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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

#281

Post by School-Cotton »

octobus2021 wrote: post #205
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…

That was my point, if the workweek in US is Monday through Friday, and US weekend is Saturday and Sunday, there's NO REASON WHATSOEVER to call Sunday "the first day of the week"...

There’s no reason whatsoever (other than historical) for any of the inconsistencies explored in the tweet thread. Why should the start of the week be any different?

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

#282

Post by dullcrisp »

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"

Hmm, and the week is the not-done-thing?

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

#283

Post by latexr »

ysavir wrote: post #213
retrac wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-speaking world. A quick check of Wikipedia suggests…

> A quick check of Wikipedia suggests Arabic, Portuguese and Vietnamese, all use number-based systems to name the days of the week, and they are indexed from Sunday = 1. I can confirm that in Hebrew, the name for Sunday translates into "First Day", Monday into "Second Day", etc. Except for Saturday, which is Shabat.

In Portuguese, Monday through Friday translates to something like “Second Fair” through “Sixth Fair”¹. Saturday and Sunday aren’t numbered.

¹ “Fair” as in “a gathering of stalls and amusements for public entertainment”.

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

#284

Post by drdeca »

stuartd wrote: post #248
retrac wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-speaking world. A quick check of Wikipedia suggests…

> .. considers Sunday to be the first day of the week How can the first day of the week happen in the middle of the weekend !?!

Because the week has two endpoints: the initial day of the week and the final day of the week.

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

#285

Post by adhesive_wombat »

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.

In Chinese, Monday is 星期一 (=1st in week).

And the months are numbered (January = "first month"),

Who are we to argue with the people who have finally gotten an act together to number it properly?[1]

[1]: alright, yes, Sunday is still the odd one out and doesn't have a number.

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

#286

Post by ManuelKiessling »

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.

Mh, but isn’t the base 12 system coming from the fact that people used to count stuff with their thumb, using the 3 sections of the other 4 fingers?

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

#289

Post by Ash_Crow »

MayeulC wrote: post #127
Svip wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the Romans who inserted a leap month inside February between the 23rd and 24th. Since the two consuls ruled on alternating months, adding an extra month after February would give one consul one more ruling month, making it somewhat unfair. Since leap years were handled irregularly back then, they were leap months, not leap days. The Julian calendar introduced the leap day instead, and maintained it in February…

Julius and Augustus you mean, both were Caesars (Augustus, AKA Octavian, was adopted).

If we're splitting hair, Octavian was adopted into the gens Julia, so he was a Julius as much as he was a Caesar, and his full name before ascending to emperor was Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.
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