superkuh · 3 years ago

Yeah, it's a shame it's hidden behind a computational paywall.

okwubodu · 3 years ago

First recorded instance of spaghetti code?

rsynnott · 3 years ago

It's _not_ very backwards compatible, though; in particular, different countries transitioned from Julian to Gregorian at different times, so things get _extremely_ messy if you go back more than about a century.

uoaei · 3 years ago

Even the 12-hour system (vs 24-) is used by a relatively small minority of Earth's population.

petesergeant · 3 years ago

The look on an American's face when you describe something as being "a fortnight away"

case0x00 · 3 years ago

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

Svip · 3 years ago

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.

cperciva · 3 years ago

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).

silvestrov · 3 years ago

He didn't mention LEAP-SECONDS which are at THE END OF THE YEAR.

jcranmer · 3 years ago

> 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.

adventured · 3 years ago

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.

Buttons840 · 3 years ago

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.

enlyth · 3 years ago

I follow about 80 people on Twitter and Foone usually takes up more than half of my feed :D

EdwardDiego · 3 years ago

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.

DemocracyFTW2 · 3 years ago

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?

Sunspark · 3 years ago

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.

weissbier · 3 years ago

As far as I know, that's actually used, when something starts in the "old" day and continues into the "new" day.

vsnf · 3 years ago

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”.

naniwaduni · 3 years ago

Hour 25 is 1 am on the next day, which is 25 hours from midnight of the reference day.

DemocracyFTW2 · 3 years ago

In Japan, clubs will announce opening times like "Friday 22:00〜27:00" meaning 10PM to 3AM the following day

323 · 3 years ago

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.

kevinmchugh · 3 years ago

Yes, it's very strange that the English measure their weight in stone and pounds and their beer in pints.

llanowarelves · 3 years ago

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 °C, 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 μg 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."

JoeAltmaier · 3 years ago

Two pints in a quart! Two quarts in a 'pottle'! Two pottles in a gallon!

Except nobody remembers what a 'pottle' is.

timbit42 · 3 years ago

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 · 3 years ago

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.

ratsmack · 3 years ago

"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’ ."

anjbe · 3 years ago

There’s a good exchange in the classic video game Star Control 2 (now open source, available in most package managers as “uqm”), when the player encounters a species of plant‐like alien:

>> I am Captain Zelnick from Earth. We come in peace.

> I am Captain Ala‐la’la. We come in peace.

>> Our starship is called Vindicator.

> Our starship is called the Tender Shoot.

>> We are the New Alliance of Free Stars from Earth.

> We are the Supox Utricularia from Earth.

>> You’re from Earth??? Hey! Are you just copying whatever I say?

> Oh yes, we apologize for the confusion, our homeworld is also called ‘Earth’, or more properly ‘Vlik’, which means ‘Perfectly Good and Nutritious Dirt’. ‘Earth’ is pretty close, is it not?

xenocratus · 3 years ago

I feel like the poor (probably knuckleless) alien would definitely be sobbing at that :)

davchana · 3 years ago

Pinky knuckle is July 31 days, & conveniently next knuckle is index finger August, again 31 days :)

mro_name · 3 years ago

septem, octo, novem, decimus is latin for the numbers 7, 8, 9, 10.

hutzlibu · 3 years ago

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..

wongarsu · 3 years ago

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.

colechristensen · 3 years ago

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.

Macha · 3 years ago

Who celebrates new year's day on September 25th?

timbit42 · 3 years ago

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.

function_seven · 3 years ago

I’ve always loved that idea. So did Kodak

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar

bombcar · 3 years ago

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.

throwaway290 · 3 years ago

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.

nurettin · 3 years ago

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.

renewiltord · 3 years ago

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.

eastbound · 3 years ago

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.

dathinab · 3 years ago

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.

dang · 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tZar4wRP40

fsflover · 3 years ago

Unless they redesigned it for their own benefit.

amelius · 3 years ago

And they'll force it upon us.

edflsafoiewq · 3 years ago

In Hebrew the weekdays are named "First", "Second", etc. making "Shabbat" ie Saturday, the last day of the week.

_glass · 3 years ago

- 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 · 3 years ago

I'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should be the first day of the week.

Yhippa · 3 years ago

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.

myth2018 · 3 years ago

> 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"

Swizec · 3 years ago

> 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 · 3 years ago

> - 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 "sábado" (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.

fortran77 · 3 years ago

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.

retrac · 3 years ago

> 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.

plebianRube · 3 years ago

Sunday is the first day of the week in crontab.

First index in the array, 0.

eastbound · 3 years ago

Yes. It should end with “…and this is the best system we’ve found, because all other ones were ditched for being too complicated.”

dan-robertson · 3 years ago

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.

narag · 3 years ago

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.

happyopossum · 3 years ago

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.

