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Deciyear Calendar

deciyear.com

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#11
All the problems listed aren't real world problems. No one has a problem understanding the calendar and there are no engineering problems with it either unlike the inch. For the few folks in astronomy we have computers.

Why would there be a problem? Half the world's population prays according to a base 7 week.

Nor is this proposal new. Its been tried (at least) twice before failed spectacularly embittering people. Based 10 (french) or 5 (soviet) weeks were introduced at the blood thirsty peak of thise anti-religious regime with the explicit goal of also erasing worship to the God of Abraham.

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#12
Not a single mention of the topic/reason calendars were invented in the first place: keeping track of the 4 seasons (for agriculture purposes). Though since each month has 4 weeks, I can see a season being 2.5 months making sense. At least much more than the 13-month year.

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#13
post #5

My favorite part is that they designed a new calendar system where the months are named starting at one (Primilis, Secundilis, etc.) but numbered starting at 0. So Primilis is month 0, Secundilis is month 1, and Decilis is month 9. This somehow feels even worse than our current system where there’s a shift of 2 in the other direction for September to December. They also claim that this is useful when dealing with qua…

Why even name the months?

For conversation, "last October" is easier than "last month 10"

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#14
post #11

All the problems listed aren't real world problems. No one has a problem understanding the calendar and there are no engineering problems with it either unlike the inch. For the few folks in astronomy we have computers. Why would there be a problem? Half the world's population prays according to a base 7 week. Nor is this proposal new. Its been tried (at least) twice before failed spectacularly embittering people. Ba…

About understanding, we're used to it but you can't trivially know whether 02/05/2026 is a Monday. Even remembering whether July has 30 or 31 days can be a chore. Irregular months also can have some small annoying effects since "in a month" is not always the same amount of days. There's even the 360 day calendar for that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-day_calendar

Just one more in the long history of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_reform#Proposals

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#15
post #5

My favorite part is that they designed a new calendar system where the months are named starting at one (Primilis, Secundilis, etc.) but numbered starting at 0. So Primilis is month 0, Secundilis is month 1, and Decilis is month 9. This somehow feels even worse than our current system where there’s a shift of 2 in the other direction for September to December. They also claim that this is useful when dealing with qua…

Why even name the months?

[deleted]

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#16
post #14
post #11

All the problems listed aren't real world problems. No one has a problem understanding the calendar and there are no engineering problems with it either unlike the inch. For the few folks in astronomy we have computers. Why would there be a problem? Half the world's population prays according to a base 7 week. Nor is this proposal new. Its been tried (at least) twice before failed spectacularly embittering people. Ba…

About understanding, we're used to it but you can't trivially know whether 02/05/2026 is a Monday. Even remembering whether July has 30 or 31 days can be a chore. Irregular months also can have some small annoying effects since "in a month" is not always the same amount of days. There's even the 360 day calendar for that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-day_calendar Just one more in the long history of https://en.wi…

Actually there are trivially easy ways to calculate DOW off the top of your head. No one bothers because it was never a real problem. People used to carry their calendar books on them to keep track of their engagements. Now we carry a smartphone.

Nevertheless, my colleague bothered to do it and he could tell you the DOW without pausing. He is of average intelligence maybe a little more intelligent than I (though I was better at mental math)

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even name the months?

For conversation, "last October" is easier than "last month 10"

No it isn’t. If they were named Blorple and Frotz it would be harder than 10. Only because you’ve had your lifetime to learn the order of the Gregorian months is it in any way easier.

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#18
Proposals like thus are so unrealistic that it's difficult to take then seriously. This one has lots of problems, but perhaps the worst (and yet, easiest to fix) are the millidays. People do not naturally think in thousands. Put a separator in there.

More fundamentally, the "second" is embedded everywhere in culture, science and engineering. Trying to replace the second with microdays is...let's be polite...suboptimal.

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#19
post #11

All the problems listed aren't real world problems. No one has a problem understanding the calendar and there are no engineering problems with it either unlike the inch. For the few folks in astronomy we have computers. Why would there be a problem? Half the world's population prays according to a base 7 week. Nor is this proposal new. Its been tried (at least) twice before failed spectacularly embittering people. Ba…

This is denial. There are absolutely problematic side-effects with the existing calendar system, and the obvious use-cases that jumped out to me are on the business/financial side. Yes, the changing length of months makes financial planning slightly more difficult. The arbitrary nature of how many non-business days occurs in a month cause issues (some months can have many more 'business' days than other months, skewing financial data for those months and the months surrounding them). Don't get me started on the fact that different years have, in the US, different lengths of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, skewing consumer behavior.

I'm not saying this is a good enough reason to even begin trying to upend the existing calendar system and replace it. But the somewhat random nature of how weekends and certain holidays are distributed throughout the calendar can have effects on business, and presumably other areas. One might suggest it is all awash because the bad effects of one year/week/month will erase the good effects of a future one, but I don't find that comforting if it contributes to, say, the company I work for having an under-performing year, resulting in layoffs (granted, there would be other factors here as well). Regardless, the inconsistency is a problem.

I recall working at a FinTech company and hearing some team gloat about something like an 8% increase in MoM revenue, only to be shut down by someone in finance pointing out that there were 8% more bank days that month. Imagine someone wasn't thinking of this and people got promoted (or fired) because of a total nothing-signal being misinterpreted as a hugely positive (or negative) performance. The existing calendar allows this.

Re: Deciyear Calendar

#20
This is worse than my 365 month calendar since it still has that ugly 5-day “year end”. In my calendar, every month is exactly one day long, no exceptions. Leap years simply add an extra month.
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