[HN Gopher] Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until ...
___________________________________________________________________
Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our
calendar
Author : thunderbong
Score : 536 points
Date : 2022-09-25 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| furyofantares wrote:
| This actually made me feel very much better about all the
| weirdness. Seeing it all in one place made it look clearly
| inevitable and also made it clear how little of a problem any of
| it is.
| haswell wrote:
| This is what bothered me a bit too.
|
| I half expected a punchline from the alien like "wow, your method
| of time keeping seems pretty simple compared to ours", hinting at
| the universal nature of evolution and gradual learning over time.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| For what it's worth, leap day _is_ at the "end" of a year. It's
| just a year that starts in March--an assumption shared with
| several other odd properties of this calendar.
| wongarsu wrote:
| This is why September, October, November and December are named
| after the numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10: they are the 7th, 8th, 9th
| and 10th month if you start the year in March, like we used to.
| [deleted]
| pjerem wrote:
| wow.
| vlunkr wrote:
| The author mentions this as well. I don't know how I've never
| connected those dots.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| There's no going back. I routinely mess up 8 with October
| now.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| That happens especially if you speak a Latin language.
| Very annoying.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Evidence for this is September October November and December
| are named as seventh eighth ninth and tenth months which
| matches with a year starting in March obviously intentionally
| at the spring equinox but calendar inaccuracies lost that.
|
| Quarters should begin and end with equinoxes and solstices and
| be equivalent with seasons, major holidays aligned with quarter
| transitions and solar milestones make sense.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| The author is moaning about being misgendered on HN. Poor they.
| Message to foone: Ignore the haters - good luck with your
| hollywood apirations!
|
| Anyway, if an alien species managed to get here and managed to
| communicate with us, they would likely understand the
| complexities of culture and history on an advanced civilisation.
|
| Finally, aliens don't exist.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| Aliens don't exist? You seem very certain of that
| [deleted]
| steele wrote:
| If they don't see this reply they are following your advice
| ajaimk wrote:
| The 12 makes sense for being divisible by 3 and 4. 60 does the
| same but also for 5.
|
| The rest is chaos.
| timbit42 wrote:
| If we switch to dozenal, we can switch metric to being dozenal
| based and we won't need decimal time.
| rags2riches wrote:
| We used to end our days at sunset, because that's an observable
| event. Now we don't. That's why we have things like Christmas eve
| one date and Christmas day the next, when they really should be
| on the same date.
| freetime2 wrote:
| How about the fact that 10/11/12 can variously refer to October
| 11, 2012, November 10, 2012, or November 12, 2010 - depending on
| what country you are in?
| romanhn wrote:
| And just to make sure the aliens lose whatever shred of
| confidence they might still have in human civilisation, we should
| introduce them to time zones: https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY. My
| favorite video on the topic.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| These aliens must be either software developers or economists.
| Nobody else just assumes the world is logical and freaks out when
| it isn't...
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Dates are one of the first standards through which humans
| discovered https://xkcd.com/927/.
|
| Standards simple and useful enough to be used in everyday
| conversation die with their users. So I don't know anyone who
| keeps track of the Republican calendar, but I _do_ know people
| who are celebrating New Year's tonight. And the English still
| drink beer in pints.
|
| It would only be simpler to use the Republican Calendar in a
| vacuum. Practically, all us programmers would spend all our time
| converting dates between Georgian and Republican dates, and I'd
| have to look at my ID to know my birthdate.
| Macha wrote:
| Who celebrates new year's day on September 25th?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Jewish people celebrate New Year's Day on the first of
| Tishrei - which is tomorrow
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Why the presupposition that these aliens are more rational than
| us? Presumably they would be just as vulnerable to their evolved
| behaviour and inertia of historical decision making as we are.
| Someone wrote:
| > "At the start of the year?"
|
| > "nah. The end of the second month"
|
| > "WHY WOULD IT BE THE SECOND MONTH?"
|
| Because leap day is at the end of the year, but at some time we
| moved the start of the year two months back (same reason why
| September through December now are the ninth through twelfth
| month of the year, not the seventh through tenth)
|
| (Historically, I think it was slightly different. February, the
| last month of the year was shorter because the year isn't long
| enough to give it 30 days, then we moved the start of the year,
| and then we invented the Gregorian calendar, and picked February
| for the leap day because it already was an outlier)
| cperciva wrote:
| _February, the last month of the year was shorter because the
| year isn't long enough to give it 30 days_
|
| Originally February had 30 days, along with all the other
| months. (The 5 or 6 remaining days at various times were either
| extra days which didn't belong to a month or were omitted until
| there was a month's worth of them to catch up on.)
|
| February got shorter because (being the last month of the year)
| it had days removed in order to add them to other months --
| what was originally February 30th (the end of the year) became
| February 23rd (the end of the year, after which the leap day is
| inserted).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Augustus and Julius stole a day from February so theirs'
| would be long ones.
| jcranmer wrote:
| February had 28 days before Julius Caesar came to power, so
| he and his successor couldn't have stolen a day from it.
| miniwark wrote:
| The Ethiopian calendar still do this, 12 months of 30 days
| each and a last 5 to 6 "month".
|
| The reddit thread is funny but it also forget than there is
| not only one calendar in the actual world... Long time ago, i
| have meet an indian who was never able to explain to me witch
| days he was forbidden to eat meat (he was not a strict
| vegetarian), or even food at all. It was probably a mix of
| one of the indian calendars, horoscope and religion.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Because leap day is at the end of the year, but at some time
| we moved the start of the year two months back (same reason why
| September through December now are the ninth through twelfth
| month of the year, not the seventh through tenth)
|
| There is actually no hard evidence that the Romans ever started
| their calendar in March instead of January. The earliest
| contemporaneous use of the calendar relies on January 1 as the
| start of the year, short February, and with intercalation
| happening after (or maybe within) February.
|
| The primary evidence we use to indicate that the start of the
| year shifted is... the apparently wrong month names. Some
| writers did describe a calendar that starts at March and ends
| in December, with winter basically having no proper calendar--
| but these are writers describing how their calendar worked
| several centuries ago, attributing it to mythological figures,
| and the explanation strikes me as very heavily a "just so"
| explanation.
|
| If you want my hypothesis, the Roman civil year never started
| in March. But March would have had some amount of primacy, as
| it indicates the start of the _planting_ year. Shenanigans in
| the calendar would have occurred in February to ensure that the
| equinox is properly timed to happen in March. But the civil
| year would have started closer to the beginning of winter for
| other reasons (perhaps taxation? but finding this level of
| granularity of information on Roman taxation is difficult).
|
| In this hypothesis, the month names were not incorrect because
| they were never intended to count from the beginning of the
| year. Note that the first 6 months of the civil year have
| names, while the last 6 are merely numbered. It makes no sense
| to me that you'd make up special names for the first 4 and the
| last 2 months of the year, while skipping everything in the
| middle.
| silvestrov wrote:
| He didn't mention LEAP-SECONDS which are at THE END OF THE
| YEAR.
| detaro wrote:
| or june 30th
| Someone wrote:
| Indeed. See https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-
| division/leap-se...
|
| And they always are end of June or December in UTC time, so
| locally they can happen on the first of January or first or
| July.
| Svip wrote:
| It was the Romans who inserted a leap month inside February
| between the 23rd and 24th. Since the two consuls ruled on
| alternating months, adding an extra month after February would
| give one consul one more ruling month, making it somewhat
| unfair. Since leap years were handled irregularly back then,
| they were leap months, not leap days.
|
| The Julian calendar introduced the leap day instead, and
| maintained it in February as originally, and introduced it
| every 4 years (except years dividable by 100).
|
| This is also around the same time that July and August were
| named to their current names (named after Caesar and Augustus).
| Before that, they had had names equal to fifth and sixth month,
| respectively, like September comes from seventh.
| bonzini wrote:
| The Julian calendar didn't have the divisible-by-100 rule,
| every other fourth year was leap.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Julius and Augustus you mean, both were Caesars (Augustus,
| AKA Octavian, was adopted).
| Ash_Crow wrote:
| wartijn_ wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the men were known as Julius Caesar
| and Augustus Caesar? Because that's wrong[0]. Augustus used
| this name and it became a title for roman Emperors, in
| reference to Julius Caesar. If people are talking about
| Caesar, they mean Julius Caesar.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus#Name
| mcv wrote:
| I recently read that the reason February has only 28 or 29
| days, and not 29 or 39, as you'd expect, is because Augustus
| wanted his month to have just as many days as Julius' month.
|
| No idea if that's true, but sounds appropriate for the ego of
| an emperor.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >Before that, they had had names equal to fifth and sixth
| month, respectively, like September comes from seventh.
|
| Now, do i google, duckduckgo, or bing, what those months were
| called?
|
| Fifth collumism? Sexism?
| jcranmer wrote:
| Quintilis and Sextilis are their names.
| Svip wrote:
| Isn't it also about as likely that the aliens will have an even
| more convoluted calendar, and may even consider ours simple?
| adventured wrote:
| I'm always amused by the fantasy that aliens are more likely to
| be rational and have far less convoluted systems than we do.
|
| It's some manner of borderline religious, faith-based notion
| about the assumed nature of aliens. People seem to get quite
| upset if you intrude on their fantasy about what aliens must
| surely be like (not like us, far better than us; humans are the
| primitive dredge of the universe basically). Despite the fact
| that there's no evidence to support either side of the premise,
| so it ends up revealing what the person thinks about themselves
| (self-hate) and humanity generally more than anything else.
|
| And if you really want to see their heads explode, suggest the
| notion that the odds - as far as we know - are just as good
| that humans are the most advanced beings in the universe as
| not; and the odds are just as good that we're the very first
| spacefaring beings in the universe rather than the zillionth.
| rocqua wrote:
| There is one defining difference between us, and aliens that
| visit earth.
|
| They managed interstellar travel, we did not. That inherently
| puts them at an advantage to us. Definitely a technological
| advantage. Hence it makes sense to assume (with medium
| confidence) that such aliens will be better at science than
| us. Assuming that they will therefore be more rational than
| us is not much of a leap.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > They managed interstellar travel, we did not. That
| inherently puts them at an advantage to us.
|
| It means some species that is/ was out there has an
| advantage. The species that actually visits us could be
| less intelligent than us but just intelligent enough to
| operate the equipment they dug up.
| bombcar wrote:
| I mean most people can drive a car but few can build one,
| and the majority of both groups can drive pretty badly at
| times.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I don't want to actually even imagine what sort of hell an
| proper interstellar empire timekeeping is. Just ignore
| different planets having different orbital and rotational
| characteristic.
|
| Just the basic relativistic effects even with some type of
| instant transfers would make most communication and so on
| massively painful mess.
| chungy wrote:
| At least, we have a well-defined second. Assuming that
| humans make interstellar travel and/or colonization
| happen before being visited first, it's not entirely
| unreasonable that space-borne vessels will maintain the
| time and calendar system developed on Earth. It's
| convention, after all (we fudge it _just a bit_ here on
| Earth, too).
|
| Perhaps extrasolar colonies will have to develop a system
| that makes sense for whatever planet or moon they settle
| on, at which point they'd be converting between Earth
| time and local time for correspondence.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Sure, if "rational" means that you only do that one thing
| (science/tech) and have no quirks, personality traits,
| faiths, etc. outside of that.
| bluecalm wrote:
| I always thought it would make sense to have 52 weeks (364 days)
| and then a special New Years day and then repeat 52 weeks.
|
| This way every year is the same. It's always the same day of the
| week on April's 13th. No moving holidays. Easier to plan. No
| adjusting schedules. No problem with leap seconds/days (just as
| them to the special day whenever).
|
| It just seems like a simple and superior solution. What were
| those guys thinking...
| timbit42 wrote:
| How about three 90 day quarters comprised of three 30 day
| months and one day in between each quarter for each solstice
| and equinox day? You can add a day or a week periodically to
| keep it synced.
| bombcar wrote:
| Tolkien's Hobbit calendar did just that - which had the good or
| bad effect of your birthday always being on the same weekday.
| Which could be annoying.
| function_seven wrote:
| I've always loved that idea. So did Kodak
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
| bluecalm wrote:
| It's a bit different though. I think the are reasons for 12
| months, 7 days per week, 3 months quarters etc. My version
| keeps it all and avoids points in "disadvantages" section of
| the Wikipedia article.
| int_19h wrote:
| There's no strong reason for 12 months.
|
| 7 days per week seems to be so ubiquitous now because
| religions that depended on that particular cycle (Judaism
| originally, and from thence Christianity and Islam) are so
| popular. But, historically, societies have successfully
| existed with weeks ranging anywhere from 5 to 10 days.
| Romans, in particular, had an 8-day week for most of their
| history.
|
| (7 days per week has a more natural meaning if your
| calendar is lunar overall, so that weeks can be aligned
| with months. But lunar calendars are overall very messy due
| to disagreements with the solar cycle, so it's best to not
| go there in the first place.)
