Spyke
lemmy.world

13 Fridays the 13th

Jason would unionize if he had that many hours of work to do

147
kbin.social

If the first was Monday as he describes, every 12th would be a Friday. There would be exactly zero Fridays on the 13th of any month.

Every 13th would only be Friday if the first was on Sunday.

85

Oh shit you're right.

Then I think Jason should look into universal basic income cuz he's about to be out of his job.

58
lemmy.world

The first should be a Sunday. Then we can align with Stardew Valley time.

8
lemmy.ml

Yay for The Human Calculator Calendar. Boo for not crediting sources. A missed opportunity to replace Jesse's name with, "Scott."

Double boo for not explaining the extra day every year, not to mention leap year. (364 / 28 = 13.)

Final boo for conflating the real world ~29.5 day imprecise lunar month with the 28 day English common law lunar month.

107

"not crediting sources"

Anyone that's able to do math and that takes 30 seconds to look at our calendars can come up with the same reflection, nothing special with the "human calculator".

50

Holy shit that slapped so hard. Was not prepared.

Now I need to have an L A N, L A N, L A N it's an L A N party

4
kbin.social

New Year’s Day. The next day is Monday. And every four years there is a second New Year’s Day

79
BorgDronereply
lemmy.one

And also, it should still be 12 months, just 4 months (December, January, June and July) should have 5 weeks while the other months have 4 weeks

But they you still have irregularities. Easier to just add Undecimber to the calendar.

7
alvvaysonreply
lemmy.world

You would then lose the ability to divide the year into pieces, since 13 is prime.

No half-yearly, quarterly or bi-monthly rhythm.

0

Our quarters don't follow the actual half anyway, with the solstice and equinox not matching up with the months.

7

The divide is easy, and can be marked on the calendar like a holiday.

  • 3 months and a week
  • 6 months and two weeks
  • 9 months and three weeks
  • New years (or day before or after, take your pick)

Much more convenient than making the whole calendar inconsistent.

5

Have a "liminal day" that serves as New Year's Day, and then every leap year put the extra day as the last day of the leap year after the last month.

The big trouble is that there isn't a subdivision between the month and the year, 13 is prime, there isn't a whole number division of months that can be used to mark say a fiscal quarter for example.

So I say instead of a 13th month, split those 4 weeks to be an extra week at the end of every 3rd month, so March, June, September, and December would all have 35 days instead of 28.

Kinda what Caesar was going for originally too, having the months alternate between 30 and 31 days, but he fucked it up because Romans were superstitious about February for whatever reason.

10

Every new years day and leap day exists as its own thing outside of any particular month. So every year we get a full new year holiday and about every four years it's a full blown 2 day event. It doesn't need to even be a named day of the week or part of a named month. It can just be it's own thing. We can number it as the 0 month if it makes you feel better and to help sorting dates. If we're feeling sentimental, maybe we can call it Friday the 13th because those won't be a thing anymore otherwise.

8
marcosreply
lemmy.world

Also, how to you tell the Moon to ignore it and stay in sync?

3
Andyreply
slrpnk.net

Each year, the moon phase would shift one day (and an additional every four years for a leap day), then sync with that day for the next year. That sounds much better than what we have now.

5

Eh, having a lunar calendar is overrated IMO. Especially since going by lunar phase is actually an inaccurate time keeper for seasons and the like.

4

Count them and insert a week at the end of the year every now and then

1
toasteecupreply
lemmy.world

I can tell you're a programmer, you autocorrected to sprint instead of spring lol

19
lemmy.world

Aren't the definitions just a client side issue these days? When times are compared it's unix or unix msec.

5

2038 is only a problem for systems with 32 bit Unix time timekeeping. Right now that's only a few embedded systems, in fifteen years there will be even fewer

This isn't even remotely as bad as Y2K where many systems used two digits to store years and rolled over unpredictably when tested. We considered one system in my workplace "good enough" as it rolled over to 100 so the calculations still worked. Others crashed, for example clobbering something in RAM when adding 99 + 1 and storing the results in two bytes

4

Not everything can be done client side. Sending notifications or emails: server side. Basically anything that's automated.