NorwegianDude · 3 years ago

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.

lloeki · 3 years ago

> 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 · 3 years ago

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.

shadowofneptune · 3 years ago

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.

magic_hamster · 3 years ago

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.

Shatnerz · 3 years ago

> 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.

poisonarena · 3 years ago

>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

irrational · 3 years ago

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.

smsm42 · 3 years ago

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.

fire · 3 years ago

just fyi the author's pronouns are they/them ( they're in their twitter bio )

pezezin · 3 years ago

> - 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).

Fatnino · 3 years ago

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".

smsm42 · 3 years ago

> 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...

WastingMyTime89 · 3 years ago

> 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 · 3 years ago

> 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.

mcv · 3 years ago

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.

typetheorist · 3 years ago

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".

sqs · 3 years ago

> 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).

Digory · 3 years ago

All of Christianity puts Sunday as the first day, as does the calendar of Judaism.

Saturday as the Jewish Sabbath, Sunday as the ‘the Lord’s day” in Christianity.

Matthew 28:1

The Resurrection

[1] Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

mullingitover · 3 years ago

> - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

There's one other country in particular that firmly designates Saturday as the seventh day of the week: Israel. (Canada, Japan and Brazil also use Sunday as the first day of the week.)

I'm not religious, but I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, which worships on the seventh day, which for the past couple millennia has been Saturday. There is no end to conspiracy theories in the church about the seventh day of the week being designated as Sunday and how this (and particularly the compulsion to worship on Sunday instead of Saturday) is a sign of the end times.

dogmatism · 3 years ago

>despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well

It actually reminded me of, and made me sad for the days of the old internet. I don't think this should be on twitter but it's own site

smegger001 · 3 years ago

just think if he had to explain how the date for easter is calculated

sva_ · 3 years ago

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

I think Israel, and Jews in general consider Sunday the first day of the week.

ordu · 3 years ago

> This is absolutely hilarious

Not absolutely, it could be even more hilarious, if PM/AM switches happened at 11:00 and 23:00, not at 12:00 and 00:00. Or even better, the switch could ignore seasonal timezone shift.

unity1001 · 3 years ago

> DST

I always felt that DST was invented to prevent people from realizing that they are forced to wake up and get out of the house before dawn during the winter. It would literally alienate people from work life.

coldtea · 3 years ago

>* - 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;*

I think most countries use 12h time casually (conversationally and so on), but most understand 24h time - and it's used officially (e.g. in state communications) in many. It's in the US though that people often need it explained.

Morgawr · 3 years ago

> - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

Just adding to the rest of the responses but Japan also has a very... contrived relationship with what counts as "the beginning of the week" and most people would say Sunday is that day.

lr4444lr · 3 years ago

Israel also starts the week on Sunday, in keeping with Saturday being the Jewish end of week sabbath.

soneca · 3 years ago

Living in Brazil, I always heard that Sunday is the first day of the week. Accordingly, we do name most of the week days by number, sort of. Monday is ”Segunda-feira”, which a literal translation would be “Second fair”. The “Third fair, Fourth fair, Fifth fair, Sixth-fair”.

throwaway888abc · 3 years ago

at Swatch

https://www.swatch.com/en-en/internet-time.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

TaylorAlexander · 3 years ago

Nit: foone uses they/them pronouns and has previously expressed some displeasure with the way they get misgendered when their posts hit hacker news. Queer folks seem to agree that if you aren’t sure what someone’s pronouns are, they/them is a good default (only until they tell you or you find out the correct pronouns).

As a non-binary person myself I always find it interesting when people assume he/him for every random internet commenter. Happens on HN a lot.

User23 · 3 years ago

> - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

I assume Israel must too since shabbat, the seventh day of rest, is Saturday.

npsomaratna · 3 years ago

Over here in Sri Lanka:

1) I've seen calendars with both starting days (Sunday/Monday). Anecdotally, calendars with Sunday as the first day seemed to be more popular when I was a kid; now, calendars with Monday as the first day seem to be more common.

2) The 12-hour system is far more popular here than the 24-hour system. Not that we don't use it, but in my experience, 24-hour tends to be mainly used in professional settings; 12-hour is used essentially everywhere else.

davchana · 3 years ago

> 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

India uses 12h time (except in military talk; & railway timetable display boards) in day to day life. I have never heard in 29 years somebody using 15 as 3, or 20 as 8pm. Even till few years ago, atound 2008, flights times at Delhi Airport too were displayed in 12h, on mechanical card spinner display board (where a card with letter falls & next one comes, on a roll until desired letter comes). Seeing that board as a kid was highlight of my childhood trips to airport.rt.

el-salvador · 3 years ago

> - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

Where I live we are taught that Monday is the first day of the week, yet most calendars start on Sunday. It's the sort of question you ask your teachers at school and nobody knows how to answer.

fritolaid · 3 years ago

In Arabic, Sunday is Ahad (first) Monday is Ithnain (second) and so on until Friday which is Jum’a (gathering) and Sabit (comes from Sabbath I think?) as Saturday.