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| >"YOUR CALENDAR IS BASED ON A RELIGIOUS LEADER THAT NOT EVERYONE
| BELIEVES IN?"
|
| Instead of taking the opportunity to make a holier-than-thou
| twitter rant the would-be probee would do better to reply to this
| by explaining that almost every religion and many cultures have
| one or more of their own.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Yes, and for some theirs is the main one. It's now year 2565 BE
| in Thailand, you won't really see "2022" that much outside of
| strictly tourist-oriented references. Use a Thai VPN when
| googling and that's the date you will see in search result
| listings.
|
| I believe the next version of ISO 8601 is expected to support
| different calendar & time systems.
| ecshafer wrote:
| This would be better written in a short story format but I
| digress.
|
| This is precisely the type of thing that would probably happen in
| almost any society. There are many standards that pop up that are
| vestiges of one thing or another. The fact we get base 60 from
| Sumeria but use Base 12 or Base 24 for hours is not a big deal,
| weird things happen. I doubt any advanced alien would be just so
| flabbergasted over this. We have multiple cultures all over the
| world that count differently, so the assumption of base 10, just
| doesn't really make sense. All standards like time, counting, etc
| in any culture I think would be this mishmash of legacies from
| some people's that were dominant at some point that other
| people's culture imprinted upon that. If anything an alien race
| would probably be _more_ suspicious if our calendar and time
| system was some perfect base 10 all through or something of that
| nature as if the cult of reason had dominated the world after the
| French Revolution.
|
| Also the historical record of someone named Jesus existing isn't
| debated by any historical scholar I have ever heard of, just the
| messianic / prophetic / son of god nature seems to be the rub.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| _the historical record of someone named Jesus existing isn 't
| debated by any historical scholar_
|
| It _is_ debated by people like Richard Carrier
| https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=richard...
| who says that (IIRC) while it's not unlikely that one or
| several people with similar messages preached in Judea 2000
| years ago, the Jesus of the Bible looks like a literary
| invention when you go back to all the earliest records in
| Christian and non-Christian (e.g. Roman) sources.
|
| *Edit* now that I got downvoted for mentioning Richard Carrier
| I'd very much like to hear about substantialized criticism
| about his work. Any pointers?
| altthought wrote:
| Richard Carrier is an extremely fringe figure regarding the
| historical Jesus. The overwhelming majority of scholars in
| the field from conservative to liberal historians dismiss his
| ideas as fringe, and his methodologies as inconclusive, at
| best.
| wl wrote:
| Richard Carrier is a crank who somehow got popular among New
| Atheists who didn't know any better. His work enjoys no
| support in academia.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > It is debated by people like Richard Carrier
|
| Yes, but there's little debate amongst scholars that aren't
| atheist activists. For instance, it's extremely difficult to
| explain the historical facts of the early Christian movement
| without a historical Jesus due to those events being so
| recent and broadly falsifiable via living memory let alone
| records extant at the time and there being no evidence of the
| Romans using a lack of historical evidence for Jesus as an
| argument against Christianity.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Aliens are likely to view 12 or 60 as prettier numbers than 10
| or 100. Try writing the multiplication tables in base 12 and
| you'll see how much nicer they are.
| drusepth wrote:
| Here's the base 12 multiplication tables:
| https://math.tools/table/multiplication/base/12
|
| It doesn't look more or less nice to me than the base 10
| version. Can you describe what is supposed to make it look
| nicer, especially to aliens?
| Buttons840 wrote:
| You have to fill out the table yourself to appreciate the
| patterns.
| GoldenRacer wrote:
| In base 10, the times tables for 2 and 5 are easy because
| they divide 10. If I want 2*7, I know 7/5 is 1 remainder 2
| so it's 10+2*2=14. As for 5x7, I know 7/2 is 3 remainder 1
| so it's 30+1*5=35.
|
| In base 12, there are similarly easy rules for 2, 3, 4, and
| 6. Doesn't seem like that great of a trade off but it could
| be beneficial. That also just comes down to 12 being a
| "superior highly composite number".
|
| If I personally was allowed to rewrite our number system, I
| think I'd choose a base that is either a superior highly
| composite number or a power of 2. So something in the set
| [2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 32, 60, 64...]. I doubt 10 would even
| cross my mind as an option if I didn't have 10 fingers.
| enlyth wrote:
| I follow about 80 people on Twitter and Foone usually takes up
| more than half of my feed :D
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Yeah, from what I understand, it's generally accepted that some
| rabble rouser called Yeshua existed, and later had followers
| who considered him to be holy.
| ajuc wrote:
| So, for comparison - in Poland we use
|
| - 24 hour clock
|
| - days of the week are called "after not working day", "second
| day", "middle day", "fourth day", "fifth day", "sabbath", "not
| working day"
|
| - months are mostly named from the agricultural/weather phenomena
| "wood cutting month", "strong cold month", "Mars month", "flowers
| month", "Mai month", "red pigment larvae month", "linden trees
| month", "sickle month", "heather month", "chaff month", "falling
| leaves month", "frozen ground month"
|
| Dates are written dd-mm-yyyy or yyyy-mm-dd (less often).
|
| The rest is as bad as in USA.
| tasuki wrote:
| > "second day"
|
| Wtorek? That... does not appear to have "dwa" or anything
| similar in it. Please ELIC (explain like I'm Czech (actually
| am, tho lived in Poland for a bit))
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > "nah, we call them AM and PM"
|
| Not a human-universal practice.
| Thorentis wrote:
| > He's written about in a famous book but historical records are
| spotty
|
| Don't want to start a religious debate, but it really annoys me
| when for some reason, multiple documents that were later compiled
| into a book are not historical documents, just because they were
| treated as religious texts by the church councils 300 years
| later. The Bible isn't a book that Christians all sat down and
| wrote. It's a collection of many different historical documents
| written by many different people.
| miniwark wrote:
| Because it's about a books who explain than at last, two people
| can come back from death... days after it. Historians have
| doubts about this (and other weird events from this books) and
| therefore do not keep this specifics book as very credible
| sources. That said, no real historian actually doubt of the
| historical existence of the famous religious leader from the
| past.
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| What is wrong with saying everything is an approximation and is
| made as a means for convenience that is not supposed to be
| perfect.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh that works for humans. But if you tell an alien that they
| just block you from transmitting on any frequency of EM.
| Cultural quirk of aliens.
| nurettin wrote:
| I think the point of the article is to look at things from am
| engineering/scientist perspective where saying such things
| would get you fired/scrutinized.
| xani_ wrote:
| Uh, they will nuke us the moment they get on facebook
| Havoc wrote:
| Reminds me of the imperial measurements debate.
| leto_ii wrote:
| Couldn't this whole thread just be condensed to: we have a thing
| called culture which is not completely rational or efficient? I'm
| sure the aliens would get that - they would probably have
| something similar, albeit with different irrationalities and
| inefficiencies.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| You don't even have to introduce culture. "We built a simple
| time system a long time ago. Some of its initial assumptions
| were wrong and we've been patching it up as we go ever since".
| I'm sure the aliens have a word for "technical debt".
|
| Also, dividing the day into 24hs is kind of genius. Sure, 10 is
| nice, but good luck dividing it neatly into 3 parts.
| 113 wrote:
| That would be significantly less funny and interesting.
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| It would be exactly as funny and exactly as interesting,
| which is to say: not very.
|
| This is right up there with noticing that sometimes the "b"
| in certain English words is completely silent! Haha isn't
| that totally irrational and crazy you guys??
| allenu wrote:
| I didn't find it particularly funny either. It's mostly
| predicated on this belief that somehow we "should" have
| optimized our date and time system and that it's silly that
| we're using an inconsistent, legacy system formed for many
| cultural reasons.
|
| My analogy is that it's like writing a tweetstorm about how
| aliens landed on Earth to find that humans use different
| languages! And different writing systems! How quaint!
| lotu wrote:
| How I would have ended would be with the aliens saying we
| should just adopt galactic standard time because it is so
| much easier, but in fact it is twice as complicated and
| confusing, but they are used to it so it appears simple.
| Still funny better message.
| BlackLotus89 wrote:
| They forgot summer- and wintertime, and leap seconds.
|
| Oh and afaik only some english speaking countries use AM/PM, the
| rest of the world uses the 24h based system doesn't it?
| ozim wrote:
| Consistency is for small minds. I expect aliens to have much
| broader issues with time keeping.
|
| Rotations of different galaxies? Weird alien rulers imposing
| their names like "X AE A-12" for 3rd rotation even if 12 is in
| the name.
|
| Having video calls scheduling is hard between Earth time zones -
| good luck scheduling video call between two galaxies.
| dathinab wrote:
| The bigger the problems you have to handle at scale the more
| annoying are small, fully unnecessary inconsistencies in the
| peaces which compose the system in which your problems exist.
|
| Big things have failed due to small overlooked inconsistencies
| in handling date times.
| eastbound wrote:
| The lag would be enormous between galaxies, unless we invent
| quantum entanglement, in which case the lag is also irrelevant
| because you can teleport yourself.
| dalys wrote:
| Teleporting would still require energy and therefor money.
| Plus wearing pants. So I think the biggest problem is coming
| up with: A) A network protocol for quantum entaglement. B)
| porting the Zoom client to the Yapple N1 architecture, the
| most recent Alien Processing Unit from the company Yapple,
| named by the popular yapple fruit on the planet Mostly Sand.
| (Yes, they also named their planet after the material that
| was under their feet, which they regret after joining the
| United Planets) Yapple recently used 1.2% of the company's
| cash reserves to buy up their only competitor's architectual
| IP, their workforce, factories, land, workers, workers
| families, cities, countries, planets, solar systems and
| galaxies. So luckily for Zoom developers, there is only one
| port to be done.
| wazoox wrote:
| In fact all of these points have valid reasons which simply
| reflect some form of cruft. For instance, until Caesar February
| was the last month of the year, so there was an intercalation of
| a month of varying length every two years(which made more sense).
| Also, the months September, October, November, December actually
| were the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months of the year. And all the
| months were 30 days (actually alternatively 29 and 31 days), but
| the _mensis intercalaris_ which was either 22 or 23 days.
|
| Julius Caesar changed this because during the Civil wars of the
| late Republic, many times there was no Great Pontiff to do the
| calculations, so the additional month were left out a few times
| and the calendar was really getting out of sync. He changed the
| beginning of the year from the Spring solstice to January 1st,
| because that was the day of the consular election (and the
| consuls were elected for one year, so that made more sense as the
| years were named from the consuls that were elected).
|
| As for the birth of Jesus, we now know that it must be off by a
| few years. But originally, it was just the best guess they could
| come with; once it was found that Jesus actually wasn't born when
| initially thought, well, tough luck, it simply stayed as it was
| because it was too difficult to change after centuries of
| counting this way already.
|
| Regarding the use of base 60 for time, it made sense because it
| allows matching the course of the Sun and the Moon across the
| year (about 360 days), across the month (lunar month is 29.5
| days) and the day. That's also why we cut circles in 360deg: to
| allow for easy astronomical calculation (by approximating the
| year to 360 days, the lunation to 30 days), and splitting the day
| and night into 12 hours.
