this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
216 points (97.8% liked)

Cartography Anarchy

1018 readers
5 users here now

A community for Cartographers with nothing left to lose.

Rules:

Don't be awful Lemmy Guidelines Still Apply.

No direct upload images This is hosted on Lemm.ee- to post images, you must use an image upload service like Imgur to post maps.

We are agents of chaos I've created this to be the alternative to the community I used to manage on the website that shalt not be named "mapporncirclejerk"

Live and let die Meme trends happen, so please don't message mods asking to take down maps that are repetitive to a bit.

Reposts Vs. Covers Not all reposts are evil- if someone posts something that has been done years ago, it serves to bring old memes to the new users. I call these meme covers. However it can be done in excess which makes it a repost and spam. Mods will determine if a post is a cover or a repost.

No impersonating mods I can't believe I had to make this rule.

No harassing mods on an appeal We can talk it out, and we will be acting in good faith when making decisions. If you disagree with a removal, you are free to message for clarification or to appeal by giving some added context.

Bans Bans will be set to a maximum of 365 days for humans, and a minimum of 365 years for bots. I believe people can change, so if you are banned for good reason, do know that it is not permanent, it is just a way to say "take time to grow and come back when you are ready".

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 31 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The imaginary line has to go somewhere. 🀷

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I talked to a guy that thinks we should just all use Unix Epoch on here once. We'd still need local informal systems to describe the time of day and weekday, but the more I've thought about it the less stupid it sounds. Date/time systems are a pain in the ass and necessarily ugly.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Shit programmers say...

The problems of time zones only affect a handful of people, the wast majority of people nearly never think about this.

Epoch or standard time would just rename time zones, beucause currently you say hour offset from London, with "no timezone" you would have to say something like, noon is at 05:00 utc/epoch at that city, so nothing really changed

Industries where it actually matters already use UTC for everything, e.g. international flights.

It would make more sense to switch to base 10 minutes and hours than to "solve" the time zones

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

Yeah, I'm not seriously suggesting this is something we should get on, lol. Maybe solve world hunger or just all the wars first before another radical standards reform.

The difference would be that you would actually just schedule something for a megasecond out, instead of having to screw with timezones or reference the sun at all. It wouldn't matter much locally, but for anything international - like probably this conversation - it would be easier. Even UTC has hard edges.

If we seriously go into space it's going to be really picking weird thinking in terms of the incommensurable days and years of a distant planet, at which a point it might not be just a trivial issue anymore.

Would you redefine the second to make your decimal system work? We'll need a new Epoch system then, haha. The French did try to do something like that.

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

What would be easier with our conversation? I guess we are at the other side of the globe. I wasn't answering because I was sleeping, you won't answer immediately because you are sleeping, what would help if our clocked showed the same? Both of us sleep because the sun is down, not because the clock says something.

With long range space travel we will have to deal with the relativity of time as well. Lets say we define an Epoch and both of us do something exactly a googol second later but we live on a different planet, it wouldn't be at the same time because of relativity. If I would say lets do something when it is 12:00 in London, UK, Earth, than you can convert it to your relativity and time zone.

About the intetplanetary usage of the current system, it's already in effect, LTC aka Coordinated Lunar Time is already under development since this April.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-moon-will-get-its-own-time-zone-called-coordinated-lunar-time-under-nasas-lead-180984076/

On the moon, a smaller body where the gravitational pull is much weaker, time moves more quickly and unevenly: Lunar time gains about 58.7 microseconds per day compared to Earth’s time, though even this can vary, depending on the altitude and longitude where lunar clocks may be located.

β€œAn atomic clock on the moon will tick at a different rate than a clock on Earth,” Kevin Coggins, manager of NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation Program, tells the Guardian’s Diana Ramirez-Simon. β€œIt makes sense that when you go to another body, like the moon or Mars, that each one gets its own heartbeat.”

So the solution is to just convert between time zones, and resync them sometime because they can drift because of relativity.

I don't know how a base 10 day would work, it just annoys me that its reform wasn't successful with the metric system. But I don't know how it will work when people will live on Mars. A day on Mars aka a Sol is 24 hours and 39 mins. Will they have "Mars hour" which equals 1 Earth hour and 1.6 Earth minutes? If not, they could simply use Earth hours, than it won't be possible to create classic circular clocks.

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

Yeah, you can use an hour/day-based system elsewhere, but it's goofy and has a lot of complications. If a separate culture were to grow up on the moon, they would start to wonder why their measurements are based on the particular natural rhythms of a place they've never been, except eventually out of sync completely.

