this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
1165 points (96.3% liked)
memes
14864 readers
6187 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- [email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- [email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- [email protected] : Linux themed memes
- [email protected] : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
AIUI there was an aspect in the divisibility of the numbers being convenient.
12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30.
10 is divisible by 2 and 5. 100 is divisible by 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 50.
If you want to minimize dealing with fractions, 12 and 60 are far more convenient than 10 and 100.
That's an interesting thought, but I believe it to simply be a coincidence.
The base 12 counting being based on counting the division of your fingers is historically verified, but if the division aspect was so compelling to them you'd expect it to carry forward into their writing system.
By the time you get cuneiform math though, they actually go back to base 10.
https://images.app.goo.gl/9GR6VEiT7GHYF3KaA
As you can see base 12 is not in the written system, or for written mathematics. It just was convenient for counting on their hands.
They used mixes of base 10/base 12 and base 60.
Base 10 would be used go determine the symbols for a specific "digit" in base 60.
So similar to how our 13 is 1 ten and 3 ones, their 13 was the symbol for 10 then 3 symbols for 1. 13 = ๐๐น๐น๐น But 73 would be written ๐น ๐๐น๐น๐น
Which would be interpreted as 1 sixty and 13 ones, or 60 + 13
I'ma start a revolution where we use duodecimal metric for everything, including time.
That's how we ended up with 12 months of varying length in a year and it's a mess.
It's a problem no matter how you divide the year
That's why I propose changing the orbit of the earth, too
Not if you divide by 5. It gets you 73 days each.
Ok, but now subdivide the 73 day month-analogs into week-analogs.
I can see calling the month analogs "seasons", but 73 is a prime number so you're boned. We need subdivisions smaller than that for practical purposes
Don't subdivide the 73-day seasons.
Instead, subdivide the year into 73 5-day weeks.
A year made up of 5 seasons and 73 weeks.
Like I said, we need smaller subdivisions than 73 for practical purposes.
just having 5 season per year and nothing else simply isn't practical. Imagine having to wait 70 days to the weekend ๐. We need to have a week analog, and no matter what it's not going to fit cleanly in the seasons.
Actually, splitting the season into 10 day weeks with a 3 day weekend, and then ending each season with a 3 day holiday could work, not opposed to that lol
But I don't like 73, it's not power of 10 or 12 so it doesn't fit a decimal it duodecimal metric calendar. The universe sucks for not confirming to the way we order to count.
I want to have like... A day, a decaday (week), hectoday (season), kiloday (year), megaday (millenium).
And in the other direction, a day, a deciday (hour), centiday (minute), milliday(second) etc.
So my plan is to change the orbit and rotation of earth to force reality to match our preferences
Well, your solution works. But if you want to subdivide the season into neat and regular weeks, it's not possible. So the next best thing is subdividing the year into weeks while disregarding the seasons.
Only if your week is 5 days long, which causes causes problems with our current work culture.
Also leap day is truly a fuck.
13 months of 4 weeks + new year's day (+leap day) actually fits perfectly.
I wouldn't call having an unassigned remainder "perfectly". And always, leap day fucking shit up lol