So the US is not the only country that considers Sunday to be the first day, etymologically speaking. I think the first day in the Middle East is Saturday because people work on that day (on Friday is a day off, unless things changed since the 70s)

…

retrocryptid · 3 years ago

The US, Canada, China, Japan and most of South America. Oh. And the Phillipines consider Sunday the beginning of the week. And someone just shouted at me that Israel considers Sunday the beginning of the week, but that seems unlikely to me.

csours · 3 years ago

I saw someone wearing a Swatch Time t-shirt today!

srcreigh · 3 years ago

I picked 3 random countries and 2/3 of them had calendars starting with Sunday.

Calendars starting with Sunday: Nambia, Trinidad and Tobago. Calendars starting with Monday: Benin.

quickthrower2 · 3 years ago

Perhaps you mean 24h _sometimes_ is used conversationally!

My devices all show 12h too.

The thing is most people know if it means the evening or morning.

But when programming, and dealing with times from all over the shop - please show me 24h clocks!

apexalpha · 3 years ago

>- Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

Does anyone know why? This has always seemed a bit weird to me. I mean the US is a fairly religious country and it's pretty much known to anyone that Sunday is the 7th day in Christianity?

And on the first day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the first day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the first day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

edit: just looked it up. Apparently Sunday = Restday is a catholic thing and Jews / Muslims use Sunday as their first day!

How and why America switched as Christian nation I'm still not sure.

madsohm · 3 years ago

In Denmark we use 24h, but we call them by their 12h equivalent, e.g. "15:15" is "a quarter past three". However, you could also say: "It's now 21 30" to signify half past nine. Or some people would say: "It's half 10". Okay, having 24h clocks don't make it easier it seems.

anoopelias · 3 years ago

> Also, for those interested, look up Swatch time invented in late 90s and touted as more logical replacement of the mess that we have.

There is Tranquility Calendar[1] that was proposed sometime back:

- Starts at the time when man landed on Moon. (Tranquility base)

- 1 year = 13 months each of 28 days (13*4 = 364) + 1 Armstrong day

- Exactly 4 week months.

Back in 2019, (50th year of moon landing) I happened to build a web representation of the same[2].

[1] https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48c6d4c3d54cf

[2] https://anoopelias.github.io/tranquility-calendar/

kelnos · 3 years ago

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

Not correct, as others have pointed out. Regardless, why is it more or less logical for any particular day to be considered the start of the week? Hell, it seems that even in several countries that use Monday as the first day of the week, the names of the day reflect that Monday is the second day of the week!

I personally like Sunday and Saturday to be the opposite ends of the week. Sunday and Saturday are both considered rest days for the most part, and I think rest days are a good way to both start and finish your week. But I recognize that there's still really no logical basis for this; it's just what I grew up with so it "feels right". Just as those of you who grew up in a Monday-indexed week are used to it, so that "feels right" to you.

bradwood · 3 years ago

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

Many Arabic countries have the weekend on Friday and Saturday and work on Sunday. I think they probably all start the week on Sunday for this reason. No idea why the US does too though!

belter · 3 years ago

Hopefully the Aliens will leave the planet before the discussion gets to G11n...

"The Problem with Time & Timezones" - https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_local...

krageon · 3 years ago

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

In a few EU countries people have started implying Sunday could somehow be the start (even though they are protestant societies! Makes no sense), so I think the US is leaking lunacy to the rest of the world.

bipson · 3 years ago

> - 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;

For German speaking countries: rather always#. In fact, you don't even say 3 PM. Just "drei". I think everything from 8 AM to 7 PM is considered "business hours" - and everything else needs clarification ("4 in the morning").

And we call 0:00 "12 Uhr Mitternacht" as well, I think nobody says "0 Uhr". But at least writing it down makes sense.

# Nobody I knows really uses "15 Uhr" to say 3 PM (people might sometimes do, but I never hear it, it sounds wrong, maybe "nerdy")

bjarneh · 3 years ago

> the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is used conversationally;

Here in Norway we use 24 hours when writing; but we use 12 hour system when speaking - if that makes any sense?

