6 ms·

Small Seasons

118 points by mrzool 7y ago

echelon 7y ago
I wrote a small Swift screensaver to display the current Japanese microseason : https://github.com/echelon/microseasons https://github.com/echelon/microseasons It's just a toy project I used to learn Swift. The code isn't particularly great.
- swanson 7y ago
  Neat, you should add a screenshot to the README so I can see what it looks like without having to install :)
dkarp 7y ago
Would make a great addition on a magic mirror
tcmb 7y ago
I like it, thanks for making this and bringing my attention to this concept. The descriptions remind me of Japanese Zen poems ("Rice has ripened, the heat of summer, forgotten.") Reading it, I wondered how much the 'little seasons' are identical between various regions on the northern hemisphere? I subscribed to the iCal calendar, and the descriptions have HTML tags in them. Any chance of avoiding this?
cardamomo 7y ago
This is fascinating. I love the names of these seasons, and this guide does a great job offering a pithy and easily grokable description. By the same token, I am curious how else we can come to understand seasons and yearly cycles. The climate stability that led to this sequence of small seasons and their associations with agriculture has begun to vanish. With the worsening climate emergency, where there is no "new normal," what yearly cycles can we still hold onto?
- tcmb 7y ago
  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Spring Sale, Back-To-School Promotions, Christmas Sale, Pre-Season Clearance, ...
  - ajmurmann 7y ago
    It's unfortunate that your description already feels like it has more of an impact on my life than most details in the sekki descriptions, with or without climate change. Just reading the sekki descriptions initially made me kinda sad because I realized how far removed I am from all that. That was at least different as a kid who played outside a lot in a small village.
    - saalweachter 7y ago
      One of the weirdest things about existence, besides that we're all made of meat or that the entire universe will one day crumble into cold nothingness forever, is that we can only be one person. You can be the one who stayed in the village or the one who left the village for the big city, but you can't be both. You can be one who left the village but came back, or the one who goes back and forth between the city and the village, but those are different, a third and forth person, and whichever one you pick, you still only get to be one.
- vondur 7y ago
  The climate over time has not been stable and has affected history. The decline of the Roman Empire under the Emperor Justinian May have been due to a colder climate. (There is evidence for a large volcanic eruption too) Also some fairly bad climatic conditions didn’t help the lead up to the French Revolution.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  Some solar terms are based on astronomical observations (vernal & autumn equinox, summer & winter solstice) and while they no longer line up with seasonal changes you can definitely rely on them.
soneca 7y ago
kind of off-topic: Being raised in Brazil, on a urban environment there are basically two seasons: Summer and Winter, the rest is just transition between them. Now, having just moved to the USA I am constantly incredibly confused by season references. Not only because the seasons are inverted, but because we do not use season references for anything in Brazil. We say the months name or things like "end/middle/start of the year" or "first/second semester" So when I see that a movie will come to the theaters "next fall" I have no idea when it is.
- foobar1962 7y ago
  In Australia, the two seasons are “football” and “cricket”.
  - flukus 7y ago
    But now we have the cricket world cup in the middle of footy season and soccer football in the middle of cricket season. I blame climate Change /s. More seriously, the CSIRO has attempted to define Australia's seasons better (in line with plants) with the addition of Sprinter on Sprummer: http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221 http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221 . The BOM has a page on various indigenous seasons too: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml . I'm enjoying an unseasonably warm Chunnup day today.
    - ehnto 7y ago
      We could have called them anything, and they chose sprinter and sprummer?
      - mjlee 7y ago
        This is Australia we're talking about. Seven Mile Beach, Great Barrier Reef, Great Sandy Desert, Granite Island... Calling things exactly what they are seems like a tradition.
        7y ago
lxe 7y ago
Months of the year are named in the similar spirit in Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian and probably other Slavic languages. Edit: I couldn't find a good definitive source of etymology/roots etc, so here's a rough sheet of what was able to scrape from the web as well as my own knowledge/interpretation: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT8PGYX8c46NyR3NEyRUH--PnKzCoKNtRFPVSWkbdn_tZUMuYsg7idAiLJv4nYysyhy9Htec2bQgF_C/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT8PGYX8c46N...
- mci 7y ago
  FYI чэрвень comes from the Slavic name of Polish cochineal, an insect harvested in June and used to produce red dye until Mexican cochineal pushed it out of the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal#Linguistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal#Linguistics
goodJobWalrus 7y ago
For some reason I find this really beautiful.
- esilver 7y ago
  I agree. The typography and page layout are gorgeous.
jamesrcole 7y ago
I was trying to find out the Chinese names for these seasons and came across a Wikipedia page on these seasons, if anyone else is interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Looks like the Chinese names are identical to the Japanese ones. (Or really, the other way around.) Chinese 节气 are certainly not defined or tracked by natural phenomena such as fish becoming visible under the ice or plants blooming, though. As Wikipedia notes, they are defined astronomically and are used to calculate when an extra month needs to be inserted into the calendar. (Each 节气 is assigned a polarity, yin or yang. A month is supposed to include one yin point and one yang point. Since lunar months are too short, eventually there will be a month with only one point instead of the correct two; that month is immediately repeated. I think this system is very cool because just a little thought will show that it is guaranteed to stay within one month of the "true" position of the earth wrt the sun, using just the dead simple method of "Oh, were we too slow this month? We'll put in some overtime.")
  - bctnry 7y ago
    From the wikipedia page: > Solar terms originated in China, then spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, countries in the East Asian cultural sphere.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      ...yes? Why mention it again?
Xcelerate 7y ago
I moved from the southeast US to the Bay Area, and the difference in seasons is striking. It went from a clearly defined spring, summer, fall, and winter to what appears to be "brown/dry" season and "green/wet" season. I certainly don't miss winter or the hottest parts of summer, but I do miss spring and fall (particularly autumn colors). The almost nonstop sunshine is a nice replacement though. I wonder what other parts of the world have "weird" seasons?
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  Where I live (Townsville, Australia) the only changes are that it gets hotter the closer you are to Summer and cooler the closer you are to Winter. The rainfall (minimal) is pretty similar all year round.
- sturadnidge 7y ago
  Sydney, Australia is pretty much the same - 2 seasons, most trees are green all year, and things that you’d normally associate with Autumn tend to happen at the start of Winter.
- my_usernam3 7y ago
  You can get your autumn fix if you go into the east bay hills, like tilden nature area and san pablo reservoir. Tree's turn pretty colors over there.
- BonesJustice 7y ago
  Where in the southeast? I grew up around Knoxville, which had reasonably well defined seasons. Then I moved to Atlanta, which basically has “summer” and “not summer”.
  - Xcelerate 7y ago
    Haha, similar to you then. Grew up near Atlanta, then moved to Knoxville, then the Bay Area.
  - madcaptenor 7y ago
    I live in Atlanta (formerly: Philadelphia, Boston, Bay Area). I would say that Atlanta "winter" is cold enough to be a season - although it's more defined by the threat of possible snow than by actual snow.
Pamar 7y ago
There is an extremely nice app (IOS only, I am afraid: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/72-seasons/id1059622777 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/72-seasons/id1059622777 ) called "72 Seasons" which collects charming pictures, poems and interesting factoids for each of the 72 seasons.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
graup 7y ago
A nice and simple website. I like the responsive design here. Text size scales with window size, and the table loses its first column on smaller screens.
- mrzool 7y ago
  I noticed that too, it's really well done.

