Why Don't We Have Metric Time? | Answers With Joe

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The metric system revolutionized the world and simplified how we measure things. But one part of our lives never quite got the metric treatment - time. The reason why highlights the importance of time on our lives.
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[@dx1450]

In Europe, Miles Davis is known as Kilometers Davis.

[@josephburchanowski4636]

So wait. does that mean if I recommend the Robert Miles youtube channel on AI safety; I have to say Robert Kilometer instead?

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

Around the last third of the video, Joe also mistakenly uses the Imperial term for the obviously correct kilometerstone.

[@consideringorthodoxy5495]

@@davidanderson_surrey_bc I think i have seen two separate articles defending the imperial system for its literary importance.

[@PlanetEarth3141]

Kilometers didn't sell a single unit of jazz music.

[@dx1450]

@@PlanetEarth3141 You mean metric units or imperial units?

[@robomatt101]

“The kilogram is shrinking” (Pulls out eyelash and sets it on top) “Fixed it!”

[@matheussanthiago9685]

''and who are you, who is so wise in the ways of science?''

[@palleppalsson]

@@matheussanthiago9685 a newt?

[@grandetaco4416]

what gets me about this thing losing weight, is it may have not been the weight itself that changed. It could be the magma flow in the earth. The height above sea level or the speed at which the earth spins or the mass of buildings added to the neighborhood near by. Weight is too relative.

[@mikalrage7316]

@@grandetaco4416 Don’t blame me! I voted to not change the Earth’s rotation speed.

[@sanityassassin8161]

The *eyelash* is shrinking! (When will it ever end!)

[@LittleBallOfPurr]

If we just made years half as long, we could double life expectancy

[@tommeakin1732]

You have a promising career in politics ahead of you

[@jacobfitz6872]

You must work at NASA

[@holidayfish]

if we just made hours half as long, we could have twice as much free time after work

[@whythelongface64]

@@holidayfish Capitalists: Write that down! Write that down! Edit: admittedly, it would double work hours too but hey... It's a joke, I shouldn't overthink it.

[@Rorydr_Tv]

Lol

[@robertsparks3685]

Some trivia on this topic that you might like: Clockwise is the direction that a shadow moves around a stick stuck upright in the ground in the northern hemisphere. The theoretical circle traced out by the shadow can be easily divided into 12 sections with a compass. But dividing a circle into 5 or ten is not nearly as easy. Cheers.

[@marcellkiss-redey8451]

Also: at solar noon, the sun shines from exactly south - hence, in Hungarian, the word for south and the word for noon is the same ("dél"), while the word for north ("észak") is similar to the word for night ("éjszaka").

[@tatianaes3354]

It is easier to split a circle into 8 parts rather than 12. The compass aid including, as there we have the north, east, south and west and four in-betweens. Or, if we like it so, we can split it even further into 16 parts.

[@Cvjkncfxcccfdd]

Base 12 is far superior to base 10. However, unfortunately, math uses base 10.

[@martaborkowska8168]

@@marcellkiss-redey8451 that's do cool! Its very similar in Polish, south means literally "noon" (same word for both) and north is "midnight"

[@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk]

Calling a 10 hour clock "metric" is stupid, because having it 10 hours means redefining how many minutes an hour has - or worse: redefining how long a second is. *For all intents and purposes, a 12/24 hour time **_is_** Metric time, because it's measuring time in seconds - an SI unit.* Making the 10/20 hours clock doesn't make it "metric"; that's just decimalization. The Metric system is not (strictly) all about decimalization. Edit: BTW, minutes, hours and days are considered "metric accepted".

[@paulbland5625]

A funny thing happened on my way to work one day, many years ago. I worked in a clock making factory, owned by my father. One morning on my way to work, I was listening to the radio in my car, and the topic of metric time was the conversation. I must have come in to the show some time in the conversation. I heard, that we will have 20 hours per day, so many days per month and so on. I was on to this, and as soon as I arrived at work, with this new information ready to blurt out of my mouth in excitement. Dad was having a chat with the other workers, when all of a sudden, I expelled this new found information to the group. Dad, did you hear, that we are converting to metric time. We should jump on this straight away. We need to work out the gearing for the clock movements. Silence took over the room. A glare from my captive audience. Dad looking amused at what had just taken place, and calling me out for being an idiot. Do you know what day it is? Me, Dumb founded, Monday! Dad, it the 1st of April! April fools day! Me, red faced and about the size of a mouse.

[@dsdy1205]

and tomorrow you get to celebrate its anniversary!

[@olsmokey]

Some years ago I used to write articles for a music magazine and for one April edition I wrote about the new metric keyboard that had 10 notes per octave and even showed a picture of one of the new keyboards. I was amazed at the number of people who contacted me during that month after further details - people in the music industry who really should have known better.

[@krixpop]

"Dad looking amused at what had just taken place" thinking, ...I should have just tell her "honey, I too tired now... love you, 'night"

[@johntracy72]

That was a really good April Fools prank.

[@honderdzeventien]

@@olsmokey 10 notes per octave? You're cracking me up!! And they called for further details? LOL Did none of them ask why they wouldn't be called "dectaves"? I'd like to see that picture though, you made me curious

[@helanesteinmuller9279]

My dad was a watchmaker with a wicked sense of humour that belied his shy demeanour. When Australia adopted the metric system in 1974, my father joked with everyone at church that if they came in to his shop that week, he would give them 10% off their new metric watches. He was mortified when at least half the congregation turned up that week (including the pastor).🥴

[@crsmith6226]

Task failed successfully?

[@glen1arthur]

: ) hehe

[@azmanabdula]

"my father joked with everyone at church" Church goers are serious people *Perhaps the worst place to tell a joke*

[@austenhead5303]

@@azmanabdula Serious, highly gullible people.

[@azmanabdula]

@@austenhead5303 half half Either easily persuaded or are out to do just that

[@jerrylong381]

My father had a saying that says a lot about a persons work life. "Always remember that you are selling what you can't buy, and you don't know how much you have." I miss you Dad.

[@monad_tcp]

I realized that, and stopped having a job, better work for myself.

[@ncuco]

@@monad_tcp me too, now I do Crack instead

[@damonedwards1544]

@@ncuco This isn't a crack house, It's a crack home.

[@TheB0sss]

About the whole Unix time thing you talked about around 15:00. I would say it's niche in the sense that a lot of people don't know about it. But Unix time is used in all of your devices, every single app on your phone. All of it is Unix time. I'd say it's by far the most commonly used time measurement right now. It's just that it displays it to us in human readable format

[@GH-oi2jf]

The clock in my truck has no external connection, so I doubt that is Unix time. More likely, it’s just a clock chip somewhere.

[@ericw.1620]

@@GH-oi2jf your ECU probably uses Unix time :)

[@AwfulnewsFM]

​@@GH-oi2jfthey come synced to Unix time from the factory. All chips come synced with Unix time from the factory

[@TheSanpletext]

Was about to say this (I was only a year late). Epoch is FAR from niche, it's used in almost everywhere because it's standard and every language can convert it to HR time.

[@UnabashedOops]

It is exceedingly likely that you program your truck clock to a specific day and time and it stores it in seconds since 1/1/70.

[@jasongreen1056]

I love that you called time “mile markers” in a metric video. Well played.

[@Ravi_Raj_Gupta]

Rest of the world: Milestones in life. US: hehehehe.

[@andreassundberg5636]

In scandinavia we use "mil" which is 10 kilometers. Its often wrongly translated into mile though which confuses everyone.

[@dctatt]

@@andreassundberg5636 In the US, a mil is 0.001 inches (or 25.4 micrometers). It's sometimes mistaken as an abbreviation of millimeter.

[@machalot]

@@andreassundberg5636 I learned about the mil by playing Digital Combat Sim and flying the AJS-37 Viggen module.

[@LarsRyeJeppesen]

@@andreassundberg5636 No we don't. Only swedes do that.

[@Frolkinator]

"If you could not take it as a personal attack" So, i took that very personally, i feel quite attacked.

[@brechtstroobant9879]

*Angry comment to your comment*

[@crackedemerald4930]

I am angry too

[@ejoshuamc]

i know is silly, but i also feel a bit angry

[@bboutwell69]

@@brechtstroobant9879 angry comment to your angry comment. Wait. I forget which side I’m on. Nevermind

[@mikalrage7316]

Whatabout that comment YOU made that offended someone else on the internet?! “Double Standard Hypocrisy” must be your middle names! 😂🤣😂🤣

[@puellanivis]

I was actually working in some software dev work at my university during the year 2000. I actually had to fix a bug in some code, because it had the every 4, except every 100, but not the except every 400. It wasn’t a big code change, and was pretty easy, but it did require me to read and understand all about leap year maths.

[@jeffwells1255]

I must be a genius by comparison to most programmers during the Y2K problem, because my software planned for it starting around 1980 and I just laughed at all the fools who didn't think of it from the beginning!

