• chaosCruiser@futurology.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    Time units are just as cursed as American units.

    Conversion between days, hours, minutes and seconds is a total mess. If you never have to do anything with those numbers, you don’t need to worry about it. The moment you need to do calculations or compare devices you run into completely unnecessary problems that would have been easy to avoid. Just think of pumps and fans with units given in l/min or m^3/h.

    Just pick the standard time unit and stick with it. Use prefixes to deal with big or small numbers.

      • chaosCruiser@futurology.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        That addresses the calendar problem, which is another pet peeve of mine. Oh, where do I even begin. The calendar system is just the next level of curses and barrels of rotting worms.

        At least time units have fixed, but inconvenient conversion multipliers. Months and years involve numbers that aren’t even constants!

        Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, someone reminds you about time zones. That’s just pure cosmic horror.

        It’s a miracle we don’t trigger a nuclear meltdown every week while using a system like this.

        • mathemachristian[he]@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          8 months ago

          This will either sooth you because it’s so nice comparatively, or enrage you that it’s not the standard everywhere already but

          The Ethiopian calendar has twelve months, all thirty days long, and five or six epagomenal days, which form a thirteenth month. A sixth epagomenal day is added every four years, without exception.

    • GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      And the icing on the cake? If we had 13 months, essentially every month could have the same number of days, 28.

      • notabot@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        That only gives you 364 daya per year and we need just fractionally less than 365.25. You end up needing an extra day every year, and if we want to keep midnight in the middle of the night, and extra full day every four years (except when we don’t). Adding those sorts of bodges onto an otherwise elegant system would be awful to work with.

        Instead, I propose we build giant rocket engines pointing straight up on the equator, and adjust the Earth’s orbit until one orbit around the sun takes exactly 364 days.