118 points by mrzool 7y ago

I wrote a small Swift screensaver to display the current Japanese microseason : https://github.com/echelon/microseasons https://github.com/echelon/microseasons It's just a toy project I used to learn Swift. The code isn't particularly great.

swanson 7y ago
Neat, you should add a screenshot to the README so I can see what it looks like without having to install :)

dkarp 7y ago

Would make a great addition on a magic mirror

tcmb 7y ago

I like it, thanks for making this and bringing my attention to this concept. The descriptions remind me of Japanese Zen poems ("Rice has ripened, the heat of summer, forgotten.") Reading it, I wondered how much the 'little seasons' are identical between various regions on the northern hemisphere? I subscribed to the iCal calendar, and the descriptions have HTML tags in them. Any chance of avoiding this?

cardamomo 7y ago

This is fascinating. I love the names of these seasons, and this guide does a great job offering a pithy and easily grokable description. By the same token, I am curious how else we can come to understand seasons and yearly cycles. The climate stability that led to this sequence of small seasons and their associations with agriculture has begun to vanish. With the worsening climate emergency, where there is no "new normal," what yearly cycles can we still hold onto?

tcmb 7y ago
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Spring Sale, Back-To-School Promotions, Christmas Sale, Pre-Season Clearance, ...
- ajmurmann 7y ago
  It's unfortunate that your description already feels like it has more of an impact on my life than most details in the sekki descriptions, with or without climate change. Just reading the sekki descriptions initially made me kinda sad because I realized how far removed I am from all that. That was at least different as a kid who played outside a lot in a small village.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    One of the weirdest things about existence, besides that we're all made of meat or that the entire universe will one day crumble into cold nothingness forever, is that we can only be one person. You can be the one who stayed in the village or the one who left the village for the big city, but you can't be both. You can be one who left the village but came back, or the one who goes back and forth between the city and the village, but those are different, a third and forth person, and whichever one you pick, you still only get to be one.
vondur 7y ago
The climate over time has not been stable and has affected history. The decline of the Roman Empire under the Emperor Justinian May have been due to a colder climate. (There is evidence for a large volcanic eruption too) Also some fairly bad climatic conditions didn’t help the lead up to the French Revolution.
lifthrasiir 7y ago
Some solar terms are based on astronomical observations (vernal & autumn equinox, summer & winter solstice) and while they no longer line up with seasonal changes you can definitely rely on them.

