[HN Gopher] A Fond Farewell
___________________________________________________________________
A Fond Farewell
Author : erhuve
Score : 546 points
Date : 2025-11-07 03:01 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.farmersalmanac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.farmersalmanac.com)
| shervinafshar wrote:
| Not to be confused with Old Farmer's Almanac (est. 1792) and yet
| sad to see a 200 years old periodical closing up shop.
| owlninja wrote:
| This is the one my mind went to, mostly because that cover is
| so familiar. Granted, I never invested much time in either but
| was always glad they existed.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| the old farmers almanac is the one people are probably more
| familiar with
| np_tedious wrote:
| https://www.almanac.com/old-farmers-almanac-233-years-and-st...
|
| They appear experienced at navigating this confusion
| andrepd wrote:
| Damn, I would expect at least a word of courtesy towards a
| fellow multicentennial publication.
| darkwater wrote:
| Saying "after an incredible 200+ year run." seems enough
| chivalrous for me.
| energy123 wrote:
| We all know they're popping the champagne
| bcherry wrote:
| wow thanks for leaving this comment - i now realize two things:
|
| 1. the farmer's almanac i thought of when i saw the title and
| even read the article is not going anywhere 2. i have never
| before heard of the farmer's almanac referred to in this notice
| rcleveng wrote:
| Wow, I had never heard of that new one until today! Was worried
| for a bit.
| amelius wrote:
| Does this mean they can now rename the Old Farmer's Almanac to
| the Farmer's Almanac?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Interesting, I appreciate how they gave no reasons, I'm also
| curious if there is more details beyond "we don't want to
| anymore"
|
| Would be pretty cool if it was that simple, that reason needs
| more representation and is how I run my entrepreneurial endeavors
| ngold wrote:
| Tis a bit curious R.I.P.
| kragen wrote:
| 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.
| Shorn wrote:
| > 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.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| You might find your crowd among the Long Now Foundation,
| they love their 5-digit years.
| dingnuts wrote:
| this thing where someone performs an in group practice
| (the leading zero behavior) to garner interest, and then
| another in group member appears to try to recruit the
| curious person who takes the bait, that y'all are doing?
|
| it's creepy cult behavior, and the "Long Now" name and
| framing focused on the infinite isn't helping
| jacquesm wrote:
| > 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.
| aydyn wrote:
| Coincidentally, the temperatures in the Farmer's Almanac
| are all in Kelvin.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Degrees Kelvin has its place, just as leading zeros. The
| Farmer's Almanac may have a point but if they do I can't
| see it and to put a leading zero in front of a year is
| just annoying. Think about it: how would you pronounce
| the dates from now on, are you really going to say 'Today
| is the 7th of november of zero-two-zero-two-five'? And
| why stop at one zero, really forward thinking people
| should start counting from the big bang up, that's as
| close as you can get to the Kelvin analogy, might as well
| take it all the way then.
| tdeck wrote:
| If they do indeed use Kelvin, perhaps it's to reduce
| percent error? :)
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > Degrees Kelvin
|
| Not degrees. The unit is simply the kelvin.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You are right.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Leading zeros aren 't a thing for a reason._
|
| If they aren't a thing, why are we talking about them?
| Clearly they're a thing. And not even an obscure thing.
| If you've ever used commonly used representations like
| ZIP codes, bank account numbers, or serial numbers you'll
| no doubt have encountered it before. And that even goes
| for dates. ISO 8601, for example, requires leading zeros,
| including for the year component. "1" is not considered a
| valid year under that standard. It must be represented as
| "0001". Granted, ISO 8601 only requires a minimum of four
| characters to represent the year, but expecting at least
| five characters is conceptually just as valid.
| icehawk wrote:
| > If they aren't a thing, why are we talking about them?
|
| Because someone decided to break convention and use one
| in a four-digit year.
| 9rx wrote:
| The question asks why we're talking about something that
| is purportedly not a thing, not a quest to find further
| confirmation of it being a thing. Swing and a miss.
| icehawk wrote:
| I'm sorry about your miss there.
| 9rx wrote:
| Don't be. Computers don't have feelings.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Well said. Five-digit years are the Shadow the Hedgehog
| of rationalism. But he successfully derailed the thread
| and took the spotlight for himself, so... mission
| accomplished, I guess.
| euroderf wrote:
| Octal schmoctal eh
| kstrauser wrote:
| It's big "look at me" energy, coupled with that user
| citing years way more often than most.
|
| Some person: I like yams.
|
| Person in question: Me too, since I had my first one in
| 01985 or so.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's an interesting - and falsifiable - observation.
|
| Quick check: 1984 rates 15103 mentions, 01984 42. So
| about 0.3%.
|
| For 2015 it is 69000 vs 89 for 02015.
|
| But not all of those are years, there are some other
| cases in there as well.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That was a synthesized example of how they insert years
| seemingly for the sake of formatting it weirdly. Now that
| I've pointed it out to you, next time you see this come
| up, ask yourself if anyone else would have mentioned a
| date in that context.
|
| If I were them, I might end this comment with "I haven't
| seen it done like that since I first got online, in
| around 01993."
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's a bit like vegetarians/vegans or people that don't
| have TV.
|
| It usually gets dropped in the first five minutes of
| meeting and after that it gets repeated if it is
| initially ignored.
| eichin wrote:
| How many of those are actually (New England) zip codes?
| (and of the ones that are years, how many of them are
| "kragen is at it again" :-) Seriously, I've never noticed
| a thread on these and not found a kragen post as a
| trigger, but there's probably sampling bias in that - or
| maybe the intersection of "people who are into the Long
| Now Foundation" and HN posters is that small?)
| silisili wrote:
| Nobody seems to care about the y100k problem this
| introduces.
|
| 001852 is safe for a million years!
| Alive-in-2025 wrote:
| Only losers don't pad dates out to 10 digits to account
| for when Donald Trump passes off his earthly coil.
| bombcar wrote:
| Big miss on your name not being Alive-in-0000002025
| shagie wrote:
| RFC 2550 Section 3.1 has years from 0000 to 9999 as four
| digit but zero padded (so the fall of Rome was 0476). It
| then gets appropriately weird as it was published April 1,
| 1999.
