[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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-25 23:00 UTC)