1
rojunreply
lemmy.world

I've heard that Augustus wanted "his own month just like Julius" and that's how they took 2 days from february for july and august. That way we ended having less months with 30 days. Never did look it up if it's true.

3
lemmy.world

I don't like the idea of my birthday being on the same day of the week every year. Based on the IFC Calendar, mine would be on a Tuesday every year and that would suck.

2
psudreply
aussie.zone

So track your birthday on the old calendar. Religious folks will be using old calendars to track important days

Which day of the week your birthday would fall on in the new calendar would depend on which year the new calendar came in.

My birthday is the 31st day of its month, it's erased by all the 4 week month calendars

2

So I was curious about this and realized that your birthday will need to be converted for the year you were born to align with the date on the International Foxed Calendar. You just need to convert it once and use the new date from then on.

For example, say you were born on 31 Jan Gregorian. That would mean that your new birthday will be on 3 Feb in the new calendar. This would work for most dates except those between the periods of 28 Feb and 18 Jun (not inclusive) on the Gregorian calendar. Your birthday would depend on whether you were born in a leap year or not. For instance 1 May Gregorian would be 9 May IFC if you were born in a common year or 10 May IFC for a leap year. From then on you would celebrate that as you birthday. This could lead to a lot of people not sharing a birthday anymore if they were born in different years and one was a leap year. Also, if you were born on 29 Feb Gregorian, you'd now always have your birthday on 1 Mar, but if you were born on 17 Jun in a leap year, your birthday is Leap Day and outside of the calendar. All the best getting a venue for your party since it's a public holiday.

Interestingly, anyone born in the period 18 Jun to 15 Jul Gregorian would now celebrate their birthday in the new month of Sol. Congratulations!

The rest of the year would be pretty standard. For example, anyone born on 1 Aug would now celebrate their birthday on 17 July irrespective of whether they were born in a leap year or not.

30 Dec Gregorian would now be 28 Dec IFC and 31 Dec is Year Day! Hope you found that venue for Leap Day, coz your friend now needs it for their birthday.

It sounds complicated at first, but once we started recording people's birthdays on the new calendar as they were born, it would effectively be the same.

1
Riskreply
feddit.uk

But what if we decimalised time?

1
ricecakereply
sh.itjust.works

No. Base 12 and base 60 are significantly better for things that are commonly divided into halves, thirds, fourths and so on.

A "day" is 86400 seconds. Changing the length of a second is a non starter, so you'd end up saying a day doesn't line up with a day night cycle, or something weird like "a day is 8.64 hours long", which doesn't feel better than 24.

6

We could change the definition of a second, but we'd be changing the si unit of time to mesh up with things that don't currently have si equivalents. We'd have to redo a significant number of units.
The meter is defined in terms of the second, which is then used to define the kilogram.
It's a base unit that all the others are built on. This wouldn't be a tweak, it would be rebuilding the metric system. So that there would be ten hours in a day, which we would keep having to tweak because the earths rotation isn't constant, which is why "day" isn't an si unit in the first place.

Yeah, the civilization that decided they like base 60 is long gone, but the reason they liked it is still relevant, which is why we keep using it. Highly composite numbers are really convenient, and ten is a pretty shitty number beyond being the base we often count in.

5

Yep, base 10, base 10 everywhere.

Chad ancestors splited 1 year of 10 months of 3 décades of 10 days of 10 hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds and so on. With 5 or 6 "sans-culotides" to handle leap years.

Also each unit of a decade is related to a fixed name: for example, "primedi" (first day of decade) is the 1st, 11th and 21th days of any month, "duodi" 2nd, 12th and 22th, "tridi" 3rd, 13th, 23th and so on until décadi fot 10th,20th and 30th and last day of the décade.

Jesse would approve that

5
droansreply
lemmy.world

December was the last month. January and February were added later.

0

Calendar of King Romulus:

Martius - 31 Days
Aprilis - 30 Days
Maius - 31 Days
Iunius - 30 Days
Quintilis - 31 Days
Sextilis - 30 Days
September - 30 Days
October - 31 Days
November - 30 Days
December - 30 Days

All credit and mistakes may be attributed to history.stackexchange.

