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Freedom Clock

domsson.github.io

91–100 of 189 posts

Re: Freedom Clock

#91
post #59
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

It only is human-firendly if you grew up with it, so it's rather "American-friendly". > You don't say "25th Apartment", you say "Apartment 25", We say 25th March in German. Saying the whole date follows the importance: day, month, year: fünfundzwanzigster märz zweitausenddreiundzwanzig.

Why would you start with '5' and not '20'? :)

Many traditions have their quirks. But at least very few German-speakers will try to defend this format.

Re: Freedom Clock

#92
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

> Consider any other Label. You don't say "25th Apartment", you say "Apartment 25", "Unit 25", "P.O. Box 25"

That’s very obviously cherry-picked though. The opposite is true for the names of numbered streets (“9th Street”) and house numbers (“1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”). You picked the only component of an address where the number comes after the label.

Re: Freedom Clock

#93

the least ambiguous format i know for human-facing dates: %d %b %Y so today is 25 Mar 2023. not coincidentally, this format is in common use in the american military. Occasionally my use of it has had people ask me where i served, though i never have.

This is a good example of why we have standards for dates. Your example is wrong for multiple reasons: * You don't specify the year and the time zone * ISO 8601 and RFC 3339 are better when it comes to naming files * It's not a valid date in the healthcare industry where the month must be in uppercase letters like "25 MAR 2023"

None of these are examples of wrongness, but of it being unfit for specific purposes.

Re: Freedom Clock

#94
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

Yeah, I don't think so. If it's 0°C outside, I know it's probably time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze. If water in the pot on my stove is close to 100°C, I know it will boil soon. Same with dates — it has nothing to do with being machine readable or not, dates should go from largest to smallest (yyyy-mm-dd, etc) or vise versa, not turn 180 degrees at midpoint for some reason. Your…

If your body temp is over 100 F, you have a fever. If the outside is 100 F, it's too damn hot.

The bottom end is much harder to justify but I believe the idea was that you wouldn't have to regularly deal with negative numbers.

But both F and C are completely arbitrary. That's the least messed up part of the non-SI unit system.

Re: Freedom Clock

#95
post #58
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

water freezes at 0, boils at 100. this is an excellent and intuitive scale for a human that is 70% water. The SI units, like kg or m are characteristic of the human scale. and more importantly, sanely decimal. and you say 3rd street, not Street 3. and 4th of july i do prefer the american decimal point 1,000.00 , it makes more sense. But it's time for humans to quit our nonsense and give way to machines , which requir…

That’s why I say 11rd Street and set my hot pot to 1100100 degrees. The added benefit is I can now do math on my fingers with a 100x greater range! Bring in toes and it gets insane.

Re: Freedom Clock

#96

Dates should be annotated as such and rendered according to your browser's time zone and formating preferences. Don't blame the other culture, blame your inept communication medium.

This is a great point. Hypermedia is failing us!

  

Today is .

Re: Freedom Clock

#97
(Not American)

We think units that are used in different countries/cultures/continents are weird, because we’re not used to it. I can get behind the Fahrenheit bit, being more “human-readable” but for me 30C will always be hot.

Re: Freedom Clock

#98
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

Yeah, I don't think so. If it's 0°C outside, I know it's probably time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze. If water in the pot on my stove is close to 100°C, I know it will boil soon. Same with dates — it has nothing to do with being machine readable or not, dates should go from largest to smallest (yyyy-mm-dd, etc) or vise versa, not turn 180 degrees at midpoint for some reason. Your…

I think of 100F as being when weather starts becoming lethal if you are poorly prepared.

Re: Freedom Clock

#100
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

> Here we are on March 25. The year comes last because it's least important.

Sorry to break it to you, but in the UK, Australia or India you wouldn't say March 25, you would say 25 March or 25th March. Just as you would in Spanish, French or German. The fact that you say March 25 reflects the atypical American date standard. They do say March 25 in Chinese, but that's because they use YMD order (and when saying a full date, they will say "2023 year, 3 month, 25 day") which also makes sense.

There's nothing more "human-friendly" about saying March 25. It's a purely American thing. There's also nothing more "human-friendly" about Fahrenheit. If you grow with Celsius, 20-25 is optimal, 10-20 cool, below 10 cold, below 0 freezing, over 30 very hot, nothing difficult about it.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but your comment is pure distilled bias.

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