For some reason I heard this in a combination of the voices of Mitch Hedberg, and Nate Bargatze as George Washington.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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"At least we're not mixing in letters"
I see IIII in there and I cry a little on the inside.
This has become a standard on analog clocks and watches (presumably to avoid confusion with VI), but for some reason IX and XI (for 9 and 11 respectively) is fine.
Personally I’d like to see IX and IIIIIIIIIII.
ETA: I guess IX and XI are ‘fine’ because they’re not upside down, but my point still stands.
At least we're not mixing in letters
Zulu Time: Am I a joke to you?
If the day started at 1:00 then by the second hour you would be at 2:00, even though only 1 hour has passed. Effectively the day starts at 0. In fact in 24-hour time that is how it's depicted, 00:00 with midday being depicted as 12:00, so it isn't confusing
Careful, there are Americans around
Americans love units based on 12
If the day started at 1:00 then by the second hour you would be at 2:00, even though only 1 hour has passed.
When the second day of the month starts, the day of the month is 2, even though only 1 day has passed.
I mean, numerically it does make sense to start at zero but it doesn't seem to correspond to the way people think and talk.
Feel free to take it up with the Romans. It's their stupid calendar system.
I also take issue with there being 7 days in a week rather than 10, it's just messy.
In the roman empire the day/night cycle was divided into 24 segments. 12 for the day and 12 for the night which also meant a day hour in summer was longer than the night hour.
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It's the same logic that was used by ancient astronomers to arrive at 360 degrees for a full revolution.
The math is easier if you have to do it by hand.
You've gone 360 on me.
These are called "superior highly composite numbers" apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_number
It's also the one advantage Imperial has over metric. It's easier to do mental math in a lot of cases in base 12 rather than base 10.
Now excuse me while I bar my windows and doors from the mobs of angry people that show every time I point this out.
True, but why does volume/length/weight have to be separated? I honestly wouldn't mind a base 12 system if they were connected logically.
I should have been more precise, I was really just talking about length measurements and less so on the holy fuckshit of everything else. I, too, would be super on board with a base 12 measurement system...
If we invent it we can have 3 competing standards!
Let me jump in until the mobs show up. "Noooooo, it's just what you're used to lalala. When is dividing by thirds ever useful, anyway?".
I've also found that if you make this point without any reference to metric vs imperial, people tend to accept it.
That's a good tip. I'll keep that in mind next time this topic comes up.
Only really counts for feet and inches. But yes, having your base unit be divisible by halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, and twelths with whole numbers of sub units is highly useful when fabricating objects when you don't have access to modern tooling and supplies. In fact I would argue base 12 is the superior numerical system that was abandoned for metric and we have lost something in the meantime. Though Jan Misali might disagree with his love for sexinal.
Imperial units do have another advantage to this day, though. When talking about machining bolts and threads Imperial use threads per inch or threads per unit length while metric uses the pitch of the thread, so mm in-between threads. This decision means that when machining imperial nuts and bolts we by default pick whole numbers of threads per inch which due to the circular nature of lathes means that a simple clock dial can keep the lead screw synchronised with the head. Since metric uses pitch we pick numbers like 1.25mm pitch which does not always synchronous well with the lead screw and head and requires some odd gear ratios to cut specific threads.
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Also see this: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca
It amazingly explains all the insanities for handling dates and times.
Somebody never had a clock with roman numerals and it shows
I remember getting into an argument with a grade school teacher over IIII because most such clocks put that for 4 instead of IV because of some fuckin reason
I despise these so so much. IIII was historically NEVER correct. Some doofus decided to put that on a clock because it looks more symmetrical with the VIII on the other side. Terrible reasoning.
"However, even though it is now widely accepted that 4 must be written IV, the original and most ancient pattern for Roman numerals wasn’t the same as what we know today. Earliest models did, in fact, use VIIII for 9 (instead of IX) and IIII for 4 (instead of IV). However, these two numerals proved problematic, they were easily confused with III and VIII. Instead of the original additive notation, the Roman numeral system changed to the more familiar subtractive notation. However, this was well after the fall of the Roman Empire."
https://monochrome-watches.com/why-do-clocks-and-watches-use-roman-numeral-iiii-instead-of-iv/
IIII was the way Romans usually wrote 4. It's associated with simplicity / illiteracy. But also depended on era, region, intended audience, or practicality. I think the most famous example is the coliseum using LIIII.
There's still variation even now; standardization is relatively new, and it's not common knowledge. And dates... it's like every 50-100 years people decided to write them differently.
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The french:
Goddamn metric time
Even the French figured out that decimalized time was stupid after a couple of years.
Which has added credence to the old saying that "The French follow no one. And no one follows the French."
Why is it stupid beyond, "nobody else uses it"?
Well, beyond the sheer social resistance to the idea. Turns out everyone needs to agree it's a great idea and almost no one did. Evidently humans are wired to the base12 time format far better.
The attempt at switching to base10 time quickly fell apart when people started notice that the the "time markers" were starting to drift. And at some point they finally figured out that what we call "noon" was going drift rather quickly to not happening until evening and therefore Monday was going to move to a different spot also. This is a very bad thing. Because any kind of calendaring system needs to be as consistent as possible. Noon must happen at the same point in the day every day or as close to it as it it can mathematically get. If it drifts to fast and far, then it's a worthless marker for time. And decimal time has that problem in spades.
Now, no calendar system is perfect because the orbits of the planets in our solar system isn't perfectly consistent. Sometimes the orbit of earth is a tiny bit faster or sometimes it's a tiny bit slower. So we strive to get a close as we can but we still need to make adjustments. Turns out, all that math is really bloody hard.
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IIRC they counted the bones in their fingers using their thumb and that gives 12. The first sundial was around the equator and there is always light for half a day, so half a day becomes 12 hours.
To count large numbers often one hand was used to count using 5 fingers and the other to count the bones, so you get 5x12 for 60 minutes.
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