2
lemm.ee

Kodak used to operate on this 13 month calendar. When I asked someone who used to work there, she was shocked that I knew about it and said that it was the best thing about working there. The original plan that this calendar is based on called for a liminal day between years for New Year's Day with 2 days for leap years

63
lemmy.world

Big Calendar would never allow for this. Imagine only ever having to buy one calendar!

16
Maggotyreply
lemmy.world

You don't need to buy more than (I think) 4 right now...

2

There are 14, they can start on any day of the week and they may or may not have a leap year.

6
feddit.uk

I work for a company which used to have 13 financial periods. It was great. Then they switched to 12 and we now have a couple of 5 week periods thrown in to balance the year out. I don't know why they decided that but it's not as good now.

15
rojunreply
lemmy.world

I'm surprised they successfully attempted that and that it resulted to be taken positively. It seems as every out-of-the-norm scheduling idea is so frowned upon that even in small companies you can steer them to anything but the same ole.

I've used iso-weeks for this purpose. I don't really care for dates if I don't absolutely have to. It's nice to refer to "week 44 five years ago" in my journals. Truth be told, no one else around me uses the weeks and the only mention to it I've heard was not positive.

7

I'm responsible for our databases and work with our BI guy a lot. Changing from 13 to 12 periods was a right pain. We had snapshots, budgets and loads of forecasting data, all of which needed to be updated to reflect the new calendar. It wasn't as easy as dumping a new calendar in, well it perhaps could have been if we were given ample time to plan it.

In regards to week, period, year, quarter, etc that's all easy for the user to switch to their preferred view in the BI system. The ERP system will use the financial calendar but reporting is done against whatever the user sees fit.

3
droansreply
lemmy.world

13 period financial calendars don't break down into quarters that easily. One reporting quarter will always have an extra period.

5-4-4 creates even quarters except it requires either one extra day every year or one extra week every five to six years. It's most beneficial for companies that either experience high seasonality or high consistency, such as retail and manufacturing.

Most other companies just use calendar month since it's simple, easy to determine, and allows for rather consistent year-over-year comparison.

4

Very late but couldn't you do it like;

364 / 4 ? You'd have the quarter be around 3 months and 1 week.

The results of the other 1-2 days you could spread over the entire year.

1

There is a choice between having an extra day in the holiday season and counting up the extra days plus leap days, and inserting an extra week every several years

Adding the extra day annoys people who value weeks continuing as they have since ancient times

Using a leap week rule makes the calendar track the seasons a little worse. Solstices and equinoxes will move by about a week over several years

7
midwest.social

Huh, so this + Human Era dating is now my new favorite calender (there's a sentence lol)

9
lemm.ee

Every birthday you have, for your entire life, being on a Wednesday.

Sounds great.

53

Happy belated all the birthdays, have a cumulative party at some point!

2

Why yes, yes it does. By then you'll actually have vacation time to use because you've unionized a decade ago and only work 8x4s anyway.

1
literature.cafe

Not a calendarologist, but I'm pretty sure lunar calendars were tried and rejected for a reason. Other than the places that still use them for traditional reasons.

Of course, maybe they just didn't have the concept of leap days?

5

It only comes out to 364 days so you'll still need to handle that 1.25 extra days in a year otherwise it'll drift. You could just add December 29th as a special day past Saturday, but then you lose sync with the moon, eg.if New moon was on Sunday the first in the previous year, New moon would be on December 29th instead of on Jan 1st the next year and all new moons would be on the 28th.

You can keep your calendar in sync with the moon or the sun but not both.

21
lemmy.world

Well if the 1st is on Sunday then every month would have a Friday 13th.

48
rmukreply
feddit.uk

Did you know that the 13th day of the month is more likely to be a Friday than any of the other weekdays?

8
lemmy.world

I'm a nerd so I had to write code to check this out.

https://pastebin.com/62kwesZz

So from 1/1/1500 until 12/31/2023:

Weekday counts: Monday: 898 Tuesday: 897 Wednesday: 901 Thursday: 896 Friday: 901 Saturday: 896 Sunday: 899

No idea why, and other than a tie with Wednesday, this is indeed true. Well if my code is correct.

