> This decision, though difficult, reflects the growing financial challenges of producing and distributing the Almanac in today’s chaotic media environment.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 51.3 ms ] threadWould be pretty cool if it was that simple, that reason needs more representation and is how I run my entrepreneurial endeavors
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.
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?
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.
I wonder if a changing climate makes the predictions in the almanac less useful too
The Illustrated Phrenological Almanac
https://archive.org/details/illustratedphren1852fowl/mode/2u...
http://calendariozaragozano.net/almanaque-zaragozano.html
If print (and other) media had not been designed around advertising revenue in the first place, things might have gone very, very differently.
I am amazed this publication made it this far.
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%.