Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

Post by mattl » Sun, Sep 25, 2022, 11:00 PM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #220

comeonbro wrote: post #170

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…

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 .…

Post by Symbiote » Sun, Sep 25, 2022, 11:01 PM UTC

sqs wrote: post #397

octobus2021 wrote: post #63

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…

> 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…

Post by TapamN » Sun, Sep 25, 2022, 11:03 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #95

octobus2021 wrote: post #63

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…

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.

Post by IRP » Sun, Sep 25, 2022, 11:05 PM UTC

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Sun, Sep 25, 2022, 11:07 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #371

superjan wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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. EDIT: Because there's a lot of confusion in several replies I thought I'd clarify: February was the second month in Julius Caesar's calendar. Romans in the Republic describe the month as being at some point the last month in the calendar…