551–560 of 1001 posts
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.
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Weekends? Weekends are... the ... ends of the week. When you build a bookshelf, do you do: or do you do:
A week is not a bookshelf, it's a snake. Does a snake have one end, or does it have two? Does a dog have two tails and two butts?
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…
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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Persian, I always found the Gregorian calendar weird. In Iran and some other countries, Jalali calendar is used which is much more straightforward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalali_calendar The Iranian calendar (also known as Persian calendar or the Jalaali Calendar) is a solar calendar currently used in Iran and Afghanistan. It is observation-based, rather than rule-based, beginning each year on the vernal…
> It's also precisely set to follow seasons. For example, the first day of Fall is actually the first day of "Mehr" (the 7th month). For some reason, the Gregorian calendar has it on Sep. 22. This doesn't really work; the first day of Fall differs from place to place according to the specifics of the local climate.
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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…
> but January has been the first month of the year through all of recorded history Are you kidding? Not only are September through December literally named "Month 7" through "Month 10", but the year began in late March as recently as AD 1751. That is not a period where we're suffering from a lack of recorded history.
My main point is still the same: Caesar's calendar started in January and he was following the order that was current in his day. We do not know when the switch from March to January occurred. There are multiple stories about the switch (the supposed dates range from 750 BC to 153 BC), and there are legends of a 10-month calendar that didn't include January and February at all, but there are no extant contemporary records describing the switch.
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…
Honestly, even our DNA is full of historical reasons; why shouldn’t our society too?
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…
I though marzec came from marznąć meaning "to freeze".