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If not for religious groups, we could have had World Calendar and all this would be unnecessary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar https://en.m.wik

If not for religious groups, we could have had World Calendar and all this would be unnecessary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar.

heyoni 7y ago
Yea nope. Leap days not having a weekday? How would that even work?
- Rerarom 7y ago
  Simple - they don't have a weekday :)
- GavinMcG 7y ago
  Instead of just dumping the first thought that comes through your head on us, could you explain why you think it wouldn't work? What issues do you see arising? It seems to me we go through life with little exceptional circumstances all the time, and go right back to normal pretty easily. Is it that hard to imagine having a holiday not disrupting the weekly rhythm of your life? For example, there's a group I go to every Wednesday. But since Christmas and New Year's are both Wednesdays, it's being skipped two weeks in a row. On the other hand, if Christmas and New Year's "didn't count" then we could carry on without changing the schedule, getting in the way of other standing plans, etc.
  - heyoni 7y ago
    Because that's all I've got and I haven't really given it much more thought than my initial gut reaction. It just seems infinitely bizarre not to have a weekday, and writing about it now seems like it would make synchronizing and automation hell with a day like that.
    - Rerarom 7y ago
      There's more to life than synchronizing and automation.
      - heyoni 7y ago
        That's the least warranted, holier than though sentence I've ever read here on HN. I don't even know where to begin to pick this apart. It's not about enabling automation in the factory making sense, it's about keeping order in our minds and in our software...and having an "oopsie" blank day with no way to logically derive will do more to fuck with your intuition about time and calendars than having everything else around it neatly fit. Even something as simple as counting days on your hands will become wholly unintuitive because you now have to consider something worse than an edge-case. But go ahead, make this about how narrow-minded my view on life is. Arguments like this are why wishy-washy calendar ideas like the one being proposed got blown to bits and relegated to a single page wikipedia article barely worth the occasional mention.
        Rerarom 7y ago
        Come on, I don't disagree with you. But when I was a kid and I first found out about calendar proposals with blank days it all seemed magical to me and it just seems weird to me (with regard to this topic) to think about practicalities.
        GavinMcG 7y ago
        How on earth is it impossible to logically derive a Leap Day every four years in a consistent spot, especially compared to any other calendaring we already do?
- rhizome 7y ago
  Every once in a while there would be a day called Leap Day.
whiddershins 7y ago
We not just have 13 months of 28 days each? This would make the days of the week always cycle synchronously with the days of the month. Then you have one day left over for New Years and that extra Leap Day every 4 years that your linked calendar proposes. If you are going to redo something like a calendar, ending up still having different length months and weeks that drift against them seems like a non-victory.
- hu3 7y ago
  Your's is a much simpler calendar than the others I've seen proposed. It's also so obvious. Not sure how I missed it. I'm stealing the idea. It shall be named whiddershins' calendar.
  - azhenley 7y ago
    It’s already named the International Fixed Calendar :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
  - triclops200 7y ago
    It's been proposed before, see: International Fixed Calendar
- ixwt 7y ago
  The primary reason is that 13 is prime. 12 is a better number in this case for a few reasons. 12 is what we already have. So nothing would have to change in that regard. We could keep the names as they are, despite the fact they are out of order as it is. I used to think the same way, but after seeing this calendar, it would be easier to integrate this into what we currently have, just the amount of days have changed. And, this calendar would work well with businesses. Most businesses are based on quarters. Not that it is significantly more difficult to track 13 weeks (they would be static after all), the pushback would be less, arguably. And the world calendar is cyclical, just on a quarterly scale, rather than a monthly scale. I'd argue the monthly cycle makes more sense. But the math of the Earth's rotation doesn't make for a nice calendar. I feel the world calendar would be easier to integrate, and a little nicer (I am a huge advocate for base 12 anyway, that's always been a big hangup for me for the international fixed calendar).
shwoopdiwoop 7y ago
Starting the week on a Sunday seems to be a very american centric view for a ‘World’ Calendar. I get that it has to start on _a_ day but don’t see how a consensus could be reached here.
- hu3 7y ago
  Not to mention that the ISO says Monday is day 1 of the week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
  - IgorPartola 7y ago
    But what is day 0? :)
chrisseaton 7y ago
Why does the week start on a Sunday in that calendar?
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  In some countries Sunday is considered the first day of the week, which is quite strange for me, as here it's Monday. Do Americans, for example, feel like "a new week has started" on Sunday morning? For me Saturday and Sunday feel as one block, it's weird to imagine a separation in there. But perhaps someone who grows up with that calendar feels like Saturday is end-of-the-week winding down, and Sunday is a start-of-the-fresh-week "warmup" day.
  - vinay427 7y ago
    American and even I've never understood why Sunday is considered the first day on some calendars. It has always, in my experience, been considered a weekend day and you would think that the "weekend" is at the end of the week, and Monday has long been the default start of a work or school week.
irrational 7y ago
If not for people, we could have had a World Calendar? A majority of the earth’s population are religious, so you can pretty easily substitute people for religious groups.
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  The point is that specific religious groups opposed it because it would break the seven day cycle of worship, leaving room for the Devil (insert evil laugh here). Reasonable people pointed out that it would leave people with the choice to worship on an extra holiday, but religion and personal choice don’t get along so in the end religious zealots won out.
  - env123 7y ago
    A majority of the earth’s population say they are religious, for cultural/social/safety reasons. The point is that specific religious leaders would oppose it because it would stop them from controlling the population. I doubt there are religious zealots in this age and era.
bmn__ 7y ago
Dominus calendar https://blog.plover.com/calendar/leapday.html https://blog.plover.com/calendar/leapday.html

If not for religious groups, we could have had World Calendar and all this would be unnecessary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar.

heyoni 7y ago

Yea nope. Leap days not having a weekday? How would that even work?

