this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One benefit of base 12 and base 60 over base 10 for everyday use with things like time is simple factorization. You can divide 12 hours evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths, and 60 minutes evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc. With base 10, you've just got halves and fifths.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Another benefit of base 12 is that you can count to 12 easily with one hand by using your thumb to count each of the 3 segments on your 4 fingers.

I learned that on that other website prior to the great migration and it blew my mind then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

tries it

Whoa. Dude that's super useful.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm trying to think of a situation where I need to count to 12 on one hand 🤔

This would be useful if I was used to counting with base 12.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

When ordering twelve beers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Wait until you find out that binary counting allows you to count to 31 with one hand.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pros scale that up to base 60 by counting to 12 and using the other hand to count how many times they have counted to 12.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That is so cool! Thanks for the tip

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah, I know all about that, but I don't think we'll convince people to change everything to base 12, so let's go with a base 10 clock.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

A base-10 unit circle would be abhorrent. 1/2 of a circle is an important concept, but 1/5th and 1/10th of a circle are rarely used in geometry or trigonometry. Meanwhile, a right angle (1/4 of a circle) would require an ugly fraction, and the angle of an equilateral triangle (1/6th) would require a repeating decimal.

Think of 12-hour clocks and 360-degree circles as paper bags. When we're fucking with angular concepts, you do not want to take those bags off Decimal's head.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just want everything to be switched to 24 instead of 12. Why everyone want to complicate things?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Switch everything to Base24?! Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Do we have base12? I know only base64 and maybe base32.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see what you did there and it’s very funny.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't put in a secret punchline. It's a genuine thought. What do you think I did?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, I thought I was replying to squirrel, but they say we’ll never get everyone to use base 12 systems so we had better just go to base 10…

When the entire sae/imperial/whatever is either base 12 or divisible by it already.

There’s already a perfectly good base 12 system in everyday use, but we’ll never get anyone to accept that so we gotta accept inferior base 10. See the joke?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, so you just replied to the wrong guy? Ok then.

Yeah, I understood that joke.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i'm reading here on .ml and it looks like my reply was to squirrel and then you replied to me. what are you seeing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hold on. I did get notification with your comment, but... hmm... Since we both replied to the same guy, the app thought that it's logical to send notification about "adjacent/neighbor" reply. I thought that notifications are only about direct replies. Strange. Yes, you did not replied to me. Oopsy. :)

P.S. I'm currently using Liftoff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

that's crazy. over here on the .ml webui deep in the weeds comments dont expand right. excited to see what kind of api call sanitization ends pu getting implemented to make instances talking to each other and to clients end up getting implemented.