h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think Women's Day is a much better thing than mothers' day (only because these days you get stick for talking about it and not respecting the fact that lots of women aren't mothers or don't have mothers for whatever reason and it upsets them to see a celebration of motherhood. To which I say: sorry but not really because don't rain on our parade... sort of thing)

For a few years a chap in our Polish factory arranged with a Russian chap here to give each of the women in the office a flower on this day, and they wrote us an email about the history of the day. But they've both moved on so it doesn't happen.

and true to form when I mentioned women's day the first comment from a German chap was: when's men's day. (i told him after he got the Death Stare)

Our Korean chaps like the idea of Women's day but not enough to remember it

Regarding whether anyone pays attention to the various National / International days, I spent a lot of time reading on World Book Day.Shame on you if you don't know when that was.

I've got kids so we definitely celebrated World Book Day – Facebook was inundated last week by photos of children dressed up in their world book day costumes. Which only goes to show that events that weren't celebrated a few years ago can now become fairly big events. I think that we all agree that celebrating and appreciating books and the people all around you is a good thing.

Unfortunately, in my experience, International Women's Day isn't a day that is celebrated, although they did show 'Suffragette' for free here. I didn't know that it was over a century old, but it doesn't really matter if an event is a few years/decades old, such as British Pie Week*, a century or so, such as International Women's Day or a few millennia, such as the Ides of March; if it isn't celebrated, it isn't celebrated. In the UK at least, you can't get International Women's Day cards or merchandise (probably a good thing). It isn't a date on my wall calendar, which this month mentions St David's Day, Mothering Sunday, St Patrick's Day, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.

This isn't to say it shouldn't be celebrated, or that in the future this might change and be commemorated more. I'll be delighted to hear that outside the UK it is a huge celebration. Perhaps here it is just in the shadow of Mothering Sunday too much at the moment, but that may change. After all, as a child Hallowe'en was only celebrated by a skeleton crew but now it's more popular than Bonfire Night.

But a petty hate is when people dismiss Mothering Sunday. Mothering Sunday began as a religious celebration, true, but it was traditionally the only day in the year that domestic servants were allowed the day off to go home and visit their families (especially, but not limited to, their mothers). It established a historic precedent – workers are entitled to days off. That is a hugely important right that should not be taken for granted.

<BB<

*If British Pie Week is more than a few decades old, I apologise for my ignorance.

Today I received an email from Amazon informing me that the software on my Kindle needs to be updated so I can continue to download books. I checked which of my devices are affected and followed the instructions to access the update. Nothing happened.

According to the email, there's a deadline for installing the update. Given that deadline, they should expect people to try to install it as soon as possible. So why isn't it available when they send the email?

Today's PH: People tweeting nothing but Facebook links.

Okay, you've written something on Facebook where you're able to explain something properly, or go into more depth, or provide more details than the character limit on Twitter. That's nice.
But please, please, please don't just tweet a link to it with no accompanying description.

I've no idea what you've posted, and I'm not going to click that link until I do. It could be anything, and I'm not interested in just anything.

An associated PH is when people post on Facebook a "such and such just tweeted this...."


I KNOW THEY DID, I SAW IT THERE!

If I've friended you on Facebook, it's pretty likely I'm also following you on Twitter.

Oh, and don't get me started on Instagram.



(sorry for the small flooding!)

but some people use facebook/twitter/instagram and some people use only one. If you have your accounts connected it's clear that other friends who use more than one will see it twice.

my PH today is people who come right up into my personal space at work and tell me that they have dragged themselves in despite shivery fever, headaches, sore throat and ear ache.

GO AWAY FROM ME!

Wipes up Pastey's flood/spillage

I don't use facebook, twitter or instagram, - I spend enough time on h2g2 as it is. After resisting it for three years, I was forced to join Whatsup by two groups of people I'm in - was getting some Paddington-style Hard Stares because I was the only one left. So I don't have to PH them - in fact, they don't bother me at all.

Sho, I'll look for a face mask I brought back from Hong Kong as a souvenir. It won't do any good, but might make a point to your co-worker(s). Otherwise perhaps a large fan to hold up between you?

My current PH regarding Facebook is a spate of possibly entertaining articles that won't let me read them as the button that certifies I'm over 13 doesn't work. I'm nearly 60 years older than that and realistically don't have that much time left to find out how I've been washing my hair the wrong way.

Not a petty hate, a serious one.

Fake News Sites.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook referring others to Snopes links debunking the latest fake post they've shared.


I don't mean sites like The Onion or The Daily Mash. Those are legitimate satirical news sites, but there are hordes of those that use the banner of satire to spread absolute B.S. for profit. In other words, click bait. They post false, sensational news stories hoping they'll spread virally and generate traffic and page views for advertisers. Some sites don't even pay lip service to satire and use names that spoof legitimate news sites. These are the worst. These are the ones that constantly "report" celebrity deaths and inflammatory political news that are simply made up.

And it's disheartening how many people share these links; they don't even question the most outrageous claims. Conspiracy theories and pseudoscience runs rampant. The level of B.S. is rising at an exponential rate.

One of the things I love about facebook is getting things out there. So if someone I know locally has lost their dog, I can share their post with other local friends and so on...result, lots of people aware and more chance the dog is found.

One of the things I hate about facebook is people just clicking share and moving on without checking that what they're sharing is still relevant. I can't count the number of times I've replied to a post by saying "Found safe and sound three & a half months ago" or whatever. It's not hard to quickly check the recent comments

Deb

People who bang on about Faecesbook on here, go and do it moan, on there and spare us sensible people who wouldn't go near it.

I'm sorry, what?

Deb

I really don't get why people who don't use facebook (twitter, other social media are available) bang on about how awful it is and how stupid people are for using it.

It can be a very useful tool in so many ways. Just get on with your life and let others get on with theirs.

Ahh...

The meta-petty hate. Complaints about others' complaints. Bonus points earned.

Can I be your Facebook friend Flo? See you there with all the other nosey so and ao's.

I haven't to this day signed up with Facebook.

My sister suggests it as a convenient place to correspond with her though, so I suppose I may take a day and establish an account there soon.

If you only wish to correspond with one person, then just use email or txting.

Facebook is a place for broadcasting a persona to select masses.

You can communicate one on one there, but email works much better.

Agreed.