|
| Notice that until the invention of mechanical clocks, there was
| 12 hours a day and 12 hours a night, therefore hours were of
| varying length depending upon seasons, but OTOH using a sundial
| was dead simple -- which made sense when you had sundials, but no
| clocks...
| tomcam wrote:
| It's a near tie between the anal probe and explaining our
| calendar
| dang wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tZar4wRP40
| tomcam wrote:
| All right I'm gonna go with Calendar after all
| tomcam wrote:
| I miss those guys
| kitd wrote:
| The single most complex component I have ever written in about 35
| years of SW development was a scheduler to calculate the next
| instance in a set of overlaid periodic cycles, allowing for time
| zones, DST changes, leap year/centuries, etc, etc ... in Visual
| Basic no less!
| croes wrote:
| I'll bet the aliens have something similar that is based on
| historical changes and habits and isn't purely logical.
| amelius wrote:
| And they'll force it upon us.
| fsflover wrote:
| Unless they redesigned it for their own benefit.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits
| Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last
| :)
|
| A few notes:
|
| - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and
| illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;
|
| - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the
| only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs,
| however 12h _sometimes_ is used conversationally;
|
| - May be the author got tired (or whatever he took started to
| wear off) but I consider omitting the whole DST thing a major
| missed opportunity. :)
|
| Also, for those interested, look up Swatch time invented in late
| 90s and touted as more logical replacement of the mess that we
| have. I believe they still maintain some Internet presence but
| mostly gave up on promoting it. Good luck breaking 1000+yo
| habits.
| smsm42 wrote:
| > Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and
| illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;
|
| No, in Israel Sunday is the first day of the week too, because
| the weekend is Friday-Saturday (Shabbath). In Hebrew, though,
| the week days are named rather simply - except for Sabbath,
| they are just "Day 1" (Sunday), ..., "Day 6" (Friday). OTOH,
| that's exactly how they were numbered in the Bible, so...
| comeonbro wrote:
| I didn't appreciate until recently that the calendar we live by
| today was _personally_ designed by Julius Caesar.
|
| Like not by some forgotten technocrats incidentally during his
| time, but Julius Caesar himself as a subject matter expert, as
| a side-project. With consultation, certainly, but by his
| initiative, from long-standing engagement with the problem in
| one of his early jobs from long before he was a main character
| of the Roman story.
|
| Digestable and entertaining (fragment of a) video on the topic:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD-R35DSSZY&t=1312s
| superjan wrote:
| And in that calender, February is the last month, which makes
| it the logical month for adjusting leap years.
| jffry wrote:
| And likewise, September is the 7th month, October the 8th,
| etc etc
| lolinder wrote:
| It looks like there's a legend that this was the case, but
| January has been the first month of the year through all of
| recorded history, and Julius Caesar's version was no
| different.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Februarius
| jfk13 wrote:
| That article says "it is unclear when the Romans reset
| the course of the year so that January and February came
| first", but doesn't actually deny that the year formerly
| ended with February.
|
| See for example p.187 of
| https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L333.pdf for a 1st
| century BC reference to it:
|
| > The _Terminalia_ 'Festival of Terminus,' because this
| day is set as the last day of the year; for the twelfth
| month was February, and when the extra month is inserted
| the last five days are taken off the twelfth month.
| Jap2-0 wrote:
| That article seems to state the opposite?
| lolinder wrote:
| > In the oldest Roman calendar, which the Romans believed
| to have been instituted by their legendary founder
| Romulus, March was the first month, and the calendar year
| had only ten months in all. Ianuarius and Februarius were
| supposed to have been added by Numa Pompilius, the second
| king of Rome, originally at the end of the year. It is
| unclear when the Romans reset the course of the year so
| that January and February came first.
|
| Most of what we know about pre-republican Rome is from
| oral tradition, not actual records. So if by the time of
| the Republic February was the second month of the year,
| it was the second month of the year through all of
| recorded Roman history.
| permo-w wrote:
| I'm unsure how commonly known this is, but also note that
| July and August are named after Julius Caesar and Emperor
| Augustus
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| If Caesar designed the calendar, how did he get a month in
| there named after something that hadn't happened yet? When
| Caesar died Augustus' name was Octavian, and Rome hadn't
| had an emperor yet...
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Are you messing around?
|
| Octavius became Julius Caesar after he was adopted. And
| also later he was given the honorable designation by the
| senate and called Augustus. That's not his name its one
| of his honors.
|
| Octavian is essentially a past tense of his name and he
| never truly went by that. It's a name used by historians.
| j-bos wrote:
| Well worth the watch, also shows that Ceasar's main character
| arc was bossted by his calendar knowledge and authority.
| gerdesj wrote:
| He didn't just throw dice or march in, see what's what and
| grab the locals by the nadgers.
|
| JC was quite a chap and of course why its called the Julian
| Calendar. Many other calendars are available. Kalends is the
| source of the name for calendar and the Roman day of month
| counting is pretty involved - http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=
| calhistory/earlier/roman/kale... Kalends, nones and ides.
|
| JS died on the ides of March ...
| Swizec wrote:
| > US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the
| only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs,
| however 12h _sometimes_ is used conversationally;
|
| Maybe this is because I grew up when analog clocks were common,
| but it would feel extremely weird to say "15 o'clock" in speech
| instead of "3pm". Even though it's written down as 15.
|
| I think you're right that younger generations that grew up with
| digital are more likely to answer "fifteen oh seven" when you
| ask the time whereas I'd be more likely to read the same time
| and say "ten past three"
|
| (Slovenian background)
| less_less wrote:
| > - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly
| (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the
| week;
|
| It's not the only one. In Portuguese, the names of Monday ..
| Friday are literally "second .. sixth fair [day]", with
| Saturday and Sunday being "sabado" (sabbath) and "domingo"
| (lord's day).
|
| I'm not sure which other countries follow the convention, but
| it's the numbering used in the Bible so I would be surprised if
| there aren't others.
| zakki wrote:
| In Indonesia looks like Sunday is taken from Portuguese name
| with modifications: Domingo - Mingo - Minggu
| fortran77 wrote:
| Israel (where I spend several months/year) considers Sunday to
| be the first day of the week. The workweek is Sunday through
| Thursday.
|
| Weekend is Friday and Saturday. I suspect many Islamic
| countries are the same way.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| I had no clue, if the work week is Sunday though Thursday, it
| makes perfect sense. Learned something new today :)
| 988747 wrote:
| Saudi Arabia used to have Thursday and Friday as weekend.
| They changed that recently (2013) to Friday and Saturday,
| because that gives them a bigger overlap with the rest of the
| world, which is good for business.
| retrac wrote:
| > Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and
| illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week
|
| /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where
| Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The
| week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in
| English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-
| speaking world.
|
| A quick check of Wikipedia suggests Arabic, Portuguese and
| Vietnamese, all use number-based systems to name the days of
| the week, and they are indexed from Sunday = 1. But yes, the
| other is more common. Most of the Slavic languages, and
| Chinese, among others, use indexed from Monday = 1.
|
| Then there's Swahili: Saturday = 1 and Friday = 7. Though
| personally, I believe Sunday is the 0th day of the week.
| shakezula wrote:
| > Sunday = 1
|
| Animals. Absolutely barbaric.
|
| Everybody knows we should index lists starting at 0. /s
| stnikolauswagne wrote:
| Time to start a movement to consider saturday the as the
| beginning of the week!
| gorbypark wrote:
| As a English Canadian who works for a company that was bought
| by an American company and was force switched to Sunday as
| the first day of the week....what? Maybe we "officially" or
| legally have Sundays as the first day but my entire life has
| been Mondays first. Every calendar I've had has been that way
| as well. It still messes with my mind, even four years later,
| that at work Sunday is the first day of the week.
| skipants wrote:
| I'm from Winnipeg originally and considered Sunday the
| first day of the week. Maybe it's regional or cultural?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What does it even mean to consider Sunday the first day
| of the week? What does it change?
| paines wrote:
| It doesn't truly matter or? It's not like you are going
| to work on sundays. You only realize it with calenders in
| e.g. Outlook, and long gone TV guides....
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's a little disorienting on booking sites (hotels etc)
| when the first day of the week isn't Monday.
|
| I once booked a train on the wrong day because the
| localisation changed part way through my search.
| (Fortunately I noticed.)
| stormbrew wrote:
| What part of English Canada? In Alberta or Ontario (the
| parts I've lived in, though I was pretty young when I lived
| in Ontario) I've literally never seen a calendar with
| Monday as the first day of the week that I can recall.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| Portuguese name weekdays by numbers ex Monday, Segunda-feira
| (Second Market), but I don't think anyone assumes Sunday as
| the first day.
|
| And I leave the "market" for someone who still didn't have
| enough of this rabbit hole.
| gerdesj wrote:
| That sounds quite sensible. From memory, our (en_GB)
| weekdays are named like this:
|
| Monday -> Moon day
|
| Tuesday -> Tiw's day (Norse)
|
| Wednesday -> Woden's day (Norse - Odin - chief god, one
| eye, two ravens)
|
| Thursday -> Thor's day (Norse - god with a massive hammer)
| Friday -> Freya's day (Norse, rode a chariot drawn by cats)
|
| Saturday -> Saturn's day (Roman, also: Saturnalia is the
| winter festival that eventually became Christmas)
|
| Sunday -> Sun day
| forinti wrote:
| Russian is similar to Portuguese, albeit off by one.
|
| Monday = Segunda (second) = ponedel'nik (start of the week)
|
| Tuesday = Terca (third) = vtornik (second)
|
| Wednesday = Quarta (fourth) = sreda (middle)
|
| Thursday = Quinta (fifth) = Chetverg (fourth)
|
| Friday = Sexta (sixth) = piatnitsa (fifth)
|
| So I guess Russians have no doubt as to when the week
| starts.
| stuartd wrote:
| > .. considers Sunday to be the first day of the week
|
| How can the first day of the week happen _in the middle of
| the weekend_!?!
| drdeca wrote:
| Because the week has two endpoints: the initial day of the
| week and the final day of the week.
| irrational wrote:
| Sunday being the first day of the week came long (as in
| thousands of years) before the weekend was invented (which
| is a very recent development).
| nwallin wrote:
| Weekends? Weekends are... the ... ends of the week. When
| you build a bookshelf, do you do:
|
| <stack of bricks> <book> <book> <book> <book> <book> <stack
| of bricks>
|
| or do you do:
|
| <book> <book> <book> <book> <book> <stack of bricks> <stack
| of bricks>
| umanwizard wrote:
| The same way all the other illogical things happened:
| random cultural legacy.
|
| Why would you expect the week start day to be any
| different?
| count wrote:
| Both ends of the week are the weekend.
|
| One is the starting weekend, and the other the ending
| weekend.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Right, I (in the US) always figured "end" in the word
| "weekend" was akin to the two ends of a line segment, the
| two ends of a bar, etc.
|
| To instead think of "end" in the word "weekend" as the
| opposite of "start" is to use a completely different
| definition of the word "end".
|
| I wonder if "weekend" therefore has two definitions,
| given the split dependency.
| glandium wrote:
| It feels to me that for "end" to be used as the two ends
| of the week, it would be weekends (plural), not weekend
| (singular).