I.e. we would say: "Vi spiser middag klokka fem (5)" [We eat dinner at five o'clock]; but we'd write it with 17 typically. We never use the terms AM/PM but can occasionally specify daytime/nighttime if it's uncertain which of the two we are talking about. I.e. "Jeg kom hjem fra jobb klokka fem (5) om morgenen" [I came home from work at five in the morning].

kmclean · 3 years ago

Sunday is also the first day of the week in Canada (actually a separate country from the US despite appearances).

henriquecm8 · 3 years ago

> - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

In Brazil, I think most people consider Sunday the first the of the week, in Portuguese the days of the week sound like ordinal numbers, Monday sounds like 2nd, Tuesday sounds 3rd, and so on. So it's pretty logical to consider Sunday the first day of the week.

ubermonkey · 3 years ago

I don't know that we necessarily consider Sunday first in any way except in the default / traditional presentation of weeks in calendars -- which is to say, it's a visual thing but not something that seems to impact work or life in any meaningful sense. I think pretty much all calendaring programs can show Monday as the first day if you prefer.

stjohnswarts · 3 years ago

What is the advantage of adopting any of those, other than being a bit more in sync with other countries? None of them imply anything other than semantic difference, there is very little advantage and a lot of pain if we were to adopt those "standards".

gjvnq · 3 years ago

> - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week;

Brazil does the same as seemingly do Grece and Japan.

Also, in Portuguese, Monday is _segunda-feira_ which roughly translates as second-day.

StingyJelly · 3 years ago

Maybe it's optimal to have an obvious overflow state

Archelaos · 3 years ago

This was harmless compared to the Swedish calendar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar

crote · 3 years ago

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.

dave4420 · 3 years ago

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.

dathinab · 3 years ago

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.

Joeri · 3 years ago

Or the missing day in samoa in 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16351377

gonzus · 3 years ago

This is just a word, which although originally means "fifteen days", it is actually used for "two weeks". The same thing happens in Spanish with "quincena" (which, confusingly, could also mean "fifteen days" or "half a month", at which point hilarity ensues).

MayeulC · 3 years ago

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).

mcv · 3 years ago

I thought it was nicely egalitarian and oecumenical to have the years from oune religion, months from another, and weekdays from a third. Let's give every religion a stake in the calendar system.

foone · 3 years ago

yeah, same. they really need to be blocked from HN, permanently.

fortran77 · 3 years ago

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 · 3 years ago

Czech but only for Thursday and Friday. And they're fourth and fifth, so it's off by one.

anjbe · 3 years ago

The Quakers numbered their weekdays and also their months, to avoid referencing foreign gods in their calendar. https://www.swarthmore.edu/friends-historical-library/quaker...

bloak · 3 years ago

Chinese numbers the days of the week, starting from 1 for Monday, but with a special name for Sunday, it seems.

I don't speak, or read, Chinese, but translate.google.com confirms this.

I am often curious about how Chinese expresses something, so I ask translate.google.com to translate an expression into Chinese, then I change the direction of translation and insert newlines between the Chinese characters. It's not a very reliable way of investigating how Chinese works, of course, but it's a lot faster than trawling through wiktionary.org. If anyone knows of a better way of getting an answer to that sort of question, please reply here!

MayeulC · 3 years ago

Ooh, that's interesting. Did you use decimal time as well?

tomcam · 3 years ago

The French revolutionaries made a whole lot of mistakes, some fatal, because they liked to dictate things top down.

aljgz · 3 years ago

mmmm wait until you know that Persians' extra day off is not Saturday, it's Thursday.

Also that in Muslim countries that take Sat and Sun off, they all leave at Friday noon to attend the Friday prayer.

Now what if you have a Persian embassy in a foreign country (they are at the verge of extinction though), it will be closed on Friday, Sat, and Sun!, plus all the holidays of Iran and the host country. They almost never work (This sentence was not only about their days off)

If you have a company that has a branch in Iran, no luck for remote meetings on Thursdays all the way to Sundays!

113 · 3 years ago

That would be significantly less funny and interesting.

probably_wrong · 3 years ago

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.

twelvechairs · 3 years ago

Parts of it yes. The day/month/year thing though is fundamenally based on astronomical observations that dont fit into each other with fractions (rotation of earth around sun, orbit of moon around earth, orbit of earth around sun) which is kind of missed here.

KaiserPro · 3 years ago

yes, but then it'd be dull and not funny. the whole USP of Foone is that they explain things in a fun and engaging way.

chungy · 3 years ago

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.

Judgmentality · 3 years ago

[flagged]

Thorentis · 3 years ago

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.

haswell · 3 years ago

The thing that would've brought it around for me is a punchline where the alien says something like "wow, your system is so clean and simple compared to ours".

I do think there's a certain degree of humor when looking back at history. There are plenty of things to laugh at in hindsight. But the thing that rubs me wrong is the undertone that this is somehow a distinctly human trait or inherently a bad thing. That somehow only humanity is subject to the impact of evolution and gradual learning over time.

