this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
194 points (94.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26701 readers
1708 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics.


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Mine is that I pour the milk before the cereal. people are always extremely confused by that.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

after midnight, past midday”

AM, PM. It actually means ante meridiem and post meridiem, Latin for "Before Noon" and "After Noon," but the above also works and is in English.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Latin for "Before Noon" and "After Noon,"

I'm going to start using BN and AN, just to confuse people.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

It's terrible as a mnemonic though. "After" and "post" both mean the same thing, and the other words both start by M.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I don't think they're confused by times like 1pm.

At least for my brain, 12pm and 12am are the sticking points.

As you note, pm is Latin for after noon, yet we call noon 12pm. Noon isn't anymore after itself than it is before itself. Neither makes any sense.

With 12am, we generally seem to think about midnight as the end of the day, even though it's really the start of the new day. The Latin isn't confusing here, but the numbers get real weird. We start the day counting at 12:00, go up to 12:59, and then reset the count to 1 an hour in? Our 12h clocks are split between being 0-indexed, and a weird variant of modulus 12.

I'm clearly overthinking things, but I don't always immediately remember which 12 is which. Latin doesn't help.

With 00 it's clear which time we're talking about, and which calendar date it's part of. It's also the easiest way to sort out which 12 gets mislabeled what.