older (and therefore better) ways of counting

posted on this day Tournesol 19 Vendémiaire CCXXX of the revolution

"A normal French calendar year of 365 days was to consist of twelve 30-day months followed by 5 "complementary" days, the "sans-culottides," at the end of the year, i.e. in late September."

i'm not giving the nameday from the ten-day week aka décade (very unconfusing mes braves citoyens) bcz (a) it's hard to work out given leapyears -- which never really got bedded in -- and (b) they annoy me (duodi, quintidi, fuck off)

beware the sans-culottides of march i mean floréal, i squeaked

less than a décade later my head was off and a modern caesar had toppled the republic

4. The brightness of the forgotten 5
At first sight, 5 does not seem to form a part of the sym-
bolically relevant numerical entities of Dogon thinking.
However, in a closer analysis, its implied present reveals
a density of significance in a large numer of occasions,
some of which we will examine below.

5 and temporal maturity
The Dogon venerate the first 5 generations after Nommo,
as it is believed that is was during their age that all the
social and religious institutions were created. Even today,
every individual relates to the 5 generations around his
own, the three that preceded him, his own generation and
the one that will follow. This cult of 5 generations exists
regardless of the individual’s lineage, within the 4 funda-
mental Dogon lineages (Palau Marti 1957: 56).
Houses have 5 niches on each side of the door, for the
express purpose of representing these ancestors (Beaudoin
1984: 90).
The number 5 determines the age groups that are socially
recognised by the Dogon, namely, the period from birth
until the age of initiation, adolescence, youth, maturity
and old age (Palau Marti 1957: 49).
According to Paulme (1985), children are breast-fed for
5 consecutive seasons. The Dogon week has 5 days and
local market are held every 5 days. This temporal division
of time seems to have a symbolic relation to Nommo’s
blood, which ran for 5 days when he was sacrificed. In ad-
dition, it took Amma 5 days to resuscitate Nommo, which
explains the ritual of the dead (Dama) takes place every 5
years in every village. In addition, the Dogon believe that
the soul only reaches the land of the ancestors 5 years
after death (Beaudoin 1984: 87, 90, 174, 201–203).

https://www.emis.de/journals/ZDM/zdm992a4.pdf

Cool thread. Thought this might have been inspired by something recently on Foundation. Seem to recall some scene in Elling where he buys a train ticket and uses the more Danish style of numbers.

I believe 9 is a greater and more attractive number than 10. There is something hot + beautiful about 9, but 10 is a cold bastard number of capital and hard science.

Love the Republican calendar, such a ridiculous undertaking, it didn't work very well of course and having a ten day week was a pretty sneaky way of giving workers even less days off in a year.

a: i will never be inspired by something recently on Foundation

b: thermidor was bcz the jacobins were addicted to the number 10 (bad) and not les nombres enragé (7, 9, 13, numerals of that nature)

"I believe 9 is a greater… number than 10"

— the louis antoine léon de saint-just of ilx

their failed attempt at decimalising time seems quite amusing. A bit of a hard sell!

Very much a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The guy who came up with names of the months, Fabre d'Églantine, was quite a character.

everyone in a place of greater safety regards Fd'E as an overtheatrical and basically annoying dick, and enjoys points out that he invented the name d'Églantin for himself after a poetry prize he said he was awarded in a year the prize was not in fact given

however his month-names and day-names are good not bad and who is to say if his forgery and financial fraud are what brought down danton and then everyone else

There seem to have been an unusual number of actors and theatrical types involved in the French Revolution, among all the thousands of lawyers.

a: i will never be inspired by something recently on _Foundation_

I have the feeling that this is not the first time NV has beaten me to referencing that Jake Thackray track. Let me have it!

Jake is for everybody

wozzeck (berg) b/w yan tan tethera (birtwhistle: skip to 1:41 for some posh guy explaining the opera's central conceit, skip to 1:45 for space alien Tv visuals to calm down)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvHAMRxg7gc

wtf happened to tony harrison, i feel like he used to be everywhere

Yan Tan Tethera Methera

I took the family to Swaledale for summer holidays this year, never been there before and we were all just stunned by it, I've been all around the UK but I can't think of anywhere more beautiful and other-worldly. of course we listened to the jake thackeray song.