We haven't actually scheduled anything here, but if we were to I'd default to UTC like you said. The thing is, it's just not as simple as a decimal count, and it has leap seconds, and there's daylight savings and permanently changing timezones and physical relativity that can make it difficult to know what your current offset is. If we were to drop the requirement that the time has anything to do with the day/night cycle and the seasons, all that goes away.

The current system is definitely good enough, but it could be done better.

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

The conversation is easier because we have a shared understanding of the time.

When you ask me can you call me at 13:00, I currently need to google what your timezone is and convert it to my timezone to know whether my sun is up.

If instead I just know when my sun comes up and goes down in UTC, I can immediately answer if I'm available at 13:00

Relativity does make space more difficult, but we'll ultimately have to make some shared reference point there, too, as you've pointed out

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

But I have to google when the sun comes up for you, it's literally the same thing.

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

In the context of I'm not available and you need to know when to call, sure

In the context of we're currently talking and trying to plan when we'll talk again, UTC is infinitely easier once you have 5 different people talking

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

What's 12h/15h? How long a day is?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago

At 00:00 (midnight) UTC on monday, Russia's time would be 12:00 (noon) of monday and alaska's would be 15:00 (3 pm) of sunday.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Hour. Just a weird way to say 12:00 and 15:00 or 3pm and whatever 12:00 is in am/pm talk

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

12am is midnight and 12pm is noon. But most people just say "noon" or "midnight" because it's less confusing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

That is confusing. "PM" is "post meridian" or, as I understand it, after the middle. One would think it wouldn't be PM until 12:01 or at least 12:00:01.

Which is why I, as you said, use "noon" and "midnight."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If you look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight it's also not at all clear if 12:00 am is midnight or noon.
To me the clock jumping from 11:59 am to 12:00 pm and then again from 12:59 pm to 1:00 pm seems weird. Imho, stepping from 11:59 am to 12:00 am and from 12:59 am to 1:00 pm would be more logical.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Didn't expect this almost a month later.

I agree with probably 50% of your post. I agree that it's not clear whether 12:00am is midnight or noon. However, if you recognize noon as the meridian, 12:00:01 is post meridian, i.e. after the middle (presuming that 12:00:00 was the meridian). It becomes after the middle immediately after the middle, not an hour later.

I don't mean to be contrarian, but that's not the part that confuses me personally. Really I think the world should just convert to 24 hour time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Didn't expect this almost a month later.

Sorry, I just discovered this community and didn't look at the date.

Really I think the world should just convert to 24 hour time.

Definitely. In Germany, we often use the 12 hour system in spoken language, but always with an indication (morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night) unless it's already clear from the context. But in written language, using the 24h system is most common.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

No need to apologize! I was expressing surprise, not displeasure.

In the USA, as I'm assuming you know due to your clear fluency in the language, we largely rely on context but add am/pm if necessary. Most of the time when I personally discuss times, it's for an appointment or meeting, and most of my 12:30 meetings aren't happening thirty minutes after midnight (the ones that do aren't usually scheduled in advance). We've managed so far, but there are for sure better approaches.

I would like to reiterate that I wasn't criticizing, just observing. My search engine says it's 8am in Germany, so hopefully you're having a great morning!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I didn't feel your reply as critics too. I also wish you have a great time, whatever time your clock might currently show.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Just shy of 3am.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I can never remember it properly either but when someone reminds me (thanks samus12345) which way around it is it does kind of make sense.

If you think of 12:00 as literally an infinitesimal slice of time it's not really possible to give it an am/pm distinction, as it is literally the devider between the two. BUT, in a more real-life approach 12:00 is probably not an infinitesimal slice of time but the minute after a digital clock flipped to 12:00. That can be 12:00:00.00004 or 12:00:30 or 12:00:59.999944. And all those are indisputably pm.

[–] four 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Couldn't it be 00:00 PM? So zero time since meridian?

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

That's not a bad suggestion, but may interfere with 24 hour clocks.

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

That's why you switch the clocks over to 24 hours

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

I can't tell if you're agreeing or arguing with me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Correct - technically, noon is neither am nor pm, but clocks and the like have to have SOMETHING there, so am for midnight and pm for noon was arbitrarily chosen.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Hour, it's noon Monday on the Russian side and 3pm Sunday on the American side.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

So Sarah Palin can see into the future!?