[@ibnorml]

A point of trivia: When the IBM PC came out, IBM designed the computer clock circuit to work the same as their mainframe computers, so they chose to start their PC clock on Jan 1, 1900. 1900 was not a leap year, making the circuitry in the chip more complicated. When Apple produced their first computers, they designed their clock circuitry to start on January 1, 1904. This meant that the circuitry was simpler and cheaper, because every 4 years from 1904 through 2096 are leap years. If your old Mac is still working during year 2100, it will not be able to display Feb 29, 2100 correctly (unless Apple fixes it via software). And that is also why Microsoft Excel for the PC starts at date 1/1/1900 and Microsoft Excel for the Mac starts at date 1/1/1904.

[@ibnorml]

@@jeffwells1255 Just a point, the Y2K problem was created by two things: 1) RAM and storage space was EXTREMELY expensive back when computers were first made, and programmers spent an extreme amount of time optimising programs to take up the least amount of RAM and space, and to run on the least amount of CPU cycles in order to to save money (back then, computer processing was MUCH MORE expensive than labor costs), and 2) most of these programs were not expected to still be in use in the year 2000.

[@mac_lak]

@@ibnorml You forgot also to say that customers often complained about having 4 digits for the year, while they were used to use only two when handwriting... Also, most displays were pure text displays (i.e. fixed number of characters on screen, often 80x25 or 80x50 characters). Same for printers, very often limited to 80 characters wide, sometimes 120 when using "condensed" fonts. Therefore, "wasting" (irony inside...) 2 columns for an "useless" information was considered as a bad thing to do. But the digits, printed with graphical dots using TrueType fonts and followed by a currency symbol, located at the botton of the numerous Y2K bills changed this mentality A LOT. Hopefully, the Y10k won't be a thing, but we may laugh a lot in 2038 (only 17 years left!) when 32 bits Unix timestamps will reach their limit and loop back to 1970 *_OR_* 1902, depending how negative numbers are dealed... 😁

[@nvsv_wintersport]

@@mac_lak I've worked with software where they took out the century again, maybe even just where the year was visible, just because people wanted the old format back. These people probably still use the old green terminals...

[@danejohannescaldwell7999]

One of the challenges of metric time is that it is inconvenient for shift work. You can divide 24 hours evenly into 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 12 parts, which works very well if you have 3 shifts (8 hours each) or 4 (6 hours each). Metric time can only be divided into 2 or 5 parts unless you use fractional hours.

[@ravensblade]

The only real problem is division by 3 and 6. Dividing by 4 and 8 is not a problem. It's as hard as dividing 10kg into 4 parts - it's simply 2,5kg.

[@arthurclement8656]

Well I would argue that in a perfect world we would count in base 12, but that would be hard to implement today

[@boggless2771]

hence the 12 inches in a foot. divisible by 2 3 4 6

[@ravensblade]

@@arthurclement8656 There is actually little gain of using base 12 over base 10. In base 12 there is problem when dividing by 5 (and 10) that are also common dividers. So you basically exchange one for another and there is no actual gain. You choose what you can write - 1/3 or 1/5. Base 30 would be the closest one with actual gain - additional prime divider. And that actually don't matter as in modern world for calculation we use computer swhich use base 2 - even worse (and probably the worst base system) as there is only 2 prime dividers and both 1/3 and 1/5 would result in infinite sequence of digits. And as seen above for actual mathematics there is no problem writing various fraction of 3 using base 10.

[@Nazuiko]

@@ravensblade ... but 1/5 of 12 is just 2.4. Thats still a finite, rational number. 1/3 of 10 is not rational or convenient. 1/5 of 16 is almost identical to 1/3 of 10; 3.2 vs 3.33333333333 except one is far more precise.

[@Zorgongola]

Hi Joe, I've been a subscriber with you for while now, it's great to see you mention the Kibble balance mainly because I was part of the team that worked on it from 1991 to 2000 under the guidance of Bryan Kibble. Our main focus for years was in eliminating noise from the experiment, not just acoustic, but also electromagnetic and thermal, the level of precision was incredible. This was at the National Physical Laboratory in England, the same place that Barnes Wallace developed the bouncing bomb during WW2 , and where packet switching was invented. Thank you for including it here.

[@leifjenkinson4039]

It is so cool to hear this from you. Thanks!

[@Six_Gorillion]

Yea thats way simpler than going to a place with a block of steel to check if your kg is still a kg.

[@a2falcone]

Imagine your birthday always being on mondays in the Hanke-Herny calendar.

[@lePoMo]

Nice point. This may be the best reason against a metric calendar I have heard yet

[@Delgen1951]

the best and worst day of the week.

[@mammutMK2]

The weekend is getting closer

[@a2falcone]

@@mammutMK2 But so is on all the other work days.

[@NICEFINENEWROBOT]

@@a2falcone It's the change. The weekend is getting closer a g a i n.

[@ryanm7263]

The frustrating thing about time is that it keeps slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future.

[@irw4350]

the best answer on here

[@lybri5490]

I dare anyone to read that and not sing it too

[@ChristopherRolls]

Time is the past.

[@kv3g]

Well so just fly like an eagle. problem solved.

[@davej9228]

Careful ,that might be a copyright infringement.

[@martian_yearz9412]

i appreciate the plug for "days sober", im 2 yrs clean off of heroin. I am currently in college at 30 and majoring in engineering and love your channel just a little bit more now Joe! Knowledge has truly changed my outlook on life and goals for my own. #spacefish

[@seanaugagnon6383]

Right there with you man. Off H for 15 months.

[@Nehmo]

So are you on methadone or buprenorphine (Suboxone brand name), or are you completely clean?

[@Nehmo]

@@seanaugagnon6383 I'll give you the same question I gave Martian_Yearz. Are you on methadone or buprenorphine (Suboxone brand name), or are you completely clean?

[@lijohnyoutube101]

@@Nehmo I think these questions just seek to demean others. What medications a team of medical staff has determined has or has not determined for them to be appropriate is zero of your business.

[@Nehmo]

@@lijohnyoutube101 This is a discussion about such drugs, and my question is relevant. I, personally, don't care, and, beyond the screen name, I don't even know who the person is.

[@detritus23]

Also, traditionally when a new king was enthroned, the units of length were restandardized. Thus, restandardizing a measurement system after a revolution made a certain sense.

[@shadowcween7890]

should've made it dozenal rather than decimal

[@graham1034]

@@shadowcween7890 I'd be cool with a binary system or hexadecimal. Baring those choices then dozenal is a good one though. Of course we'd probably want to change our daily math system for clarity.

[@detritus23]

@@shadowcween7890 I think you meant “the dodecimal system.”

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

You'd think that after removing a bad king from power, instead of removing his head, you'd remove his feet. Then he'd have to suffer the rest of his life watching his kingdom operate according to his successor's foot-length. Especially humiliating if that foot was noticeably longer -- wink wink.

[@allangibson2408]

France didn’t have a national standard for weights and measures until the metric system came in.

[@Applemangh]

I always thought it was because 12 is so conveniently divisible, so you can split the time on a clock into a lot of different sized chunks for scheduling, without breaking into individual hours. And when you do have to break apart hours 60 (a multiple of 12) can also be neatly subdivisided based on need.

[@PhilipKaskela]

Base 12 makes a lot more sense than base 10, except that we have ten fingers. Otherwise, I bet we would have evolved to use it for everything, including the metric system (a gross meter vs centimeter)

[@1985ThePedro]

@@PhilipKaskela The issue though with base 12 is that it doesn't convert well into the standard Arabic numerals system that is used all over the world (because that's a base-10 setup). Now the old Sumerian system of base-60 definitely had significant advantages for complex mathematics, but it seems that asking modern man to memorize a base-60 system is a bit much. For some reason.

[@19Szabolcs91]

12 is such a nice convenient number, being divisible by 3 and 4. We kinda sorta counted some things in a base-12 system, I mean we still use the word "a dozen", meaning of 12 of something. And in many languages (including English) we have unique words for 11 and 12.

[@ssokolow]

@@1985ThePedro Babylonian cuneiform numbering didn't simply have 60 symbols. It was more like Hangul in that each digit was composed from smaller marks. Here's what Wikipedia's Sexagesimal page has to say about it: "The sexagesimal system as used in ancient Mesopotamia was not a pure base-60 system, in the sense that it did not use 60 distinct symbols for its digits. Instead, the cuneiform digits used ten as a sub-base in the fashion of a sign-value notation: a sexagesimal digit was composed of a group of narrow, wedge-shaped marks representing units up to nine and a group of wide, wedge-shaped marks representing up to five tens. The value of the digit was the sum of the values of its component parts:" "Numbers larger than 59 were indicated by multiple symbol blocks of this form in place value notation."