|
| You might also enjoy the Kurzgesagt human era calendar -
| https://youtu.be/29pN-2KM2DI - https://shop-
| us.kurzgesagt.org/collections/calendar
| echelon wrote:
| > 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.
| unwind wrote:
| Nobody posted [1] yet, it feels like it's needed.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Wow, an organisation worried about dealing with the date
| flipover in 010000. Very forward thinking
| Shorn wrote:
| I see what you did there
| Polizeiposaune wrote:
| error: invalid digit "8" in octal constant
| msla wrote:
| > 01852, 173 years ago
|
| Certainly not.
| lisbbb wrote:
| Unless he's a vampire. Those bastards are very cunning at
| hiding how long they live for.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> the core market of farmers gets smaller every year._
|
| While the Farmer's Almanac doesn't go out of its way to
| prevent farmers from reading it or anything, it was really
| geared more towards suburbanites with an interest in things
| like gardening.
|
| The Old Farmer's Almanac is more geared towards farmers, but
| there is no signs of it ending publication.
| 9rx wrote:
| They assert "Stay tuned here for more updates" on X, suggesting
| a change in the way they are doing things rather than not doing
| it in any capacity anymore.
| tylerchilds wrote:
| I'll put a bowl of water in the moonlight tonight to bring
| blessings to the generations of authors farming our collective
| reality framing.
| owlninja wrote:
| I think this is from the _Old_ Farmer 's Almanac
| lisbbb wrote:
| There's probably one for witches that's still all the rage on
| the east coast.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The full moon was yesterday unfortunately!
| mtillman wrote:
| I skim both almanac products each year. Both have helpful little
| home tips and quite a bit of gardening advice. Sad to see them
| go.
| hajile wrote:
| Should have paid the $9 instead of just skimming...
| thorum wrote:
| This press release has a bit more explanation:
|
| https://www.farmersalmanac.com/end-of-an-era-farmers-almanac...
|
| > This decision, though difficult, reflects the growing financial
| challenges of producing and distributing the Almanac in today's
| chaotic media environment.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| Hardly an explanation, what is meant by chaotic media
| environment?
| khannn wrote:
| If I had to hazard a guess I'd say how everyone has the
| internet in their pocket, news and entertainment being one
| and the same, and the fact that nobody reads books anymore
| atomicnature wrote:
| Book sales in general (across all formats) are up I think -
| so there are still many, many readers around. We just have
| many new formats (EPUB, audiobooks, reader devices, etc.)
| and of course population is increasing over the globe. I'm
| pretty sure we have the highest number of readers on the
| planet right now than ever before in absolute terms.
| jbstack wrote:
| I'm not sure that's still correct. There was an uplift
| because of Covid and people having more spare time, but
| whatever more recent (2024 - 2025) sources I can find
| suggest the trend has reversed.
|
| It's worth also considering demographics. If you narrow
| the focus to just younger generations (who, we can guess,
| are more addicted to smartphones) then the numbers look
| pretty bad. E.g.:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/05/report-
| fall-in...
| technothrasher wrote:
| My son, who is away at college as a freshman this year,
| recently phoned me and apologized for calling me a bad
| dad and thanked me for not allowing him to have any
| devices in his bedroom after bedtime growing up, as it
| made him become a reader. He said he was amazed when he
| got to school and nobody else reads for pleasure.
| atomicnature wrote:
| 1. The survey seems limited to UK or so. Not sure - it
| doesn't look like a global report.
|
| 2. Don't confuse "enjoyment" with "number of readers".
| The previous generation may have enjoyed it more -
| because there were no better options.
|
| 3. People over the globe are more educated now, and
| engaged in knowledge work. They must read to get work
| done.
|
| 4. Don't forget the "pirate book" scene - such as lib
| gen, Anna's archive, etc. - in developing countries.
| hajile wrote:
| Audience matters here. Most book sales have been falling.
| The one increase has been in romance porn with those
| books accounting for some 50% of all paperbacks sold at
| this point (they are dominating for the exact same reason
| porn dominates internet video content).
|
| Personally, I don't count pornhub traffic the same way I
| count Youtube or Netflix traffic and I think the same
| applies here.
| autoexec wrote:
| I can't fault people for feeling that nobody reads
| anymore. In the US today the majority of Americans can't
| even understand books written at a 6th grade level and
| literacy has been trending downward. Only a small number
| of us are propping up book sales.
| vslira wrote:
| Without snark, I believe it just means they're not making
| money, likely because people consume less "published media"
| nowadays
| iAMkenough wrote:
| You can Google or ask AI instead of reference a book
| arthurfirst wrote:
| Like asking for a book at the library in Rollerball?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Their audience is old people who buy the book at the cashier
| line at Walmart.
|
| Both their customer base and sales outlet is dying off.
|
| These things are really magazines that run once a year. The
| notion of a magazine is a weird concept that doesn't compute
| for anyone younger than 35.
| bluGill wrote:
| With all the digital AI slop these days I'm starting to
| look for magazines again. Ones that put some effort into
| verification that the stories really are true.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| I think there's been a micro-boom in prestige
| periodicals. Until I kind of fell back out of love with
| tennis, I was a subscriber of Racquet, which is a really
| high quality print publication about tennis (and
| occasionally other racquet sports).
|
| https://shop.racquetmag.com/products/issue-
| no-8?pr_prod_stra... if you're interested in seeing what
| a very nice tennis magazine looks like (links to shop
| because it's the best way to show contents)
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| The last couple times I cracked open a magazine it was
| 50% ads and I'm not sure how many articles were PR
| releases. Thinking of Pop Sci, Psychology Today, etc
| bluGill wrote:
| Only 50% - that seems low. They were always more than
| that (except mad, though they did take ads latter I'm
| told).
| reaperducer wrote:
| _These things are really magazines that run once a year.
| The notion of a magazine is a weird concept that doesn't
| compute for anyone younger than 35._
|
| Ageism aside, your stereotype of young people today is
| about a decade out of date. It doesn't sound like you've
| been to a book store in America since 2015.
|
| I see high schoolers gathered around the magazine racks at
| the book store every time I visit, which is at least
| weekly.
|
| In a lot of ways, nothing has changed. Blue jeans, concert
| shirts, and someone always walks away with a Rolling Stone.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > Their audience is old people who buy the book at the
| cashier line at Walmart.
