Why no base10 clock?
Comment on Everyday, as an American
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Metric yes please. Also for fucks sake use the 24 hour clock. Some of us learned it from the military but it’s just earth time and way easier than adding letters to a number
vic_rattlehead@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Inductor@feddit.de 4 months ago
base12 has the advantage of being divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while base10 is only divisible by 2 and 5.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 4 months ago
So you’re arguing in favor of feet and inches?
bluewing@lemm.ee 4 months ago
The Dozenal system does have some advantages over base10. Feel free to poke around []dozenal.org/…/brief-introduction-dozenal-counting… to learn a bit about Donzenal/Duodecimal counting and maths.
And to bring up a point, why did every nation that adopted the metric system require a law(s) to force people to use it? Complete with penalties if you don’t. If it was such a good and great idea, people would have naturally gravitated to it don’t you think?
bluewing@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Ahh, another connoisseur of the Dozenal system! Everyone should add a little dek and el to their life!
uis@lemm.ee 4 months ago
You listed 2 twice - as 2 and as 4. Generally, when talking about bases better talk only about prime factors. Base12 has 2 and 3 as prime factors, while base10 has 2 and 5.
s_s@lemm.ee 4 months ago
You don’t need to add or multiply time very often. Division is super important tho, and base60 is better than base10 for that.
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Too easy. Plus we put in the 3/5 “compromise” so you can’t expect old white racists to learn proper math
bluewing@lemm.ee 4 months ago
The French did try it back when they were in the process of changing to the metric system in the 1700s. Even THEY quickly determined that, much like the creation of the universe, it was a very bad idea. And it was very quietly dropped. French tried hard to scrub that moment of insanity from the history books. But well, the internet is truly forever in both directions I guess.
Metric time quickly got out of sync with the periods of light and dark. Mother Nature evidently doesn’t like humans dicking around with the time periods of her celestial movements. (Dozenal for the win!)
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
The 12 hour one is just so wildly dumb and inconsistent.
Why does it go from 11 AM to 12 PM to 1 PM?
letsgo@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Why would you demand metric everything and not metric time?
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Cause then we’d be thinking we’re monkeys on a spherical rock in a vacuum instead of calibrating clocks to a radioactive element to make sure everyone tunes in to wheel of fortune on time while this oblate spheroid tumbles around
Also, it’s hard enough getting people to equate Km and C with known quantities, Americans can’t handle base unit shifts like that
hellofriend@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Cause then we’d be thinking we’re monkeys on a spherical rock in a vacuum instead of calibrating clocks to a radioactive element to make sure everyone tunes in to wheel of fortune on time while this oblate spheroid tumbles around
Just a little sodium chloride
Jentu@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
If America is going to go through the trouble to convert everything to metric, might as well switch to base 10/decimal time as well lol
lobut@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I love the 24 hour clock and living in London, UK I used it all the time. However, I remember one time I bought movie tickets at lunch for 17:30 and my brain thought it was for 7:30pm and I called my friend at the last moment saying: “you have to leave work early if we’re gonna make it!”
ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 4 months ago
I switched to it in my later teens when I realised how many cases it would be better in.
Conversion during conversation might be an extra step, but I’ll be pushing for the next generation to have this by default.
Also, much better when using for file names.
Also, YYYY-MM-DD
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The conversion is pretty much the only hurdle I ever hear about, but that’s easy enough. How many songs/films talk about “if I could rewind the last 12+12 hours”…it’s just a matter of making it fit in context people can understand when they know a day is 24 but are used to 12.
ISO and while we’re at it, the NATO phonetic alphabet for English speakers. “A as in apple B as in boy” means fuck all when you’re grasping for any word that starts with that letter, and if English isn’t your first language fuckin forget about it.
ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 4 months ago
err… didn’t get what you’re trying to say
ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 4 months ago
The radio words were chosen to be distinct, such that for people who trained in them, it would be easier to distinguish letters being spoken over low quality radio.
Not very relevant in the era of 2G HD audio, and now VoLTE.
But when there’s a bad signal and you have to tell someone a callsign, it makes sense.
Anti Commercial-AI license
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
We standardized an alphabet among all countries for clear communication.
Here is an example of it going wrong.
uis@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Conversion is always extra step, but you don’t need it if you use same timezone as other participant.
linja@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Except no because the digits themselves are still big-endian. That’s nUxi.
uis@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Mixed-endian. Or how I call it - abomination-endian.