[@1985ThePedro]

@@ssokolow That's a good point. It isn't that it was exactly a base-60 system when you were only considering numbers below 60, but more that if you had a larger value you would end up with less places than in the Arabic Numeral system commonly used today. The Arabic Numeral system is also far superior to the Roman Numeral system for most number. Even though a number like 10 takes two digits for Arabic but only 1 symbol for Roman, most numbers in between become pretty labor intensive. And the math is also often labor intensive, even though it can be done by someone who is less mathematically literate. The Babylonian system, with a value of 60 in each place, is even less labor intensive than the Arabic system, but does require a slightly more advanced literacy in mathematics to solve without excessive labor. All that aside, variations of Roman Numerals (tally marks, which actually are precursors to Roman and not necessarily a variation) are probably the best method for keeping a running tally of a grouping. It's thought that RN evolved as a way of managing larger sets of these tally marks, and that the disposition of symbols to subtract from a value vs add to a value was a later feature.

[@rafaeldiasdemoura7735]

“Let’s make a universal system for all people” *names months after seasons in the northern hemisphere*

[@LilliBellentor]

Wait, Europe ISN'T the universe???

[@joesterling4299]

@@LilliBellentor It was when Pope Gregory XIII was around. Or at least the part of the world that mattered on a global scale.

[@mikalrage7316]

@@LilliBellentor - Well, it was until a little thing called USA happened. Fun fact; it was in that instantaneous shift of the Universe from Europe to USA without any intermediary position that we discovered the Quantum State. Ironically, the Quantum State is still just a Territory with no actual power or voting rights, because lawmakers at the time couldn’t be sure that it would vote exclusively for their party, so they thought it was best to just prevent it from having any representation at all. And that’s how a Bill becomes a Law of Thermodynamics.

[@jasonlast7091]

@@mikalrage7316 And this has been commenting on Salvia.

[@mikalrage7316]

@@jasonlast7091 The Salvia Uncertainty Principality.

[@SolarWebsite]

I saw an interview once with the guy at Microsoft who led the team that kept track of the world's time zone's, DST dates, stuff like that, to make sure instances of MS Outlook all around the world agreed upon identical times and dates for a given appointment. I can't find the video anymore (it must have been 10+ years ago) but I remember him describing the nightmare this job essentially was. This team had to browse like Chinese regional newspapers to find out that some province would switch time zone to match a neighbouring province, or discover that Chile is going to change the date at which DST becomes active. Making mistakes, or missing such changes, meant Outlook users missing appointments. Outlook users not updating their Office software could mean the same. Surely an interesting but frustrating job, and one that will not have changed much. (if someone can find this video, if it's still up, please let me know! I'd love to rewatch it)

[@UnabashedOops]

Tom Scott did a video on why programmers hate time. Probably not the same video, but same concept.

[@lelandunruh7896]

Fun fact: China only has one time zone. But there are unofficial time zones some people use, so perhaps that was part of the problem.

A small mistake: meter was never defined as 1/1 000 000 of distance from pole to equator, you are missing one zero, 1/10 000 000 would be correct ratio.

[@DidivsIvlianvs]

Was just going to post that. (amateur astronomer) I wonder how many of the first 2600 comments are on this error? Not going to scroll further though.

[@themadpsyentist4633]

Pretty sure there's another mistake, the energy of a kilogram must of been with 10 to the 34 power as 10 to the -34 power makes no sense.

[@Aniqa101]

@@themadpsyentist4633 Which still is false because E = m·c², therefore E/m = c² = 9.0 × 10^16 J/kg.

[@prjndigo]

Yeah, about that. A meter is the side of a cube of a mass of fresh water that weights the same as the average mass of a nautical ton which varies a little bit because any given localized 35 cubic feet of sea water may weigh slightly different amounts. The "ton" was already an international standard of displacement and to be accepted the metric ton had to literally be the same mass on a balance scale. Its kinda like how all shipping containers are actually based on the 24 or 48 foot size because of the international pallet standards and that the dominant accepting markets were still using feet. So the metric system is literally based off the foot.

[@dlevi67]

@@prjndigo Um, no.

[@JohnClay77]

The “In-No-Way-Will-That-Statement-Blow-Up-In-My-Face Cam” face was awesome!

[@flagmichael]

A view of the face before the Big Kaboom.

[@charlesgantz5865]

A little trivia. As you mentioned, the meter was defined originally as "one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator", which was actually measured from Dunkirk to Barcelona. The commission to measure that distance was signed by Louis XVI on the morning of the day the mob attacked Versailles and took Louis prisoner. Also, it turned out that the measurements were wrong, which they tried to correct a few times. But by that time someone had put the scratches on the platinum bars. They didn't want to erase the scratches, so they ignored the measurements and just went by the scratches.

[@martijnspruit]

The group land surveyors left Paris to go out and start measuring, but they actually had great difficulty getting out of the city gates, since their pass had royal seals on it, and the guards were of the "new regime" (non royalist). If the head of the group who took the measurements would not have been persuasive enough, the group would not have been able to start measuring at all.

[@gustavosantiago1543]

What? But they already knew earth's circumpherence, didn't they? why bother measuring it again?

[@franznarf]

@@gustavosantiago1543 1st NO 2nd useless question

[@gustavosantiago1543]

@@franznarf Really? I thought the greek had already figured it out

[@robinsuj]

@@gustavosantiago1543 Probably not with enough precision?

[@Joanna-il2ur]

When I was 15, we switched to decimal currency on 15 February 1971. As an April fools stunt, the local newspaper the Kentish Express ran a story that we were going to move also to decimal time. Each day would have ten hours, each hour ten minutes and each minute ten seconds. Not only did some people fall for it, many teachers wrote off for the imaginary info pack offered. Never trusted a teacher since.

[@yershov]

That's very interesting, thank you. One of the factors was because the clocks and watches were cutting edge high tech back then. You could force people to change the scales and rulers but time devices were much more expensive. And it's not just adding metric marks on the inch ruler. You have to re-engineer and rebuild the clock from scratch.

[@howdyhamster]

There was the watch company Swatch, which created .beat time in 1998 dividing the day into 1000 beats. There were no time zones, and the day was based on the time in Biel, Switzerland. One of the few applications to implement it was the video game Phantasy Star Online, with in-game clocks and timers being set to it. For example, you could feed your "mag" (robotic pet) every 2 beats, though players usually just said 3 minutes. It also eliminated the need for international groups of players to convert time zones.

[@sterlingodeaghaidh5086]

Other games like Club Penguin back in the day did similar things, creating their own universal time for their games.

[@vinapocalypse]

Thank you, I'm surprised he didn't mention .beat time since it was so recent, even though it was more of a marketing campaign

[@thunderwazp7653]

The only redeeming quality about Monday’s is that weeks Joe Scott video

[@Hat-]

Agreed

[@artdonovandesign]

I listen for that Monday/"New Joe" notification starting at 6:00am

[@tomc4132]

Watch the bad friends podcast then. Expand yourself.

[@LivingWithSpinaBifida]

Achievement Hunter puts out a GTA video so theres that

[@name1483]

And last week tonight 😂

[@DenUitvreter]

Here (NL) there was this guy once who went to the local 'people bring art to experts' show with a clock he believed was weird but rather well made. In turned out to be a French clock from just after the French revolution with the metric timescale applied. This was only a short period before the French went back. So the clock was very rare and woth about 150.000 euro.

[@patavinity1262]

"They started it in September of our Gregorian calendar because... I don't know why" Well it would have been easy enough to find out. It's because the Republic was declared on the 22nd of September 1792, which became Year I of the Era of Liberty. All French dates were therefore traced back to that point.

[@joescott]

Told you I was lazy.

[@verrios4825]

@@joescott I feel you

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

And that's why it didn't work -- France was expecting the rest of the world (read: Europe and the Americas) to switch over to a calendar based on an event in French history. Zut alors!

[@patavinity1262]

@@davidanderson_surrey_bc No, I don't think they expected that. I'm not sure they even introduced it in the Sister Republics they established in Europe.

[@Nikolas_Davis]

Yeah, that's the autumnal equinox. It's one out of the 4 most natural dates to start the year. That it coincides with the Declaration of the Republic was a happy coincidence.

[@Geordie504]

FYI: RISC is pronounced “risk”, VAX VMS is pronounced “Vacks V.M.S”. Just for fun, ASCII is pronounced “askey”.

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

Judging by your photo, I'd say we both come from the era when everybody associated with the computer industry knew those things like a second language. Remember COBOL, Fortran, Basic, and Assembler? I was fluent in all of them. Now I don't even know WHAT they use for programming any more, much less how to code that way.

[@PlanetEarth3141]

All correct.

[@captainnerd6452]

@@davidanderson_surrey_bc We're a vanishing breed.

[@christopherneelyakagoattmo6078]

Yeah. Two or three years ago some friends were talking about some new programming for Python. And I thought there was a new Spamalot play. Or John Cleese had signed a deal with some new streaming platform named Perl.