|
| That's the _Old Farmer 's Almanac_. I don't know where this
| _Farmer 's Almanac_ is on the shelves, but it's certainly
| not at Walmart, which carries a different publication
| that's even older.
|
| Confusing names, yes, because one is TFA and the other is
| TOFA.
| kulahan wrote:
| You think Walmart is dying off? Definitely not.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The retail experience is. Farmer's Almanac sat above the
| candy in the checkout aisle.
|
| That's all transitioning to delivery and self-checkout.
| 20 years ago, you'd like 30 lanes open with eyeballs on
| the book. Now, in my area there's like 3-5 lanes most
| times.
| muzani wrote:
| I think they simply don't know what to do next. In the past
| century, you could write a book with good content, put it on
| a shelf, and people would pay money for it.
|
| Then at some point, book stores stopped existing. Some turned
| into gift stores where the book was some decoration you'd put
| on the shelf to add aesthetic to the room.
|
| So a lot of things went digital. But nobody wants to pay for
| digital information. You'd think almanacs would be popular in
| the era of overinformation.
|
| What channel next? YT shorts? TikTok? Do farmers even use
| LinkedIn? How do you deal with bots that grab all the
| information you put out there and repackage it into a
| $20/month subscription?
| profunctor wrote:
| Book stores did not stop existing. They are everywhere.
| Book sales are up in recent times.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Print book sales are down, although not as much as people
| want to believe. Book stores are making a comeback but in
| terms of number of books on shelves I'd say the average
| one is ~50% less. We had a real heyday in the late 90s
| where a Barnes and Nobles would have a copy of almost any
| book you could reasonably be looking for, plus multiple
| rows of magazines. We have not returned to that, and
| certainly books that you'd pick up on a whim like an end-
| cap item have reasonably suffered for it, or increased
| their prices to fairly insane levels.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> We had a real heyday in the late 90s where a Barnes
| and Nobles would have a copy of almost any book you could
| reasonably be looking for, plus multiple rows of
| magazines.
|
| I don't know if there was ever a bookstore that ever had
| a copy of almost any book you could reasonably be looking
| for. Maybe Powell's back in the day if you counted the
| technical bookstore along with the mother ship. Certainly
| not Barnes & Noble. There are still multiple rows of
| magazines at B&N today, including ones on Linux,
| programming, network admin, Raspberry Pi, etc.
|
| The one I go to is the same size as the ones I went to 20
| years ago and an order of magnitude larger than the mall
| bookstores I went to 40 years ago. Although some of that
| space is taken up by the coffee shop, Legos, and vinyl
| records.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Barnes & Nobles and Borders were both the ultimate in
| retail bookstores and also the beginning of the end of
| retail book stores. They killed local bookstores, and
| then Amazon killed them.
| RankingMember wrote:
| They didn't, you're right, but book stores themselves are
| on the decline [1]. Borders brick and mortar footprint is
| gone in the U.S. and they used to be the #2 bookseller.
| Barnes and Noble is holding on, thankfully. I love
| physical books and just the quiet ambience of a good
| bookstore.
|
| [1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/do-
| not-turn-t...
| bluGill wrote:
| Despite the name "farmers" I doubt the majority of
| customers were farmers, at least not in the last 50 years
| or so.
| lokar wrote:
| Over the 200 years, most of the readers may have been
| farmers, or at least lived or worked on farms. That would
| have been much of the population back then.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Bro book sales are at a record high right now and barnes
| and noble is opening lots of stores
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > Do farmers even use LinkedIn?
|
| Farmers don't even use the Almanac, because it's not
| accurate. These things are all 50/50. A coin toss in their
| predictions.
| kulahan wrote:
| Well that just obviously isn't true. If it were, who'd
| keep buying the stupid things? If nothing else, natural
| market forces would simply prop up the farmers who aren't
| wasting time and money following a completely inaccurate
| book.
|
| In statistics, two things are simple: predicting the very
| next step, and predicting what happens in 100,000 steps.
| It's the part in between that's tough. Weather is a
| function of statistics, essentially. It's why we can tell
| what the weather will be like tomorrow, and why we can
| tell that La Nina is going to affect us this year, but
| why we can't tell what the weather will be like on a
| Thursday 4 weeks from now.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > If it were, who'd keep buying the stupid things?
|
| The same people who buy books about healing crystals, who
| donate to televangelists, who go to reiki "healers" and
| chiropractors, who believe in tarot firmly, etc.
| kulahan wrote:
| Those people aren't in something resembling a zero-sum
| game, so they don't really make sense. Chiropractors sell
| back cracks, and the people buying that get exactly what
| they want.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _what is meant by chaotic media environment?_
|
| it means that the almanac does not bring in enough profit to
| make it worthwhile to continue or to find a buyer for the
| company, and the owners are also aware that many of the same
| profit related issues are in the public discourse as
| affecting (formerly-)print media in the now-digital market,
| so the owners conclude that their financial are part of the
| general trend in the industry rather than to specific
| problems with the business formula they have used for over
| 200 years.
| lisbbb wrote:
| 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.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| And still some of IT's biggest trends right now are LLMs, which
| essentially make shit up on an industrial scale.
|
| What is going to be lost is more than an old book for old
| people: It's the folklore associated with it, the - and I mean
| that in the most positive meaning of the word - myths. The same
| kind of old magic that vanished when 'Weekly World News'
| stopped publication, or when MAD stopped being published
| monthly.
| Fomite wrote:
| Was going to say this - making shit up is currently driving
| most of the S&P 500's growth.
| avalys wrote:
| Readers Digest was just a general interest collection of
| articles, wasn't it? I don't remember it being particularly
| made-up.
|
| I mainly read it for the jokes, as I recall.
| Aloha wrote:
| I used to look forward to RD in the pre internet times, it
| was great medium form reading.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It reprinted articles from other popular magazines, often in
| an abridged format (shortened, glossing over the boring
| details). I think by the 1980s though, quite a few of the
| articles were original.
| dangus wrote:
| 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 the modern media
| landscape, in the days when entertainment was a little more
| hard to come by.
|
| Some things sadly do have their time and place. We aren't
| getting this back just like we aren't getting back a nation
| where everyone watched the same 3 channels on their television.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> 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...