16
Makeitstopreply
lemmy.world

For most proposals like this, new years day and leap day wouldn't have a day of the week. And therefore the calendar wouldn't change from year to year.

1

until 12/31/2023:

My eyes see mixed-endian! I want them to unsee it!

Decide already whether you want 2023.12.31 or 31.12.2023.

2

I think your code is fine. The Gregorian Calendar actually runs on a 400-year cycle (i.e. the pattern caused by 7-day weeks, variable-length months and leap years repeats every 400 years) so if you re-ran the code against a 400-year period you'd get the correct ratios.

1
Empricornreply
feddit.nl

Landlords salivating at the prospect of an entirely new way to increase rent almost 10% for every tenant

22
lemmy.world

As long as I get an extra payday without a decrease in payment, I’m good. I doubt that would be the case though.

2

Number of hours worked remains the same. TPTB would never allow this to improve the lives of ordinary folk. I say we cut a month out of the year. Who likes August, anyway?

1

If anything an extra month just means more time for holiday pay, more time for accountants, and more time to waste in general

1

But think of the possibilities. If you were born on the 31st, you'd stop aging.

9
lemmy.ca

Watch out for places (like gyms) that bill biweekly instead of monthly. You may think it lines up with months, but over the course of a year you pay an additional 8.6% more.

6
EatYouWellreply
lemmy.world

But, if you get paid biweekly and all of your bills are monthly, you basically get an extra paycheck each year.

2

Two extra I believe. And every few years three. BTW advertisers know this and try to sell big ticket items like TVs when that happens.

1
pawb.social

Let’s make each month 73 days.

5 months. We can figure out a season for each one!

And pay less than half as much rent!

37

Landlords thought process: Since 2 months was typically 60-61 days and that range is higher, we'll have to charge 3 payments for each monthly payment!

4
lemmy.ca

See also: Metric time.

10hrs in a day. 100min in a hour. 100 sec in a min.

32
Kindnessreply
lemmy.ml

Hmn...

You'd need to redefine the derived SI Units, or take new measurements for newly derived units. Newtons, joules, pascals, hertz, coulombs, watts, volts, ohms, farads, siemens, webers, teslas, henrys, becquerels, grays, sieverts, and katals.

Also not to mention motion and heat.

You could say there's a large amount of pressure to not change, or that it's a high "bar"...

I hope you smiled, because that is one joke I will not be making again.

37
maryjayjayreply
lemmy.world

There are (roughly) 86400 seconds in a day. This metric time describes a day with 100000 seconds. If you don't redefine the second, then I guess we'll just redefine the day, right?

12

100 seconds to a minute, 96 minutes to an hour, 9 hours in a day?? Metric with rounding.

0
SrTobireply
feddit.de

Though I like the idea a lot, 60 has the great advantage that you can devide it by 2,3,4,5 and 6 which is a very useful property... The real power move would be to use the 60-system for everything... Like the Babylonians did, or so I heared

24

It's useful. But when was the last time you used it? You usually don't say a twelves or a third or a sixth of an hour, you say 5, 20 or 10 minutes. Half and quarter are available the same in decimal time.

It's more a matter of habbit. You know what a second, a minute and an hour are because you had all your life to precisely learn it.

0
uisreply
lemmy.world

But then we will change either seconds or days.

2
lemmy.world

If you take rhe same 24 hour day, and convert it to 10 metric hours, or mours, and split that to 100 metric minutes, or cenutes, and then 100 meconds, one cenute is 1.44 minutes, and one mecond is 0.86 seconds. The practical difference would be almost imperceptible. A mour would be significantly longer than an hour, 2.4 times, but you'd have the metric system attour disposal to break it into decimals.

That's not to say we should switch, but it wouldn't be that different.

4
Donkterreply
lemmy.world

I always thought that the argument is that metric time sounds nice but it's actually worse than traditional time because 24 and 60 have much more factors that are more convenient in every day use. You can split them in half, in quarters, in thirds, in sixths.