[@matchrocket1702]

@@christopherneelyakagoattmo6078 I use Linux and my repository is loaded with Python and Perl utilities and applications.

[@alpharivelino]

"Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time" -Jorge Luis Borges

[@rwstavros]

Time is based 60. That means it is divisible by 1,2,3,4,and 5. This means you can get finer resolution without decimals. It also means there are more places to introduce errors.

[@majorramsey3k]

Also by 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 & 30

[@rwstavros]

@@majorramsey3k yes, i only listed the prime numbers. Because we are so used to computers today, this is often overlooked. The imperial system also considers this. Ask to cut a 1 meter length of wood in thirds and it is harder than asking to take a 1 yard length of wood in thirds. In design, the rule of thirds is important.

[@majorramsey3k]

@@rwstavros I would imagine that's not an insignificant reason for the construction industry to stick with ft/in. Even in metricized countries like Canada, we use those all the time.

[@nikolatasev4948]

This reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite books "Once second is defined as 1/100,000 of a solar day on Home. One meter is defined as 1/300,000,000 of a light second One gravity is defined as 10 meters per second squared acceleration. The Emperor has decreed that the speed of light shall remain as nature has provided." It always cracks me up how generous the Emperor was not overriding the physical constants. Anyway, the book is Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld, great hard Sci-fi.

[@nikolatasev4948]

@@Lord_Skeptic The solution is simple. Earth gravity is not exactly 1 gravity as defined. Which makes sense, since it changes based on location, altitude and so on.

[@nikolatasev4948]

@@Lord_Skeptic Yes, the number for the Earth average would need to change, using this definition. Then again, the original metre was defined as "one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris" - and the number for the distance changed with the new meter definitions. I unironically believe redefining the meter and/or second so the speed of light is a round number would be a good thing. The number is very close anyway, it will not impact our everyday lives at all, but it will make science easier.

[@Lord_Skeptic]

@@nikolatasev4948 the 1/10000000 was a bit out though since it is actually 4/40007863 (1/10001965.75)

[@M1stersupersonic8]

Just a small correction, here's the actual quote by Benjamin Franklin: "And what an indulgence is here, for those who love their pillow to lie down in Peace on the second of this month and not perhaps awake till the morning of the fourteenth."

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

You get my thumb up just for doing the homework.

[@ljmz79]

I had to google the height of Napoleon because I just got confused about the measurements in different feet and metric was not mentioned. He was 1,68m if anyone is interested.

[@dickbutt7854]

Not short

[@ljmz79]

@@dickbutt7854 Still clearly shorter than me. 😄 And I'm not tall either.

[@Galatzo]

That's exactly 9 croissants tall in the old french system

[@mrkitty777]

Napoleon wasn't a natural born French I heard.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

"He was 1,68m if anyone is interested." But if anyone is NOT interested, he was 3.5m.

[@wreckinball11]

Before age 50 I didn't think of time. Now it's my most valuable resource. I used to fix everything myself, now i pay others to use my time remaining wisely. The 2011 movie "In time" really hits home.

[@Mbember-g7w]

So using your time wisely means paying other people for work you could do yourself but won't because you're a self-absorbed consumer?

[@bsadewitz]

​@@Mbember-g7wHow does paying other people to do things make someone "self-absorbed"? This is the dumbest thing I've heard in a while. Google "specialization of labor". It's a cornerstone of civilization. What's self-absorbed is not being aware of how nearly everything you do somehow involves the labor of someone else. Are your lights on? Network working on your phone? Who made the device you're holding? Who paves the roads you travel on? Do you grow all your own food? Collect all the water you drink yourself? Who made the plates you eat off of? If we all followed your logic we would all be solo hunter-gatherers.

[@Mbember-g7w]

@@bsadewitz check your reading comprehension. "Paying other people for work you could do yourself but won't." If you own a 10-bedroom house, be kind enough to take time out of your busy schedule to keep the house clean and tidy. Division of labour is perfectly fine as long as you don't think that your time (=life) is more important than someone else's because you happen to hold a better position and have accumulated more wealth. You could argue that your labour is more valuable, which, ironically, only proves my point.

[@bsadewitz]

@Mbember-g7w EVERYONE WHO PAYS ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING IS PAYING THEM TO DO SOMETHING THAT THEY EITHER DON'T WANT TO DO THEMSELVES OR CAN'T DO THEMSELVES. You gonna tell me that you never pay someone to do something that you couldn't do yourself in some way? Right. I understood perfectly what you're saying. It isn't up to me to declare my labor is more valuable. That is up to the people who are willing to PAY ME. Well, really, we're talking about price. Value is subjective. Obviously, if my labor was more VALUABLE to me, I would do it all for myself. Neither you nor I get to decide what other people choose to spend their money on. Period. If someone wants to pay people to clean their house, they can do that. You wanna talk about economic inequality, class, labor laws, etc, that's all important. I'm with you on that. But what you are saying just doesn't make any sense. We don't get to decide what other people want to spend their money on or what they should do (I mean they shouldn't be able to bribe politicians or buy children or whatever, but generally). You don't seem to understand that no one else is doing anything fundamentally different than you are.

[@michaelbeatie]

"October the 4th would always be a Wednesday." Fantastic. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's song "You saw my blinker" would forever be accurate when you listen to it... On your raycon ear buds.

[@Wesley_H]

You wanna know the biggest difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars? In the Julian calendar, when your solstices and equinoxes don’t quite line up, you like to move it, move it.

[@samrooney2958]

Noooooo. *flashback*

[@christophertstone]

6:26 Marie Antoinette never said anything like "let them eat cake", and was a pretty darn nice person considering her upbringing. Her last words were apologizing to the executioner for stepping on his foot. I highly recommend taking a hour to lookup her story sometime, pretty interesting even at a high level.

[@ScotHarkins]

And she had a pair of Converse sneakers. Couldn't have been all bad!

[@scottclowe]

"Let them eat cake" was literally fake news, yet it is a meme that persists to this day. Much like people thinking Napoleon was short.

[@tara5742]

I didn’t know that! According to 23and Me, I’m in her Maternal Haplo Group. Is it bad that I’m more interested in learning about her because I’m supposedly related to her XD

[@ScotHarkins]

@@tara5742 knowledge for its own sake is good. Knowledge that expands on what you know about your life is perfectly natural.

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

@@tara5742 Congratulations! Just a reminder to be extra careful around meat slicers and Slap Chop products.

[@be_heard247]

I have always wondered why time and calenders were not more standard like just simply 30 days in a month or 100 minutes in an hour. Thank you for explaining! This would def not work 😅 lets keep it as is lol

[@lunam7249]

13:53 the correct calender was 28 days of 13 month....moon time😳😳😳

[@tomweale9763]

"France was in a kinda fixing its shit mood" is my new favourite quote 😂

[@hurri7720]

I have been hoping the British would finally do it too, one can hope.

[@tuckergary1516]

yes, he is a closeted comedian.

[@michaeloosthuizen2383]

I always use Unix Epoch time for applications I architect. A timestamp is the exact same time everywhere on the planet and doesn't get changed with daylight saving shifts. That means it can be delivered to a client device and converted to a human readable time based on the preferences of that specific client device. It's very useful.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

Until 19 January 2038 when the epoch ends.

[@AraliciaMoran]

@@thomasmaughan4798 That date is the limit for the 32-bit (signed) integer. We've been progressively switching to 64-bits for the past 2 decades, and this also apply to time representation. Most OS have already switched to using a 64-bit integer for storing the epoch; and the same apply to the now common and recommended file storage systems; Databases are on the same page, with the most common now handling epoch timestamps way past 2038. While some old programs and formats will probably break at that time, it's most probably not going to be a big deal.

[@WilliumBobCole]

"we don't tend to think about how our time is our most limited resource" My existential dread tends to disagree

[@annoyed707]

I never gave it a second (of) thought.

[@sodinc]

it killed my mood quickly

[@stephenhoughton632]

I think it is also important to realize that as useful as decimalization is, there is also use to base twelve and base twenty, which the earlier systems included. Think of the number of gains in an ounce, 480. That is evenly divisible by 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 8, etc.

[@arthurcrown3063]

Troy ounce 480 (gold etc), Avoir ounce (normal use) 437.5

[@wiblet]

kibble balance is actually what you achieve when you shake your cat's half full bowl to convince them there's still food in it

[@ThreenaddiesRexMegistus]

Below 70% denotes official emptiness, or if the bottom of the bowl is partially visible regardless of the residual column height. Similarly the “favourite” food you have just purchased in bulk is immediately rendered inedible by proximity to more of the same and in direct proportion to convenience.

[@MK-of7qw]

Brilliant 😺

[@dsdy1205]

@@ThreenaddiesRexMegistus So apparently I've recently read that this could be because your bowl is too small - if a cat's whiskers touch the bowl it can give them sensory overload which can be annoying / painful. So it's a lot better if the food is in the center of a very wide bowl.