| pjbeam wrote:
| 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.
| chatmasta wrote:
| The brand has 200 years of value. They could easily sell it.
| It's a respectable decision to shut it down instead.
| keane wrote:
| I bet County Highway would be interested in acquiring this.
| https://www.countyhighway.com/about
| block_dagger wrote:
| AI can replace them too. The Server Farmers' Almanac will be in
| high demand.
| bitwize wrote:
| Especially as data centers start displacing the amber waves
| of grain in America's hinterlands.
| amelius wrote:
| Content farmers, you mean.
| imdsm wrote:
| Engagement Farmers Almanac, A Guide to Brainrot
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Ah yes, the soul of humanity reduced to silicon.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Isn't the Server Farmer's Almanac basically stuff like the
| UNIX handbook and the like?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| What exactly _is_ the Farmer's Almanac? I always thought it was
| basically a big set of historical data that helped provide a sort
| of statistical foundation for choices, even if the _why_ isn't
| explained.
|
| Which seems like I can completely understand it as a practical
| tool in the past but fairly obsolete in modern times.
|
| Or did it evolve, too, and was essentially modern science and
| maths, dressed in the trappings of a beloved cultural relic? Or
| is it more than ever a collection of stories and advice and other
| culture, and much less about the actual almanac?
| m463 wrote:
| "The 2026 Old Farmer's Almanac" provides weather forecasts,
| astronomical data, and practical wisdom for those living close
| to the earth, continuing its tradition since 1792."
| 9rx wrote:
| The parent is asking about the Farmer's Almanac (the one
| bidding farewell), first published in 1818.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I actually don't realize there were two! I'm guessing
| there's a history here involving a fork.
| shervinafshar wrote:
| But if you'd like to see a sample of _Old_ Farmer's
| Almanac, their 2026 issue could be accessed here: https:/
| /reader.mediawiremobile.com/TheOldFarmersAlmanac/issu...
|
| I always enjoy reading through those tabulated stuff; see
| pp. 280-281.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> I'm guessing there's a history here involving a fork._
|
| This is no direct relationship. Just a case of a
| competitor deciding to compete in the marketplace.
| conductr wrote:
| Seems like the original already named it wisely. If it's
| 1820 and I'm a farmer, I'm definitely getting my almanac
| from an "old farmer".
| 9rx wrote:
| Stands to reason, not just in name, but because The
| Farmer's Almanac was a spin on The Old Farmer's Almanac
| that was geared more towards the growing urban
| population.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| Kinda all of the above. It did evolve into a
| scientific(-adjacent) thing, if that makes sense. My
| boyfriend's parents have all of them sitting on a dedicated
| shelf. Interesting to read through.
|
| They _definitely_ leaned into being a cultural artifact. Jokes,
| anecdotes, stories, how-tos, homeopathic recipes for things
| like cough syrups, etc. They all look kinda the same so either
| brand consistency or to keep the nostalgia factor.
|
| Their sun/moon/eclipse is rooted in real math foundations but
| their "proprietary" weather forecast model was developed when
| the publication began in 1792.
|
| It's like 30% hard astronomical data, 30% proprietary models
| that they've been using for generations and 40% storytelling.
|
| edit for context on scientific side:
|
| WRT forecast modeling, the publication claims ~80% accuracy [1]
| but it's been found to come out to about ~50%+ under scrutiny
| [2]
|
| [1] https://www.almanac.com/2026-old-farmers-almanac
|
| [2]
| https://climate.colostate.edu/blog/index.php/2024/08/23/shou...
| conductr wrote:
| They have to predict the weather for the year in a book that
| has to go through the publishing and distribution process
| ahead of time.
|
| My local weather news has all the benefits of real time data
| and weather models yet I think their accuracy rate is just as
| poor when it comes to producing the 7 day outlook. It's
| common to hear a forecast for rain/cold front/etc in 7 day
| outlook that just never materializes. Also the timing of the
| event if it does arrive is almost always off by a day or two.
| Often they have the whole town worried about something that's
| definitely happening Friday, they talk about it all week,
| everyone is preparing, little league games getting
| rescheduled, etc. then only hours beforehand it's well looks
| like maybe Sunday. Then Sunday comes and instead of inches of
| rain, it's a sprinkle.
|
| I'm not even trying to be critical of weather reporting, I
| get that it's a crapshoot but doing it a year+ ahead of time
| and getting similar results/accuracy is actually quite
| impressive.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I didn't study too much meteorology in undergrad, but one
| thing impressed upon us is that any forecast beyond maybe 3
| days is basically guesswork.
|
| I think what might be getting observed here is that when
| forecasting that many days out, the local data becomes so
| unimportant to the model's outcome that the model is just
| reflecting historical climate trends. Which kind of makes
| both the same _kind_ of model. Ie. when forecasting
| tomorrow, the current temperature and pressure data
| _really_ makes a difference. But once pushed to 7 days,
| those data essentially become a proxy for typical weather
| at that time of year, possibly down-weighted by a lot.
|
| I just woke up and I feel like I'm doing a very poor job
| trying to describe this.
| bluGill wrote:
| That depends on what you care about. Will it rain at a
| specific date/time - getting that for tomorrow is hard,
| much less a year. However you can often predict if this
| will be a wet or dry year with reasonable accuracy and
| that is important information (farmers plant different
| seeds). I doubt their model is very good at this, but
| science can do well enough.
| jsight wrote:
| I think you are describing it pretty well, and I've
| noticed the same thing. The farther into the future the
| forecast goes, the higher the probability is that it will
| look like the historical average.
|
| One thing that I've found to help a lot is to go to
| weather.gov and look at the "forecast discussion". Often
| it will help to understand what types of uncertainties
| exist within the forecast.
|
| It isn't unusual to see notes that make it really clear
| that 24-48 hour variations are expected, or that massive
| differences will exist based upon hard to predict
| variables. "Hey we think it will rain heavily as far
| south as X, but actually it might end up staying north of
| Y in which case X will stay dry"
|
| It is easy to see how hard it can be even if the forecast
| itself turns out to be fairly accurate at a high level.
| hajile wrote:
| Even if we had perfect information at one instant in time,
| modeling a chaotic system going into the future becomes
| increasingly difficult.
|
| We have far from perfect information and very flawed models
| too.
