[HN Gopher] The Duodecimal Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 1, Year 1209 [...
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The Duodecimal Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 1, Year 1209 [pdf]
Author : susam
Score : 61 points
Date : 2025-12-23 01:49 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dozenal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dozenal.org)
| omnicognate wrote:
| 1209 is 2025, to answer the first question I had.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I have a t-shirt with a jack o lantern with a Xmas hat with
| this text:
|
| 31 Oct is 25 Dec
| kps wrote:
| This year also US Thanksgiving.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Neat! Too bad "nov" is not a canonical abbreviation of
| nonary ("non" is)
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| "In 1193 (1981.), I submitted my first article [...] and in
| 1197 (1987.), I became a member"
|
| Seems obviously wrong, or is that yet another dozenal notation,
| where what looks like the digit three is really a one? Because
| it should have been real easy to avoid mistakes like that for
| an entire decade by just remembering that 1190 = 1980 decimal
| (next time the decades and dozen-years align like that will be
| in 2040).
| hermitcrab wrote:
| 12 is, in many ways, a better base than 10 (divisible by 2,3,4
| and 6 vs 2 and 5). And it was used in many British/Imperial
| units. But the chance of the world moving existing systems from
| base 10 to base 12 is surely so close to 0 as makes no
| difference?
| borgesat wrote:
| Yes, but hexadecimal eight-bit computing introduces the octet
| as specifying information protocol (255.255.255.255) addresses.
| zokier wrote:
| Hexadecimal would be 4-bit computing, not 8-bit.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| In premodern engineering they used twelfths. The foot _'_ ,
| inch _' '_, line _' ''_, and point _' '''_ were each 1/12th of
| the previous unit. (Yes, they used quad prime marks.) European
| typographic points were 1/144th of an inch.
| https://dozenal.org/
| Skwid wrote:
| I'm more of a seximal man myself: https://www.seximal.net/
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Base 16 (or base 10, as they would call it) is the perfect
| base: http://www.intuitor.com/hex/
| Skwid wrote:
| I'm standing my ground on optimal base, but I will absolutely
| be using those hex pronounciations in future
| nephihaha wrote:
| Sexagesimal (Base 60) is the way to go. Plenty of history
| behind it and can handle much larger numbers than decimal.
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| The "dividing things by two" argument makes a lot of sense!
| And if you need 1/3 and 1/5 , they aren't too bad either:
| .5555 and .3333 repeating.
| xg15 wrote:
| There better be some deep, decades-long feud between the
| Duodecimal and the Seximal Society, or I'm very disappointed.
|
| (Of course any squabbling is instantly forgotten the moment
| they have to act against their common arch enemy, the
| Hexadecimal Society)
| xg15 wrote:
| (And then there is the Sexagesimal Society. We don't talk
| about the Sexagesimal Society.)
| nephihaha wrote:
| Jan Misali! My comment about Esperanto above wasn't far off.
| Toki Pona... The Newspeak of auxlangs.
| scythe wrote:
| An advantage of seximal is that it takes a lot less time to
| memorize the times table: there are only ten "nontrivial"
| entries, whereas in base ten you have 36.
| mgr86 wrote:
| Wow, they throw some serious spars at these duodecimal people:
|
| > the problem is that Latin uses base ten, so bases larger than
| ten end up with names that put a bit too much of an emphasis on
| their relationship with decimal: undecimal, duodecimal,
| tridecimal, etc. people who like base twelve like to call it
| "dozenal" instead of "duodecimal" for this exact reason. these
| names are simply too biased in decimal's favor. ideally, every
| base should have a unique name that reflects its properties,
| rather than trivial information about its size.
| xg15 wrote:
| What's the deal with that upside-down 2 on the title page? I
| first thought it would be one of the two additional digits, but
| those are visible on the "clock face" circle on the first page
| and look nothing like it.
|
| (or are upside-down digits their way to mark icky base-10 numbers
| if they have to write them?)
|
| Edit: ah, they explain it on page 23.
| Cosi1125 wrote:
| On page [?]: "Did you ever wonder just what the number system
| would be like if man had been created with 12 fingers?" (and an
| illustration).
|
| With the advent of modern AI tools, this question has never been
| more important.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Okay, that DID make me laugh out loud.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| The upside down 2 and 3 to represent 10 and 11 look really dumb.
| Feels like a lazy solution rather then extending the character
| set with something interesting or unique.
| volemo wrote:
| The upside down 6 to represent nine is really dumb. Those
| decimal evangelists are so lazy!
| nephihaha wrote:
| Yeah, that's bad enough.
| volemo wrote:
| Although I too dislike upside down "2" because it looks too
| much like "5".
| greenbit wrote:
| My hot take on that was "upside down 2? Nah, must be a really
| stylized 7"
| nephihaha wrote:
| This is for people who think Esperanto is too successful. I was
| amazed to see pictures of women in there, since there are none
| among the directors or writers...
|
| I bet that annual meeting they held in that wee room back in 1983
| was riveting.
| Malic wrote:
| I feel obliged to drop the School House Rock video/song "Little
| Twelve Toes" here. It's the earliest exposure to alternative
| counting systems for me.
|
| https://youtu.be/7m3AHBu93OE
| k2enemy wrote:
| And to think, people are concerned that humans will struggle to
| find meaning in life after the AI utopia obviates the need for
| work.
| greenbit wrote:
| The best base, and I think everyone can agree, has and always
| will be 10, regardless of one's radix persuasion.
| isotropy wrote:
| So...if we had already been using a base-12 counting system when
| metric came along, we would have the best of both worlds.
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| The dozenal movement seems based (no pun intended) mostly on
| opposition to the metric system.
|
| The article on page 38 is really funny to anyone not in the US:
| Fahrenheit temperature usually ranges from about 0deg (cold) to
| about 100deg (hot). On the other hand, those who use the
| awkward Celsius scale usually range from about 18deg to
| about 38deg! Interesting.
|
| (18-22 degC is room temperature, 38 degC = 100 degF = hot summer
| day. 0 degF is way below freezing, a lot colder than it gets in
| most places!).
|
| And apparently only the metric system was imposed by tyrannical
| governments. Maybe someone could ask the people in metric
| countries today if they would like to go back to the "natural"
| measurements that were in use before that happened? And maybe
| also switch to counting everything in dozen and gross at the same
| time.
|
| Even if that really were objectively a better system, I think few
| would make that change if it wasn't forced on them.
| madmoose wrote:
| There's nothing "natural" about the Fahrenheit scale either.
| Fahrenheit took the Romer scale, multiplied it by 4 and rounded
| it off a bit.
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(page generated 2025-12-23 23:02 UTC)