Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 15-May-2026 11:51:04 JST Adrianna Tan

   I’ve been here 8 years and every time someone says ‘after memorial day’ I have no idea when it is and I keep forgetting after I keep looking it up.

   It’s just one of those things like pretending to know what a quart of something is.

   • Embed this notice
     Sean Bala (seanbala@mas.to)'s status on Friday, 15-May-2026 11:55:17 JST Sean Bala

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I think it is so ingrained because it is the unofficial start of summer. We also grew up with Labor day being the unofficial end of the season. I grew up in a tourist heavy area and we always used those two dates to define the summer.

   • Embed this notice
     Zack Stern (zackstern@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 15-May-2026 12:32:28 JST Zack Stern

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte same on this and nearly ever common holiday, especially those based on Christianity.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandra Magin 🏳️‍🌈 (recursive@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 15-May-2026 12:45:35 JST Alexandra Magin 🏳️‍🌈

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte The only way I remember it is:
     - Memorial Day and Labor Day roughly bound the period of time we were off school for the summer when I was a kid (late may to late august).
     - Of the two, Labor Day was placed furthest from May 1 on the calendar due to fear of communism (I don't know this to be in any way actually true, aside from it being a different day than May 1)

   • Embed this notice
     Raven667 (raven667@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 15-May-2026 13:29:59 JST Raven667

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I may have told this story before by my small town US 1980s education was in the metric system, because we were supposed to transition over at some point, probably a law Carter signed that Reagan ignored. I've never gotten the hang of miles, feet and inches, I'm more comfortable estimating in centimeters and meters, and I don't feel like pretending to care about the legacy units anymore.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Pińska (confluency@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 15-May-2026 16:32:43 JST Adrianna Pińska

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I've been in the southern hemisphere for almost 40 years, the majority of my life, and "winter" is still December and "summer" is still July, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.

     I also keep having to count on my fingers to translate month names between Polish and English, because most of them are unrelated words.

     South Africa switched to the metric system around 1970, but using feet and inches to describe people's heights informally has apparently been especially tenacious, and I presume gets passed down in local families. People younger than I am say "five foot something" like I'm supposed to know what that is. I just smile and nod.