|
| Interestingly, there seems to be some success with AI
| models that almost completely skip the science and jump
| straight to pattern recognition. It's interesting to think
| of modern 10-day weather forecasting going back to its old
| almanac roots.
| wat10000 wrote:
| They don't _have_ to predict the weather for a year. They
| _choose_ to do something which cannot be done. Certainly
| not with any known technique, and probably not even in
| theory.
|
| If I predict that the weather in my location on November 7,
| 2076 will be moderately cool and sunny (as it is today), I
| have a pretty good chance of being correct. I wouldn't find
| it impressive, though.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _My local weather news has all the benefits of real time
| data and weather models yet I think their accuracy rate is
| just as poor when it comes to producing the 7 day outlook._
|
| Where is your local source getting their forecast from?
|
| > _A seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather
| about 80 percent of the time and a five-day forecast can
| accurately predict the weather approximately 90 percent of
| the time. However, a 10-day--or longer--forecast is only
| right about half the time._
|
| * https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/k-12-education/weather-
| for...
|
| There are also 'technicalities': I'm in Toronto, Canada,
| which is 40km east-to-east and 20km from the lake to the
| northern border. If rain hits the western half (around
| 427/Sherway/Etobicoke) but not the eastern half
| (Scarborough bluffs), is a "it will rain" forecast correct
| for the city? Some will perceive it as yes and some as no.
| astura wrote:
| This comment appears to confuse the Farmers' Almanac
| (published since 1818) with the Old Farmer's Almanac
| (published since 1792). It's really unclear which one you're
| talking about.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| FYI your links are about two different publications with
| similar names (the former is older and _not_ shutting down*).
| ajdude wrote:
| 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.
| carabiner wrote:
| 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.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Does something like this exist for weather prediction
| worldwide?
| bartread wrote:
| Sadly it would never work for the British Isles, that much
| I can guarantee you. Our weather resists all forms of
| prediction found to be reliable elsewhere, and I doubt AI
| enhancements over the next few years will make much of a
| dent in the problem.
|
| I've tried all manner of weather services and none of them
| really do a really good job of any level of forecasting.
| They do however excel at supplying me with information I
| can get just by looking out the window.
| aubanel wrote:
| For Europe, use ECMWF, they provide great data:
| https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts
| jrmg wrote:
| Statistical averages and confirmation bias.
| zkmon wrote:
| 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.
| ragebol wrote:
| > Best known for its long-range weather predictions
|
| I wonder if a changing climate makes the predictions in the
| almanac less useful too
| naIak wrote:
| When all you have is a hammer...
| squirtle24 wrote:
| To be honest I've never even _heard_ of the "Farmers Almanac",
| but its #2 on HN now. Am I the only one here?
| NaomiLehman wrote:
| I think people like the name because of nostalgia they can't
| connect to and the word Almanac reminding them of Back to the
| Future
| gabagool wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_Almanac
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Farmer%27s_Almanac
|
| People do know things other people do not. They are fairly
| notable, though obviously not as much in today's society,
| hence this one's retirement
| tkgally wrote:
| If anyone is interested in seeing older almanac(k)s, or at least
| texts with the word in their titles, the Internet Archive has
| scans of thousands. One chosen at random:
|
| _The Illustrated Phrenological Almanac_
|
| https://archive.org/details/illustratedphren1852fowl/mode/2u...
| markphip wrote:
| There is still the Old Farmer's Almanac
| https://www.almanac.com/old-farmers-almanac-233-years-and-st...
| styanax wrote:
| Thank you, this is the one I recall from my youth (having them
| around the house). I did not realize there was another one with
| an almost identical name (this post).
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Why was there two? Linked article doesn't really say why the
| confusion exists, other than that there are 2 almanacs.
| LogicWolfe wrote:
| Looks like it's not a case of a fork and but rather of
| different publishers all trying to serve a common need with a
| well understood formula. There used to be many almanacs, then
| there were two, now there is one.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| On the other side of the pond there are more:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Moore%27s_Almanack in
| England published since 1697 and a similarly named one
| (without the k) in Ireland,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Moore%27s_Almanac since
| 1764
| mastazi wrote:
| In Italy, where I grew up, my grandparents used to read
| the Almanacco di Barbanera; the first edition came out in
| 1762. It is still around https://www.barbanera.it/
| fsckboy wrote:
| barbanera = black beard
| hencq wrote:
| Similarly in the Netherlands, my grandparents used to
| have the Enkhuizer Almanak. Also still around after 430
| years https://www.almanak.nl/
| jimbokun wrote:
| Oh, I thought this was the one that was closing down!
|
| Which really surprised me. Ben Franklin's version is a really
| strong brand so it makes sense it's some other Farmer's Almanac
| that's shutting down.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| Did we all have a Mandela moment that what we all thought was
| "The Farmer's Almanac" with the yellow cover actually has OLD
| in the title? And there is randomly this other farmer's
| almanac?
| anthk wrote:
| Uh, Spain had this counterpart named "El Calendario Zaragozano"
| (The Zaragozan calendar) which looks like 120 years old or
| more... in the current edition and layout. It had ephemerides,
| farming related weather 'preditions', sowing dates, religious
| holydays, farming tips, big flea market day listings, old idioms,
| famous quotes and so on.
|
| http://calendariozaragozano.net/almanaque-zaragozano.html
| Lu2025 wrote:
| Good riddance. These guys had like 40% forecast accuracy, worse
| than random. When they say the winter will warmer it will be
| colder and vice versa.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| If you're treating a forecast as a single Bernoulli trial,
| wouldn't that make them 60% accurate for the opposite of their
| prediction?
|
| Which is a silly assumption; a forecast isn't a single yes-no
| event. it's not obvious to me that 50% is the worst case
| success rate.
|
| Would be more interesting to compare their forecast to
| something like a long term NOAA forecast, but I don't believe
| such a thing exists because calculating the future is very
| expensive.
| hbn wrote:
| GP did say it was just in reference to whether the winter
| will be warmer or colder than the last one, which is 50/50
|
| In which case if they're 40% accurate, you can get 60%
| accuracy from them by assuming it'll be the opposite of what
| they say
|
| If they could get their accuracy down to 0% you'd have
| perfect predictions!
