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

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

#271

Post by thriftwy »

torstenvl wrote: post #221
FastEatSlow wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that that in Slavic languages Sunday would be the first day of the week, since the Polish for 'monday' means 'after sunday'. EDIT: got 'monday' and 'sunday' the wrong way round

In Russian, Sunday is "Resurrection Day" and Monday is "The Thing concerning Not-Doing being in the Past-Perfective Tense" (po + ne+del + nik) It looks like Polish is similar except that Sunday is "Not-Doing"

Not-Doing can be a false alias: the week is nedelya and ponedelnik may thus mean "one going with the week*, i.e. starting it.

Altough I'm not sure since the sibling proto-slavic explanation makes much sense. Fun fact: slavic languages split off in medieval times when the calendar and the week were already thorougly taken care of.

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

#272

Post by Macha »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #42

Dates are one of the first standards through which humans discovered https://xkcd.com/927/ . Standards simple and useful enough to be used in everyday conversation die with their users. So I don't know anyone who keeps track of the Republican calendar, but I _do_ know people who are celebrating New Year's tonight. And the English still drink beer in pints. It would only be simpler to use the Republican Calendar in a…

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

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

#273

Post by tomcam »

autophagian wrote: post #85

For a few years I lived my life rigorously to the beat of the french revolutionary calendar - i was very enamoured by its consistent month partitioning, and dumping the leap day at the end of the year's festival days. The major downside is that the months were named after French seasonal characteristics, which... doesn't really work.

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

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

#276

Post by School-Cotton »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #225
NorwegianDude wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, the standard US weekend is Saturday–Sunday, even amongst the Sunday=1 holdouts. I say holdouts, because it helps to understand that this isn’t agreed on even within the US. Not to suggest that the holdouts are a minority, I honestly don’t know but I doubt it. I think, apart from the initial puzzlement of recognizing the inconsistency, most of us don’t give much thought at all to which day is 1. “Weekend” generall…

> I say holdouts, because it helps to understand that this isn’t agreed on even within the US.

I disagree. I can’t remember having ever seen calendars display any day other than Sunday as the first of the week, except in the case of computer software made by non-Americans who didn’t think to localize it.

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

#277

Post by InCityDreams »

octobus2021 wrote: post #164
Swenrekcah wrote: post #157

Very entertaining read. The earthling says at one point (for comedic effect probably) that they don’t know why people used to like to count in dozens. I didn’t understand myself until someone explained to me that it makes dividing pay between a group of workers much easier. You pay 12 coins for a job, very simple to divide between a team of two, three, four, six or twelve.

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

Because you get paid in coins and have to divide them in 2, 3, 4, 6'z?

*but i do now understand the use of a thru'ppenny bit.

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

#278

Post by LudwigNagasena »

torstenvl wrote: post #221
FastEatSlow wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that that in Slavic languages Sunday would be the first day of the week, since the Polish for 'monday' means 'after sunday'. EDIT: got 'monday' and 'sunday' the wrong way round

In Russian, Sunday is "Resurrection Day" and Monday is "The Thing concerning Not-Doing being in the Past-Perfective Tense" (po + ne+del + nik) It looks like Polish is similar except that Sunday is "Not-Doing"

Ponedelnik etymologically means the day after the not-doing day. Nowadays the connection is lost because Sunday is no longer called “nedelja”.

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

#279

Post by throwaway06421 »

googlryas wrote: post #92
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…

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

What I find interesting is that many Americans consider themselves Christians and that will influence their decisions. So one argument can be made from that point of view (I'm not religious myself).

In the Bible it says God designated the last day of the week as a day of rest. From a Christian point of view, it would make sense that Sunday is the last day of the week, as it is the official day of rest. Otherwise they disrespect the Bible and skip the "real" day of rest.

I'm not religious or American, so from my relatively objective view it seems as if the people from the majority religion has ignored their holy book.

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

#280

Post by timoth3y »

An interesting aside the Cotsworth Calendar is such an obvious approach to the months problem it makes me wonder why it was not adopted in the first place.

We have 13 months of 28 days each. The 9th is always a Monday the 19th is always a Thursday. "Two months from now" always means the same thing and always means the same number of days.

The extra day is New Years Day. It's a holiday and does not belong to any month - or belongs to it's own month if you prefer. On Leap Years there are two of these days.

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