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| Considering that the word is from the British and the
| fact that the week ends with Sunday there, that can't be
| it. It would also be weekends, not weekend if there was
| multiple ends. The upcoming weekends doesn't mean
| Saturday and Sunday in the US... It occurs over a time
| period of at least one whole week into the
| future...right?
| umanwizard wrote:
| > The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday
| in English Canada
|
| Interesting. How does software (e.g. Google Calendar) display
| weeks when in en_CA localization?
| [deleted]
| murderfs wrote:
| Most software I can think of lets you configure it
| independent of the locale.
| FastEatSlow wrote:
| I thought that that in Slavic languages Sunday would be the
| first day of the week, since the Polish for 'monday' means
| 'after sunday'.
|
| EDIT: got 'monday' and 'sunday' the wrong way round
| mszmszmsz wrote:
| nope, monday is ,,after sunday"
| FastEatSlow wrote:
| Thanks for catching that, I got my English the wrong way
| round.
| torstenvl wrote:
| In Russian, Sunday is "Resurrection Day" and Monday is "The
| Thing concerning Not-Doing being in the Past-Perfective
| Tense" (po + ne+del + nik)
|
| It looks like Polish is similar except that Sunday is "Not-
| Doing"
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Hmm, and the week is the not-done-thing?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In Polish, Sunday is ,,niedziela", and Monday is also
| ,,poniedzialek", so it actually makes more sense than in
| Russian :) I suspect "niedziela" (<<nedelia>>) was the
| original, proto-Slavic word for the day of the week, as
| some variations of it are used for I think all Slavic
| languages except Russian, who at some point decided to
| rename it to celebrate Resurrection.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Not-Doing can be a false alias: the week is _nedelya_ and
| _ponedelnik_ may thus mean "one going with the week*,
| i.e. starting it.
|
| Altough I'm not sure since the sibling proto-slavic
| explanation makes much sense. Fun fact: slavic languages
| split off in medieval times when the calendar and the
| week were already thorougly taken care of.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Ponedelnik etymologically means the day after the not-
| doing day. Nowadays the connection is lost because Sunday
| is no longer called "nedelja".
| jq-r wrote:
| Depends ;). In Croatia its still called nedjelja (Sunday)
| and ponedjeljak (Monday).
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "Sat and Sun constitute the weekEND, right?"
|
| "Of course."
|
| "And Sunday is the 7th day, the day of rest?"
|
| "Yeah, that's what they preach at my church."
|
| "What about your workplace?"
|
| "Everybody knows the standard workweek is Mon-Fri. What's
| your point?"
|
| "Ok, so we're agreed the weekends include Sunday, your Bible
| says Sunday is the 7th day, and the workweek starts on
| Monday."
|
| "Yep."
|
| "So printed calendars and day-planners and calendar software
| should treat weeks as starting on Monday, right?"
|
| "..."
| chungy wrote:
| 6-day work weeks are still common in agriculture, and the
| Bible is silent on what the exact weekday the sabbath lands
| on. Some people really argue that it's supposed to be
| Saturday, but traditionally Jesus's resurrection is said to
| have happened on Sunday, so most Christian churches went
| along with that.
|
| My own personal opinion: it matters not what day you
| consider to be the sabbath, but it does help when a
| community agrees on a day and goes along with it. So for
| me, Sunday it is. (It also doesn't matter how a calendar is
| printed; it could start on Wednesday for all I care. It'd
| be weird, but it wouldn't change anything.)
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| "Sat and Sun constitute the weekEND, right?"
|
| It's called a bookEND only if it's to the right of the row
| of books. If it's to the left (for books in an RTL
| language), we call it a bookSTART
| ysavir wrote:
| > A quick check of Wikipedia suggests Arabic, Portuguese and
| Vietnamese, all use number-based systems to name the days of
| the week, and they are indexed from Sunday = 1.
|
| I can confirm that in Hebrew, the name for Sunday translates
| into "First Day", Monday into "Second Day", etc. Except for
| Saturday, which is Shabat.
| latexr wrote:
| In Portuguese, Monday through Friday translates to
| something like "Second Fair" through "Sixth Fair"1.
| Saturday and Sunday aren't numbered.
|
| 1 "Fair" as in "a gathering of stalls and amusements for
| public entertainment".
| Cyph0n wrote:
| The Arabic/Islamic calendar starts at Sunday because the
| weekend is Friday and Saturday. In Islam, the weekly
| congregation (mass equivalent) takes place on Friday around
| noon.
| xani_ wrote:
| > Then there's Swahili: Saturday = 1 and Friday = 7. Though
| personally, I believe Sunday is the 0th day of the week.
|
| The cron way, where both 0 and 7 means sunday
| plebianRube wrote:
| Sunday is the first day of the week in crontab.
|
| First index in the array, 0.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sunday is the last day of the week in crontab.
|
| Last index in the array, 7.
| plebianRube wrote:
| 7 also resolves to Sunday, but doesn't take away from the
| fact that the first index [0] is Sunday.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| Why is it illogical to have Sunday be the first day of the
| week? Maybe Saturday is logically the first day of the week
| since nobody in their right minds would want a work day
| (assuming a 5 day work Week) to be the first day. Like eating
| dessert first, starting the week with a day off just makes
| logical sense.
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| Why? One word: weekEND
| irrational wrote:
| https://youtu.be/zhfpBW-nUWk
| dwighttk wrote:
| Which end?
| messe wrote:
| The one at the end of the week, and not the start.
| irrational wrote:
| Maybe it is both ends. Like book ends.
| thfuran wrote:
| But then surely a consecutive Saturday and Sunday would
| be weekends rather than a single weekend?
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| Legit question. What is a weekend in the US? Is a weekend in
| the US Friday - Saturday?
|
| Most places consider the week to end with Sunday and the
| weekend is usually considered to be from after work on
| Friday(or technically Saturday) until Monday starts.
|
| But when an American says "right over the weekend", do they
| mean Sunday, since the US week starts on Sunday? Or does the
| week actually start on Monday as in most places?
|
| I'm from this planet, and even I am confused with all of us,
| but especially with Americans.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| So, the standard US weekend is Saturday-Sunday, even amongst
| the Sunday=1 holdouts. I say holdouts, because it helps to
| understand that this isn't agreed on even within the US. Not
| to suggest that the holdouts are a minority, I honestly don't
| know but I doubt it. I think, apart from the initial
| puzzlement of recognizing the inconsistency, most of us don't
| give much thought at all to which day is 1. "Weekend"
| generally is used colloquially to mean whichever two
| simultaneous days the speaker or audience is off work,
| insofar as they have two consecutive days off work.
|
| I believe, but I may be wrong, that the inconsistency arises
| from Sunday being the Christian sabbath. That "starts" the
| week, but it's a traditional day off for religious
| observance. And this tradition goes back well before the 40
| hour work week, and the common Monday-Friday work week. Which
| is to say that "weekend" didn't originally have connotations
| about which days were work days, they were typically all work
| days except for the Christian sabbath. Which as a retcon
| makes the present colloquial usage even odder, even if it's
| (maybe?) more consistent with how other countries/cultures
| use it.
| irrational wrote:
| No. It starts from the creation story where creation starts
| on Sunday and ends on Friday and then the seventh day
| (Saturday) is the day of rest - the sabbath.
|
| You are thinking of how Jesus is said to resurrect on the
| first day of the week (I.e., Sunday) and later that becomes
| the Sabbath day for (most) Christians.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > I say holdouts, because it helps to understand that this
| isn't agreed on even within the US.
|
| I disagree. I can't remember having ever seen calendars
| display any day other than Sunday as the first of the week,
| except in the case of computer software made by non-
| Americans who didn't think to localize it.
| pantojax45 wrote:
| There's still ambiguity in verbal language. On Sunday, if
| someone messages you "let's do this next week" - do they
| mean "in the next 6 days" or "after 7 days from now"?
| djur wrote:
| The answer is the same on Saturday as on Sunday, so that
| doesn't really matter.
| pitaj wrote:
| That kind of ambiguity is everywhere, though. If it's
| Friday, and I say "next Monday", those two days are close
| enough that you may need clarification - do I mean "this
| coming Monday" or "the Monday after that". Or another
| example for day 1 = Monday, if on Sunday I said "let's do
| that next week", you may need the same form of
| clarification.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I don't see any ambiguity in "next Monday". It literally
| is saying the next day which is Monday.
|
| "Next week" on a Sunday is ambiguous _because_ some
| people consider the new week to have started while others
| consider it to start the next day.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Almost universally meant to mean in the next 6 days.
| _Next_ week implies after 7 days.
| pantojax45 wrote:
| Slightly confused - don't your two sentences contradict
| each other?
|
| Edit: also on a Friday, you can say next week and mean
| Monday (3 days later)
| cercatrova wrote:
| Sorry I read your post incorrectly. If I say, let's do
| something this week, it means up to and including Sunday.
| If I say next week, it means after the upcoming Sunday.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| That makes sense for places where the week starts with
| Monday, but I guess this week means up to and including
| Saturday for Americans if it's actually normal that the
| week starts with Sunday.
|
| I was always under the impression that Americans
| basically agreed on that the week started on Monday, that
| the weekend ended with Sunday and that next week meant
| after Sunday. I thought Sunday as the first day in
| American calendars was a "yeah, it's stupid we do it like
| that, but I guess that is how it used to be back in the
| days" kind of thing.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I disagree with the sibling poster. Your first paragraph
| is correct.
|
| The week starts on Sunday. The weekend ends on Sunday. It
| only makes sense if you consider two adjoining endpoints
| of previous weeks to be one "weekend", which I've never
| known anyone not to do without thinking about it.
|
| Someone talking _at work_ might mean something different,
| but I don 't usually hear "next week" to mean Monday-
| Sunday in general conversation and we'd probably clarify
| for Sunday anyway.
|
| If someone says "The week of the 15th" and Sunday is the
| 15th, they mean the seven days from 15-21 not the seven
| days of 9-15.
|
| "Next week, maybe Sunday" means the next calendar Sunday
| as in Sunday-Saturday, _not_ the Sunday after that as in
| Monday-Sunday.
|
| Anyone who says otherwise is selling calendars with a
| Monday start of the week. :)
| cercatrova wrote:
| Your 2nd paragraph is correct. No one actually thinks
| about when the week starts, it's almost universally
| understood to be Monday based even if the calendar says
| Sunday based.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| "Next" has terrible ambiguity, beyond the phrase "next
| week." If it's Monday and someone says "next Thursday" do
| they mean the coming Thursday (+3) or the one after that
| (+10)? I assume the latter, except when it's said by
| people who I know disagree!
|
| But even with people I don't put in that category, I'd
| hesitate to assume +13 days if they said "next Sunday" on
| Monday. More likely they mean +6 when it's so far out...
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| "Next Thursday" vs "next week Thursday". The former, for
| me, means +3 and the latter +10. I don't think there's
| ever been a time when someone I know has said the former
| but implied +10.
|
| Interesting to see so many people here who _do_ interpret
| it that way.
| yepguy wrote:
| Obviously Sunday is the left end of the week, Saturday the
| right.
| beaned wrote:
| The way I've always thought it was meant to be is that the
| "weekend" is really the "week ends," meaning start and end,
| the same way a shoelace has 2 ends.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| "Weekend" in the US typically refers to Saturday / Sunday.
|
| Monday through Friday is the workweek.
| irrational wrote:
| The concept of weekend is quite a recent development.
|
| https://youtu.be/zhfpBW-nUWk
|
| The concept of Sunday as the first day of the week dates back
| thousands of years.
| masklinn wrote:
| The american weekend is sat-sun. Work week starts on the
| second day of the week. Because reasons.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| That was my point, if the workweek in US is Monday through
| Friday, and US weekend is Saturday and Sunday, there's NO
| REASON WHATSOEVER to call Sunday "the first day of the
| week"...
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| It's biblical. Saturday is the sabbath, the 7th day rest
| day, which would make sunday the first day. Later,
| christians decided to hold mass on sunday instead, because
| it was when Jesus resurrected. Eventually you end up with
| saturday and sunday as rest days, even though one is
| biblically the first and one is biblically the last day of
| the week. But both are the "weekend".
| mcv wrote:
| There are many reasons to call Sunday the first say of the
| week. Mostly historical ones. Weeks have existed for far
| longer than the US or in fact any modern country has. Or
| the concept of a 5-day work week, in fact. The Monday as
| the first day of the week is modern revisionism.
| tolmasky wrote:
| The year also starts and ends with winter. The day starts
| and ends with night. So growing up it seemed to fit that
| the week would start and end with weekend.
| umanwizard wrote:
| There's no reason whatsoever (other than historical) for
| any of the inconsistencies explored in the tweet thread.
| Why should the start of the week be any different?
| umanwizard wrote:
| Weeks are always displayed as beginning on Sunday in the US
| (I get confused and annoyed when a calendar app is improperly
| localized for en_US and shows weeks as starting on Monday).
|
| Separately, we call Saturday and Sunday "the weekend". Yes,
| these two facts are logically inconsistent, but we live with
| it and I have never observed it causing any difficulty in
| practice.
| eastbound wrote:
| Yes. It should end with "...and this is the best system we've
| found, because all other ones were ditched for being too
| complicated."
