Birbla

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  • Hacker News
  • 1897 seems like an important year.
    by rzzzt
  • The Futility Closet website (and, formerly, podcast) is an amazing treasure trove of fascinating facts.
    by TRiG_Ireland
  • Yes! and thank you for making me remember its existence
    by alucardo
  • My great grandmother taught me that “nothing doing” meant something similar to “there’s nothing for it”.
    by bckr
  • I’m in my late thirties and it was still in common use in India, and perhaps specifically among Anglo Indians? But it meant more like “no chance”.

    “Can I go out to the movies with my friends?”

    “Nothing doing! You have an exam tomorrow”

    Or failure to do something.

    “I tried to fix it myself but nothing doing”.

    by arjie
  • It’s curious how there seem to be so few combinations of place and time where nothing important happened.
    by layer8
  • It’s just the macro perspective. Down around the Planck limit, there’s something going on all the time, everywhere, all at once!
    by gumby
  • Funny, does anyone know the history of any of the markers? I'm just curious why this is global thing really.
    by tolugenius
  • Was it in a Monty python sketch or something?
    by clickety_clack
  • You don't think this is just a joke that multiple people thought of independently?

    Some of them might be in reaction to a local event, or even a worldwide event that had no local impact. But I think they're mostly just jokes.

    by wccrawford
  • The plaque is identical in two of the photos (one from Ireland, one from Luxembourg), and the wording is identical in those two plus a third (from Western Australia). That makes me curious.
    by Photogrammaton
  • The one from Míšov, Czech Republic is tribute to the running joke of nonexistent genius Jara Cimmrman

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1ra_Cimrman

    by LahvacCz
  • I need this for some past companies I've worked at.
    by swader999
  • "I just wanted to mention, for those who have asked... Absolutely nothing whatsoever happened today in Sector 83 by 9 by 12."

    https://youtu.be/vZt5_27mGcE?si=PaeEaF9Ws0aDvMMt

    I am totally sure I've seen that plaque in O'Hungry's. It's a San Diego classic. It's reassuring to know that there are such places around the world.

    by ButlerianJihad