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A Fond Farewell

farmersalmanac.com

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Re: A Fond Farewell

#61

Post by 9rx »

dangus wrote: post #57
lisbbb wrote: post #18

I know it has a tradition behind it, but you can't just make shit up and just expect people in this technical age to be okay with it. I used to peruse my Grandmother's Reader's Digest as a kid and never really understood that one, either.

Obviously stuff like lunar phases is easy to document in a forward-looking way. But yeah, this is a book claiming on the front cover to be able to tell you the best time to get married? lol I also think that the general purpose nature of the book serves it poorly. It seems to cram together seemingly unrelated topics: life advice, gardening advice, kitchen tips, astrology, etc. This probably made a lot of sense before…

> But yeah, this is a book claiming on the front cover to be able to tell you the best time to get married? lol

A quick perusal of the "best day" calendar — which is presumably what that refers to — suggests that it believes the best time to get married is on days we call the weekend. Which seems pretty fair. I've never been to a wedding that wasn't on a weekend. That is when most people seem to want to get married. Not exactly ground-breaking information, of course, but practical in some very limited sense; likely more useful than lunar phase schedules for the average person.

> We aren’t getting this back

I'm not sure it was ever lost. The most notable one in this space, the Old Farmer's Almanac, is still going. The departure of The Farmer's Almanac means one less competitor than before, but the "Almanac" genre remains filled with quite a number of publications that show no signs of stopping. Individual businesses step out of their respective markets all the time. That is nothing unusual (although a 200+ year run is noteworthy, granted).

> just like we aren’t getting back a nation where everyone watched the same 3 channels on their television.

Now we all visit the same 3 websites instead...

Re: A Fond Farewell

#62

Post by ajdude »

I'm not a farmer, but I have relied on the farmers almanac before when planning vacations months in advance. It's been surprisingly accurate at determining whether a given week would have rain, snow, or sun. I have no idea how they did it but I would love to see their weather prediction system open sourced if they're going to be shutting down.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#63

Post by bitwize »

block_dagger wrote: post #53
pjbeam wrote: post #30

Huh, this always seemed like such an institution it never occurred to me that people have to produce Farmers' Almanac. Which of course they do. Didn't have this on my bingo card today, makes me a little sad.

AI can replace them too. The Server Farmers’ Almanac will be in high demand.

Especially as data centers start displacing the amber waves of grain in America's hinterlands.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#64

Post by zkmon »

You will see accelerated extinction of many members of the business species. The good members of the species can't adapt quickly with the pace of changes that are brought in by the excessive want (greed) and excessive power (knowledge) by other members of the species. Business is the only species where members of the race compete with other members of the own race, and not with other species. In natural species, internal competition happens only for mating rights and food, but not to kill each other.

Capitalism is unnatural - it allows rapid consolidation of the businesses, leading to colonial style of empires. Colonial empires fell due to local people's assertion of their ownership of the land. Business workers have no such bond with the companies. They can't resurrect their businesses once gobbled up by the mega companies.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#65

Post by echelon »

Shorn wrote: post #8
kragen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original editor hasn't wanted to anymore since he died in 01852, 173 years ago, so that's not it. Surely what is happening is that people don't buy reference books much anymore, and the core market of farmers gets smaller every year.

> 01852, 173 years ago That's some serious forward thinking you've got going on with your date format there. I like it, I will be formatting all my years to 5 digits from now on. OTOH, if it was just a typo - keep it to yourself, I don't wanna know. I'm all in - 5 digit years is a thing now.

> That's some serious forward thinking you've got going on with your date format there. I like it, I will be formatting all my years to 5 digits from now on.

I like this.

I wonder what other conventions we could break by being "forward-thinking" in this sense.

Past tense for all proper names ("America was...", "Google was..."), prices pegged to energy equivalents (bananas were priced at 10 kWh). Describing life on the North American Plate under Alpha Centauri aligned constellations...

Those are all awkward. The date thing is just smooth.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#66

Post by carabiner »

ajdude wrote: post #62

I'm not a farmer, but I have relied on the farmers almanac before when planning vacations months in advance. It's been surprisingly accurate at determining whether a given week would have rain, snow, or sun. I have no idea how they did it but I would love to see their weather prediction system open sourced if they're going to be shutting down.

Better yet, use the NWS climate outlook, based on actual science: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/

They do detailed scoring of their predictions and it's based on rigorous physical modeling (navier stokes) so they know that it's better than chance. FA hasn't held up well to such scrutiny.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#67

Post by ragebol »

> Best known for its long-range weather predictions

I wonder if a changing climate makes the predictions in the almanac less useful too

Re: A Fond Farewell

#69

Post by unwind »

Shorn wrote: post #8
kragen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original editor hasn't wanted to anymore since he died in 01852, 173 years ago, so that's not it. Surely what is happening is that people don't buy reference books much anymore, and the core market of farmers gets smaller every year.

> 01852, 173 years ago That's some serious forward thinking you've got going on with your date format there. I like it, I will be formatting all my years to 5 digits from now on. OTOH, if it was just a typo - keep it to yourself, I don't wanna know. I'm all in - 5 digit years is a thing now.

Nobody posted [1] yet, it feels like it's needed.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

Re: A Fond Farewell

#70

Post by euroderf »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
Shorn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 01852, 173 years ago That's some serious forward thinking you've got going on with your date format there. I like it, I will be formatting all my years to 5 digits from now on. OTOH, if it was just a typo - keep it to yourself, I don't wanna know. I'm all in - 5 digit years is a thing now.

> I like it, I will be formatting all my years to 5 digits from now on. Please don't, it's highly irritating and usually just serves as a way to get people to discuss the leading zero rather than the subject they were really interested in in the first place. Leading zeros aren't a thing for a reason. It's about as useful as expressing the temperature in Kelvin.

Octal schmoctal eh
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