Rerarom 7y ago
Simple - they don't have a weekday :)
GavinMcG 7y ago
Instead of just dumping the first thought that comes through your head on us, could you explain why you think it wouldn't work? What issues do you see arising? It seems to me we go through life with little exceptional circumstances all the time, and go right back to normal pretty easily. Is it that hard to imagine having a holiday not disrupting the weekly rhythm of your life? For example, there's a group I go to every Wednesday. But since Christmas and New Year's are both Wednesdays, it's being skipped two weeks in a row. On the other hand, if Christmas and New Year's "didn't count" then we could carry on without changing the schedule, getting in the way of other standing plans, etc.
- heyoni 7y ago
  Because that's all I've got and I haven't really given it much more thought than my initial gut reaction. It just seems infinitely bizarre not to have a weekday, and writing about it now seems like it would make synchronizing and automation hell with a day like that.
  - Rerarom 7y ago
    There's more to life than synchronizing and automation.
    - heyoni 7y ago
      That's the least warranted, holier than though sentence I've ever read here on HN. I don't even know where to begin to pick this apart. It's not about enabling automation in the factory making sense, it's about keeping order in our minds and in our software...and having an "oopsie" blank day with no way to logically derive will do more to fuck with your intuition about time and calendars than having everything else around it neatly fit. Even something as simple as counting days on your hands will become wholly unintuitive because you now have to consider something worse than an edge-case. But go ahead, make this about how narrow-minded my view on life is. Arguments like this are why wishy-washy calendar ideas like the one being proposed got blown to bits and relegated to a single page wikipedia article barely worth the occasional mention.
      - Rerarom 7y ago
        Come on, I don't disagree with you. But when I was a kid and I first found out about calendar proposals with blank days it all seemed magical to me and it just seems weird to me (with regard to this topic) to think about practicalities.
      - GavinMcG 7y ago
        How on earth is it impossible to logically derive a Leap Day every four years in a consistent spot, especially compared to any other calendaring we already do?
rhizome 7y ago
Every once in a while there would be a day called Leap Day.

whiddershins 7y ago

We not just have 13 months of 28 days each? This would make the days of the week always cycle synchronously with the days of the month. Then you have one day left over for New Years and that extra Leap Day every 4 years that your linked calendar proposes. If you are going to redo something like a calendar, ending up still having different length months and weeks that drift against them seems like a non-victory.

hu3 7y ago
Your's is a much simpler calendar than the others I've seen proposed. It's also so obvious. Not sure how I missed it. I'm stealing the idea. It shall be named whiddershins' calendar.
- azhenley 7y ago
  It’s already named the International Fixed Calendar :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
- triclops200 7y ago
  It's been proposed before, see: International Fixed Calendar
ixwt 7y ago
The primary reason is that 13 is prime. 12 is a better number in this case for a few reasons. 12 is what we already have. So nothing would have to change in that regard. We could keep the names as they are, despite the fact they are out of order as it is. I used to think the same way, but after seeing this calendar, it would be easier to integrate this into what we currently have, just the amount of days have changed. And, this calendar would work well with businesses. Most businesses are based on quarters. Not that it is significantly more difficult to track 13 weeks (they would be static after all), the pushback would be less, arguably. And the world calendar is cyclical, just on a quarterly scale, rather than a monthly scale. I'd argue the monthly cycle makes more sense. But the math of the Earth's rotation doesn't make for a nice calendar. I feel the world calendar would be easier to integrate, and a little nicer (I am a huge advocate for base 12 anyway, that's always been a big hangup for me for the international fixed calendar).

shwoopdiwoop 7y ago

Starting the week on a Sunday seems to be a very american centric view for a ‘World’ Calendar. I get that it has to start on _a_ day but don’t see how a consensus could be reached here.

hu3 7y ago
Not to mention that the ISO says Monday is day 1 of the week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  But what is day 0? :)

chrisseaton 7y ago

Why does the week start on a Sunday in that calendar?

bonoboTP 7y ago
In some countries Sunday is considered the first day of the week, which is quite strange for me, as here it's Monday. Do Americans, for example, feel like "a new week has started" on Sunday morning? For me Saturday and Sunday feel as one block, it's weird to imagine a separation in there. But perhaps someone who grows up with that calendar feels like Saturday is end-of-the-week winding down, and Sunday is a start-of-the-fresh-week "warmup" day.
- vinay427 7y ago
  American and even I've never understood why Sunday is considered the first day on some calendars. It has always, in my experience, been considered a weekend day and you would think that the "weekend" is at the end of the week, and Monday has long been the default start of a work or school week.

irrational 7y ago

If not for people, we could have had a World Calendar? A majority of the earth’s population are religious, so you can pretty easily substitute people for religious groups.

IgorPartola 7y ago
The point is that specific religious groups opposed it because it would break the seven day cycle of worship, leaving room for the Devil (insert evil laugh here). Reasonable people pointed out that it would leave people with the choice to worship on an extra holiday, but religion and personal choice don’t get along so in the end religious zealots won out.
- env123 7y ago
  A majority of the earth’s population say they are religious, for cultural/social/safety reasons. The point is that specific religious leaders would oppose it because it would stop them from controlling the population. I doubt there are religious zealots in this age and era.

bmn__ 7y ago

Dominus calendar https://blog.plover.com/calendar/leapday.html https://blog.plover.com/calendar/leapday.html