And to those complaining that we should just have fun with this, I get it. There's some funny stuff in there. But that shouldn't absolve the thread of criticism. It's fair to point out that it's a pretty reductionist take when combined with the implication that humans are uniquely stupid. It's an easy problem to solve with a very slight reframing. $0.02.

hackerlight · 3 years ago

> subrational concepts

More like vestigial organs that our society isn't capable enough to excise.

lyu07282 · 3 years ago

At the end of the story they isolate us from them and prevent us from reaching the stars, I don't think the implication is that this is just due to the weird calendar system. I think its more than that, our inability to rid ourselves from our tradition and religious heritage has more profound implications. We don't look at things rationally and make decisions to improve ourselves. The aliens may have gone through similar steps in their evolution of their civilization so they probably know what it *means* if a post-interstellar species still uses a gods birthday to count time.

We aren't making any collective rational decisions yet, we build elaborate structures around tradition that more or less managed to reduce our collective human suffering at least in the northern hemisphere. It took us hundreds of years to rid ourselves from slavery and it will probably take us hundreds more to figure out that murdering billions of animals is bad for example. We might never figure out how to prevent poverty, inequality, racism, imperialism, colonialism and war. We probably make earth uninhabitable way before then anyhow.

I can see why aliens want to isolate and not want to talk to us. Not because of the calendar system we use, but because of what it represents.

rendall · 3 years ago

I'm also not a fan of the "alien-who-is-really-the-writer has an objectively superior and judgmental perspective" genre, even when it's trying to be funny. Some movies: K-PAX was one, Powder, another.

octobus2021 · 3 years ago

Yep, one of the reasons US construction industry sticks to feet and inches instead of using decimal system.

ManuelKiessling · 3 years ago

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?

felipeerias · 3 years ago

Furthermore, you can count up to 12 using the fingers of just one hand: you just place the tip of your thumb on each of the other finger's phalanges.

With two hands, you can use this method to count up to 144 (a "gross" in English): one hand counts individual items, the other counts dozens.

mcv · 3 years ago

Yeah, that sounds like a mistake by the tweeter. As far as I know there have always been 12 months, but the start of the year got moved from March to January at some point.

superjan · 3 years ago

And in that calender, February is the last month, which makes it the logical month for adjusting leap years.

gerdesj · 3 years ago

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 ...

j-bos · 3 years ago

Well worth the watch, also shows that Ceasar's main character arc was bossted by his calendar knowledge and authority.

permo-w · 3 years ago

I’m unsure how commonly known this is, but also note that July and August are named after Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus

fsckboy · 3 years ago

> the calendar we live by today was personally designed by Julius Caesar

Pope Gregory has entered the chat

there have been some changes to the calendar since Caesar, especially when people went to bed Thursday 4 October 1582 and woke up on Friday 15 October 1582, and thereafter there were no more leap years on centuries except every 400 years.

https://www.onthisday.com/articles/gregory-conquers-julius-c...

ithkuil · 3 years ago

People mostly remember Caesar as a ruler, however in 63 BC (5 years before the Gallic wars) Caeser managed to get himself elected as Pontifex Maximus (chief high priest).

Adjusting the calendar was as part of the duties of the Pontifex Maximus. They decided public holidays and they decided whether to add an "intercalary month" (at the end of February which used to be the last month).

There are many interesting things to say about this but since this is hacker news I'm going ro focus on one:

Caesar was away campaigning a lot and the Pontifex could adjust the calendar only while physically in Rome. So many years went by without calendar fixes.

After having benefited from the confusion and the edge he had by understanding the calendar (like knowing he could safely cross the Adriatic when his opponent assumed that crossing it that given month was a bad luck) he decided to fix the calendar so that it doesn't require a human in the loop.

In a way, he automated himself out of his job.

timbit42 · 3 years ago

If we switch to dozenal, we can switch metric to being dozenal based and we won't need decimal time.

umanwizard · 3 years ago

The story begins with aliens landing in New Jersey, and describes the calendar most commonly used there.

davchana · 3 years ago

In Hinduism, there is a whole extra month after few years, kind of like December Bad. It is thought to not to do anything special in this month because its a bad month, labeled as like creature who lives under earth.

thfuran · 3 years ago

>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.

davchana · 3 years ago

Its not some countries. Every country British had ruled uses 12h for day to day life; & 24 for military speak & railway time tables display board. & British ruled a lot of countries.

needle0 · 3 years ago

Japan uses the Western calendar pretty much as-is. One addition is the Japanese gengou system of year/era counting, which resets with a new era name every time a new emperor is enthroned (at least in recent years). Most people are aware of and use both the Western and Japanese methods of year counting, though.

