Actually, hipster language doesn't form nouns in a way that maps conventionally onto English grammatical forms.
Blech -- the feeling induced by reading this list.
Some of these are great-- Anecdoche I like.
It looks like these are the work of John Koenig, who also has nice proposals for less ugly banknotes.
http://jkcreative.tumblr.com/
I love the idea behind those banknotes and the general design, but I take issue with some of the people: Jobs, Dylan and perhaps Sagan have not yet passed the test of time and IMO are quite likely not to. Substitute some women/people of colour (of whom Koenig only proposes one of each, on improbably high denomination bills.)
Most of the list of words could be quite useful though.
Lethgnosis: Weariness at the seeming endless overuse of the term "hipster."
I find the designs sort of busy. Some more variety is good, colors and sizes like with the euro serve various purposes, but I still like the classic engraved style with some additions.
Of course ATST the dollar bill should not even exist.
It would be nice to be able to pay for small purchases with coins, like back when I was kid and a loose cigarette cost a nickle.
What, no saudade or mono no aware?
I recognize the sentiment described for most of the items on the list, but I don't like the suggested words.
Lachesism is the chronic inability to define courage, I thought.
I would also choose different people-- there's ostensibly a hashtag for voting on who should be on the ten. I voted for Barbara McClintock. The Fleischer brothers, Barbara Stanwyck, John Bardeeen, Gibbs, so many better choices. But the sense of potential, banknotes that look OK!
How very quickly to release progressively more ugly and boring designs for the money without changing the faces or buildings on the back, synecdoche for all that's wrong with postindustrial government. It took nearly a century to take off the fucking model T ford in front of the Capitol.
On the other hand, a cache of banknotes many generations old will still have value here, who else can say that-- UK I guess, any other places where paper money from WWI still holds value?
I recognize the sentiment described for most of the items on the list, but I don't like the suggested words.
That's because they're mostly terrible (in addition to being hyperspecific in an annoying way).
"Vellichor" sounds like it should involve the vital fluids of divine cows, or something.
It would be nice to be able to pay for small purchases with coins
I was recently in Atlanta, where the the MARTA pass machines dispense change in $1 coins.
Why is it that when I was in Europe I loved that there were coins worth more than a dollar, but in the U.S. such coins seem ludicrous, even to me?
There ought to be a term for that. Xenonumismatophobia, perhaps?
Mostly agree with NickS that I don't love the invented words, but the sorrows themselves are pretty great. The original site is here. Happy to do your research for you, Heebie. You need your rest.
Boy do I ever. Jammies has been more-or-less AWOL as a parent because of hockey tournament and then work conference, and we're starting the drive to Florida this afternoon and I'm sort of coming apart at the seams.
"n. the desire to be struck by disaster--to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall--which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other."
BARF BARF BARF BARF BARF
11 last. Money from WWI is no good in the UK. If it is in the US I guess that's unique.
re: 17
It can still be exchanged though, by the Bank of England.
Genuine Bank of England banknotes that have been withdrawn from circulation retain their face value for all time and can be exchanged at the Bank of England in London.
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Pages/about/exchanges.aspx
Theoretically, I think the bills and coins never go off date. Practically, there's an age when the collectors value is sufficiently above the face value that they all disappear (e.g. the older quarters and dimes that had actual silver have basically been hoarded). And for bills, the old ones are still good but I think banks and the feds retire the old ones as they pass through.
I'd personally be very leery of accepting an old-style U.S. twenty if I were outside of the U.S. As I understand it, the odds of it being counterfeit were high enough that we got the new twenty. In the U.S., I probably wouldn't notice but then I very rarely get a twenty from anywhere but a bank.
I got a counterfeit 5 in change, probably from a secondhand hardware place recently. Totally low-tech inkjet printed. No strip, no watermark, paper felt OK but not exactly right, would not hold up to any scrutiny.
The poor person, usually an old man living alone, who makes the smallest practical bill, traditionally a one, is proverbial. The story comes around every few years; I can remember it popping up in a Barney Miller episode.
Today a five makes more sense, and aside from the big portrait and other modern features that might make counterfeiting harder, just as unlikely to be inspected.
