Astral Codex Ten

Halloween

6 min read

Halloween

Article

Halloween is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 21, 2021 and August 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “It was October 31, the night of Halloween”; “avoid Labor Day and Halloween”. It most often appears alongside ACX, Andes Mountains, Antiochan subgroup.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: April 21, 2021
  • Last seen: August 01, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

No, Really, Why Are So Many Christians In Colombia Converting To Orthodox Judaism?
April 21, 2021 · Original source
Two days later, on a Friday night, I left the synagogue with a crowd of about 100. The men wore black suits, white shirts with tzitzit, and black knitted kippot or black fedoras. The women were dressed in long polyester skirts and bright head scarves. They were heading home after Shabbat services. They had been chanting and praising God, the men fervently kissing a Torah scroll, and were in a merry mood. I was walking between Elad and Shlomo. We chatted about the women who had stayed at home preparing the most important dinner of the week and the families who were hosting. We reached the corner of Bello’s main street and were about to scatter, wish­ing “Shabbat shalom” to one another, when a crowd of Zorros, Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, Ebola nurses, witches, and princesses engulfed us. It was October 31, the night of Halloween.
The Jews ignored the Halloweeners and parted in small groups toward their dinners. Elad turned left. I continued walking uphill with Shlomo, Baruj, and their half-dozen guests. Before we reached the next corner, a man approached Baruj, who, like his father, was dressed in a black suit, and gave him candy.
Meetups Everywhere Fall 2024 - Call for Organizers
August 01, 2024 · Original source
People enjoy each other’s company and keep having meetups throughout the year. The form will ask you to pick a location, time, and date, and to provide an email address where people can reach you for questions. It will also ask a few short questions about how excited you are to run the meetup to help pick between multiple organizers in the same city. One meetup per city will be advertised on the blog, and people can email you if they have questions. Organizing an ACX Everywhere meetup can be easy. Pick a time and a place (parks work well if you think there will be a lot of people, cafes or apartments work fine for fewer) and show up with a sign saying “ACX Meetup.” You don’t need to have discussion plans or a group activity. If you want to make the experience better for people, you can bring nice things like nametags/markers, food/drinks, or games. Meetups Czar Skyler can reimburse you for the nametags, markers, food, and drinks. If you feel more ambitious, collect people’s names and emails if they’re interested in future meetups. You could do this with a pen and paper, or if you’re concerned about reading people’s handwriting, you could use a QR code/bitly link to a Google Form. Here’s a short FAQ for potential meetup organizers: 1. How do I know if I would be a good meetup organizer? If you can put a name/time/date in a box on Google Forms and show up there, you have the minimum skill necessary to be a meetup organizer for your city, and I recommend you sign up. Don't worry, you signing up won't randomly take the job away from someone else. The form will ask people how excited/qualified they are about being an organizer, and if there are many options, I'll choose whoever I think is best. (Or plausibly whoever Meetup Czar Skyler thinks is best.) But a lot of cities might not have an excited/qualified person, in which case I would rather the unexcited/unqualified people sign up, than have nobody available at all. This spreadsheet shows the cities where someone has filled out the form, updated manually after a basic check. Lots of cities have existing meetup groups and we’ll probably prioritize them, but we always appreciate more options. Last time there were some people who didn’t volunteer because they just assumed their city was big enough that someone else would do it. Beware the Bystander Effect! If you are the leader of your city’s existing meetup group, please fill in the form anyway and say so. 2. How will people hear about the meetup? You give me the information, and on August 23 (or so), I’ll post it on ACX. An event will also be created on LessWrong’s Community page. 3. When should I plan the meetup for? Since I’ll post the list of meetup times and dates around August 23, please choose sometime after that. Any day September 1st through October 31st is okay. I recommend a weekend, since it's when most people are available. You’ll probably get more attendance if you schedule for at least one week out, but not so far out that people will forget - so mid September or early October would be best. Check your local calendar for holidays where people might be busy: If you're in the US, that probably means avoid Labor Day and Halloween. 4. How many people should I expect? The last time we tried this, meetups ranged from one person to over a hundred. Meetups in big US cities (especially ones with universities or tech hubs) had the most people; meetups in non-English-speaking countries had the fewest. You can see a list of every city and how many people most of them got last time here. Plan accordingly. 5. Where should I hold the meetup? A good venue should be easy for people to get to, not too loud, and have basic things like places to sit, access to toilets, and the option of acquiring food and water. City parks and mall common areas work well. If you want to hold the meetup at your house, remember that this will involve me posting your address on the Internet. 6. What should I do at the meetup? Mostly people just show up and talk. If you’re worried about this not going well, here are some things that can help: Have people indicate topics they’re interested in by writing something on their nametag
Inline links: This spreadsheet, LessWrong’s Community, here