The last reset was in May 1st 2019, when Heisei year 31 switched to Reiwa year 1. (Yes, a single year can have two era-based names since the switch doesn't necessarily occur on New Year's Day. Annoying.) It is now Reiwa 4.

zazaulola · 3 years ago

In C-lang the algorithm is more mysterious:

  dow(m,d,y) { y-=m<3; return(y+y/4-y/100+y/400+"-bed=pen+mad."[m]+d)%7; }

kadonoishi · 3 years ago

Oh, is that why Tolkien had Frodo throw the Ring in the Fire on March 25? And then King Elessar made that day the first day of the New Year. And the tradition held on until the 18th century. Huh.

ivlad · 3 years ago

13 is prime and thus quarterly planning gets complicated. Quarterly planning is there because of the seasons and agriculture.

Zekio · 3 years ago

sometimes more than one of them in the same country depending on whether people use the old format or the "new" official format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Denm... and isn't even consistent in delimiters

davchana · 3 years ago

& sometimes even in same country but depending on who is using it. In USA, Social Security will use like mm/dd/yyyy. Passport will have dd MMM YYYY. Immigration documents from USCIS will have mmddyy. Some state documents will have mm-dd-yy

needle0 · 3 years ago

Came to say this. They operate under the same rules of physics; it should just be as likely that their planetary motions and cultural history will also force them into weird counting systems.

tasuki · 3 years ago

> "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))

Izkata · 3 years ago

"Middle day" isn't the middle day?

jmpeax · 3 years ago

> "Mars month"

I though marzec came from marznąć meaning "to freeze".

drdeca · 3 years ago

So you have the day before "seventh day" be called "fifth day"?

nothrowaways · 3 years ago

Looks cute.

miniwark · 3 years ago

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.

gurumeditations · 3 years ago

Biblical books are biased to assert Jesus existed as they describe him. There are no neutral historical records to prove he specifically existed. Besides, your “historical documents” contain competing narratives of events with each other, supernatural magic, and exist as part of a handpicked religious narrative that left other books out at that.

noslenwerdna · 3 years ago

There are many documents dating from ancient Rome (and earlier) that we don't consider historical because of their fantastic or religious nature. The set of documents you refer to are self-contradictory and describe supernatural events that no other author recorded.

Hell, historians take Herodotus with a grain of salt, and he was an actual historian.

ivlad · 3 years ago

Quarterly planning is hard with 13 months

yen223 · 3 years ago

"At least your calendar doesn't get reset every time a comet flies past the sky" or something

rsynnott · 3 years ago

We largely dumped the long and rich and annoying history for most things _other_ than time, though, with metrication. It's arguably surprising that time survived that.

viraptor · 3 years ago

Not an agreed upon final answer, but a common not arbitrarily changing one - yes. You can easily see that in our history. Every time we have something slightly different in various cultures, we try to unify it and make it more consistent. Various units of measurement got pretty much unified when we needed to work together. Where we didn't, we got issues like losing the Mars orbiter because someone thought inches are still cute. We got time measurement unified and precisely defined, because we needed to synchronise time globally to enable precise GPS. Even on a cultural level, many countries went through some kind of unification/simplification of their language. (simplified Chinese, German orthography reform, Indonesian -> Malaysian, etc.) On a social level, we're so connected, that pointing at a random person today, I could guess they speak English, Spanish, or Chinese and not be wrong too often.

So yeah, once a society gets to travel to other life forms in the universe, you could expect their measurement of time is simplified and plain. Not that they don't understand the historical context of not having it that way though... but that would be far in the past. And it's funny to think of them going "oh, one of those again...", or even "ok, I've seen some weird stuff, but the mixed units on Earth are just disgusting". Probably the same reaction you'd get if you saw a programmer today copying the whole source to another folder with suffix "..._working_8". "oh $deity, I see why you're doing this, but please stop, this hurts my brain, I'll show you version control".

w10-1 · 3 years ago

Actually, what you're suggesting is that even if it is broken, it's too costly to fix. Then you should ask: costly compared to what?

If we fixed it, then innumerable generations after us would not have to deal with the problem.

The idea of "historical reason" and "social custom" assumes what it tries to prove, that the past is more important than the future.

The real problem is that we don't pay for the costs we impose on the future -- in bad calendars and environmental collapse from an overheated climate.

And because we don't pay, we don't have to care.

Indeed, "not caring" is taken as a badge of honor -- oppositional self-glorification through contempt for others.

