949
submitted 1 year ago by MobileTechGuy@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Squirrel@thelemmy.club 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Why hasn't the Metric world found a better way? I want a clock based around multiples of 10, dammit!

[-] mlfh@lemmy.ml 78 points 1 year ago

One benefit of base 12 and base 60 over base 10 for everyday use with things like time is simple factorization. You can divide 12 hours evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths, and 60 minutes evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc. With base 10, you've just got halves and fifths.

[-] kvn@midwest.social 25 points 1 year ago

Another benefit of base 12 is that you can count to 12 easily with one hand by using your thumb to count each of the 3 segments on your 4 fingers.

I learned that on that other website prior to the great migration and it blew my mind then.

[-] Gork@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

tries it

Whoa. Dude that's super useful.

[-] nailbar@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm trying to think of a situation where I need to count to 12 on one hand 🤔

This would be useful if I was used to counting with base 12.

[-] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

When ordering twelve beers

[-] SeaJ@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Pros scale that up to base 60 by counting to 12 and using the other hand to count how many times they have counted to 12.

[-] sxan@midwest.social -3 points 1 year ago

Thems rookie numbers. You can get to 144 using the twelve segments on each hand.

[-] SeaJ@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

God tier is throwing your toes into the mix.

[-] static_motion@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Wait until you find out that binary counting allows you to count to 31 with one hand.

[-] mlfh@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

That is so cool! Thanks for the tip

[-] Squirrel@thelemmy.club 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I know all about that, but I don't think we'll convince people to change everything to base 12, so let's go with a base 10 clock.

[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 25 points 1 year ago

A base-10 unit circle would be abhorrent. 1/2 of a circle is an important concept, but 1/5th and 1/10th of a circle are rarely used in geometry or trigonometry. Meanwhile, a right angle (1/4 of a circle) would require an ugly fraction, and the angle of an equilateral triangle (1/6th) would require a repeating decimal.

Think of 12-hour clocks and 360-degree circles as paper bags. When we're fucking with angular concepts, you do not want to take those bags off Decimal's head.

[-] Andrew15_5@mander.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

I just want everything to be switched to 24 instead of 12. Why everyone want to complicate things?

[-] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Switch everything to Base24?! Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!

[-] Andrew15_5@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Do we have base12? I know only base64 and maybe base32.

[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I see what you did there and it’s very funny.

[-] Andrew15_5@mander.xyz 0 points 1 year ago

I didn't put in a secret punchline. It's a genuine thought. What do you think I did?

[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Well, I thought I was replying to squirrel, but they say we’ll never get everyone to use base 12 systems so we had better just go to base 10…

When the entire sae/imperial/whatever is either base 12 or divisible by it already.

There’s already a perfectly good base 12 system in everyday use, but we’ll never get anyone to accept that so we gotta accept inferior base 10. See the joke?

[-] Andrew15_5@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, so you just replied to the wrong guy? Ok then.

Yeah, I understood that joke.

[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

i'm reading here on .ml and it looks like my reply was to squirrel and then you replied to me. what are you seeing?

[-] Andrew15_5@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hold on. I did get notification with your comment, but... hmm... Since we both replied to the same guy, the app thought that it's logical to send notification about "adjacent/neighbor" reply. I thought that notifications are only about direct replies. Strange. Yes, you did not replied to me. Oopsy. :)

P.S. I'm currently using Liftoff.

[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

that's crazy. over here on the .ml webui deep in the weeds comments dont expand right. excited to see what kind of api call sanitization ends pu getting implemented to make instances talking to each other and to clients end up getting implemented.

[-] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 year ago

Because base ten sucks for practical use and anything that needs division.

[-] exu@feditown.com 10 points 1 year ago
[-] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

"It's hex'o clock somewhere 😉"

[-] mlc894@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Some people briefly tried that during the French Revolution, but it never caught on.

[-] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was called the French Republican Calendar. Didn’t last very long.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

[-] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

That's extremely elegant. Plus if you have days of rest every first, fifth and tenth day of the week then you have 3 or 4 days of work in a row at a time (of course im sure at the time they were far more stingy with days of rest)

[-] hglman@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time?wprov=sfla1

The French tried at the same time they adopted the rest of the metric system but it just didnt offer much advantage vs changing out clocks.

With digital clocks it would be simpler now.

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
949 points (95.9% liked)

Memes

45890 readers
1367 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS