In this thread, post the greetings as per your personal mood, local time zone, and official calendar, to reflect the festive spirit

Today: Χριστός ἀνέστη

Stay tuned for the wall opening celebration.

I'm sceptical about the wall. No dineros.
The only wall Trump was able to build so far was that between him and his wife.

On May 9th Russians have their victory parade as usual.



Elsewhere in the world it's the Stroke Day.

Stay tuned for the wall opening celebration.

I'm sceptical about the wall. No dineros.
The only wall Trump was able to build so far was that between him and his wife.

The Mexico wall is becoming for Trump a similar case like Guantanamo for Obama. Obama got a pre-emptive Nobel Peace Prize for the promise to close down Guantanamo, but then he failed to fulfil the promise. Regardless if Trump delivers or not, his only prize is the presidency.

Onnea Suomi! (100th anniversary of Finland's independence)

Happy Independence Day!

Also happy Sinterklaas. Around here it's on the 6th rather than the 5th.

Friday 13th, a do-nothing day in the English-speaking world,

[According to] the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina [...] when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday [...] customers refrain from activities such as flying and anxious employees stay home from work.

The phenomenon even has a name: paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday 13th, while triskaidekaphobics are scared of the number 13 more generally.

The number 13 as a "bad" number is definitely spread much wider than the US, but I think Friday the thirteenth might be an American thing. Also I don't think we usually do weird things like no house/room/floor/seat 13.

According to Dutch Wikipedia there's no day with fewer accidents than Friday the thirteenth.

Yes, it's weird. Does this house have 14 floors? Hows does this work? Did they build twelve floors, then skipped a floor, and then they built the fourteenth?

A corresponding elevator in China.

A corresponding elevator in China.

Are those all bad numbers? Also, I see they don't do 0/ground floor.

In China, Norway and the US the first floor is the ground floor. In Czechia, Sweden and Britain the first floor is the floor above the ground floor.

4 and combinations is unlucky because 4 (四) sounds like death (死). Additionally 14 can be read as "I want to die", so it is not very popular floor to go to. 13 is known as a (Western) unlucky number, so it is dropped too. Solidarity in superstition, brother. So 15th floor is really 12th floor, 11th floor if you are a Swede.

In China, Norway and the US the first floor is the ground floor. In Czechia, Sweden and Britain the first floor is the floor above the ground floor.

Yes, but in the US there's not generally a "-1". You'll have B, 1, 2, etc. Or if there are multiple floors below ground, B2, B1, 1, 2, etc.

The combination of -1 and 1 without 0/parterre/ground floor/whatever strikes me as the worst possible combination. But in spite of that, I'm much more perturbed by all the missing numbers that aren't 0.

4 and combinations is unlucky because 4 (四) sounds like death (死).

So on one of those enormous skyscrapers you'll have "300" floors even if there are actually some 260 just because every combination with 4 is mysteriously missing? How about combinations with 13?

In Canada

The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving are also sometimes traced to the French settlers who came to New France in the 17th century, who celebrated their successful harvests. The French settlers in the area typically had feasts at the end of the harvest season and continued throughout the winter season, even sharing food with the indigenous peoples of the area.

In the United States

Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a well-recorded 1619 event in Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group's charter from the London Company [...]

Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations. Various proclamations were made by royal governors, John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress,[17] each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes.

On October 31, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a presidential proclamation changing the holiday to the next to last Thursday in November, for business reasons.[26] On December 26, 1941, he signed a joint resolution of Congress changing the national Thanksgiving Day from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday.[27]

Since 1971, when the American Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect, the American observance of Columbus Day has coincided with the Canadian observance of Thanksgiving.

About a decade later Captain John Smith, who coined the term "New England," wrote that the Massachusetts, a nearby indigenous group, inhabited what he described as "the Paradise of all those parts."

Champlain and Smith understood that any Europeans who wanted to establish communities in this region would need either to compete with Natives or find ways to extract resources with their support.

But after Champlain and Smith visited, a terrible illness spread through the region. Modern scholars have argued that indigenous communities were devastated by leptospirosis, a disease caused by Old World bacteria that had likely reached New England through the feces of rats that arrived on European ships.

[...]

The epidemic benefited the Pilgrims, who arrived soon thereafter: The best land had fewer residents and there was less competition for local resources, while the Natives who had survived proved eager trading partners.

Happy Thanksgiving!

And that was just the first of many epidemics.

The Canadian may have been first, annually and originally. Otherwise interesting that Thanksgiving, arguably the most charming of American festivities, is the one having least traction internationally. Here in Sweden Thanksgiving isn't celebrated, but Black Friday is (as well as Singles Day, being neutral in two world wars, there is no Armistice/Veterans Day).

The fundamentals, feasting and feuding with family, is fairly universal, just at different times of the year. Christmas here, Spring Festival in China. Harvest festivals are common, though of course, not being farmers anymore, it has lost most of its meaning.

The combination of -1 and 1 without 0/parterre/ground floor/whatever strikes me as the worst possible combination. But in spite of that, I'm much more perturbed by all the missing numbers that aren't 0. 


So on one of those enormous skyscrapers you'll have "300" floors even if there are actually some 260 just because every combination with 4 is mysteriously missing? How about combinations with 13? 

If they state the number of floors they should, and do, state that truthfully. It's just the naming scheme that is not in sync with the actual number of floors. So yes, you could live on the 22nd floor of a 20 floor building.

The same goes for the discontinuous discrete algebra of floors named 3, 2, 1, -1, -2. You just map the names to above/below ground. B1, B2 is also used. That is a global mess, as the letters follow no universal pattern, G, B, K, M etc could be just about anything. M tends to be the floor between 1 and 2 (or 0 and 1, depending on how you count). Sometimes that is I instead. Then there are those who discern between basement and cellar, and you have to figure out which one is lowest. G is almost always ground floor, but could be garage if the elevator is evil. B is usually basement, but in Sweden it can be ground (bottom) floor.

Fortunately many elevators (almost all elevators here in Sweden) have an emphasised and usually green button for the primary exit floor. So the algorithm "Push the provided button for where you are going, and push green for going back" usually works as intended.

Somehow in none of the histories about Thanksgiving is there any mention of turkey.

Enjoy safer fireworks over youtube

I went by the river last night. They launch the fireworks from a barge; probably in Moscow as well?

Today is Estonia's independence day, 101 years since the declaration of independence.

You are all welcome to watch the boring offering of the Estonian state tv to celebrate this day https://otse.err.ee/k/etv

And over here I recently linked to an Estonian youtuber who made a video about Estonia's war of independence. The war was part of the bigger WWI theatre.

Hooray!