[@Beowulf03]

"and France at the time was in a bit of a 'fixin' shit' mood" Lol

[@Beowulf03]

@Todd Starbuck this Simpsons did an episode about everything

[@HomeGunMaker]

“Physical objects change. Atoms decay, elements react.” When my mom complains I haven’t stayed the same weight I’ll have something to argue.

[@HomeGunMaker]

@@remingtonsmooth1417 try telling her that and staying alive lol

[@firstclaw1]

I wonder if the kilogram material simply lost so many atoms or molecules due to some kind of decay, or if gravity causing the mass having a measurable weight has changed.

[@Frisbieinstein]

Electrons, neutrinos, and protons don't decay.

[@urmorph]

@@Frisbieinstein But they can be annihilated if smashed in the face by someone of the opposite persuasion.

[@DanielLavedoniodeLima_DLL]

The idea of days of the week being counted in order kind of happens in Brazil and Portugal (and I believe that for other Portuguese speaking countries too): Sunday = Domingo Monday = 2ª-feira Tuesday = 3ª-feira Wednesday = 4ª-feira Thursday = 5ª-feira Friday = 6ª-feira Saturday = Sábado

[@csolisr]

I'm surprised to see that Portugal didn't push for Sunday's to be Primera Feira

[@allejandrodavid5222]

​@@csolisrand it was, but they've changed and Domingo means "Lord's Day"

[@Nazuiko]

Lord's Day, 2nd-6th, and the Sabbath? I like that system

[@csolisr]

@@Nazuiko I wonder if Portuguese agnostic people stick to "1ª-feira" and "7ª-feira" regardless.

[@optimeus]

This, also in connection with the loss of time due to the uniqueness of transience: Lying on your deathbed it cannot be otherwise that you are overwhelmed by a great feeling of loss and regret. Only your "past" contribution to this world can compensate for this. So nothing to worry about for you, Joe Scott, you will be remembered.

[@mellissadalby1402]

OK, I might be sick and sad and twisted, but your sense of humor amuses me.

[@foxpup]

Join the club. Most of us are sick, sad, and twisted. We were all born that way. Just ask the theologian Calvin. Some of us, through grace, do end up improving from that baseline, however. :-)

[@clinkers]

yes

[@LuccaGasser]

Had to scroll pretty far down to find a Member, shouldn't it boost you guys straight to the top? just sayin'...

[@flitzsdomingos]

Can we just appreciate the fact that you tried to tell things in French with a Spanish accent xD

[@danieljensen2626]

He's from Texas, Spanish is probably the only foreign language he hears regularly

[@flitzsdomingos]

@@danieljensen2626 Ah that's why thanks

[@igorfrancapereira4888]

@@danieljensen2626 Maybe I'm wrong but I think that mostly in the US they only know Spanish as a foreign language. I don't know if in the northern states, near the Canadian border mainly towards Quebec, maybe in those places they can identify French but I really don't know haha. What I do know is that almost every American I've ever talked to when I say I live in Brazil they always say I speak Spanish and obviously that makes me a little angry haha, Portuguese is only spoken by almost 300 million people it must be really unusual lol.

[@martijnspruit]

@@igorfrancapereira4888 In Louisiana, there's still a number of people who speak French daily. And Spanish is the first (and sometimes the only) language for over 15 percent of the population in the USA, mostly in Texas in Southern California, which borders on Mexico. And I'm not even mentioning all the languages of the indigenous peoples in the USA, or all the languages brought there by immigrants who still use theirs within their communities, like Italian, Russian, Chinese, or even Yiddish. In fact, the USA has no official language (as in: codified by a national law.)

[@Rechtauch]

As a Spaniard living in a French-speaking country and married to a French guy, I confirm that trying Spanish accent makers the pronunciation more accurate than if he tried the English one. Also, this is an absolutely natural mechanism for people who speak more than one language: when you learn a third one, you apply to that one the accent of the second language (the one that you identify as "foreign"). I have French accent in German and Dutch, which is just ridiculous and confusing 😕

[@THall-vi8cp]

Time is measured in the old Babylonian base 60 math system. They charted the rotation of the earth by observing the motion of stars and the general progression of the zodiac. This same system is used today in angular measurement. The metric system works because it was incorporated into an already existing largely base 10 math system. I say largely because Geometry uses some of the old Babylonian system. What I find pretty cool is that we are able to use the current base 10 and the old base 60 system together.

[@lunam7249]

1 wize comment among thousands!!!😳😳😳👏👏❤️🥇....let me illuminate further....the pendulum 1 meter length (metric) clock is a standard clock, and then it was counted 86400 seconds later was COINCIDENTALLY 1 day..... the correct calender is 13 months of 28 days...a womens clock.😳😳

[@GntlTch]

It's actually not too surprising. If you examine the symbols (and hence the math), used for the base 60 system it is actually a mash up of a base 6 system with a base 10 subsystem using different symbols for the two bases. To be more specific, they used one symbol to count to 5 and another to count to 9. There was no symbol for zero. BTW, The Sumerians invented the base 60 system some 5000 years ago which was then later used by the Babylonians. Wikipedia and Google are your friends for further info. Search for Sexagesimal+sumerian

[@wissamelkadamani9750]

Joe the number you said has the number of joules in a kg is actually Planck's constant. The number of joules in a kilogram by E=mc² is much much much much more than a fraction of a fraction of a joule. Got that thing wrong buddy

[@DJRY360]

C squared has that effect on things

[@GregorBotttz]

He's only off by a magnitude of 50.

[@DJRY360]

@@GregorBotttz astronomers be like "not bad!"

[@mirandawilde5681]

The kilgram was tied to Planck's constant (h) by defining h to be exactly that number in kg m^2 / s. Since the meter and the second are already defined by c and Cs ocillations, this gives us a fundamental kg.

[@duaneeitzen1025]

One kilogram (kg) of mass is equivalent to exactly 89,875,517,873,681,764 joules

[@MrVasile]

"Don't take it personally"? "I'm too lazy"?! Sheesh! I tell ya. Give some people a centimeter and they take a kilometer! ;)

[@Kay_McKay]

This pleases me.

[@josephelijah1211]

😑 it's not the same

[@b.6603]

That segment about Napoleon tho, it could reeeally use some metric subtitles. Outside the US it's just impossible to understand. Also, hot tip for pronunciation: put it in google translate and use the speaker button. The attempts at guessing the pronunciation are funny tho. Hahaha.

[@KaiseruSoze]

umm no. It's 2.54 cm and they'll take 0.62 kilometer.

[@joebushnell143]

Ha ha ha ha....

[@octapc]

You know time is precious when a song is played that takes you back emotionally to when you were a teen as if it was only yesterday, but you are now 60+

[@yimmy7160]

for the new it is only 20 years

[@YodaWhat]

"If I could keep time in a bottle".

[@CarthagoMike]

Fun fact about the Julian and Gregorian calender switch: In the Spanish Netherlands, different provinces adopted it at different times, but there was very vivid correspondence between cities in different provinces. This meant that letters (which were always dated and included the date of the last letter sent in case the previous one didn't arrive) could arrive before the 'written date', or even include two different dates.

[@Eugensson]

Another Trivia. Back in the 80s the city of Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia was using two timezones, depending on which bank of the river Ob where you located.

[@mrkitty777]

Handy for bookkeepers like Enron 😂

[@skeptic1000]

Most people never notice that Sept-Dec are named after 7-10 in Latin, since those were the seventh - tenth months until we added July and August to honor some kings.

[@CyanHour]

we couldve added them after december lol

[@Foxtrek_64]

July is named after Gaius Julius Caesar and August is named after Caesar Augustus (the first Roman emperor).

[@skeptic1000]

@@Foxtrek_64 yes, my some "some kings" phrasing was highly sarcastic

[@axokm97]

It’s literally in the video that the change from julian to gregorian made the start of the year in January instead of March, which accounts for the mismatch in month names

[@dtvjho]

Actually the Julian calendar used systematic names for months 5 and 6, before being renamed for emperors. The original Latin names were Quintilis and Sextilis, and if those names had survived, we could have Quintober and Sextember on our summer calendars! Even today's politicians monkey with time zones every few years. By the sun, each zone should be 15 degrees wide (360 / 24), with straight borders from pole to pole, but look at a time zone map of the world and you'll see the carnage.

