks, we know that a gift’s worth isn’t measured by it’s monetary value.

Before we go too much further, let me first dispel an annoyance. It isn’t the thought that counts. If I ask you for dark chocolate and you gift me disgusting white chocolate, it doesn’t matter that you thought about me and chocolate—you just got a bad gift. No amount of thinking in the world is going to get me to enjoy it.

It’s the effort that counts.

Metaphysically, giving gifts is an energetic exchange. The effort behind that exchange is what needs to be balanced, not necessarily the finances or thoughts.

When you shop for someone, you’re inviting a piece of them into your present moment. You try to see things through their eyes. Of the billions of possible gifts, which one would they prefer? And in order to know what they might need or like, you have to know at least a little bit about them!

Types of Holiday Gift Exchanges

So… since it is the holidays and everything… there’s some fun ways you can celebrate by giving gifts as a group.

But don’t do it because you have to. Do it because it’s fun. We do a gift exchange every year in our coven. It helps people get to know one another on a different level. Sure, you can practice magick with them regularly, but do you know what kind of silly little gift they’d enjoy receiving?

Here you go, three easy ways to give gifts as a group.

Grab Bag: Simplicity and fate! Gather all the gifts into a pile and then allow each participant to choose one at random. You can draw numbers to determine the order if you like, but there’s no stealing or switching—you get what you get.

This one kind of reminds me of a divinatory act… and the very old spiritual lesson: sometimes the medicine (or gift) chooses you! This works well with generic gifts that anyone can use.

White Elephant: This is controlled chaos. Gather all the gifts into a pile, then assign an order of turns. One at a time, participants can either select a new gift or steal from another player. If a player has a gift stolen, they can either steal or pick something new. You can limit how many times a gift can be stolen, but the same gift cannot be stolen more than once each turn.

You’ll often find humorous or gag gifts here. And the stranger the gift, the more often it seems to get stolen!

Mysterious Odin: Now it’s personal! Every participant is secretly assigned the name of another participant. You buy a special gift for that person. There’s no stealing or randomness here—you actually have to think. At the end of the exchange, you can decide whether or not to reveal who the gifters are.

Guys, this is not the same thing as a Secret Santa. I’m not sure why everyone keeps telling me that… this is a Mysterious Odin.

It’s that simple. Just set a low spending limit so that people don’t have to worry about budgeting or extravagance and have fun with it.

Conclusions

As you give gifts to your friends and loved ones this holiday season, remember that even though we’ve put new faces on it, that tradition goes back to the beginning of time. But again, don’t just give gifts because it’s ancient. Don’t gives gifts because it’s expected or because you have to do it. Give because you love people. Give because it’s fun. And overall, give because it feels good.

Don’t miss out. Here’s what’s coming up…

#christmas #exchange #gifts #holidays #mysteriousOdin #sabbats #santaClaus #secretSanta #spirituality #whiteElephant #witchcraft #yule