6 ms·
Minor pedantry, but this copy is mixing two different time schemes: > [peaking at 0AM] while during the day colors are lighter [peaking at 12AM] 0(0:00) is a
by smallerfish 4y ago
Minor pedantry, but this copy is mixing two different time schemes:
> [peaking at 0AM] while during the day colors are lighter [peaking at 12AM]
0(0:00) is a 24 hour clock concept, and isn't used with a 12 hour clock. Further, 12AM typically refers to midnight. So you either want {peaking at 00:00; peaking at 12:00} or {peaking at 12AM; peaking at 12PM}.
- samwillis 4y agoSee this brilliant thread by Foone: https://mobile.twitter.com/foone/status/1572260363764400129 https://mobile.twitter.com/foone/status/1572260363764400129 "Someday aliens are going to land their saucers in a field somewhere in New Jersey and everything is going to go just fine right up until we try to explain our calendar to them..."
- DoctorOW 4y agoI've seen this one before, but I highly recommend anyone in the lucky 10,000 to read this.
- tmtvl 4y agoHm, I wonder if that guy realizes that there are other languages than English in the world, and that there are different calendars in use.
- thunderbong 4y agoRelevant HN thread (989 comments, posted by, ahem, myself!) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32975173`| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32975173`|
- vehementi 4y agoNew link, now more correct! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32975173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32975173
- vlovich123 4y agoSomeday aliens are going to land their saucers in a field somewhere in New Jersey and everything is going to go just fine, especially when they too admit they haven't figured out how to keep track of time consistently.
- samstr 4y ago[dead]
- chungy 4y agoHe makes the assumption that aliens wouldn't have their own seemingly-arbitrary date and time system. Honestly it's biased for a "everyone but humans are entirely logical and never deviated" viewpoint that cheap (bad) sci-fi goes for.
- Razengan 4y agoLazy sci-fi. Every civilization except humans is unified and monolithic, or has at most maybe 2 subgroups, because it’s hard to invent thousands of years of history. And not just fiction, but science also: “Why haven’t aliens done X by now?”
- samtho 4y agoThis clearly humorous twitter thread has really nothing to do with aliens, it’s shorthand for a viewpoint we can all understand enough to get the premise.
- chungy 4y agoEh, if I tweaked the story, it'd probably drive the point home more if the aliens did have a difficult-to-learn-from-scratch system to work with too. Our scientific communities already have the homogenized forms that his hypothetical aliens would actually like.
- junon 4y agoSomeday people are going to finally learn that Foone doesn't like when people link to their Twitter from HN.
- wodenokoto 4y agoThere is no 12 am. There’s 12 noon and 12 midnight. But no 12 am or pm.
- colejohnson66 4y agoNot true. They exist, but can be confusing to some people. Because 12:01 AM is just past midnight (and 12:01 PM just past noon), 12:00 AM is midnight and 12:00 PM is noon.
- charcircuit 4y agoYes true. Midnight is not AM nor PM because it's neither ante meridiem nor post meridiem. Noon has the same issue.
- colejohnson66 4y agoYou're technically correct. Strictly speaking, yes, noon and midnight are not afternoon or after-midnight. However, that's what your digital clock will show. At 12:00:00 noon, it will say PM.
- charcircuit 4y agoDigital clocks update at a frequency and are not continuous. The chance that an update happens at exactly noon or midnight is 0%. This is why AM and PM are always shown on a digital clock.
- Dylan16807 4y agoAnd that's how real life works too. The instant that is nether AM nor PM never physically exists. As the clock hits 12, it's already past.
- aidenn0 4y agoThe fact that it's 13 hours from 11AM to 12AM is probably the strangest thing in our already bizarre system of timekeeping Like December is the twelfth month because decus is Latin for ten...
- eCa 4y ago> Like December is the twelfth month because decus is Latin for ten There also was a couple of dudes who wanted a month in their name that messed things up, IIRC..
- mfranc 4y agoIf you mean Caesar and Augustus, they are actually the reason we don't have even more badly named months, like Quintilis (July) and Sextilis (August). December was the tenth month simply because each new year started in March. This likely changed long before Caesar was even born. They also, allegedly, had only ten months, but the second king of Rome changed that, but it could also be just a legend.
- leipert 4y agoEven more pedantic: > In Japanese usage, midnight is written as 午前0時 (0:00 a.m.) and noon is written as 午後0時 (0:00 p.m.), making the hours numbered sequentially from 0 to 11 in both halves of the day. (As per Wikipedia) Can be found in the Intl.DateFormat API as well.