[@DocWolph]

When I was kid I tried to calculate metric time. This was mainly to aid in keeping time while out in space, long before I learned to the time space relationship with gravity. Anyway , my calculations were a mess trying to reconcile normal timekeeping with metric time. I only got as far as hours. Days, months, years could not be reconciled for normal relation. - Seconds are Base 10 - Minutes are 6*Base10, 10*Base6, or Base60 - Hours are 6*Base10, 10*Base6, or Base60 - Days are 2*Base12 or Base24 - Weeks are Base 7 days. Weeks are dropped from reconciliation as unnecessary. - Months have no Base varying from 28 or 29 days based on leap years mainly because a year ends in quarter day, and 30 or 31 day intervals. Months are then dropped from reconciliation. - Years are Base365. With no months, Base(months) can not specified. I was a kid (not even 10) and I'm sure I was close to hitting the nail on its head, but i think this was when math started eluding me for the more intuitive.

[@UBI_NOW]

actually Marie Antoinette never said "let them eat cake" yes, even then, they had fake news I would put a link but I don't feel like it look it up peace

[@mikalrage7316]

Her birthday parties were a total cake tease.

[@paulmitchell4421]

Perhaps something was lost-or added-in translation... no doubt, Marie Antoinette was not speaking English.

[@michaeldmingo1525]

They were making up all sorts of stuff as an excuse to be Revolting. The winners write all the history. Just makes it sound like the bad guys were the good guys.

[@germansnowman]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake

[@gelatinocyte6270]

@@michaeldmingo1525 I don't think they were _making up excuse to revolt._ The country was badly run *and the general population was starving.* You would claim a bunch of absurd shit when your stomach's empty.

[@SomewhatAbnormal]

I didn’t watch this video until today and yet somehow I had an almost verbatim conversation about the preciousness of time in my head the other morning. So much a match that I had to watch it twice because I thought I imagined what you said.

[@ThrottleKitty]

Kibble Balance sounds like something the guy at Petsmart would use to sell me 4 different kinds of dogfood

[@clintony3000]

Time is our most valuable resource, and so we hope to see you in the next episode, of spaceti- Whoops wrong show

[@MargoMB19]

I love it when I see comments like this, two of my favorite channels overlapping in some tiny way.

[@lynnmccurdythehdmmrc2561]

Speaking of anniversaries. Coming up on one year of Quarantine, or celebrating a year of Covid. One year we'll never get back.

[@craigh5236]

On the plus side I now have shoulder length fabulous hair.

[@mhigg9045]

@@justinbouchard ...good advice...maybe you should follow it...

[@MrEscape314]

Just like every other year of our lives that we'll never get back..

[@Lord_Skeptic]

11:28 it is also the same reason why there are 360 degrees in a circle rather than 100. Everyone was on the same page with that one. Although there is a system for that called gradians. There are 400 gradians in a circle. They would have to use the gradians system to create time zones if metric time was introduced. There is also the turn system. There are 100 centiturns in a circle. 1000 millieturns in a circle.

[@robertcortright]

Good video... it's ABOUT TIME!

[@leo.girardi]

Can anyone imagine the pain of having to sit through a Metric hour long meeting each week at work?

[@mattlogue1300]

Oh God

[@thomasmaughan4798]

"Can anyone imagine the pain of having to sit through a Metric hour long meeting each week at work?" Obviously it depends on how long is a metric hour. Meters are length, not time.

[@leo.girardi]

@@thomasmaughan4798 Metric is a system, Meters are a unit.

[@dwaynebeagley5345]

10 decimal minutes = 14.4 standard minutes so…. 40 decimal minutes would be your equivalent to a 1 hour meeting and 20 decimal minutes would be your half an hour lunch break.. Working 9 to 5 would be equivalent as working 3.4 to 7.2 decimal o’clock 😅 Lunch hour would be the same as 40 decimal minutes at 5 decimal o’clock

[@Lord_Skeptic]

A metric hour is the equivalent of 2 hours 24 minutes. Metric minute is 1 minute 26.4 seconds. Metric second is 0.864 seconds.

[@coryjorgensen4648]

To me, the biggest drawback of metric time is that you can't conveniently divide a day into fractional units other than 2 or 5. Imagine being the lord of a keep, or the skipper of a war frigate, and needing to set a watch rotation. You either have to have 5 shifts or 2 shifts, or else set partial hours, which defeats the purpose. 24 hours works much better, the more so even today with many more needs for shift work, when you can divide the day into 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 12 equal parts.

[@denjo3131]

Honestly, this isn't really a problem once you use a complete metric system. This is the same excuse as I often hear for measurements, it's easier to split something in 12 parts... With metric system you can easily convert to smaller units. For example instead of 0,6 = 6 dm; 0,6 dm = 6 cm; 0,6 cm = 6 mm; 0,6 mm = µm; 0,6 µm = 6 nm... 1 m divide by 40 is too difficult? convert it to mm: 1000 mm / 40 = 25 mm A day could be 100.000 seconds or 100 kiloseconds (or if you change it to 1.000.000 seconds: one megasecond), and have the same duration as now if you adjust the duration of a second (but here's the biggest problem why we don't change it, all are technologies are simply based on our current seconds). And the prefixes aren't hard to learn: they are the same for everything. It's just the way of thinking that needs to be changed. There is a reason why we work with seconds in more advanced maths, and not hours and days.

[@OptimusPhillip]

This is exactly why the Babylonians handled time the way they did. They used a base-60 counting system, which gave them a lot of really nice numbers to work with, including multiples of 12. So to them, 24 hours in a day was a round number, in the same way that a 25-cent coin is a convenient subdivision of the dollar.

[@OptimusPhillip]

@@denjo3131 That doesn't solve everything. For example, how do you write a third of a meter? 333 millimeters is too small, so is 333 333 micrometers, so is 333 333 333 nanometers, and so on and so forth. No matter how finely you subdivide the meter, the third-meter will never have a nice representation in metric units.

[@ictogon]

Which is why we should use base 12 or base 60 instead of base 10. But it would be literally impossible to switch our number base unless we started like a small space colony or something.

[@danejohannescaldwell7999]

@@denjo3131 I'm not so sure its a clean as you say regarding shift work. If the day is 10 hours long and you have three shifts, then two of the shifts must be 3.3 hours long and the third must be 3.4. I mean, you can get more granular, with 3.333 and 3.334, and you can introduce smaller units (e.g. 3 hours and 33.33 minutes) but there is no way to make it even. You lose one unit of time to rounding error (e.g. 0.001 hours). To gain what?

[@chriskaprys]

I love your balance of intellect, sass and uplifting sincerity. 👍

[@Freddie_Dunning-Kruger_Jr.]

sassincerity

[@johnreagan2106]

Thanks for the reference to VAX/VMS! It is pronounced like the first syllable in vaccine not as the individual letters. VMS is pronounced as the individual letters. VAX was the original Digital Equipment Corporation hardware platform that ran VMS but has since been ported to other platforms like x86-64. I'm one of the current VMS developers. That base date that VMS come from November 17, 1858 is the base of the Modified Julian Day system. The original Julian Day (JD) is used by astronomers and expressed in days since noon January 1, 4713 B.C. This measure of time was introduced by Joseph Scaliger in the 16th century. It is named in honor of his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger (note that this Julian Day is different from the Julian calendar named for the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar!) Why 4713 BC? Scaliger traced three time cycles and found that they were all in the first year of their cycle in 4713 B.C. The three cycles are 15, 19, and 28 years long. By multiplying these three numbers (15 * 19 * 28 = 7980), he was able to represent any date from 4713 B.C. through 3267 A.D. The starting year was before any historical event known to him. In fact, the Jewish calendar marks the start of the world as 3761 B.C. Today his numbering scheme is still used by astronomers to avoid the difficulties of converting the months of different calendars in use during different eras. So why 1858? The Julian Day 2,400,000 just happens to be November 17, 1858. The Modified Julian Day uses the following formula: MJD = JD - 2,400,000.5 The .5 changed when the day starts. Astronomers had considered it more convenient to have their day start at noon so that nighttime observation times fall in the middle. But they changed to conform to the commercial day. The Modified Julian Day was adopted by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in 1957 for satellite tracking. SAO started tracking satellites with an 8K (non-virtual) 36-bit IBM 704 computer in 1957, when Sputnik was launched. The Julian day was 2,435,839 on January 1, 1957. This is 11,225,377 in octal notation, which was too big to fit into an 18-bit field (half of its standard 36-bit word). And, with only 8K of memory, no one wanted to waste the 14 bits left over by keeping the Julian Day in its own 36-bit word. However, they also needed to track hours and minutes, for which 18 bits gave enough accuracy. So, they decided to keep the number of days in the left 18 bits and the hours and minutes in the right 18 bits of a word. Eighteen bits would allow the Modified Julian Day (the SAO day) to grow as large as 262,143 ((2 ** 18) - 1). From Nov. 17, 1858, this allowed for seven centuries. Using only 17 bits, the date could possibly grow only as large as 131,071, but this still covers 3 centuries, as well as leaving the possibility of representing negative time. The year 1858 preceded the oldest star catalog in use at SAO, which also avoided having to use negative time in any of the satellite tracking calculations.