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Also, for those interested, look up Swatch time invented in
| late 90s and touted as more logical replacement of the mess
| that we have.
|
| Swatch Time is just a rebranding of French Revolutionary
| decimal time displaying the hour number next to the minute. It
| was introduced a bit before the metric system in 1793 but was
| made optional in 1795 and finally dropped in 1806. Swatch has
| always been extremely good at marketing but I don't like
| crediting a corporation for something they didn't invent.
| LukeShu wrote:
| > May be the author got tired (or whatever he took started to
| wear off)
|
| The author uses they/them pronouns. And more likely their ADHD
| episode started to wear down, rather than something they took
| started to wear off.
| ben_ wrote:
| No need for this
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| The Swatch time is a variation on the fractional day.
| Astronomers use it, with .00 being noon and .50 being midnight.
| You can extend it to any precision you like, 1/100,000th of a
| day makes for a good 'decimal second.'
|
| I like knowing what percentage of the day is over, a friend of
| mine says it'd drive her crazy knowing exactly how much time
| gets wasted.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Why does midnight matter? And since we don't use local noon,
| why does noon matter?
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Sunday is the first day of the week in Israel, not just on
| paper but very much in practice. I know this because Israelis I
| worked with will be unavailable on Friday but they will start
| emailing you Sunday morning.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| There was a more significant effort to decimalise time (and the
| calendar to some extent) after the French Revolution, along
| with introducing the metric system everywhere. People hated it
| and they eventually switched back. A bit of related trivia is
| that France only accepted the Greenwich Meridian on maps/charts
| on the condition that the international meridian conference (of
| 1884) also concluded that the convened nations also resolved
| that decimal time was a good idea and they should work towards
| it.
| mcv wrote:
| This is incorrect. The US is hardly the only country where
| people consider Sunday to be the first day of the week. Anyone
| with some understanding of the history of our weekdays does so,
| and that historical understanding is not limited to Americans.
|
| It's also not true that the US is the only country to use 12h
| time; many countries do. Including mine. If you need to write
| time without ambiguity, you use the 24h format, but in everyday
| use and in cases where context makes it clear what you mean,
| people use the 12h format.
| psnehanshu wrote:
| Yeah I agree. 12h time is the natural consequence of using
| analog clocks where one rotation of the hour hand on the dial
| represents 12 hours. But I guess it won't be hard to
| represent 24h if the speed of the hour hand is halved,
| although I have never seen such clocks.
| Shatnerz wrote:
| > Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and
| illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;
|
| First day of the working week is Sunday in Nepal. I assume they
| consider Sunday the start of the week, but I'm not Nepalese.
| This is just a random fact I remember from visiting.
| narag wrote:
| Honestly I didn't find it funny, maybe because it ignores the
| reasons of the inconsistencies, that by the way are perfectly
| understandable looking at space.
|
| Months are related to Moon's orbit, weeks to its phases. Months
| have other gods's names: Janus, Phoebe, Mars, Aphrodite, Maya,
| Juno... Julius and Augustus were emperors and from that point
| are just numerals, starting at March. It was associated with
| Mars because Romans used to go to war in the Spring.
|
| Asimov had an excellent chapter on calendar in his divulgative
| book The Universe, explaining why it's not so easy to _design_
| a regular "logical" calendar.
| glandium wrote:
| Also, if you start in March, it suddenly makes sense that
| leap year adjustments are done in February (and also that
| it's the shortest month to begin with).
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > Julius and Augustus were emperors and from that point are
| just numerals, starting at March
|
| It used to be numbers earlier, Quintilis and Sextilis were
| renamed for them.
|
| Apparently the Romans did not find hard naming even persons -
| they just went by numbers, as in Secundus, Quintus, Sextus,
| Septimus, Octavius, etc.
| smsm42 wrote:
| They didn't have too many personal names in general, IIRC
| about 20 or so commonly used, including numeric ones
| (there's even Decimus - I guess they had big families). And
| looking at how Ceasar is always Julius Ceasar (while his
| personal name was Gaius) it looks like they didn't use it
| too much outside of family and close friends. Which kinda
| makes sense - if you know 10 guys with personal name Gaius,
| it's not very useful to say just "we're having a party at
| Gaius' place tonight".
| simonh wrote:
| The point of comical absurdities like this is precisely that
| they appear comical or absurd if you don't know the reasons
| for them being the way they are. That doesn't mean there are
| no reasons, it's just that those reasons aren't necessary or
| even relevant to appreciating the apparent absurdity.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Perhaps... but the author presents as if telling the
| reasons but the reasons are _just absurd_
| Ensorceled wrote:
| decremental wrote:
| It was fine with me. Learned something.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Why is it unacceptable to you for someone to explain why
| they do not find something funny?
|
| We are really not all the same. HN is a big old forum and
| there is no such thing as a normal response.
|
| That person was describing their personal reaction to ...
| something. I don't think that proscribing dogma is helpful
| in response.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > Why is it unacceptable to you for someone to explain
| why they do not find something funny?
|
| I mean, it's not "unacceptable", free speech and all.
| It's just silly to jump in and "well actually" a joke,
| especially when the explanation is kind of why the joke
| was funny.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Different people see humour in different ways or even not
| at all.
|
| Do I really need to spell it out?
| lloeki wrote:
| > May be the author got tired (or whatever he took started to
| wear off)
|
| Reading through to the last bits I was foreseeing the launch of
| a specific space faring vehicle except it would have failed in
| some way because of non-metric units (purposefully not saying
| of _which kind_ ) thus closing by leaving a loose thread up
| another level of insanity.
| rspeed wrote:
| I had a hell of a time trying to find a pill planner that
| didn't start on Sunday. I was ready to 3D print one when I
| found one that's circular.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Colloquially, lot of places use 12h - it's always "we're going
| to the restaurant at 8", never "at 20" or "at 20:00", at least
| in the countries I've lived or visited. But officially it's
| still 24h - which may be more confusing or less confusing,
| depending on your point of view.
|
| And times (with timezones, and leap seconds, and DST, and so
| on) add another level of fun to it.
| happyopossum wrote:
| Both of your first points are factually incorrect - I'd have to
| imagine some bubble-bias involved, but many countries aside
| from the US use the 12 hour clock and start their calendars on
| Sunday.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| I did say "per my knowledge" so my point stands :)
| fire wrote:
| just fyi the author's pronouns are they/them ( they're in their
| twitter bio )
| pezezin wrote:
| > - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly
| (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the
| week;
|
| Japan does too; I blame the American occupation (and plenty of
| other illogical things).
| typetheorist wrote:
| A lot of people have already commented on how Israel and the
| Middle East consider Sunday to be the first day of the week,
| but I'd like to add that the week itself seems to originate in
| Judaism (Wikipedia, "Week"):
|
| "A continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history
| without reference to the phases of the moon was first practiced
| in Judaism, dated to the 6th century BC at the latest."
|
| In Judaism the week starts from Sunday, so you could argue that
| it's not completely illogical for it to be the case in the US.
|
| Changing the rest day of the week to Sunday was a change made
| in Christianity by the Council of Laodicea:
|
| "Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but
| must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord's Day; and, if
| they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found
| to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ".
| poisonarena wrote:
| >Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and
| illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week
|
| Sunday is the first day of the week in much of the middle east
| Fatnino wrote:
| In Hebrew the days of the week don't really have names. They
| are simply called (direct translation here) "first day" "second
| day" etc. Except for Saturday which is called "Shabbat" instead
| of "seventh day".
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| In Hebrew the weekdays are named "First", "Second", etc. making
| "Shabbat" ie Saturday, the last day of the week.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| The same roughly applies to Arabic: Sunday (derived from one)
| to Thursday (derived from five).
|
| The word for Friday seems to be derived from "gathering"
| (probably due to weekly Islamic mass) and Saturday seems to
| derived from "sleep" (?).
| walrus01 wrote:
| This is along the same general idea as the Persian/Farsi day
| names, you've got Jummah which is the western Friday (Islamic
| day of rest), then the rest of the days are named shanbe,
| yakshanbe, doshanbe, sehshanbe, and so on.
|
| shanbe = day (first day of the week after Jummah)
|
| yak = one
|
| do = two
|
| seh = three
|
| Literally just day one, day two, day three.
|
| You count upwards in day number until you reach six, then
| it's Jummah again and it resets.
|
| The city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan being part of the historical
| extent of the Persian empire and language is literally just
| named second day.
| _glass wrote:
| - Sunday is the first day of the week (even by name, literally
| the first day) in Israel/Hebrew.
|
| - In Germany we use the 12h format in day to day conversation
|
| - Swatch time was so cool when I was a teenager
| googlryas wrote:
| I'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should be the first
| day of the week.
| 988747 wrote:
| Well, since Saturday and Sunday are called "weekEND", so it
| logically follows that Monday is a "week start". Most people
| think about it like this: Monday is a start of a new work-
| week, and then you get two days of rest at the end of the
| week.
| ethanbond wrote:
| But there are two ends of any line, one on each side. Not
| two ends, both of which are on the same side.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly. A sausage has two ends, the beginning end and
| the end end, and so shall the week
| int_19h wrote:
| Then it'd be called "weekends", not "weekend".
| bombcar wrote:
| We don't call it "nights" even though one is split over
| two days (before midnight and after).
| int_19h wrote:
| Just call it "evening" if it's before midnight. That way
| you get four nicely subdivided periods.
|
| 00-06 - night
|
| 06-12 - morning
|
| 12-18 - afternoon
|
| 18-24 - evening
|
| Would need to refactor the name of "midnight" tho to
| minimize confusion. But if we use it as a starting point
| to count hours in a day from, it doesn't make sense to
| simultaneously designate it as a middle of anything.
|
| (BTW, such subdivision is actually common in many places
| of the world.)
| Quekid5 wrote:
| I feel we've just rediscovered why appeals to grammar[0]
| don't actually solve much of anything. (Not saying you're
| appealing to grammar, just that grammar is generally not
| that useful for discerning... anything really.)
|
| Anyway, to be a bit more substantive: What really baked
| my noodle when I was younger is the fact that the seasons
| and the night/day cycle are much more disconnected than
| it appears when you live on Earth. Of course, it makes
| sense when you understand the tilt/rotation thing, but
| still... it really weirds me out sometimes.
|
| [0] English in this case, but any language, really.
| layer8 wrote:
| In a ring buffer, you have a start and an end pointer,
| not two end pointers.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| If we think of it like iterators in C++, though, begin()
| is Monday, and end() is the _next_ Monday.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| One-past-the-end is the way.
| layer8 wrote:
| If Saturday is weekend, then Sunday is one-past-the-end.
| ;)
| remram wrote:
| That only applies to things that are not obviously
| oriented. No one would try to argue that when they said
| "we'll do a recap at the end of meetings", what they
| meant is both the start and the end. This is not
| ambiguous at all and I don't even believe you believe in
| this argument.
| [deleted]
| gmac wrote:
| Because Saturday and Sunday are the weekend.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Correct. Sunday is the starting end of the week and
| Saturday is then stopping end of the week.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| Or you just say, Sunday is the end of the week and Monday
| that start of the next one. Funnily enough this is the
| first time I've heard as Sunday as the first day of the
| week. I'm from Germany where Monday is the first day and
| Sunday the last.
|
| This also coincides with the work week where the first
| workday is Monday, then the weekend ends the week and a
| new week begins with Monday.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Well, most people say Saturday is the weekend.
| thedrexster wrote:
| Because Saturday and Sunday are the weekEND.
|
| edit: lol, too slow
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| It's totally arbitrary (as well as totally immaterial)
| whether the week starts on Sunday or Monday (or any other day
| for that matter). The fact that the US does it differently
| than many other countries really isn't a big deal. Your
| downvotes show the whole bike shedding nature of the issue.
| The debate is so contentious because the stakes are so low.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure what "bike shedding" is but numerical
| values for days of the week very much count when building
| any software containing calendars (or any dates really) to
| make sure it works properly in different geographic
| regions.
| jameshart wrote:
| Congratulations! You are one of today's lucky 10,000
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20190604142831/http://www.unix
| gui...