6

You can make that same argument for Imperial units like inches and feet and cups and ounces. That's why imperial units are still popular, because decimals are great for science and conversions, but 100 doesn't have many divisors.

1

Also 10 days in a week. And 3 weeks in a month. Still 12 months, and 5 free days at the end. I like free days.

1
sopuli.xyz

Except that a lunar cycle is 29.5 days long.

The Jews recognized this and their calendar runs akin to it (https://www.timeanddate.com/date/jewish-leap-year.html), but with 7 "leap months" occurring over the course of 19 years. Of course, then they fuck it up with extra or fewer days to keep certain holidays from falling on certain days of the week. You win some, you lose some.

25

Fuck it. No-one is this thread can seem to agree, so I'm making a unilateral declaration that from here on out, all units of time except for the second are abolished, and we just use unix time for everything. You have until 1699217619s to make the switch.

21

So? I don't care if it's hot in December or not and presumably we can figure out a more sciency way to time crop planting. Not like the almanac is worth fuckall in a changing climate anyhow.

22
lemmy.world

13 x 28 = 364

Make New Years Day it's own thing, not counted in a month (or just make the new 13th month 29 days long), and continue tacking on leap days to the end of February using the currently established rules.

The length of the year doesn't change and no seasonal regression. It has so many fewer exceptions than our current system that you'd wonder how we ever ended up with a 12 month calendar.

18
marcosreply
lemmy.world

you’d wonder how we ever ended up with a 12 month calendar

Roman Empire politics...

11
snooggumsreply
kbin.social

So like leap days which we already have tacked on to the shortest month.

1
jmcsreply
discuss.tchncs.de

Yes and no. The days would be outside of the normal week (so they would be in a kind of an 8 day week), and they would be holidays to not mess up work schedules in relation to the fixed calendar.

1
dingusreply
lemmy.world

Many facilities are 24/7 operations that can't just close for a holiday (ex: hospitals, first responders). It definitely would mess up people's work schedules.

2

I've never been a fan of this idea, it doesn't go far enough and further makes things less symmetric/divisible. I say we use 6-day weeks, 5 weeks per month, 12 months per year, and an inter-calary holiday week of 5-6 days. A six day week means 4 days working, 2 days rest, and that can be staggered more easily/equitably assuming work needs full coverage in a week. We start the new year on the Spring Equinox because it's generally more pleasant.

For bonus points, we switch to base-12 (or dozenal) in our numbering system because after the transition it's a much easier system to deal with as far as division and multiplication is concerned (e.g. 1/4 would be .3 instead of .25, 1/3 is .4 instead of .333..., 1/2 is .6, etc.).

11
lemmy.ml

What would we call the 13th month?

* sorry guys, this had apparently been decided already

10
TheSladreply
sh.itjust.works

I vote for cramming a "hextember" between August and September. Then all the numbered months can be off by even more!

17
snooggumsreply
kbin.social

Who cares? Right now the 10th month is named after the number 8.

3
sh.itjust.works

Octember it will be after October. The names will be just as incorrect as they have been for way too long but if anyone wanted the names and order to correspond to their own meaning it would have been fixed by now.

9
danreply
upvote.au

If we change the number of months, the names of the off-by-two months (September through December) are getting fixed too. It's better to fix all of the technical debt at the same time.

23
aussie.zone

at the risk of sounding like a weirdo, does anyone else remember a book called the First of Octember? it was written and illustrated as though it was a Dr Suess story, but apparbely it wasnt

1
Grassreply
sh.itjust.works

Not personally but I have heard a friend mention it and another deny it's existence. I wonder if it might be one of those Bernstein/berenstain bears things. Or as I like to call it, the choice of Berensteins gate.

2
feddit.ch

What was the original idea of our calendar? And did every month have 8 weeks or so? Were weeks longer?

8
DrMangoreply
lemmy.world

There were ten months. Notice that September, October, November, and December all start with number prefixes ending at 10?

Well a few Roman bad boys decided to insert themselves in the middle of the year (July and August) and blew that idea to shit and we've never adjusted since.