[@rachel_v_k]

Wow! I had to read some of that twice! Thank you for the fascinating explanations and information. 😊❤️❤️❤️

[@nathancarlisle2094]

This was very cool to read and really interesting information. Thank you 😊

[@benr.4238]

Joe : She told them to eat cake, and they ate some cake. Me : That's bait!

[@davidvilla9581]

The value for "joules in a kilogram" at 2:23 is out by 50 orders of magnitude. The true value is 8.98 x 10^16 (approx).

[@Delgen1951]

So you not sure?

[@victortitov1740]

joules in a kilogram, according to e=m*c^2, is c^2, which is certainly not 6.626...e-34 as stated in the video. 6.626...e-34 is Plank constant, which is the energy quantum for 1Hz oscillator.

[@InventorZahran]

The most logical calendar would be 13 months of 28 days each, with one month containing four 7-day weeks. The 365th day of the year would be a "Day Zero" after the end of the last month and before New Year's Day. (We could still add a leap day every four years to account for the earth's rotation.) A global transition to this system would have the minimum possible impact on our day-to-day life: the durations of the year, week, and day would remain unchanged; every month would be the same length as February currently is, and the number of weeks in a year would not change. If anything, this new calendar would simplify timekeeping on an annual scale, since holidays and yearly events would always fall on both the same calendar day and week-day, no matter what year it is.

[@ybungalobill]

Talks about Unix time or FILETIME -- the way time's represented in almost all digital systems -- "those are niche applications"!?

[@jonathanozik5442]

How many bits would we need to count nanoseconds in an integer from 0000-00-00 00:00:00 and not run out for the next few centuries? :)

[@ybungalobill]

@@jonathanozik5442 64 bits can count nanoseconds over a span of millennium. 85 bits will get you all the way to the age of the universe. For the record, struct timespec used on most unix systems for nano-second precision is 96 bits long.

[@HotelPapa100]

5:25 "It was almost as if every product had its own currency and you had to convert denominations every time you bought something" Meet the troy ounce...

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

Troy: Introducing the new ounce! Greece: To to boats!

[@TVfen]

I always thought that ... a system like that is something that we need. - 100 seconds in 1 minute. 100 minutes in 1h, etc. - 30 days in a month... seems ok. Although some of the other options you mentioned might work as well, but ... using our current month settings, just changing seconds, minutes, days and weeks, could work great. - Now ... since many places are trying the 6h shift (instead of 8h), or the 4 day week. We could, "EASILY", have a 10 day week, with a 3 day weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun), with 3 new names for days, and ... maybe a middle-week day off, as Wednesday or Thursday (it will depend on the arrangement between the individual and the company). - Such Idea, would give us a lot... A LOT!: > Easier ways to measure time, allow us for faster calculations, AND, saving time in our lives. > a 3-day weekend, helps with travelling. You could leave early on "Thursday" ... let's call it "Ragday" (for Ragnar, since, Thursday = is for Thor's Day), and ... catch a plane(or get into a car), and travel during Ragday (maybe even arriving on the same day), having Fri, Sat, and part of Sun to enjoy our trip, and the reminding of Sun to get back (and even rest). > Having a 10 day week, would allow to split the year into 36.5 weeks, which would allow us (more or less), to predict what day for a specific date (bi-annually). But at the end of the day ... I don't care about cultures, traditions, and superstitions. I would want a fixed system based on scientific thought. Let's have all the scientists, linguists, historians, etc. sit together and figure out a proper arrangement. Even if we move from the decimal to the duodecimal system, I'm onboard with it!. If we can make our lives simpler + more precise, that would be AWESOME! Let's learn from each other... ALREADY!!! Simpler numbering, might help with maths, GREAT!. Japanese writing maths are better? then let's all use them. Indian mental maths are better? then let's all use them. People, competition is good, but REAL COOPERATION is better! I would not mind to donate my time to improve the world, if everybody were to do it! Let's not be jealous of how easy would future generations have it, because the hard work we've done now. Let's ask them (not force them) to pay-it-forward. PS: Great channel Joe! I hate imperial system (so stupid!), but it is completely understandable that you have to use it in your videos, AND ... no complaints from me, JUST PURE APPRECIATION FOR YOUR WORK. Note, that, tomorrow, when you are old, and look back to your life, you could rest easy knowing that you contributed for the betterment of mankind!

[@leifjenkinson4039]

I've worked 4 hour shifts, when you sail off-shore (ocean sailing, essentially). You do two a day of 4 hours each, 8 hours between each. It was law (maritime law). But (there is always a but): you could be worked OverTime during your off time. Of course it was "voluntary" O.T. Yeah, right. But, the Law also says a "watchstander" has to get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, every day, which can be split into 2, of which one sleep period has to give 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and the other 2 hours. So, there were 3 watches: the Mids, midnight to 4 AM (zero to zero-4 hundred) and Noon to 4 PM (12=-hundred to 16-hundred). There is the 4-8, both Am & PM. There is the 8-12s, both AM & PM. That's for "watchstanders". There are day workers (that includes "night"), with any number of schedules, but still 8-hours workdays. Or 12-hour days. That is allowed to vary, even day to day. Now, on Sunday, there is a rule left over from the sailing ship days called the "dog watches". You do some 2-hour watches so you change watches. That was so, on a long trip, you shared the misery or joy of each watch, didn't get into bad habits, etc. (Hey, the 4-8 watches have less supervision - which, with lousy or unpleasant supervisors, you get a break from them. But that was never an official reason: duh.) Only sounds complicated. Some "modern" companies, and some military vessels, no longer "dog the watches". It only sounds complicated. You get used to it. Now: In "protected waters", (The Inside Passage, certain rivers and lakes, the inter-coastal passage, etc.) you can stand 6-hour watches, 6 hours apart, for a 12-hour and no O.T. for that. So, you work an 84-our workweek, have a week off that's on shore. Or save them up for many weeks ashore. On my week-on-week-off trips, we were still considered "employed" on the weeks off, so still got benefits like Medical Insurance. Remember, we got 84-hours of work in one week, so that's two 42-hours worth of work. There was a different system for "vacation" on the sea-going vessels. Like I said, it only sounds complicated. (Yeah, right!) Heave Ho, me hearties.

[@Twiggy163]

We cant change the second because the second has been scientificaly defined and is one of the base SI units.

[@TVfen]

@@Twiggy163 I didn't say "the second". I said minutes, hours... Still, the second is an arbitrary man-made creation, OF COURSE it can be changed! ;-)

[@Twiggy163]

@@TVfen "using our current month settings, just changing seconds, minutes, days and weeks, could work great." I may have read it in a way different than you meant but, to me it says it right here. The second is as arbitrary as the metre. Today a second is defined as ''being equal to the time duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the fundamental unperturbed ground-state of the caesium-133 atom''. Changing it would ruin quite a few mathmetical equations... and my work. Plz no...

[@Spidouz]

I like the way you think, I wouldn’t mind to have 10 days weeks, 36.5 weeks year (One year with 36 weeks, and one year with 37 weeks). All this “time” notion is man made anyway… what would happen when we would have colonies on Mars (where the day length isn’t exactly the same). Days will drift, we would have to keep different calendar for each planets… and if Aliens come to earth, they would probably find this whole time completely stupid… and same with many other units anyway. That’s why it’s stupid to stick to units that don’t represent anything (like the Imperial system). And it’s better to define units using scientific measurements (like using Elements characteristics to define a man made unit).

[@orion6able]

I tried decimal time for a watch, and honestly I absolutely love it! I can think of things in terms of percents. I can take really nice measurements of daylight and how long I sleep and when things happen! 1/2 = 50% 1/3 ≈ 33%, 1/4 = 25%, stuff i know well in decimal. Its been so nice! Im not sure how we ever lived with 24 hours a day 60 minutes... Etc. Especially when decimal seconds are a little faster, you get a finer measurement with them. ahh, im too lazy to switch back! Its just too nice.

[@daveash9572]

Having grown up in England in the late 70s/80s, I grew up with a mixture of both metric and imperial measurements, and indeed to this day, I use both depending on what's more convenient. If I'm reading a modern architect's drawing, measurements are almost always in metric, but the raw materials, such as timber, although now sold in strange metric numbers, are almost universally actually imperial. For example, a plywood sheet might be sold as 2440 x 1220 x 13mm, but we all know it's 8 feet by 4 feet by half an inch (and actually, they tend to more accurately reflect imperial measurements in any case). Metric measurements are easier to grasp, and I adore the interchangeability between measurements, but... It's not easy to divide evenly, 10 sweets between 3 or 4 children, but 12 sweets? Piece of cake. Lindybeige made a fab video about the divisibility of old pence (240 to the pound prior to decimalisation), but I confess, I still can't understand why shillings were ever a good idea.

[@oscarosullivan4513]

I use imperial for boat length and Model railway baseboards

[@cube2fox]

In Germany we were meters really exclusively. Then Monitors came along with their diagonal being given in inches, a convention adopted from the Americans. Now even TVs are often measured in inches, when it was centimeters in the past. A strange step backwards.

