Today, 10/20/2025, is the beginning of Diwali on the West Coast of the Americas. Diwali is the Hindu Festival of Lights and usually lasts 5 or 6 days. A variant is also celebrated by Sikhs and Jains and maybe others s well. The date is based on the Hindu lunisolar calendar and hence, like all lunisolar dates, bounces around the Gregorian Calendar created by one of Pope Gregory's minions. It is celebrated with oil lamps, candles, and lanterns. There are also fireworks, assorted festivities, food and various forms of art. Next year Californians will get the day off, but I don't know what exact day that may turn out to be, whether if will float or be a specified Monday, or what. Da Kine Wiki has plentiful informatin on the holiday itself at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali . I can't think of any particular goal or object that the CIA could attempt to achieve by mucking with the information of this topic, so I've tentatively assumed that they haven't until I know more about it.

Regardless of the Year, 10/20 is World Statistics Day. I'm told by reliable sources that 67.482% of all statistics are bogus, but I suspect that to be just an estimate. For example, I'm quite sure that Art Buchwald was correct in pointing out that:

The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.

The word "statistics" has various usages in today's world, one of which is essentially equivalent to "data" or "numerical information", such as in the statistics on rainfall in death valley, shootings per capita in Miami and midday traffic on Hwy 101 through Santa Rosa. Another usage is statistical analyses or information presented in or by statistical analysis. There is also the meaning conveyed by the phrase "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Some salient facts about statistics that I feel like making are that real statisticians can err and they can also disagree on things and non-statisticians very often don't really undertstand the nuances of statistical information and presentations.

In the USA, statistics have very often been used to bamboozle, deceive and confuse people and often still are. They are used to support (sell) ideas and arguments, to sell all kinds of products and to imply various propositions without directly stating them, often relying upon fallacious logic. As a result, they really shouldn't be trusted except by those who fully understand exactly what they mean in all respects as well as how exactly how they were derived and computed. This will be even more true when the full ai con gets up and rolling. Also, among the specific uses is projecting conclusions about a population from a sample. Don't even go there, the pitfalls are innumerable.

It is also Community Media Day Like "Western Civilization", it would be a really wonderful idea. When I was a kid, we didn't have media, except for things like works of art that were done in "mixed media". We had pamphlets, papers, magazines, radio and TV. The paper based items existed in grand proliferation, targeting all kinds of niche groups and, for each, something really constituting "community media". The communities weren't so much geographical and cultural and topical, though there wee neighborhood weeklies too. We also had a pretty broad assortment of radio stations, again targeting different niches. It seems that consolidation plus computers have widely done in the multitudes of print and radio communications. I don't think TV was ever on that bus, so nothing there. OTOH, there is a whole multiverse of blogs out there, so the massive consolidation of the major media sources maybe has spawned something more akin to true community media as long as you know where and how to find it.

On this day in history:

1740 – France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refused to honour the Pragmatic Sanction, and the War of the Austrian Succession begins.

1774 – The Continental Association, a nonconsumption and nonimportation agreement against the British Isles and the British West Indies, was adopted by the First Continental Congress.

1803 – The United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

1818 – The Convention of 1818 was signed settling the Canada–US border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.

1827 – The Battle of Navarino; a combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet was defeated by British, French and Russian naval forces

1883 – The Treaty of Ancón, ended Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific, ceding Tarapacá province to Chile

1910 – British ocean liner RMS Olympic was launched.and stayed afloat for many years

1935 – The Long March ended.

1941 – Thousands of civilian Serbs were murdered by German soldiers in the Kragujevac massacre.

1944 – The Soviet Red Army and Yugoslav Partisans liberated Belgrade.

1944 – Liquefied natural gas leaked from storage tanks in Cleveland and then exploded, leveling 30 blocks and killing 130 people.

1947 – The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its harassment of the Hollywood film industry,

1951 – The "Johnny Bright incident" during a college football game at Oklahoma A&M (OSU)

1952 – The Governor of Kenya declared a state of emergency and began arresting hundreds of suspected leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising.

1961 – The Soviet Navy performed the first test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile

1962 – China attacked across the McMahon Line, igniting the Sino-Indian War.

1973 – US President Nixon fired U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus for refusing to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox

1973 – The Sydney Opera House was opened by Elizabeth II

1976 – The Louisiana Ferry MV George Prince was struck by the freighter SS Frosta. Seventy-eight passengers and crew died

1977 – A plane carrying the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed. Six people, including three band members, were killed.

1991 – A 6.8 Mw earthquake hit the Uttarkashi region of India, killing more than 1,000 people.

1991 – A massive firestorm broke out in the hills of Oakland and Berkeley, California killing 25 people and destroying more than 3,000 homes, apartments and condominiums.

