Epic! reminds me of the conversation I have with every new hire, trying to explain our 20 year old system.
Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
521–530 of 1001 posts
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
> .. 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 !?!
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?
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#523So, 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…
"Middle day" isn't the middle day?
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
That kind of ambiguity is everywhere, though. If it's Friday, and I say "next Monday", those two days are close enough that you may need clarification - do I mean "this coming Monday" or "the Monday after that". Or another example for day 1 = Monday, if on Sunday I said "let's do that next week", you may need the same form of clarification.
I don’t see any ambiguity in “next Monday”. It literally is saying the next day which is Monday. “Next week” on a Sunday is ambiguous because some people consider the new week to have started while others consider it to start the next day.
Human speech doesn't often work on just the literal meanings of words though, hence the ambiguity. Very very rarely at 10PM on a Sunday night does anyone mean "tomorrow" when they say "See you at the club next Monday". They usually don't mean that because we have the word "tomorrow" and that's more precise.
Likewise, on a Friday afternoon most people (in my experience) don't say "Hey we're having a cook out next Sunday, want to come?" and mean the Sunday in exactly two days. Again, because the phrase "this Sunday" is available and more precise.
In fact, I think in my experience "next X" almost always implies a full 7 days between now and the X. If my boss on Monday says "we need this in production next Friday" I don't normally take that to mean "we need this in production in the next 4 days.
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#525Wait a minute: someday the aliens are going to land and we gotta explain our calendar, sure.
Or, _we_ don’t.
Someon—- pardon me —- _Something_ has to explain it to them.
That thing is gonna say: “yeah, the epoch is our earliest known ancestor’s origin. Those animals call it ‘Unix time’. We have a record of their hieroglyphic form: January 1 1970”Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#526This 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
Not absolutely, it could be even more hilarious, if PM/AM switches happened at 11:00 and 23:00, not at 12:00 and 00:00. Or even better, the switch could ignore seasonal timezone shift.
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#527But what if the aliens don’t even have (don’t need) the concept of an integer, therefore no concept of prime numbers - and no need to split times of natural cycles into equal integer-sized intervals?
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does it even mean to consider Sunday the first day of the week? What does it change?
Every. Single. Calendar. If you’re in Ontario, you’ll rarely see a paper calendar that isn’t SMTWTFS
Same in Quebec.
Never heard anywhere in canada that don’t have their calendar start on Sunday but I’d be curious to find out otherwise.
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
Augustus and Julius stole a day from February so theirs' would be long ones.
February had 28 days before Julius Caesar came to power, so he and his successor couldn't have stolen a day from it.
Wait. The calendar was 10 months before Julius. Not sure there was even a February?
Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
#530This 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…
> DST
I always felt that DST was invented to prevent people from realizing that they are forced to wake up and get out of the house before dawn during the winter. It would literally alienate people from work life.