23: Abraham Lincoln is more fun to draw anyway.
21: The same thing happened to me a few years ago, except it was a relatively high quality print. I noticed the difference mainly because the paper didn't feel right, and whoever had done it had screwed up their settings and the thing was about 90% as large as a normal bill. (I fiddled with it for ages trying to figure out what was wrong with it and eventually took out another five dollar bill to compare it to and felt like an idiot.)
I don't know why anyone would bother counterfeiting low bills like that (less likely to be caught?). I don't think I ended up spending it.
I assume the reason is because they are less likely to be caught. You see clerks look closely at a twenty (or draw on it with the magic highlighter pen of truth) but never a five.
20: Before the revolution the US sold Iran the exact same printing presses used for US banknotes. After the revolution Iran began printing near-undetectable copies of $20 bills, which was one of the drivers behind the new bill.
The highest quality counterfeit bills are the ones that are made during an 80s musical montage.
28: How come they didn't have to cut off their own hand for stealing from us?
26. People still rob banks and still break into residences to steal a backpack's worth of electronics and visible valuables. I'd guess they are motivated by addiction.
I don't know what kind of crime has a better risk:reward profile exactly, but inkjetting small bills seems like something kids or recent immigrants from more shambolic places might see as an easy win. Or as idp said, Barney Miller characters, many of whom walk the streets of the city of 8 million stories even today.
In the 20's a group conned the UK company that printed notes under contract for the Bank of Portugal into printing huge amounts more for them specifically. All $5 equivalents, I think. They laundered them through provincial bank branches to Lisbon.
Unless you deliberately replace every instance of "public" with "pubic", that's about as bad you as you fuck up while being a printer.
33: It wasn't a deathblow, but they slowly declined and were bought out by a competitor in 1961. (Waterlow & Sons.)
Ok, hold up, those are not good banknote designs. Put together with all the tips and tricks of the contemporary freelance creative, no doubt, but they look like....well, they all look like glossy flyers advertising fairly high-quality one-day academic conferences. I keep expecting all of them to have a list of keynotes and panels below the photos, and information about the Society For American Western Historians or something dropped int the bottom left of each image.
The Sagan one, for example, is obviously the header for some kind of conference on seventies film and globalization. The Dylan fifty is for a conference devoted to nineties-era depictions of the internet in popular culture. The Great Plains fifty is for a one-day continuing ed conference for gerontologists.
I notice, too, that we still don't get to have any women on the banknotes, and only the most obvious person of color.
There's nothing wrong with the simple two color banknotes that we have at present. Just because we have full color glossy printing capacity at the mint now does not mean that everything needs to be a garish festival of "whatever design tricks were fashionable in 2015".
21 Then you found counterfeit $5!
36 is right. Probably 35 also, but I didn't actually look at the notes. I would pay money not to have to have Dylan on the money.
35/6: I like the look of the designs, but I am a philistine. Yeah, if you're going to do this put women and people of color on it. Although I'm heartened that he thought of Borlaug (and I'd vote for him being the token white guy in any set). I do wish we'd get with the times and use different colors to distinguish between different bills, even if we stuck with only a small number of colors per bill.
Of course this will all be obsolete in a few years when all retail transactions will be conducted by sending money wirelessly between our phones.
I mean, they're cute little old conference flyers and better than I could do - I once designed a conference flyer for a small international research conference on a niche aspect of virology and although it was about average for that type of thing (because I copied other flyers and have some competence with Photoshop and Indesign) it wasn't a patch on these. I think I could copy these if I sat down and tried, but I could not originate them.
But they're busy and flimsy-looking as banknotes.
Isn't part of the reason so many non-US countries use color that it helps visually-impaired people? As in, color can be discernable for some who'd have more trouble just going by small numbers or faces. (Of course they also often make the numbers bigger too.)
41: Yeah, that's why I wish we'd do it. And it turns out that, like many accessibility features, it'd help fully sighted people, too. Best practice also includes making bills of different denominations different sizes, but that's probably harder to get past the vending machine lobby (maybe not anymore).