2003 – The Sloan Great Wall cosmic structure was discovered by students at Princeton University.

2011 – Insurgents captured Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mutassim during a NATO regime change operation

2022 – Liz Truss stepped down as British Prime Minister after holding office for 48 days

Some people who were born on this day:

You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.

~~ Art Buchwald

1475 – Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai, poet and playwright
1554 – Bálint Balassi, poetr and noble
1616 – Thomas Bartholin, physician, mathematician, and theologian
1620 – Aelbert Cuyp, painter
1719 – Gottfried Achenwall, historian, economist, and jurist among the inventors of statistics
1740 – Isabelle de Charrière, author and poet
1785 – George Ormerod, historian and author
1790 – Patrick Matthew. farmer and biologist
1847 – Frits Thaulow, painter
1854 – Arthur Rimbaud, soldier and poet
1859 – John Dewey, psychologist and philosopher (died 1952)
1873 – Nellie McClung, author and suffragist
1874 – Charles Ives, composer
1882 – Margaret Dumont, actress , Groucho's leading lady and foil
1891 – James Chadwick, physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1901 – Adelaide Hall, singer, actress, and dancer
1904 – Enolia McMillan, educator and activist
1913 – Grandpa Jones, singer, songwriter, and banjo player
1917 – Stéphane Hessel, activist and diplomat
1919 – Tracy Hall, chemist and academic
1920 – Nick Cardy, illustrator
1925 – Art Buchwald, soldier and journalist
1925 – Tom Dowd, record producer and engineer
1925 – Roger Hanin, actor, director, and screenwriter
1925 – András Bíró, journalist and human rights activist
1934 – Bill Chase, trumpet player
1934 – Eddie Harris, saxophonist
1937 – Wanda Jackson, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1940 – Kathy Kirby, singer
1942 – Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, biologist and geneticist
1945 – Ric Lee, drummer
1946 – Diana Gittins, sociologist, author, and academic
1950 – Tom Petty, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1951 – Al Greenwood, keyboard player
1954 – Steve Orich, composer and conductor
1955 – Thomas Newman, composer and conductor
1956 – Martin Taylor, guitarist
1958 – Mark King, singer, songwriter, and bass player
1961 – Audun Kleive, drummer and composer
1965 – Norman Blake, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1966 – Patrick Volkerding, computer scientist and engineer, founded Slackware
1971 – Dannii Minogue, singer, songwriter, and actress
1974 – Ed Hale, singer, songwriter, writer and socio-political activist
1977 – Leila Josefowicz, violinist
1978 – Paul Wilson, bass player and songwriter
11984 – Mitch Lucker, singer, songwriter
1989 – Jess Glynne, singer and songwriter

Some people who died on this day:

A privately owned world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand

~~ Eugene V. Debs

1438 – Jacopo della Quercia, sculptor
1570 – João de Barros, historian and author
1652 – Antonio Coello, poet and playwright
1880 – Lydia Maria Child, journalist, author, and activist
1890 – Richard Francis Burton, geographer, linguist, translator, adventurer, and explorer
1894 – James Anthony Froude, historian, novelist, biographer and editor
1926 – Eugene V. Debs, union leader and politician
1936 – Anne Sullivan, educator
1972 – Harlow Shapley, astronomer and academic
1977 - Cassie Gaines, Lynyrd Skynyrd backing vocalist
1977 – Steve Gaines, Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist and vocalist
1977 – Ronnie Van Zant, Lynyrd Skynyrd singer and songwriter
1983 – Merle Travis, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1984 – Carl Ferdinand Cori, biochemist and pharmacologist
1984 – Paul Dirac, physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate
1987 – Andrey Kolmogorov, mathematician and academic
2005 – Shirley Horn, singer and pianist
2012 – Paul Kurtz, philosopher and academic
2012 – John McConnell, activist, created Earth Day
2012 – E. Donnall Thomas, physician and academic
2020 – James Randi, Canadian-stage magician, debunker, and author (born

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

Community Media Day
World Osteoporosis Day
World Statistics Day
Diwali
Multicultural Diversity Day (might be banned in the US)
World Calvados Day

Today's Tunes

Grandpa Jones

Tom Dowd

Eddie Harris

Wanda Jackson

Kathy Kirby

Ric Lee

Tom Petty

Al Greenwood

Martin Taylor

Mark King

Audun Kleive

Norman Blake

Leila Josefowicz

Pre-crash Lynyrd Skynyrd

Merle Travis

Shirley Horn

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

Open Thrad, Diwali, World Statistics Day, Wanda jackson, Tom Petty, Norman Blake, Lynryd Skynryd, Merle Travis