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| In Chinese, Monday is Xing Qi Yi (=1st in week).
|
| And the months are numbered (January = "first month"),
|
| Who are we to argue with the people who have finally gotten
| an act together to number it properly?[1]
|
| [1]: alright, yes, Sunday is still the odd one out and
| doesn't have a number.
| kklisura wrote:
| I'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should NOT be the
| first day of the week.
| mcv wrote:
| Historical reasons. Sunday has always been the first day of
| the week. Because yet another religion than the 4 mentioned
| before explicitly defines Saturday as the last day of the
| week, and everybody has always gone along with that.
| Probably because it was always like that anyway.
|
| The recent official standardisation of Monday to be the
| first day of the week was a mistake.
| TheBrokenRail wrote:
| Silly reason, but I like that Sunday being the first day
| keeps the week symmetric. You have the first and last day
| of the week being days off (in most places), and you have
| Wednesday in the middle. It's not very logical, but neither
| is any part of our calendar system.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Because weekENDs. There are two ends, one at the beginning
| (Sunday) and one at the end (Saturday).
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I have never heard anyone say "have a nice weekends".
| layer8 wrote:
| Because then the middle of the week is Thursday instead of
| Wednesday. ;)
| kuroikyu wrote:
| Easy to solve: Thursday is the middle of the week,
| Wednesday is the middle of the workweek.
| dageshi wrote:
| Mostly because Saturday and Sunday are collectively known as
| the weekend and it doesn't make a lot of sense to start the
| week in the middle of what everyone agrees is the end of the
| week.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > everyone agrees
|
| Not everyone, Israel has has Friday and Saturday off.
| mcv wrote:
| I think it's a bit naive to expect sense from anything
| related to dates and times at this point. It's all just
| accumulated history, and historically, Sunday has always
| been the first day of the week, no matter what people today
| think about it.
| merlincorey wrote:
| Every end is a new beginning, according to an old aphorism.
|
| This would imply that a Weekend and a Weekbegin could
| easily coincide.
| throwaway06421 wrote:
| What I find interesting is that many Americans consider
| themselves Christians and that will influence their
| decisions. So one argument can be made from that point of
| view (I'm not religious myself).
|
| In the Bible it says God designated the last day of the week
| as a day of rest. From a Christian point of view, it would
| make sense that Sunday is the last day of the week, as it is
| the official day of rest. Otherwise they disrespect the Bible
| and skip the "real" day of rest.
|
| I'm not religious or American, so from my relatively
| objective view it seems as if the people from the majority
| religion has ignored their holy book.
| dwighttk wrote:
| If you're interested... the reason Christians worship on
| Sunday is because Jesus was raised from the dead on the
| first day of the week. It wasn't an immediate thing as at
| first almost all Christians were Jewish and continued the
| seventh day day of rest and gathering for worship.
| mcv wrote:
| This misunderstanding is probably where the idea that
| Monday is the first day of the week came from. Biblically,
| Saturday is the Sabbath, the last day of the week. But
| early Christians came together before and after work on the
| first day of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead,
| which is explicitly the day after tue Sabbath. Eventually
| that day was also made a free day amd added to the weekend.
| But it was always the first day of the week until ISO
| redefined it.
| mcv wrote:
| No, the biblical day of rest is the Sabbath, the Saturday.
| The fact that most Christians keep the first day of the
| week instead of the last day is because Jesus rose from
| death on the first day of the week.
| Yhippa wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
|
| I believe the old Sega Dreamcast used this as its standard time
| in the menu system. Maybe that was for the online service. I
| would love to move to something like that permanently. Little
| ambiguity as to when people could meet across time zones.
| ISL wrote:
| It's not obvious why a new system is needed. UTC, TAI, or
| unix-time are sufficient.
|
| The primary defect I see in the SIT proposal is that it isn't
| obviously based on the SI, but rather tied to the Earth.
| Defining a new unit that is 86.4 seconds long feels
| troublesome for everyone.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Or, more closely, Julian day number.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Yeah, I played around with a decimal time:
| https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ but eventually
| realised that my seconds, minutes and hour equivalents
| were just names for some of the decimal places of the
| Julian day number.
| pitaj wrote:
| Wow, it used decimal time? That was always a bad idea - being
| indivisible by multiples of 3.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| Yeah, that was the idea, they invented it to make things
| easier for people around the world communicating over the
| Internet. They even launched a series of watches which
| displayed Swatch time. It was so cool, too bad it never took
| off :(
| myth2018 wrote:
| > however 12h _sometimes_ is used conversationally;
|
| That happens in Portuguese (brazilian, at least). Digital
| clocks go through 0-23 hours, but the second half is
| _sometimes_ named as 1-11 afternoon/night (whatever fits your
| taste). Hour 0 is never referred to as 12, though: it's always
| 0 or "half night"
| sqs wrote:
| > Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and
| illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;
|
| What do you mean by this? I mean, what behaviors do US people
| exhibit to show this to be true?
|
| I was born in the US and have lived here almost my entire life.
| I consider Monday to be the first day of the week, and I
| haven't seen anything in US culture to indicate that other
| people disagree or behave otherwise (except for the default
| behavior in some calendar apps in the US locale).
| rvieira wrote:
| That's a very funny dialog.
|
| But ... the sexagesimal system made sense and I guess that, in
| ancient times, time periods that don't have patterns would always
| be divided arbitrarily (years can be marked with seasons, days
| with night, but how to divide the time between, say, mid-day and
| sunset?).
| Sunspark wrote:
| I suppose they could say stuff like let's meet at shortest
| shadow or middle shadow, etc. to indicate the feel of when
| generally you should be there.
| nullc wrote:
| Wait until someone notices that _base 11_ is the natural base for
| a being with 10 fingers. A separate symbol for 10 is base 11, not
| base 10. Base 10 only has separate symbols for up to and
| including 9.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| Maybe it's optimal to have an obvious overflow state
| aasasd wrote:
| I recently learned that in West the weekdays are named after
| Roman gods, _but_ in English it 's done by the way of Germanic
| gods. It's just that Romans, when visiting German tribes,
| interpreted local gods as Roman ones, simply with different names
| --as they did everywhere else too. So they brought the calendar
| with them, and explained that Odin is the same as Mercury, etc,
| and thus where Romance languages have 'mercredi' and such,
| English has wodnesdaeg.
|
| 'History of the English language' is a splendid podcast.
| haunter wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1572260363764400129.html
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the alien calendar will be even weirder. ;)
| vsareto wrote:
| Aliens: "yeah we know, our calendar system sucks too. we're
| really here for your species' best cable management pictures"
| daedalus2027 wrote:
| I saw when i was in Japan a various billboards marking a 25 hour
| service I thought it was some kind of mistake but apparently they
| call 1 am the hour 25...I think I saw it in Okinawa
| [deleted]
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Hour 25 is 1 am on the _next_ day, which is 25 hours from
| midnight of the reference day.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| In Japan, clubs will announce opening times like "Friday 22:00~
| 27:00" meaning 10PM to 3AM the following day
| 323 wrote:
| It's called 30-hour clock.
|
| This convention is also used by some TV ratings measurement
| organizations - a show ending Tue 02:00 will be recorded as Mon
| 26:00, since it logically belonged to the day that ended, not
| the one that started.
| moogly wrote:
| Indeed, the "tv day" stretches from 02:00:00 to 25:59:59, but
| you usually don't actually use wall time (or in this case,
| modified wall time), and instead measure instant time as
| "minutes after midnight" (MAM) or "seconds after midnight"
| (SAM), so it's just an integer.
| weissbier wrote:
| As far as I know, that's actually used, when something starts
| in the "old" day and continues into the "new" day.
| personalityson wrote:
| Aliens are taking notes
| throwaway290 wrote:
| See also May 35th.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| TIL:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/opinion/global/24iht-
| june...
| vsnf wrote:
| It's more than just 25, they often go to 29, to indicate 5am.
| They do this to make it clear that it is an overnight service
| starting in one calendar day and terminating in another. It's
| not just a simple substitute for "1 am".
| Ekaros wrote:
| Actually it is pretty elegant system. Bit strange and extra
| calculation, but rather elegant option to pick.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You occasionally see times like 24:15 on European railway
| timetables. If the train runs only on weekdays, it might
| make it clearer that there isn't one at 00:15 on Monday.
|
| I haven't noticed 25:00, but I don't often look at
| printed/PDF timetables nowadays.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| I don't get it.
| mod wrote:
| I think:
|
| If a coffee shop opens at 5am, they say that. They never
| say 29.
|
| If a bar stays open UNTIL 5am, they say 29.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yep, and this makes it clear that they are NOT open
| Sunday because Saturday closes at 29 and there are no
| hours listed for Sunday.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Your flight leaves at 23 and arrives at 26. (11 PM to 2 AM
| next day)
|
| Your return flight leaves at 2 and arrives at 11. (2 AM to
| 11 AM that same day)
| tomcam wrote:
| Surprisingly, I like that as an informal system
| Swizec wrote:
| Back when I was a night owl, I considered "today" to last
| until about 5am when you start hearing birds outside.
| Aligning semantic days with your schedule is incredibly
| convenient.
|
| Now that I'm a morning person, the same concept of 5am
| semantic days still works perfectly. The day begins about
| 20min before my alarm.
| layer8 wrote:
| Japanese VCRs could be programmed with times like
| 24/25/26/27:xx, which makes a lot of sense for TV programs
| that are part of "today's" schedule but after midnight. Much
| lower risk of getting the day wrong when programming.
| philsnow wrote:
| Don't tell the aliens about the missing 12 days in 1752:
| https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/lifestyle/columns/201...
| dathinab wrote:
| It's not just days, there is a whole time period of a bunch of
| years where its not fully clear if they did exist or where
| skipped. I just forgot when.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| This is sadly more of an urban legend. There recently was an
| article about this which also disproved this theory quite
| well, best seen in other civilizations that have no
| connection to the european one.
| crote wrote:
| Not to mention that quite a few countries are also missing
| those 12 days, but in _completely different years_. Greece did
| so in 1923, for example.
| masklinn wrote:
| And iirc at least one country decided that was too simple,
| decided to gradually shift, then reverted, then did it in one
| go.
| pezezin wrote:
| Another user mentioned that it was Sweden:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar
| dave4420 wrote:
| Or the 11 missing days in 1582.
|
| I mean, programmers love to bitch about time zones, but that's
| nothing compared to the stink we'd have raised if we'd been
| coding in a time when the date depended on which country you
| were in.
| int_19h wrote:
| This is still the case, since timezone differences affect day
| boundaries.
| kevinpet wrote:
| It might actually have been easier. Our current time system
| is regular enough that you can get away with skipping many
| irregularities (leap year is pretty much the one that
| matters). If you were forced to regularly deal with time
| conversions, you would just accept that different people have
| different times and you just need to convert.
| Archelaos wrote:
| This was harmless compared to the Swedish calendar:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar
| w-m wrote:
| At least we all agree that as one week is 7 days, when we say
| we'll meet in two weeks, that'll be in 14 days. Right, guys? Oh
| no...