| zroxbhai444u wrote:
| Us
| herodotus wrote:
| In the early 1990's, during my days as a Comp. Sci. prof, I was
| so excited about the emergence of the internet. When I saw the
| Mosaic browser (a precursor to Netscape and later Firefox) I knew
| the world had changed for the better. Now I have such mixed
| feelings. Magazines (like the Farmers Almanac) either go online
| completely or just disappear. They just cannot compete for
| advertising dollars with Google. And small family run local
| retail stores, offering not just goods, but a social hub for
| people are shutting their doors because how can they compete with
| the convenience of Amazon. Much has been gained from the
| internet, and much has been lost.
| gaoshan wrote:
| The aspect of small local stores functioning as a social hub
| really hits hard. The social hub, such as it is now, can be so
| much larger and less personal that it really does feel like a
| loss (a negative even).
|
| Is the social hub now something like Instagram or a specific
| forum/subreddit/space for a school or neighborhood? These are
| really insufficient replacements and people that grew up
| knowing nothing else likely do not realize just how
| insufficient they are.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| But if it's so valuable... why aren't people willing to pay
| for it?
|
| Forgoing luxuries like a vacation to support local stores
| full of people you know and trust, that might charge 20% more
| for the same product, seems like an obvious thing...
|
| That almost no Americans do in reality.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Because if I do that, I lose my vacation and I don't gain a
| local store full of people I know and trust.
|
| Collective action problems aren't solved by individually
| performing the action, and therefore the fact that people
| aren't doing it doesn't show they don't want it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Collective action problems aren't solved by
| individually performing the action
|
| This is a truth that a lot of the west, particularly
| Americans, struggle to accept. We keep trying "the free
| market and individual incentives must solve all problems"
| over and over, and fail over and over.
|
| Huge problems require collective action to solve.
| Collective action requires good coordination, strong
| institutions, leadership, and most importantly, the
| societal willingness to not always optimize for the
| individual's freedom/desires/expectations. None of these
| are currently present in America.
| olelele wrote:
| Thank you
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's a very attractive idea. It gives you an immediate
| counterargument (people must prefer it this way because
| they're all doing it), _and_ gives you the satisfaction
| of calling the other person a hypocrite (you think it 's
| better yet you aren't doing it).
|
| I've lost count of how many times I've had someone tell
| me, "If you think you should pay more taxes, you can
| always send the IRS some extra cash."
| DFHippie wrote:
| Any problem with externalized costs or benefits is a
| collective action problem. You get a benefit everyone
| pays for or you incur a cost which everyone pays. The
| individual incentive is to freeload on the resources of
| others. It is functionally theft.
|
| Regulation and other government actions can solve these
| problems by internalizing these costs/benefits. _Any_
| solution to these problems involves collective control of
| individual actions, which is to say, government at some
| scale.
|
| There is some irony in the people who say "taxation is
| theft" ignoring the theft of the commons counteracted by
| taxation and the government services it supports.
| wat10000 wrote:
| "Pollution is theft" would be a nice way to put the
| libertarian case for environmental regulation, but it
| doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
| petsfed wrote:
| A lot of reasons, but the two big ones are:
|
| 1) the American cult of self-reliance. The idea that people
| will not value something they did not themselves work for,
| even if its given to them by a close friend or family
| member, is basically synonymous with "the American dream".
| "Socialism" is so bad to Americans that they would rather
| have diabetics die because they can't afford the lifesaving
| medicine they need, than to give handouts to such people,
| just for them to develop a "dependency". There's even an
| entire health-influencer industry built around the idea
| that all health problems not _directly_ caused by trauma
| are because the person suffering just isn 't trying hard
| enough to be healthy, and not, you know, because of a
| social and economic system that's actively corrosive to
| human health. "You're sick because you're too lazy to avoid
| trans-fats" basically the gist of RFK Jr's ideology.
|
| 2) Americans are so opposed to thinking more than 3 months
| ahead that _all_ they see with that 20% price increase is
| the impact it has on them _right now_. The easy access to
| instant gratification is steadily eroding our ability to be
| patient or suffer any hardship. This has been growing for a
| long time (c.f. fresh fruits and vegetables of all stripes,
| year round) but has reached a sort of fever pitch with the
| advent of same-day delivery for a vast array of bits and
| baubles.
| sowbug wrote:
| You think you have a choice to buy local. It's more
| complicated than that.
|
| "Local stores full of people you know and trust" is what
| advertising tries to approximate. Instead of forming
| lasting human bonds with shopkeepers and employees, we are
| informed by ads who we should patronize. And we pay,
| indirectly, for that service.
|
| Private equity also takes its pound of flesh. Try hiring a
| local plumber. They'll always say they're locally owned and
| operated, which is a partial truth. But when you're charged
| $400 for 15 minutes of labor, remember that a lot of that
| revenue goes to private equity, far far away from your
| hamlet, whether you like it or not.
| boznz wrote:
| the McDonald's in our town says "locally owned and
| operated", same with the stores where everything
| (literally) is made in China. These sums up the absurdity
| of the phrase for me.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The franchise is either locally owned and operated, or
| it's a corporation-owned store. McDonald's doesn't permit
| owner-investors as franchisees, only owner-operators (at
| least that was the case last I knew).
| xp84 wrote:
| It's true that it's locally O&O as someone else pointed
| out. The McDonald's corporation just likely owns the land
| and collects rent and a sales royalty from the owner.
| This is pretty standard and honestly, seems to me to be
| much more human than the big box retail business model
| where there is no local ownership of any kind.
|
| Side note: Grocery Outlet if you're in the places they
| operate, is a completely franchised grocery store chain.
| In my experience in multiple towns, the local owners do a
| great job, and one near me donates to some excellent
| local charities.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Lots of things have happened that have ultimately harmed
| these small communities.
|
| A major problem is consolidation. A small town hardware
| store may have had access to multiple suppliers at one
| point. Those all merged together and ultimately started
| raising their prices in a "go away" sense to small time
| purchasers. That's made it incredibly hard to be a store. A
| big box store gets a lot more foot traffic and has more
| leverage against distributers which allows them to
| ultimately outprice a small time store.