Your point would be well-taken if it were well-intended and made with grace. The original post is a funny way to imagine accounting for the weight of history we lay upon those who come after us. It's a nice way to ask us to take some responsibility. Most everyone is willing to do what they can to make the world that little bit better. Indeed, I believe that those who came up with the original mistakes were trying to do better, and would welcome the corrections.

brianpan · 3 years ago

It's a joke. But I think you're underestimating how malleable it is.

In the US, DST was changed in 2007. Many states have yearly discussions about it. The leap second was introduced in 1972 and many have been inserted since.

In Taiwan, years are often counted from the establishment of the ROC. https://www.todaytourism.com/travel-guides/Taiwanese-calenda...

It IS kind of broke and people are trying to "fix" it pretty often.

rsynnott · 3 years ago

To further complicate the issue, Jesus was born between 6 and 4BC, in any case. And in either winter or summer, depending on whether you happen to be Christian or Muslim.

gniv · 3 years ago

Or rather if you want to explain to someone why tech debt is hard to fix show them this Twitter thread.

duskwuff · 3 years ago

To riff on a bit from A Deepness in the Sky:

"We thought they were measuring from when their species first travelled to their homeworld's moon, but the point of reference is actually around fifteen megaseconds later. No idea why."

davchana · 3 years ago

& even in the same part aka USA, in day to day life & on state issued paperwork, ids, social security card, its 6-7-22 m-d-yy is June 7th, but on passport its dd MMM YYYY `07 JUN 2022`. Immigration documents issued by USCIS uses 06072022 mmddyyyy as June 07, 2022. So, not always the same sequence on same part of the earth.

oxmane · 3 years ago

Definitely the best comment I read on this thread.

Not sure if this was the intention, but I read it as both recognizing the original post as funny, and yet recognizing that we (as in humanity) aren't "stupid" for having this complex system, but that's just how things develop.

Having both views live together is the best take on this.

jes5199 · 3 years ago

ah yes, "seconds", the "second minúte part of an hour", i.e. 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of the average time it takes the Earth to rotate towards Sol. very sensible default.

krick · 3 years ago

Except it would be absolutely impractical to actually use in practice by any species/societies that have to sleep on a regular basis and in general need cycles. If all your "natural cycles" happen to fit well into base-10, well, that's great. Otherwise, you need to base your cycles on something else, which is exactly what calendars do.

And, just by the way, the Gregorian calendar is bad and messy, but the ideas it's built upon are absolutely great and are not results of shower-thinking and twitter-shitposting, but arise from pure practicality. They suit Earth, and humans are earthlings, their cycles are defined by the Earth. A year is a crucial cycle, because it defines weather so much. A day is a crucial cycle, because it defines when it's dark outside. A lunar month is a natural and pretty good cycle, because Moon cycles do actually affect life on Earth, but it isn't crucial, which is exactly the reason, why Gregorian calendar happens to get away with pretty much ignoring this one, unlike a day and a year. Still, it explains why most calendars through history prefer months being close to 27.3 days, and why weeks are 7 days (a quarter of 28). Both cycles also are both long enough and short enough to be useful for practical reasons, like organizing work schedules even without relying on celestial bodies. Furthermore, it even appears they are not enough, which is why the year is divided into "quarters" for business purposes like accounting. And these happen to be fairly close to 30 days, which happens to be a very neat divider of 360, which is close enough to a year on the one side, and a very neat number that naturally divides all small numbers up to 6 on the other side, which makes it easy to work with (unlike base-10, BTW, since that cannot be divided by 3).

All of which explains, why French Republican calendar is actually a great idea and unfortunately failed (for a fairly stupid reason, IMO), and base-10 day is not so great (although it has merit, since modern digits are base-10) and naturally failed.

Now, these totally imaginary and having nothing to do with reality aliens of yours may not have earth-like and human-like cycles, but they surely have cycles of their own. So it is unlikely that magnitude-1000 time measurement with no cycles in-between can work for them either.

zimpenfish · 3 years ago

> Because it does not match at all the one instance of a space-going species

I think conflating "made it to our local moon" as "space-going" might be the problem there when comparing with "made it to a whole other solar system" as "space-going" aliens.

I should imagine that humanity will have to get a whole lot more logical and hyper-rational before we make it out of our solar system in a repeatable way (assuming we survive that far.)

Joker_vD · 3 years ago

> all sorts of different clothes' size standards surely can be replaced by one that would actually make sense

Like, imagine if those sizes were equal to some actual body part measurements (or the garment's dimensions itself, whatever) in millimetres/centimetres?

rendall · 3 years ago

Let us stop using Wikipedia to support our arguments.

patatino · 3 years ago

It's a joke, get over it

3pt14159 · 3 years ago

(For background, I'm a Christian.)

I've learned that most of the people online that are 35 or under don't really try to get details right for work like this. It's a sort of intentional sloppiness that portrays a relaxed style in an aloof manner.