40: I dunno, our current currency is pretty busy. Say, the back of the $1 (admittedly older than all of the other bills). But I bow to your superior design ability.
Well then, we could have blue and white, green and white, red and white, etc. One can have different colors without being gaudy about it.
I have not been overwhelmed by the ease of using different sized bills on those occasions that I have encountered them - the little ones settle into the corner of your wallet or get wadded up, etc, unless they're only-a-little-littler, which doesn't help.
Maybe we could use paper with different textures. Or deckle edging! What about deckle edging?
I guess if it helps people with certain types of visual impairments, I'd be willing to consider something with vivid colors, but I'd really hate for that kind of thing to catch on.
43: While our current bills are a bit busy, it's true, they're more symmetrical and the simplicity of the color scheme minimizes the business. Plus you can excuse a certain amount of tackiness based on the longevity of the item, but I would hate to have to wait around for 2015-era Photoshop to become vintage charm (even though with the way things are now that would only take until, like, 2022.)
It turns out that I feel surprisingly strongly about this.
One can have different colors without being gaudy about it
Oh, absolutely, hence 39.1.last. Canada's currency does this reasonably.
unless they're only-a-little-littler, which doesn't help.
I think if you're blind it does. Different aspect ratios also help.
One can have different colors without being gaudy about it.
Definitely agreed. The euro isn't sublime but is at least less of a riot of colors.
Okay, here is what I suggest: henceforth, each denomination will be a slightly different size and printed on beautiful one-color paper, different for each denomination. I'm thinking that the twenty would be a rich, luminous sky blue on a sort of linen-like material - crisper, of course. Each will have the amount printed in an attractive serif font, different for each denomination. The security printed stuff will be in two printed stripes, one vertical and one horizontal, in a color slightly deeper than the original paper. There will be no nationalist nonsense or representationalism because we will all agree that people are only put on the currency in order to eviscerate the meaning of their lives and shore up national legitimacy.
This will work for the visually impaired and will not offend the eye or the hand.
Or deckle edging! What about deckle edging?
Seems unlikely to fare well in wallets, doesn't it?
36. Early in the day to be that drunk :) The current designs are
a) not 2-color, maybe you have noticed the foil, the sticker looking color denomination, the little unicorn-shit looking color sprinkles over an indifferently implemented background of spineless pastel tones.
b) Reworked from a nice design that was backward-looking in 1928, with each revision uglier and less coherent than its predecessor
c) Possibly Japan's money is more boring, but I think still less ugly. Oh, the provisional money ARgentine regions issued in 2001, also uglier. Literally every other nation has nicer money, anything but soda wrappers would be preferable. Pesos or canuckistan units, immediate improvement. Chinese currency, also not great, but at least the banknotes are harmonious, they do not scream "this committee stopped communicating with itself after the second meeting, everyone gets to write one chapter!"
49: I like this! Frowner for Minister of Currency!
I think having an anarchist minister of currency will be a nice touch.
Since I plan to become pleasantly corrupt, I will award all Unfogged commenters dachas somewhere pleasant and use my clout to destroy your enemies.
Also what's with this "dollar" thing? We're not using German silver coins or anything. We should switch to calling them Credits, or possibly Quatloos.
Oh you roll your eyes but admit it you would totally enjoy talking like a character in Star Trek.
54: Well, if we're going that way, I say we de-decimalize and convert to a binary currency. Then we could go back to talking about pieces of eight.
Could we have coins with holes in them? I've always liked those, especially the bronzey looking ones.
As minister of currency this will really be my call, but I like to provide a scrim of democratic accountability.
I linked the page of the dude who made up the words in the OP, there are better proposals. The main point is that even an indifferent attempt at improving the shitty status quo achieves that easy goal.
Color isn't really the issue-- there are nice pastel designs.
Except for Andrew Jackson, I wouldn't say the status quo is shitty.
56: Shapes, generally, other than just circles are also good.