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quinze_jours
| Ekaros wrote:
| Don't even go to those idiots over there who uses these weird
| units for measuring temperature, distance, weight and ugh
| volume...
|
| When we actually have this well designed system where everything
| fits beautifully together...
| int_19h wrote:
| Designing a well-fitting system of units is not hard given all
| the experience we have already. Units of time are the trickiest
| due to natural cycles, but there are ways to minimize the
| irregularity.
|
| The problem is getting that design adopted by everyone.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Two pints in a quart! Two quarts in a 'pottle'! Two pottles in
| a gallon!
|
| Except nobody remembers what a 'pottle' is.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Yes, it's very strange that the English measure their weight in
| stone and pounds and their beer in pints.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| In NZ, all legal weights and measures are metric, yet for
| some stubbornly cultural reason we still tend to discuss
| height in feet and inches (ladies on dating apps who are
| discriminating on height will specify that you need to be 6
| foot, not 183cm) the weight of a newborn baby in pounds (but
| only for newborn babies!), and order our beer in pints, which
| generally means "a large glass of beer somewhere between 400
| and 600mL". Also for some reason ordering a "12th" means a
| "half pint", and I'm really not sure why.
|
| But the good craft beer places have a sign saying what their
| pints are in millilitres to prevent unpleasant surprises when
| you were expecting 568mL but got 425mL.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The "above six foot" rule seems like it's just a round
| number, but in the US at least:
|
| * height is normally distributed for men.
|
| * The average height of a man is 5'9".
|
| * The standard deviation for men's height is 3".
|
| So six foot is one standard deviation above average. I am
| sure one or more of the above does not hold for NZ. I just
| think this is neat, that the commonly stated preference
| happens to be for one standard deviation above the average.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| A neat coincidence only. America consists of lots of
| ethnicities. Some bring that average up and some bring it
| down. There's some preference for intra-ethnicity dating.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Imagine if the imperial foot was one centimeter longer.
| Then men on dating apps would need to be minimum 188cm
| (because round number).
| mod wrote:
| "Pint" varies in the US as well, when ordering a beer.
| You're just gonna get whatever glass they have.
|
| They'll probably tell you if they know it's not a true
| pint, but I expect most bartenders have no idea.
| selectodude wrote:
| A lot of the shittier bars will have glasses that look
| like pints but only hold 14oz, 12oz of beer 2oz of foam.
|
| The German system where there's a line on the glass that
| needs to be reached by beer under penalty of law puts a
| smile on my face.
| jrmg wrote:
| A pint in the USA is 16 fluid ounces. In the UK (in the
| 'imperial' system) it is 20. [Technically the fluid ounce
| is also different in the two systems, but not enough to
| matter at this scale.]
|
| Some US bars will serve imperial pints on request and/or
| offer them for British or Irish beers.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| The metric "interface" has nice "round" numbers, but the
| implementation idk:
|
| "In the SI, the standard metre is defined as exactly
| 1/299,792,458 of the distance that light travels in a second."
|
| "The kilogram was originally defined as the mass of one cubic
| decimetre of water at 4 degC, standardized as the mass of a
| man-made artefact of platinum-iridium held in a laboratory in
| France, which was used until a new definition was introduced in
| May 2019. Replicas made in 1879 at the time of the artefact's
| fabrication and distributed to signatories of the Metre
| Convention serve as de facto standards of mass in those
| countries. Additional replicas have been fabricated since as
| additional countries have joined the convention. The replicas
| were subject to periodic validation by comparison to the
| original, called the IPK. It became apparent that either the
| IPK or the replicas or both were deteriorating, and are no
| longer comparable: they had diverged by 50 mg since
| fabrication, so figuratively, the accuracy of the kilogram was
| no better than 5 parts in a hundred million or a proportion of
| 5x10-8:1. The accepted redefinition of SI base units replaced
| the IPK with an exact definition of the Planck constant, which
| defines the kilogram in terms of the second and metre."
| Ekaros wrote:
| So what are the "imperial" Volts and Amperes?
| function_seven wrote:
| As an unashamed imperial units enthusiast, now I'm sad we
| don't have different ones for current and potential.
|
| But at least we still have horsepower! My PSU is a
| 3/4-horse unit. My toaster oven is a full horsepower.
|
| I like it.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| We should start first be redefining the second: 9,192,631,770
| oscillations of a cesium atom. It's too long anyways, we can
| easily perceive time down to at least 1/60th of that.
|
| So let's call it 150 million oscillations, and refer to it
| simply as "time", since the word second only makes sense in
| context of an analog clock anyways. Then we can start
| rounding the other weights and measures accordingly until
| everything is nice and clean. It appeals to the OCD in me,
| despite the societal chaos that would ensure.
|
| But then the universe will undoubtedly throw random numbers
| at us like p or the fine-structure constant and mess it all
| up.
| 12baad4db82 wrote:
| Not sure what you are trying to say with your quoted phrases.
|
| There was an issue with the standard for the Kilogram, which
| was recognised then corrected by introducing a definition
| which is based on physically measurable phenomenon. The new
| approach allows independent experiments to derive the value
| of the Kilogram.
|
| That seems to me like a process that works, and I struggle to
| think of a better outcome.
| chungy wrote:
| > Not sure what you are trying to say with your quoted
| phrases.
|
| That the metric system is just as arbitrary as the
| customary units. Things like the meter and (kilo)gram were
| based on arbitrary objects rather than anything objective.
| They've since been redefined using physical constants to
| come close enough to the old reference objects. (And the US
| customary units are officially defined as exact fractions
| from the SI units -- making the whole world happy to have
| exact measurements regardless of the system you use.)
|
| At least the customary units have nice divisors. Just
| saying.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Yeah. Who thought using decimal was a good idea? We should be
| using dozenal. At least 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while
| 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5 so doing thirds and quarters is
| messy. Being able to do fifths isn't as useful as thirds and
| quarters and you can multiply 12 by 5 and use 60 if you want to
| divide by fifths, like clocks do.
| int_19h wrote:
| Decimal is a natural convention once you're using fingers to
| count, which humans usually do while they're figuring it all
| out.
| seer-zig wrote:
| This is mainly tailored toward the Gregorian/Solar calendar. We
| don't have leap years in Hijri.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The story begins with aliens landing in New Jersey, and
| describes the calendar most commonly used there.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| "And once a year we have a 23 hour day and half a year later we
| have 25 hour day, but not all of us."
| kokizzu2 wrote:
| everything looks ok, except for Jesus is not being historical
| part, he just need to read more books
| chungy wrote:
| There are quite a few misunderstandings with his assumptions in
| explaining the story.
|
| I know, I know, it's supposed to be for humor, but for those of
| us that have read and understood the historical basis of the
| calendar system, it really kills the effect.
| anotheryou wrote:
| He forgot to mention people also don't agree on the hour in the
| day and have oddly shaped "time zones".
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| I'm a little bit surprised nobody pointed out the obvious.
|
| When we first communicate with aliens about our time system we
| will start by explaining unix epoch.
|
| Only than will we break out the spaghetti code required to map
| dates and zones and the uncertainty of some historical jumps.
| [deleted]
| MayeulC wrote:
| Well, unix timestamps are still tied to UTC, which has leap
| seconds for some reason...
|
| I would prefer if we had a few seconds of an offset with Zulu
| "GMT" Time (pardon the double acronym).
| umanwizard wrote:
| Unix time doesn't include leap seconds.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Realistically, the first of our time systems that aliens are
| likely to encounter and associate with us is probably GPS
| time?
|
| I sure as heck hope it is, at least...
| [deleted]
| russellbeattie wrote:
| We really need to update the system of years, it gives way too
| much weight to Christianity and serves as reinforcement to their
| misguided belief that their religion is somehow preeminent. It
| also gives the impression to the general public that history
| "began" at year 0, rather than being clear that recorded human
| history goes back around 5000 years.
|
| Living in the year 5022 gives a much different perspective of
| history than starting at some random time in the middle of the
| Roman Empire. The other option is beginning the calendar at the
| first transistor or the first nuclear explosion signaling modern
| times.
|
| The we could fix the months and be done with it.
| irrational wrote:
| All these things have a historical basis. Are we assuming aliens
| don't have cultural things from their own history?
|
| > I'm not sure, really.
|
| This right here. All of these things have reasons that made
| logical sense at the time. The speaker is just ignorant of
| history.
|
| > so you switch to base-10 at last
|
| At last? Are we assuming the aliens have ten fingers?
|
| > Your months are named, not numbered?
|
| Why would aliens not name things?
|
| > yeah, it's Monday or Sunday.
|
| Or Friday.
|
| The human should explain lunar calendars next.
| camdenlock wrote:
| Sounds like a person who thinks they know better than everyone
| else, that the tradeoffs accumulated in a system are just
| arbitrary and worthless. "Tear it all down, I can build something
| MUCH better!"
|
| I look forward to the day when this person's wishes to not be
| shared on HN are granted in full.
| foone wrote:
| yeah, same. they really need to be blocked from HN,
| permanently.
| cm2187 wrote:
| And we know our first reaction will be to cut interest rates.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Actually, it would be like:
|
| - Why is this so weird?
|
| - Eh, historical reasons. Legacy framework retained due to
| inertia, don't think too much about it.
|
| - Yeah, makes sense.
| myth2018 wrote:
| In Portuguese, Monday-Friday are numbered (2a-feira - 6a-feira).
|
| I wonder if are there other languages also presenting this
| feature. I believe there are.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Days of the week in Hebrew are numbered from Sunday "Yom
| Rishon" (First day, lit. "Head Day") to Friday "Yom Shishi"
| (Sixth Day). "Saturday" is "Shabbat" ("sabbath")
| bonzini wrote:
| Czech but only for Thursday and Friday. And they're fourth and
| fifth, so it's off by one.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Absolutely hilarious, can someone with artistic skills create a
| short film/animation based on this thread. Foone has given
| permission for derivative works ;-)
| breck wrote:
| before we get through "daylight savings time" they will just step
| on us
| fkarg wrote:
| Isn't there also additional calendars in at least Japanese and
| Chinese culture?
| rizky05 wrote:
| russdill wrote:
| Not looking forward to telling them that we named our home planet
| planet dirt
| ratsmack wrote:
| "The Origin Of The Word 'Earth' is an English/German name which
| simply means the ground. It comes from the Old English words
| 'eor(th)e' and 'ertha' ."
| zazaulola wrote:
| How do you explain this one?
|
| 365 = 10^2 + 11^2 + 12^2 = 13^2 + 14^2
| daptaq wrote:
| I find the implication that aliens are rational and have no
| subrational concepts due to tradition and habit interesting, as
| it sort of implies that these kinds of outgrowths are not
| necessary and can just be done away with. The narrator starts
| from a position of not wanting to legitimize or historicize
| beyond reductive statements like "some ancient civilization did
| XYZ". I'll admit that I skimmed through the last part of the
| thread, so I might have missed something, but I don't see any
| mention of the decimal calendar
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar, or why
| that failed. I get that this is supposed to be funny, but the
| indirect message of getting rid of whatever doesn't make
| conscious sense is simplistic, and spoils the fun for me. Humans
| are stupid, very funny.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Yeah, often people leap to "aliens" being some higher
| intelligence than us who will judge our poor sub-optimal
| decisions. Though to me it seems more likely that any life we
| encounter is more likely to be less intelligent, if intelligent
| at all.
| zaik wrote:
| Aliens with the ability to visit earth will be much more
| intelligent than humans.
| hsn915 wrote:
| It's worse. "Aliens have the same taste in things as me".
| With the implications being something like "Aliens are super
| intelligent" and "I am super intelligent".
|
| IAmVerySmart vibes
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > I get that this is supposed to be funny, but the indirect
| message of getting rid of whatever doesn't make conscious sense
| is simplistic, and spoils the fun for me.
|
| Do you also hate every story ever told? The point of a story is
| to say what matters.
|
| > Humans are stupid, very funny.
|
| It is funny. You should try laughing at how dumb we are. It's
| fun.
|
| HN users really love to congratulate themselves for being such
| high IQ contrarians. Here, I'll snarkily summarize your message
| for you just as you did the twitter thread: let me explain this
| joke to you, but in a way that shows why I'm too smart to enjoy
| it.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Very entertaining read. The earthling says at one point (for
| comedic effect probably) that they don't know why people used to
| like to count in dozens. I didn't understand myself until someone
| explained to me that it makes dividing pay between a group of
| workers much easier.