|
| My hometown went through this. As a kid, it had a
| restaurant, a grocery store, a hardware store, and an
| automobile repair shop. 1 by 1 those all died. The
| restaurant died because the community never ate there. It
| became a thing where you'd literally call the owner the
| night before so they could prepare you a meal the next day.
| Otherwise they had no traffic. They were too expensive for
| my small town so nobody would buy a lunch there. The
| grocery store and hardware store died from being priced
| out. At one point, just to keep the shelves stocked the
| owner literally had to buy products from Walmart to sell at
| the store. No distributor would sell to them.
| pksebben wrote:
| I think to tease out the core of the problem with large
| businesses, capital, and society (esp. as regards the
| dissolution of small businesses), you need to autopsy the
| concepts of value and liquidity.
|
| Money is meant to be a store of value, 'value' in this
| case being literally anyone considers valuable. However,
| it's an abstraction that doesn't quite fit over the thing
| it attempts to abstract - it really only captures that
| value if the value is something that is easy to transact.
| You might value a good conversation with your local
| grocer, or the smile you get when you pass someone you
| recognize in your neighborhood, but those things are left
| out of the money equation. Things the abstraction
| captures well - transactions of goods, legal
| representation, contracts, and lobbyists - are all of a
| particular stripe. Many of these are related to a
| projection of will; the ability to make things happen the
| way you want in spite of potentially mitigating factors.
|
| One of the things that money allows is exploitation.
| Because of the delta between actual value and the
| abstraction of value, one is capable of strategically
| manouvering such that they capture more of the
| abstraction than a straight value:value transaction would
| warrant. This is compounded when you get tricky with laws
| and litigation and contracts - hard edges in the problem
| space become anvils you can use to hammer things to a
| shape that you like. Cynical strategies are quite
| successful here.
|
| It is my belief that due to the recursively self-
| reinforcing nature of this system, it is bound to fail
| eventually. Because the leaks in the abstraction of value
| are actually a boon to some few powerful entities, the
| rules that govern the abstraction will fail to change and
| adapt and at some point the whole system becomes too
| heavy to support itself. As a whole, the system will
| eventually eat it's way to a heart attack.
|
| Liquidity is the velocity of this process, and thus the
| velocity of consumption. There _are_ pressures and
| systems and factors that metabolize the effects of the
| flow of capital, but the higher liquidity is the more
| burdened those systems become. We are currently in a
| place where the liquidity factor is > 1, by which I mean
| money can be spent before it is earned and most of it is
| (we have something like 5-20x debt to the pool of money,
| depending on how you measure it). This means that those
| deficiencies in the abstraction are accelerated and
| compounded by the same amount, which translates to an
| equal difference between the things we actually value as
| humans and the things we are capable of valuing as
| economic units.
| senderista wrote:
| Possible counterpoint: consumers will price in these
| intangibles when making purchasing decisions.
| etchalon wrote:
| Most people struggle to just to stay in front of their
| bills. It has nothing to do with "willing" and has
| everything to do with "able".
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They dont get a choice. You really can't operate a small
| store anymore. The distribution networks were all destroyed
| by the top-5 retailers.
|
| Regional supermarkets are capped by this. The lack of third
| party distribution means they have to have their own
| sourcing and distribution. They can't grow and are slowly
| being picked off of PE and bigger chains.
|
| It's even hard for restaurants. When I worked in
| restaurants in college in my region, we had 6 local produce
| distributors. Now you have Sysco, US Foods, two regionals,
| one of which just went PE, and the vertically integrated
| Chinese markets that prefer to do business within their
| circle.
|
| I think we are going to have significant political unrest,
| and the rollup of everything will continue until that
| federal power is exerted against it. Otherwise, welcome to
| WalmartKrogerHomeDepot.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Huge sections of America/American's are incredibly poor.
|
| Add that the highest income people were the first to switch
| to Amazon, and are more online first than community first.
| It didn't take losing too many of those customers for the
| economics to fall apart.
|
| I live in a tourist town that has had a huge influx of new,
| higher wealth people post COVID. Surprising to me our
| businesses/restaurants are doing worse with this new
| population with more money, not better. They live here for
| the amenities, but other than on the mountain biking
| trails/ski mountain/lake (on their boats or remote beaches,
| detached from most people) you never see them. They work
| from home, but our walking trails are the sparsest I've
| ever seen them. None of them seem to go out to eat,
| especially not lunch. It's awful. And now that they are
| here, property prices have gone up, so more locals (and the
| children of locals definitely) will be priced out and
| replaced by work from home types who... just disappear into
| their houses. They buy all their gear online instead of
| supporting the local shops, the local knowledge, the places
| help organize/arrange for trail maintenance, more land into
| conservancy. From my one town observation modern upper
| middle class American's appear to be a net-loss for the
| local community. They are the types so into their sport
| they do all the own maintenance, then expect the local shop
| to do the 1 or 2 things they can't/don't want to do. The
| local shop can't survive on that little bit of work on your
| 'all internet bought, self maintained' stuff. They just
| don't get it.
| localhost wrote:
| But why do social hubs need to be places of financial
| transactions?
|
| I was in Delft recently and I really loved their
| library/community center. Full of music practice rooms,
| people playing board games on the ground floor, a coffee bar
| and it was full of people at 8pm. It is open from 9am - 11pm
| M-F.
|
| You walk or cycle there (free indoor bicycle parking). There
| is a movie theater across the "street" (no cars).
| spijdar wrote:
| I don't think it's about being "places of financial
| transactions" so much as it's about places of shared
| necessity. Everyone has to eat, so everyone goes to the
| grocery store.
|
| Community centers are great and I'm not going to argue
| against having "non-commercial recreation", but the thing
| about having local stores as social hubs is they might be
| the only universally shared place of a community. Not
| everyone is going to want (or be able!) to visit a library,
| but everyone does need food and other consumables/goods.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| The "shared necessity" factor also means that you
| regularly meet acquaintances there by accident. It just
| doesn't happen at the Wal-Mart or Home-Depot 15 miles
| away anywhere near as often as it would happen at the
| town general store or the local main street shopping
| district. Possibly because nobody actually spends time at
| a big box store or strip mall; they're such deeply
| unpleasant spaces that you basically just do what
| absolutely must be done and get out. So now a little
| extra stroll around to window shop has been replaced by
| extra time in the car to drive 15 miles across town in
| the other direction to go to some other big box store.