58. Those hilarious one-liners really are a distinctive style.
Okay, here is what I suggest: henceforth, each denomination will be a slightly different size and printed on beautiful one-color paper, different for each denomination
They do this in Arrakis. I find it a bit annoying though since I usually like to keep my wad with the large denominations on the inside but here they're too big for that and I have to keep the singles on the inside.
I like the coins with holes in them too.
Seconding Frowner for Minister of Currency.
59: Definitely! Please make coins that are regular prime-number-gons, those are the best.
"We call it a five dollar bill for historical reasons, but actually it's a small soapstone carving of an eagle riding on top of a sheep holding an assault rifle."
"Then I found a small soapstone carving."
64 would really cut seigniorage profits.
May not be safe for work? I honestly have no idea.
|>
"The highest quality counterfeit bills are the ones that are made during an 80s musical montage. "
Apparently they skipped some steps to avoid counterfeit copycats.
If you're not getting artisanal counterfeit bills that were handcrafted by Willem Dafoe, then what's the point, really?
Currency from quiltbank.com would have the best feels.
39: Of course this will all be obsolete in a few years when all retail transactions will be conducted by sending money wirelessly between our phones.
A natural part of Obama's post-colonialist Kenyan agenda.
The story in 34 is a great one; the best part is that it fell apart not because anyone caught them printing the money -- Alves Reis, the mastermind, had successfully convinced everyone that either they were doing something legitimate but clandestine on the part of the Portuguese governmen or that it was a piece of honest graft by the Bank of Portugal -- but because reporters eventually decided that the bank in Angola that he was laundering the money through was part of a German plot to seize the colony.
I read Jason Kersten's The Art of Making Money a couple years ago. Fun, if slight, airport read.This was also enjoyable.
One can't help but be reminded of Wm. Gibson's description of New Yen in Count Zero:
It wasn't actually illegal to have the stuff, it was just that nobody ever did anything legitimate with it.
Future currency will have nano-RFIDs of some kind, because terrorists, which will obviate the whole point of cash as an anonymous medium of exchange, and we'll have to go back to using cowrie shells, salt and huge stone doughnoughts.
74 Wow, you're not kidding. Surely one of the greatest long cons ever run.
I have a replica Lewis and Clark $10 -- they should bring that one back.
76: That's a fascinating story. If he hadn't slipped up with the serial numbers he might have even gotten away with it.
I guess people counterfeit smaller value coins/notes because they're less likely to be scrutinised. There are lots of fake pound coins over here - sometimes really easy to spot, like you can make dents in it with a fingernail. But we have so many opportunities for paying by machine, that as long as it weighs the right amount, a fake is easy to get rid of.
New Zealand had a coin once that had the wrong country's name on it (see the RBNZ Museum) in what might have been one of the weirder acts of Mint sabotage ever. Or possibly a fuck-up. Rob Muldoon was the finance minister who had to front and then he turned into the worst Prime Minister ever, so be careful Frowner!
I heard that US bills are some of the most faked in the world because they're so easy to fake - you can get a plentiful supply of genuine paper for hundred dollar fakes by washing the ink off the (identically sized) one dollar bills.
And different colours seems so obvious to me - I can't think of many other countries that goes down the "same size, same colour" route as the US. I even used to find it irritating that the Malagasy 200 and 2000 Ariary notes were so similar in colour, which seems particularly unforgiveable for two notes with easily confused denominations.
(Also, you can check out my old place on the back of the 5000. I had a one-up one-down with running water, a ramshackle balcony and a view of the Indian Ocean somewhere in the trees to the left of the image.)
63. They don't have to be prime numbers. I used to be very fond of these. The pics are enlarged: they were 21mm across the sides.
The real money's in fake IDs. However, pro tip: don't use a PO Box for your fake ID business.
Alan McNeil Jones and Kelly Erin McPhee, both 31, and Mark Gil Bernardo, 27, entered guilty pleas to conspiracy to commit identification document fraud and aggravated identity theft, the latter of which carries a two-year mandatory sentence. They also agreed to forfeit the more than $2 million in cash found in their house and around town, including $1.3 million in a safe, $500,000 in a safe deposit box at Wells Fargo on the Downtown Mall, and $43K in parcels from the U.S. Postal Service.