|
| You pay 12 coins for a job, very simple to divide between a team
| of two, three, four, six or twelve.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| Mh, but isn't the base 12 system coming from the fact that
| people used to count stuff with their thumb, using the 3
| sections of the other 4 fingers?
| octobus2021 wrote:
| Yep, one of the reasons US construction industry sticks to feet
| and inches instead of using decimal system.
| timbit42 wrote:
| The decimal system should have been the dozenal system but
| good luck getting people to switch from decimal to dozenal.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| I don't know how many fingers you have, but decimal system
| makes more sense to me...
| latexr wrote:
| You can count to twelve on your hands just as easily. And
| that's _per hand_. Numberphile explains:
| https://youtu.be/U6xJfP7-HCc?t=500
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Because you get paid in coins and have to divide them in 2,
| 3, 4, 6'z?
|
| *but i do now understand the use of a thru'ppenny bit.
| modeless wrote:
| "There's 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds" - except sometimes
| when there are 25 hours, or 23! Because it's too hard to ask
| people to change their schedules, so we change the time instead.
| And of course we don't add or remove those hours at the beginning
| or end of the day, so we never actually have an hour 25, we just
| repeat one of the middle hours instead. And then, independently,
| sometimes there are 61 seconds, or 59. And don't get me started
| on time zones...
| thfuran wrote:
| >sometimes there are 61 seconds, or 59
|
| Isn't one of those still just a theoretical possibility? I
| think all leap seconds so far have been in the same direction.
| chaps wrote:
| A good way to know whether a month has 31 days is by counting the
| knuckles and gaps between knuckles. "Landing" on a knuckle means
| that month is 31 days. So,
|
| Pointer finger knuckle = January = 31 days
|
| Between pointer/middle = Feb != 31 days
|
| Middle finger knuckle = March = 31 days
|
| And so on, just looping back to the first knuckle when you get
| past the pinky knuckle.
| xenocratus wrote:
| I feel like the poor (probably knuckleless) alien would
| definitely be sobbing at that :)
| coin wrote:
| > we further subdivide the months into 'weeks'
|
| Nope, we they are divided into days
| autophagian wrote:
| For a few years I lived my life rigorously to the beat of the
| french revolutionary calendar - i was very enamoured by its
| consistent month partitioning, and dumping the leap day at the
| end of the year's festival days. The major downside is that the
| months were named after French seasonal characteristics, which...
| doesn't really work.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Ooh, that's interesting. Did you use decimal time as well?
| autophagian wrote:
| I gave it an honest try, but I found it much harder to adapt
| to than the calendar. I could just about do head-conversion
| for dates between Gregorian and Revolutionary calendars for
| things like appointments, but found it much harder to do it
| for both dates and time. I still have a love for the system,
| though.
| tomcam wrote:
| The French revolutionaries made a whole lot of mistakes, some
| fatal, because they liked to dictate things top down.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| shit like this is too good and entertaining to be on twitter
| superkuh wrote:
| Yeah, it's a shame it's hidden behind a computational paywall.
| bombcar wrote:
| Our calendar and timekeeping is what you get when you keep a
| system continuously operational and backwards capable over tens
| of thousands of years.
| okwubodu wrote:
| First recorded instance of spaghetti code?
| fabatka wrote:
| Exactly what I was thinking! It'd be interesting to see this
| as a git log (maybe with different branches for different
| cultures)
| bombcar wrote:
| That would be quite fun to setup - especially all the
| patches to the leap year setup heh. Could even make bug
| reports "Christmas is happening in March what is going on"
| strenholme wrote:
| Dealing with calendars can be pretty difficult. Since I recently
| wrote a script in Lua to be my personal assistant, processing
| calendars, todo lists, mailing lists, etc., here's a Lua form of
| the code to calculate the day of week. This is accurate for any
| Georgian date: -- Calculate the day of the week
| -- Input: year, month, day (e.g. 2022,9,16) -- Output: day
| of week (0 = Sunday, 6 = Saturday) function dayOfWeek(year,
| month, day) -- Tomohiko Sakamoto algorithm local
| monthX = {0, 3, 2, 5, 0, 3, 5, 1, 4, 6, 2, 4} if month <
| 3 then year = year - 1 end local yearX = (year +
| math.floor(year / 4) - math.floor(year / 100) +
| math.floor(year / 400)) local out = yearX + monthX[month]
| + day out = out % 7 return out end
| mcculley wrote:
| I would bet large amounts of money that if we ever do encounter
| an alien civilization, it too will have weird ways of describing
| the universe, driven by legacy cruft.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Since when do we assume everyone uses the same calendar?
| petesergeant wrote:
| The look on an American's face when you describe something as
| being "a fortnight away"
| ghaff wrote:
| Not sure what that has to do with calendars. Fortnight is
| just one of many measurements that aren't used a lot in the
| US (among other places) these days so I wouldn't expect the
| average person on the street to immediately recognize what it
| means. There are a ton of imperial measurements that aren't
| widely used like pecks, bushels, rods, etc.
|
| (I'd also avoid terminology like bi-monthly and semi-monthly
| as it's a predictable point of confusion.)
| Symbiote wrote:
| Everyone in Britain knows what a fortnight is, and the word
| is in normal use.
|
| We are confused when TSA staff in the US talk about quart
| bags.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's just not a word in everyday speech.
|
| A quart is the easy one. It's just a slightly smaller
| version of a liter. And it's not like the UK doesn't use
| pints which are just half of a slightly larger quart.
|
| I'm sure there's lots of language including unrelated to
| measurement which differs across the Anglosphere.
| case0x00 wrote:
| Yeah seeing this today is funny given today begins Rosh
| Hashanah, the Hebrew new year. But I imagine _most_ countries
| of the world use the gregorian, especially those on english-
| speaking sites
| uoaei wrote:
| Even the 12-hour system (vs 24-) is used by a relatively small
| minority of Earth's population.
| bananamerica wrote:
| The 12h and 24h system is essentially the same thing, no? In
| my country we use a 24h system in writing, but mainly a 12h
| system in speech.
| Fiahil wrote:
| themagician wrote:
| This would make for fantastic radio drama. For some reason I can
| imagine the voice of John Cleese as either the Alien or the
| Human.
| EGreg wrote:
| My reply:
| https://twitter.com/gregmozart/status/1574139558102716416?s=...
|
| Previously there were 10?
|
| _The Hebrew calendar always used 12 months I think. What are you
| referring to, and where is your evidence? Happy Rosh HaShana!_
| dragontamer wrote:
| October, for Octogon, meaning the 8th month, is the 10th month.
|
| And Dec for 10 meaning December is the 12th Month. Going by the
| Roman system, March is the 1st month bu we've decided to make it
| the 3rd month today and offset everything else.
| mro_name wrote:
| septem, octo, novem, decimus is latin for the numbers 7, 8, 9,
| 10.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| epta, octo, ennea, deca is greek for 7, 8, 9, 10
| walrus01 wrote:
| This gets even more complicated when you introduce dealing with
| foreign countries that actually _don 't_ follow the western
| calendar system. Such as the standard Persian calendar months and
| years. Also, did you know that the arabic Islamic calendar dates
| and the persian calendar dates don't agree? Because the
| traditional calendar dating back to the maximum geograhpical
| extent of the Persian empire is solar based, while the standard
| Islamic calendar is entirely lunar based.
|
| And the persian calendar is solar based and the year resets on
| Nowruz (new years day) around the spring equinox, but the
| practiced holidays are based on the lunar islamic months? But
| also _some_ holidays like Nowruz _are_ observed based on the
| solar date.
|
| This means you've got Nowruz occuring on approximately the same
| time in the weather season every year, while relative to the
| western calendar, notable holidays like Eid al-fitr and Eid al-
| adha and the start of Ramadan etc move backwards in calendar date
| approxiamtely 10 or 11 days per year. Some years Ramadan might
| occur in the middle of winter and much later on it will be in the
| middle of summer.
|
| This series of tweets doesn't even begin to get into the possible
| opportunities for confusion when working between _three different
| calendar systems_... And western countries where the standard
| work week is M-F but others where Friday is the day of rest and
| people work on a 6-day work week on a persian or arabic islamic
| calendar, but _some_ companies give their employees a two day
| weekend so they 're off on Friday and Saturday, but the local
| timezone equivalent of Sunday is definitely a normal workday... I
| could go on.
| nrvn wrote:
| wrt calendars there is one curious rational alternative.
|
| 13 months, 28 days each. Year day in the end not belonging to any
| month, leap day every leap year in the middle of the summer.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
| bluejekyll wrote:
| "Hasn't anyone ever tried to fix this?", "yes, there was the
| International Fixed Calendar:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar...,
| "and?", "well, only one company used it and that company
| eventually lost relevance and was never able to get the broader
| society to use it".
| antognini wrote:
| A fun bit of trivia is that it wasn't until the middle of the
| 18th century that it became standard in Europe to start the new
| year on January 1. Up until that point many regions used March 25
| as the date of the New Year. So, for example the day March 24,
| 1715 would have been followed by March 25, 1716.
|
| March 25 was the Feast of the Annunciation whereas January 1 was
| the Feast of the Circumcision, so the two dating methods were
| called Annunciation Style and Circumcision Style.
|
| Obviously this created some ambiguity since the Circumcision
| Style date March 24, 1716 would be rendered March 24, 1715 when
| written Annunciation Style. Around the time of the transition to
| Annunciation Style dating in Britain you actually see people
| writing both dates together to avoid confusion, usually with the
| Circumcision Style date below the Annunciation Style date. (You
| can see an example here:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Memorial...)
| adaisadais wrote:
| The "religious leader not existing" argument is slightly comical
| lol.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The Earth is in an elliptical orbit around the Sun and rotates on
| its axis at a ratio of roughly 365.25:1. The axial tilt of the
| planet is such that the northern and southern hemispheres have
| varying seasons at different portions of the orbit and those
| seasons materially affect the life of most of the larger animals
| on the surface.
|
| There's not many intuitive ways to break that up unless you use a
| base365.25 number system.
|
| Calendars can definitely be weird but they're working around non-
| integer natural ratios.
| tooltower wrote:
| Some call it a "tradition".
|
| Some call it "backwards compatibility".
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Hopefully no one tells them about java.util.Date.
| dspillett wrote:
| Reminds me of Dave Allen's sketch about teaching kids to tell the
| time:
|
| "and the third hand is the second hand..."
|
| ----
|
| update: found it: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=0QVPUIRGthI
| imtringued wrote:
| To be fair I am more worried that longtermists built the entirety
| of human society with the assumption that there are no aliens and
| the rest of the universe is free for the taking. If aliens pop up
| there will have to be bloodshed.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| -- Well, sometimes the last minute of the year (or of the 6th
| month) has 61 seconds. Or 60 ever-so-slightly-longer "seconds".
| We haven't agreed yet.
| dave4420 wrote:
| At least New Year's Day no longer falls on 25th March.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Depends, in the northern hemisphere this would be when spring
| is starting, so when the whole nature comes to life full power.
| Might be more appropriate, as a start of a new year, instead of
| choosing the time when the cold starts..
| dave4420 wrote:
| If New Year's Day was still 25th March, that Twitter thread
| would have complained about the year starting partway through
| a month.
|
| March 1st would make sense in terms of Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec having
| the right names for their place in the year.
| timoth3y wrote:
| An interesting aside the Cotsworth Calendar is such an obvious
| approach to the months problem it makes me wonder why it was not
| adopted in the first place.
|
| We have 13 months of 28 days each. The 9th is always a Monday the
| 19th is always a Thursday. "Two months from now" always means the
| same thing and always means the same number of days.
|
| The extra day is New Years Day. It's a holiday and does not
| belong to any month - or belongs to it's own month if you prefer.
| On Leap Years there are two of these days.
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