[@oscarosullivan4513]

@@cube2fox I agree it is backwards

[@Exgrmbl]

@@cube2fox It has to be a marketing ploy of some sorts, i think. Maybe something sexy and easily graspable/comparable (monkey brain this number is bigger than that number level thinking) about those even numbers (consider 60" vs. 152,4cm). Because most germans have no idea how big an inch is.

[@Peoples_Republic_of_Cotati]

My notion of a new calendar: every week is 9 days long: you take the last 3 off, and trade off on who is on their weekend. there are 4 seasons, each 10 weeks long; each season is ended by a special extra day. And every 4th year is the usual leap year day. The key interest is not having a single common fixed weekend for everyone, so activity is spread out.

[@EleanorPeterson]

I live one day at a time. Tomorrow is not only a bonus; it comes as a pleasant surprise, too.

[@Lord_Skeptic]

3:19 we British use imperial as well. Well if you want to more precise we actually use a hybrid. To be More precise we are imperial / metric selective.

[@diyeana]

I'd like to think I would be okay with changing the calendar if it would make it better, but then I think about my personal important anniversaries. Us humans have a difficult time letting go of the past.

[@fixman88]

That’s because it’s ours. The Future is promised to no one, but our Past belongs to us.

[@dx1450]

I'd just like to switch from 12 hour time to 24 hour time. It makes far more sense because there are 24 hours in a day.

[@dx1450]

I'd just like to switch from 12 hour time to 24 hour time. It makes far more sense because there are 24 hours in a day.

[@davidanderson_surrey_bc]

Most men everywhere: Change the calendar? YES! Then we'll have a real excuse for forgetting our wedding anniversaries and wives' birthdays. Most women everywhere: We don't think so.

[@diyeana]

@@davidanderson_surrey_bc 🤣 that's so very true.

[@OldGamerNoob]

Think of how many leap days, hours, minutes and seconds are needed to make Martian time just another time zone 🤔

[@cartermclaughlin2908]

Kim stanley robinson's Red Mars actually explores this pretty well as they build a colony

[@TANMAN9095]

Or you can just use UTC.

[@headcrab4090]

A day on Mars is roughly 40 minutes longer than a day is here on Earth. The people on JPL/NASA team controlling the new rover moves to Mars time, so family life will be a bit complicated the next 6 months.

[@OldGamerNoob]

@@headcrab4090 that sounds like 2 leap hours every 3 days (sols) making you rotate through equivalent earth time zones throughout the week

[@stephenboyd897]

I predict that Coordinated Martian Time will be metric.

[@OveranalyzingEverything]

Got real deep at the end there. And made me rethink all my life's choices.

[@cptrikester2671]

This was/is excellent. I have wondered about this many years ago. Thanks for the clear summary. Your conclusions about time is food for more thought. 🙂

[@droppedpasta]

It’s been a long time since HS French, but “sans culottes” means roughly “without knee breeches” and signifies the “lower classes” of French society at the time. So “sanculottides” may be something along the lines of Workmen’s Days (Labour Days?).

[@bertilhatt]

Yeah. The idea was to have days off around the “Fête de l’Être Suprême” the yearly celebration of the Supreme Being, the non-denominational State religion to replace “religions” (i.e. king-supporting Catholics), to let more people come to Paris. There were a couple but it didn‘t work out so well because the whole thing felt very much new-king-same-as-the-old-pope, and the celebration was during harvest, so people stayed near the fields.

[@droppedpasta]

@Bozkurt postuna bürünmüş yobaz AraB devesi No. From the Wikipedia page for Sans-culottes: “The name sans-culottes refers to their clothing, and through that to their lower-class status: culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the 18th-century nobility and bourgeoisie, and the working class sans-culottes wore pantaloons, or trousers, instead.” en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-culottes

[@ndupontnet]

Day-kah-the, which is also a word in english but it does not seem to be related to the 10-day week (EDIT: 14:30 !). It's actually sometimes used in manufacturing planning.

[@UncleWermus]

"What is my purpose" "You count every second since 1970" "... Oh my God" "Yeah welcome to the club pal"

[@frogec308]

Until you overflow and burn the world in 2038. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

[@robinhooper7702]

Not sure if you all know this but a kilogram of water is 1 liter or 10 cm sq. That is how the kilogram was derived, to my understanding, or at least that is what they taught us in European schools. I was Dutch at the time.

[@VampyrumFerox]

“Days sober are measured on a calendar “. I’ve never seen a calendar with 0 days.

[@MacSvensson]

rofl... maybe once about 7 months ago ;-)

[@moodberry]

Oh, and don't forget. Gene Roddenberry introduced us to star dates. You should have explained how that works! :)

[@mrkitty777]

Indeed, very confused in the startrek genre.

[@Olumin37]

I dont think they really know themselfs.

[@kcuhc84]

Taking Drew Barrymore to the movies?

[@shaunpcoleman]

The US doesn't use the Imperial system. The US uses US Customary Units which is based on an old system of English measurements from before the Imperial system was created.

[@DJRY360]

So its worse than we imagined

[@Rack-out]

@@DJRY360 Also, they use metric, but most don't know it. Manufacturers make things in metric and then convert it over for the American market. So that 7/16ths wrench or socket that mechanics are always bitching about losing? It's 10mm with a different label in the US basically.

[@Lorre982]

and the US Coustomary Units are define by the metric system

[@DJRY360]

@@Rack-out lol I know right?! I was just really being facetious, I'm Canadian and an instrumentation tech and with so much crossover in the market I'm fairly used to dealing with instruments that use American units.. the only one I really dislike is Fahrenheit, I mean like wtf?

[@DJRY360]

@@Rack-out the only time it makes a difference is when you get down under 5mm.. nothing a little elbow grease and a hammer won't fix

[@javiermoldon3207]

1:03 Big-K didn't actually lose 50 microgram, by definition it was still 1 Kg, but everything in the rest of the universe was 50 micrograms heavier. Absurdities of using the wrong standard

[@mindblow7617]

observation: unix time is not niche, is actually what is used in all the operative systems to synchronize time, including Windows

[@bertilhatt]

Definitely agree that everyone is within arms’ reach of a device that uses Unix time, so ”niche” feels a weird way to phrase it, but how many people do you know who can tell you the rough date and time in Unix time of the top of their head? I do and a couple of colleagues to, but unless you are way too much into bug fixing that’s unnecessary.

[@mindblow7617]

​@@bertilhatt yea, I agree with you as well, it's not the usage but the context, it's not something used outside informatics and electronics, it just sounds weird as if someone says Python is niche because it's only used by programmers.

[@lemdixon01]

We still use imperial in the UK for distances of place names on the roads, height of people and their weight, but going to the supermarket it's metric.

[@raypitts4880]

my place is called the acre because it was measured and sold as an acre or is it .63 of a hectre.

[@eddymaes9620]

Lieven Scheire explained the metric system and how stupid the imperial system is in 3 minutes. watch: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eHjImnqMq7uFeLs

[@lorenznolfi368]

167.64 cm is 5.6 foot. Just for people outside the US. In Vietnam the week starts on Sunday, as described in this special calendar. The weekdays are called day 1 (which is Sunday), day 2, day 3 up to day 7, which is Saturday.

[@maggieplummer2950]

The Time Keeper, by Mitch Album is a really interesting book about the first person who started to try and count time. And the consequences for humanity that resulted from his actions. It's an interesting reflection on time for sure.

[@gonnfishy2987]

I love the idea (nothing to do with The Time Keeper) that clocks don’t actually show the passing of time- time shows the movement of the clock. One continues unabated, the other is an interpretation which is flawed to a degree.

[@kramphillips]

The shortest calendar is the “Day’s Sober” calendar.

[@F00LSG0LD215]

Speak for yourself.

[@Qermaq]

Heh. That's not a calendar, it's an hourglass.

[@chrisschmeitz1139]

@@Qermaq one of those you get in school that measures 30 seconds (for reading purposes)

[@stevoplex]

Working in a chemistry lab, occasionally out of sheer boredom, I'd record and calculate things in microgallons, decipounds and centipints. I never could get around my boss Rudy's sense of time to escape the snap of his whip.

[@cliffordwagner]

I've always wanted to write a check in mills.

[@thomas127]

I recently figured that Electronvolts per Planck time makes a decent unit of power in case you want to measure the energy output of stars.

[@cosmolewandowski7860]

I have never really keeped track of past dates in my life, I find it far more livable. With the exceptions of Christmas being a total pain and people that don't know me well getting pissed on birthdays n such. It lets me feel new everyday.

[@gadget7894]

surprised you didnt mention the... Human Era Calendar, from "in a nutshell" - kurzgesagt where for example todays year is 12021, which better represents which "human" yeah we are in ... (the months/days stay same)