I don't especially like it, but I always did wonder how getting out of touch with the young-ins would look and I guess being curmudgeon and pedantic about factual correctness is something I could embrace as I slowly fade out of style.

If the Tweet chain had gotten every other detail right, I'd take some offence too, but this is the internet equivalent of someone goofing off at a party.

Try to roll past it with a head shake.

omegabravo · 3 years ago

You're honestly offended by that? I'm genuinely curious, not trying to be judgemental. It might be a cultural difference

apexalpha · 3 years ago

>Not all scholars agree that Jesus was raised from dead,

Are there any scholars that do agree to this?

scoofy · 3 years ago

The argument isn't generally that "Jesus" isn't a person, but rather probably built off one person, but also a collection of stories about people who might be other persons or made up. There were lots of messiahs at the time, and considering that the first gospel was probably written a good 20-to-60 years after the protagonist's death, it seems reasonable to many to presume that some the stories might be stories about other messiahs at the time that got passed on.

It obviously doesn't matter if actual divinity isn't at stake. Did Socrates exist? Maybe... probably? But he's depicted as two very different characters in the two sources we have (Plato and Xenophon). Which one is the 'real' Socrates. What about Homer? What about Achilles? Having long dated historical documents, especially one's that are more about the story than the person gets complicated.

Do I think that a person named some translation of "Jesus" existed, and generally lived the life described in Mark? Sure, maybe... It gets a bit dramatic at times, but it's plausible. Was that the exact same guy as the "Jesus" in Josephus? Hard to say... Maybe? Do I think all the things written in the gospels, and Josephus and the guy referenced by Tacitus all the same Jesus, and were all the things that happened real and/or happened to that specific one person? I find that to be wildly improbable.

Again, it sort of doesn't matter to non-religious folks. I don't think the person in the story needs to be "a person" just like I don't think Plato's depiction of Socrates needs to be 100% accurate, or even mostly accurate (it seems very obvious that liberties were taken). I don't think it really matters whether William Shakespeare or secretly someone else wrote all those plays. It really doesn't matter to people who have a healthy amount of skepticism... It's perfectly fine to admit that we don't know. The stories are still there and they're good stories.

It only really matters if one has built their identity on some long lost non-verifiable, historical parchments being the truth about the universe... I know many people have chosen to do that. I was brought up religious.

troad · 3 years ago

Treating someone with respect is not the same thing as believing what they believe.

badcppdev · 3 years ago

What do you mean you find it offensive?

Are you offended at the assertion that people doubt that Jesus existed at all? As one data point I can assure you that I personally doubt that Jesus existed at all.

Are you offended by people doubting that Jesus existed? If you are a Christian then you are a believer in one of the hundreds of religions from around the world. To be offended that someone doubts the existence of the figures in your holy book is an amazing egotistical statement. Should a follower of Zoroastrianism be offended by someone who doubts the existence of Ahura Mazda?

Are you offended by people doubting that Jesus existed because there are references to him from contemporary historical records? Well I feel that Christianity and other religions have a long record of shamelessly rewriting history and so I basically don't trust anything written down on this subject at all.

throwawayffffas · 3 years ago

A week is a quarter of a lunar month, we kept them around after months stopped being lunar, because they are kind of nice.

genewitch · 3 years ago

upthread, the year started march 1st which was also the first day of spring, thus making it march, april, may june, quintilis, sextilis, september, october, november, december.

the 12 or 15 day shift at one or more points made the spring equinox "move" from march 1st to "around march 21st", and the "new year" was moved to January 1st. Thus completely misaligning the months and the seasons, and making september the 9th month. To compensate, they renamed the 5th and sixth months to honor a couple of emperors.

Don't cite me.

adastra22 · 3 years ago

The Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar. How much it differs from the solar calendar changes a lot from year to year. Other East Asian countries don't always share the same lunar new year.

iggldiggl · 3 years ago

> elementary, middle, and high school school started 2nd week in September. College also started around the same time.

And in Germany the academic year at universities traditionally starts in October, with classes starting in the second or third week of October (and my particular alma mater apparently tending to start classes one week even later than a few random other universities I've looked up).

(Which I had to explain to a Canadian border guard when I was visiting Canada near the end of September a few years ago with regards to how come I didn't already have classes if I was claiming to be a student, since in Canada classes had of course already started for the fall term at that point.)

ben174 · 3 years ago

Way to rain on their parade.

But yes, any advanced civilization would have stacks upon stacks of rules which contradict and complicate things. There's just no way around it.

povils · 3 years ago

Funny! :D the said alien should then talk with Lithuanian because every month name more or less is describes what is happening during that month

povils · 3 years ago

A