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On a slightly related topic I was recently thinking of how simple it is to only have to worry about one calendar in your personal and business life (the western
by walrus01 2mo ago
On a slightly related topic I was recently thinking of how simple it is to only have to worry about one calendar in your personal and business life (the western gregorian calendar). If you're an even slightly observant Muslim with an educated techincal/professional life in many parts of the historical Persian speaking world, you have three calendars to keep track of:
1) Western gregorian calendar (doing business with foreigners, international travel, banking, finance, most everything done on the Internet, etc).
2) Islamic arabic originated lunar calendar (When does Ramadan start, when is an okay time to go for hajj, when is Eid Al-Fitr, when is Eid Al-Adha, etc). This goes "backwards" 10 to 11 days per year compared to the western gregorian calendar so in different decades Ramadan might be in the middle of summer, or middle of winter.
3) Persian solar calendar for new year observances like Nowruz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz , and generally persian-related cultural things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Hijri_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Hijri_calendar
But wait, there's more! Let's say you live in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan or that region and you do business with Russians. You might have to think about when the Russians are on vacation and businesses are closed, because they're taking holidays and religious observances based on the eastern orthodox calendar. Basically all the same problem as trying to get business things done in the UK on a UK standard "Bank Holdiay". Their Christmas is not the same as the western Gregorian calendar Christmas...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_liturgical_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_liturgical_ca...
- tacostakohashi 2mo agoIt depends what kind of business... there are all sorts of weird and wonderful accounting / financial calendar inventions like the 4-4-5 calendar, fiscal years ending in June, bond day count conventions like 30/360, etc. I do take your point though. I've always found it quite surprising just how universal various arbitrary/western things are like, as you say, the western gregorian calendar, seconds/minutes/hours, SI units for measurement. In a world with so many unintelligible languages and disagreements, you'd think there would be more folks out there doing, I dunno, a 10 day week, or some non-hour/minute system, etc.
- us-merul 2mo agoThe French tried this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar
- walrus01 2mo agoI wonder what they would have thought of swatch internet time.
- walrus01 2mo agoIt's the year 2083 in Nepal right now.
- MXfiveTH 2mo agoIt’s 2569 here in Thailand. Used on basically everything official and often more as on many sites, apps, etc, switching the language between English and Thai will alternate between the Thai year and Georgian year.
- mauvehaus 2mo agoMy partner's place of employment has a fiscal year ending June 30th and a use-it-or-lose-it vacation policy. We are hikers who live in the northeastern United States, which means we're inevitably planning a backpacking trip to use up her remaining vacation at the height of black fly[0] season. We did a three week thru-hike of the Long Trail in 2022. We had shelters almost entirely to ourselves north of the AT/LT split at the Inn[1] because nobody hikes the LT in June/July if they can avoid it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_fly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_fly [1] https://innatlongtrail.com/ https://innatlongtrail.com/
- goodmythical 2mo agoDoes the policy somehow preclude you from using the remaining days before the beginning of June or end of May? Seems easy enough to dodge if it's not the case that the relative privacy outweighs the flys.
- operation_moose 2mo agoEven on 1), the first day of the week being Sunday (US) and Monday (Europe) screws me up constantly, as someone who is in both worlds now. I often pick the wrong date for meetings because I'm assuming next Monday will be in the first column, not the second. As dumb and simple as it is, when something has been drilled into you since about age 3 its tough to get in the habit of double checking it when it starts becoming inconsistent.
- CatMustard 2mo agoThis is one of the most annoying ones to me. I recently almost booked a pair of ~2000 euro return flights for the completely wrong dates because the booking site decided to (despite knowing our location and correctly setting currency, currency formatting and language) show it's date picker starting with Sundays. Only caught when I did a last sanity check before I clicked the pay button.
- Mtinie 2mo agoThat’s illuminating. I was born and have lived in the U.S. my entire life. If you asked me what the first day of the week was, I would immediately respond with “Monday”. I’m going to mull this one over a bit more to figure out where my social education went wrong!
- lbotos 2mo agoIm in the US and I’d say the week starts on monday but calendar interfaces display a sunday first. https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=2026&country=9 https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=2026&country=9 Toggle the calendars here and you’ll see it.
- Mtinie 2mo agoOh, I agree that’s the case, and I’ve noticed it over the years, but never thought deeply on it other than “that’s an annoying preset”
- goodmythical 2mo ago
- kwar13 2mo agohttps://www.anycalendar.io/ https://www.anycalendar.io/
- walrus01 2mo agoI like how unix time and the mayan calendar are next to each other.
- BrtByte 2mo agoThe hard part isn't converting dates, it's remembering which calendar is socially relevant in which context
- elfly 2mo agoRespect to 2, don't you just look up at the start of the (gregorian) year when stuff is? I mostly do that in my country just to check when the holy friday holiday is, a few saint holidays, a couple of celebrations for the virgin mary, etc. Like, I know Easter follows a weird lunar calendar but I don't really calculate it.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- rmunn 2mo agoI'm just grateful that one calendar became the international standard, otherwise the combinatorial explosion would have been even worse. Imagine having to track not just one or two local calendars plus one international one, but the half-dozen different calendars of each of the countries you do business with. "Let's see, the French calendar has their new year's date on Charlemagne's birthday, the German one dates their new year on Bismarck's birthday, Switzerland follows the Gregorian calendar, but Luxembourg never signed onto the Gregorian calendar and they follow the Julian calendar so they're 11 days behind. No, wait, it's up to 13 days behind by now... or was it 14? Darn, I gotta go check again." I'm just really glad that that's not what happened, and that we ended up with just one international calendar. So that even in countries that don't use it for religious holidays, there's still only two or three (usually two) calendars to track. Which is confusing, but way less confusing than having to track dozens of them.
- gondo 2mo agoOr keeping track of national holidays if you manage a remote team in Europe.