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How Alibaba Turned November 11 Into the World's Biggest Online Shopping Day
hackingbear writes Bummed that you're home alone on date night, or stuck in your mom's basement, yet again? Don't worry. A new gadget or some scuba gear could help. Observed on November 11 — or "11.11," for the date with the most 1s — Singles Day, which started out as a joke among a group of male college students attending Nanjing University in the 1990s, has become the world's biggest online shopping day, thanks to the e-commerce prowess of China's Alibaba Group. On this day last year, they sold twice what all US companies sold on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. This year, Alibaba has decided to take its 11.11 promotions worldwide, highlighting global brands including online jewelry store Blue Nile, clothing brand Juicy Couture, and even Costco. Amazon has tried to get a piece of the action. The Seattle-based company launched promotions for the holiday last year on its Chinese site, and it's done so again this year.
Who really, REALLY doesn't give a shit?
I'm a little offended that they chose Remembrance Day for their shopping extravaganza.
Not if you have kids... time loses meaning, each day mostly an olympic dash to microobjectives and periodic unconsciousness. Some people choose to fight the inevitable, by estbalishing a date night, sort of like a repository tag, to put a stake in the in shifting sea of time. On this date, the children are given to a baby sitter of dubious repute (sometimes chosen intentionally so) and the adults are set loose on the world.
On this night there is a date. There is no date on the quicksand of parenthood, but this is a date.
Even memorial day is mostly about cooking meat on a grill
Are not holidays, by there very definition, cause for celebration? What better way to celebrate than cooking dead animal on a fire?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I think, particularly given the basis of memorial day, that the analogy is especially terrible.
...and unlike many of our holidays, this is actually one that most Canadians do take seriously.
But what does it actually mean to take a war holiday seriously? In every war, at least one side was wrong.
A simplified narrative of WWI is that the hereditary ruling class in Europe sent millions of commoners to utterly pointless deaths. Is the fundamental message then that commoners need to be careful not to be duped and exploited by the hereditary ruling class? The USA was founded to be a government of the (common) people, by the (common) people, for the (common) people. So should we in the USA "celebrate" war holidays by making rude gestures in the general direction of the British royal family?
War holidays often focus on soldiers and veterans. But what about the soldiers that fought on the wrong side? Are they villains, or fools, or victims? And how do we even know which side(s) were the wrong sides. Was the US war on Iraq basically a banana republic war to benefit a small number of corporate cronies of the Bush administration? Are the soldiers who fought in that war heroes or corporate mercenary war criminals?
When Canadians take war holidays "seriously" do they really think hard about such questions? Or do they merely do some pompous flag waving and consider the matter settled?
In every war, at least one side was wrong.
War doesn't decide who is right. It only decides who is left.
In Canada, Remembrance Day is a solemn day, full of reflection and recognition of the price Canada has paid for peace. It's definitely not a pompous flag waving day because Canada doesn't go to war to crush her enemies. Canada doesn't start wars. It ends them. We have committed more troops to UN peacekeeping efforts than any other country. As such, I think when Canadians do consider the deaths of enemy soldiers it is with sympathy rather than with Schadenfreude.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!