3

And the reason for only 10 months before that - the earlier Romans didn't even bother to keep count during the winter. From the end of December it was just 'i dunno?' until the head priest decided it was time for a new year.

2
feddit.de

Hm i don't really see a good point for this. It's not too hard to use a calendar compared to the effort it would take the world to switch.

3

Nah, if a few aliens put some nukes or worse weapons to our heads from above, maybe shoot a couple here and there, we would definitely switch within 2 weeks at most.

Or, you know, we could just phase out the politics, give some ample time for economies and a few other select business that have work on very very puctual timing, like a few years tops, the 99% of the world would switch pretty seamlessly over a week at most. The remaining 1% could just as easily keep the old year length to continue their internal businesses. Changing most things, especially if from an incorrect or arbitrary thing to a systemic one, is rather easy but hard to accept.

1

Do you understand how many computer programs will crash when you try to introduce a "month" consisting of a single day for this New Year holiday, or alternatively a day which does not have a corresponding month?

Is your Netflix subscription going to renew in December, and then next in January, or is there a troll of a month sitting in between where you're charged for a day?

How many schedulers have rules like the second Tuesday of the month, or the last Friday of the month, and those days don't even exist!

Is this special holiday even assigned a weekday? If it is, do we repeat the same weekday twice to keep the 28 day months on the same weekday schedule?

Madness! /S

2

Now rip to people who have birthdays on weekdays because that will never change. People who have birthdays on weekends would hugely luck out.

2

There would be a leap day every year, and two every four years.

3
danreply
upvote.au

Since the 12th month is December, a 13th month should obviously be called Undecember (the undec- prefix meaning 11 in Latin).

Better yet, just stick the new month in the middle of the calendar, but don't rename the months that have numbers in their name. It already worked once (thanks, Romans).

6

Why not just use Tredecember since it the thirteenth month the twelfth month can become Duodecember and not december.

1

Hendecember. We could also move Easter and Xmas to both be in that month.

2

After the revolution, the French came up with some poetic and meaningful (if you live north of the Tropic of Cancer) names for months. We could use those.

2
sh.itjust.works

Jesse, what the hell are you talking about??

Before we get too crazy, let's consider for a second the importance of 12 in units of measure. It shows up in time: minute, second, length (imperial ft), and I'm sure many other places.

The benefit is it's evenly divisible by 2, 3, and 4. How would we define seasons with 13 months?

6
lemm.ee

Personally I think you're looking at the wrong direction, it's hard to keep mental track of because the calendar doesn't reflect the time of seasonal change in most places where that matters. Doesn't have to be the exact equinox but roughly saying "the first day of the year marks spring" and "October 1st means the start of fall" would probably help folks remember seasons more easily.

1
enkersreply
sh.itjust.works

I mean, it was a pretty good idea. The only reason we happen to be so 10 centric is because that's how we happened to evolve our manipulators.

5

Not even, dozenalists have pointed out that you can do base 12 on your fingers by counting your joints, 3 in each finger with your thumb as the pointer, you can even do it on both hands and get all the way to "100"

1

I mean, for the most part. You would have 13 months of 28 days with 1 leftover. Make that one new year or something. Leap years would just have another straggler day, lump that in with new year I guess.

The moon thing is wrong though. The moon does not operate on a 28 day cycle.

As for Monday being the 1st and Sunday the 28th, that wouldn't matter at all. Any day could be the start of the month.

10
lemmy.world

Starting the week on a Monday is psych warfare on the working class and pretty fucked up to begin with. Starting it on Sunday was the Church's idea... Start every week for the future of humanity on a Saturday and get your dessert first.

0
JackbyDevreply
programming.dev

Weeks don't really have first and end days. It's just how you arrange a calendar. Case in point, I view weeks as beginning on Monday but prefer the layout with Sunday on the left.

6
lemmy.world

Downvote all you want. The global default "work" week starts on Monday, and 99.99% of every modern calendar shows Sunday in the leftmost column of every single month. Read a damn book, kids.

1

I’m on board, but I’m not sure I can use a calendar that doesn’t put Sunday as the first day of the week.

-1