soneca 7y ago

kind of off-topic: Being raised in Brazil, on a urban environment there are basically two seasons: Summer and Winter, the rest is just transition between them. Now, having just moved to the USA I am constantly incredibly confused by season references. Not only because the seasons are inverted, but because we do not use season references for anything in Brazil. We say the months name or things like "end/middle/start of the year" or "first/second semester" So when I see that a movie will come to the theaters "next fall" I have no idea when it is.

foobar1962 7y ago
In Australia, the two seasons are “football” and “cricket”.
- flukus 7y ago
  But now we have the cricket world cup in the middle of footy season and soccer football in the middle of cricket season. I blame climate Change /s. More seriously, the CSIRO has attempted to define Australia's seasons better (in line with plants) with the addition of Sprinter on Sprummer: http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221 http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221 . The BOM has a page on various indigenous seasons too: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml . I'm enjoying an unseasonably warm Chunnup day today.
  - ehnto 7y ago
    We could have called them anything, and they chose sprinter and sprummer?
    - mjlee 7y ago
      This is Australia we're talking about. Seven Mile Beach, Great Barrier Reef, Great Sandy Desert, Granite Island... Calling things exactly what they are seems like a tradition.
      - 7y ago

lxe 7y ago

Months of the year are named in the similar spirit in Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian and probably other Slavic languages. Edit: I couldn't find a good definitive source of etymology/roots etc, so here's a rough sheet of what was able to scrape from the web as well as my own knowledge/interpretation: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT8PGYX8c46NyR3NEyRUH--PnKzCoKNtRFPVSWkbdn_tZUMuYsg7idAiLJv4nYysyhy9Htec2bQgF_C/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT8PGYX8c46N...

mci 7y ago
FYI чэрвень comes from the Slavic name of Polish cochineal, an insect harvested in June and used to produce red dye until Mexican cochineal pushed it out of the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal#Linguistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal#Linguistics

goodJobWalrus 7y ago

For some reason I find this really beautiful.

esilver 7y ago
I agree. The typography and page layout are gorgeous.

jamesrcole 7y ago

I was trying to find out the Chinese names for these seasons and came across a Wikipedia page on these seasons, if anyone else is interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term

thaumasiotes 7y ago
Looks like the Chinese names are identical to the Japanese ones. (Or really, the other way around.) Chinese 节气 are certainly not defined or tracked by natural phenomena such as fish becoming visible under the ice or plants blooming, though. As Wikipedia notes, they are defined astronomically and are used to calculate when an extra month needs to be inserted into the calendar. (Each 节气 is assigned a polarity, yin or yang. A month is supposed to include one yin point and one yang point. Since lunar months are too short, eventually there will be a month with only one point instead of the correct two; that month is immediately repeated. I think this system is very cool because just a little thought will show that it is guaranteed to stay within one month of the "true" position of the earth wrt the sun, using just the dead simple method of "Oh, were we too slow this month? We'll put in some overtime.")
- bctnry 7y ago
  From the wikipedia page: > Solar terms originated in China, then spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, countries in the East Asian cultural sphere.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    ...yes? Why mention it again?

Xcelerate 7y ago

I moved from the southeast US to the Bay Area, and the difference in seasons is striking. It went from a clearly defined spring, summer, fall, and winter to what appears to be "brown/dry" season and "green/wet" season. I certainly don't miss winter or the hottest parts of summer, but I do miss spring and fall (particularly autumn colors). The almost nonstop sunshine is a nice replacement though. I wonder what other parts of the world have "weird" seasons?

jamesrcole 7y ago
Where I live (Townsville, Australia) the only changes are that it gets hotter the closer you are to Summer and cooler the closer you are to Winter. The rainfall (minimal) is pretty similar all year round.
sturadnidge 7y ago
Sydney, Australia is pretty much the same - 2 seasons, most trees are green all year, and things that you’d normally associate with Autumn tend to happen at the start of Winter.
my_usernam3 7y ago
You can get your autumn fix if you go into the east bay hills, like tilden nature area and san pablo reservoir. Tree's turn pretty colors over there.
BonesJustice 7y ago
Where in the southeast? I grew up around Knoxville, which had reasonably well defined seasons. Then I moved to Atlanta, which basically has “summer” and “not summer”.
- Xcelerate 7y ago
  Haha, similar to you then. Grew up near Atlanta, then moved to Knoxville, then the Bay Area.
- madcaptenor 7y ago
  I live in Atlanta (formerly: Philadelphia, Boston, Bay Area). I would say that Atlanta "winter" is cold enough to be a season - although it's more defined by the threat of possible snow than by actual snow.

Pamar 7y ago

There is an extremely nice app (IOS only, I am afraid: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/72-seasons/id1059622777 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/72-seasons/id1059622777 ) called "72 Seasons" which collects charming pictures, poems and interesting factoids for each of the 72 seasons.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

graup 7y ago

A nice and simple website. I like the responsive design here. Text size scales with window size, and the table loses its first column on smaller screens.

mrzool 7y ago
I noticed that too, it's really well done.