|
| It's not just a small towns thing, either. The main
| street shopping district I had in mind just now is in the
| middle of Chicago. And it doesn't happen so much there,
| either, anymore, in the post retail apocalypse era. Now
| it's all bars and restaurants so people go there for a
| very reduced range of reasons.
| localhost wrote:
| I would say that "don't let perfect be the enemy of the
| good" here. Would universal be better? Sure. But what I
| saw is so much better than what we currently have here in
| the US.
|
| The point is that OPEN (the name of the Delft library) is
| really a community center and not a library. Yes, it
| happens to have books. But it also has a stage for
| musical performances, art rooms, tables, wifi, washrooms,
| coffee. I would say that the only thing that is missing
| is a gym; there are small dance rooms in there but that's
| not quite the same.
|
| But the essence here is walkable communities. Suburbs and
| exurbs are hostile to even small local stores because you
| have to drive everywhere to do anything. There is no
| community in visiting my Costco or even my QFC.
|
| Take a look for yourself: https://www.opendelft.info
| hollerith wrote:
| Quality Food Centers, Inc., better known as QFC, has 59
| stores in western Washington and northwestern Oregon.
| breakpointalpha wrote:
| They didn't need to be transactional spaces, they need to
| be spaces that attract people regularly.
|
| The local chicken farmer who works 16 hours a day to keep
| his farm running isn't going out of his way three times a
| week to visit the community center for board game night.
|
| He's definitely in the local Tractor Supply store three
| times a week though...
|
| It's about creating community where people naturally
| gather, not creating a gathering space then hoping people
| show up.
| lumost wrote:
| I suspect this is the major reason for lifestyle premium
| fitness gyms popularity in recent years.
| quxbar wrote:
| Getting into climbing was secondarily a health choice,
| but primarily a social endeavor for me.
| anonymars wrote:
| Consider this little anecdote from Kurt Vonnegut:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kurt-vonnegut-envelope-
| quo...
|
| DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got
| to say, in a very intense book -- your latest -- in which
| you're heading out the door and your wife says what are
| you doing? I think you say -- I'm getting -- I'm going to
| buy an envelope.
|
| KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.
|
| DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?
|
| KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man.
| You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred
| envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend
| not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because
| I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of
| buying one envelope.
|
| I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking
| babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the
| thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is.
| And, and I don't know...
|
| And, of course, the computers will do us out of that.
| And, what the computer people don't realize, or they
| don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love
| to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all
| anymore.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Rare miss from Vonnegut, it's not the computer people. We
| know, and we care a lot. It's the owning people.
| ghc wrote:
| We decentralized information, and in doing so we centralized
| culture. I fear that we are only now coming to understand
| what we have wrought. I am sure that new social structures
| will arise to replace the old, but who is to say what lies
| between? It is not out of the question that even a project
| with noble intentions such as the web may precipitate a dark
| age for humanity. I don't say this as a pessimist, but as a
| wide-eyed realist wondering what happens when human
| civilization no longer requires _humanity_.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| I attend a church where most of the folks are older and they
| don't seem to get it that younger people won't just find our
| church like in the old days because people aren't connected
| by local businesses like they used to be. I don't mind saying
| on here that I attend St John's. It doesn't matter because
| there's over 1000 other St John's in the country. No one can
| find us using modern means.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Those hubs still exist for things that the internet cannot
| replace. Barber shops, coffee shops, cafes, and other local
| dining, pubs and bars. Local parks, especially if you have
| kids, and other kid-centric events such as sports, scouts,
| and other activities. Adult rec leagues, gyms, volunteer
| orgs, etc. But certainly many have gone. There are still
| bookstores and specialty retailers here and there but not
| like we used to have.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Both Google and Amazon are, generally, just middlemen
| (intermediaries)
|
| There is no way for producers and consumers to "compete" with
| intermediaries
|
| If the internet must^1 be full of intermediaries to link
| producers and consumers, then at least there should be
| competition _amongst intermediaries_
|
| Google and Amazon have no significant competition from other
| intermediaries
|
| 1. It's possible that intermediaries are unnecessary
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > They just cannot compete for advertising dollars with Google.
|
| If print (and other) media had not been designed around
| advertising revenue in the first place, things _might_ have
| gone very, very differently.
| Imnimo wrote:
| According to the "best days" link in the article, November 7th is
| the best day to cut your hair because the moon phase and zodiac
| will lead to slower hair growth if you cut it today.
|
| I am amazed this publication made it this far.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| To our loyal patrons, we promise to continue this tradition of
| trustworthiness and authenticity, of being "useful with a
| pleasant degree of humor," while producing reliable, genuine
| content every year.
|
| https://www.almanac.com/old-farmers-almanac-artificial-intel...
| wat10000 wrote:
| I have fond memories of poring over it (or maybe it was the
| other one, they're pretty similar) and taking it all in as a
| kid.
|
| Looking at it with an adult's eyes, it's absolute twaddle.
|
| But people go for that sort of thing. How much money gets made
| on astrology?
| kelnos wrote:
| Unfortunately, I think you underestimate how rampant
| superstition is in the US.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| It's world wide, not just the US.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Nota bene, this isn't the Farmer's Almanac everyone's thinking
| of. You're probably thinking of the _Old Farmer 's Almanac_,
| which has been in publication since the 1700s and is the oldest
| continuously published periodical in North America.
|
| I live in Texas and have never seen this Farmer's Almanac in my
| life. But the _Old_ Farmer 's Almanac has been on the store
| shelves my whole life, and they're still publishing.
|
| Neither is accurate tho. Both are around 50%.
| speak_plainly wrote:
| They should open source their methodologies, maybe someone else
| can carry on their work.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Is paper media illegal yet?
| wiskinator wrote:
| Dang. This is one of those annoying cases of finding out
| something that I would clearly love exists only as it leaves.
|
| I would have subscribed if I knew that the Farmer's Almanac still
| existed :(
| olivia-banks wrote:
| It's incredible they've lasted this long.
| xp84 wrote:
| Oddly the 2026 cover[1] seems to say that 2026 is a leap year.
| This seems like the kind of thing that would be their bread and
| butter to get right.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/2026-Farmers-Amanac-
| Almanac/dp/192872...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-07 23:01 UTC)