Memes

There is a fun fun sci-fi book called "Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. The Humans use epoch time with si prefixed Seconds for time,

That's pretty cool! The French actually had a decimal time system after the revolution, but they eventually abandoned it.

Okay but now you have to tell us how it works!

It came from the Sumerians, not the Greeks.

The history of the calendar in Roman times is actually an entire topic to itself.

The pre-Julian calendar required fine tuning every year in winter to keep the rest of the months aligned with the seasons.

Technically not a difficult job to keep the calendar running smoothly and consistently, but the person in charge of the calendar in Rome was a politician, so they would play political games with the length of the year.

Caesar wanted a calendar that would run on auto-pilot to strip power away from those politicians.

By sheer coincidence when Caesar made his reform, during the the changeover of calendars while he was in charge, he got to rule over a 400+ day long year.

We should have a base 12 metric system but the French already established the 10

I'm with you on metric vs. standard units all day, it's downright embarrassing that we still haven't switched to metric...but Month, Day, Year makes far more sense. The numerical day of the month is pointless by itself, there are 12 of each number (except 29-31) every year so the number says nothing at all without the context. It makes no sense to start reciting a date with the least important and least descriptive bit of information. The month is the piece of information that gives the most detail on its own and cuts down on the number of words to say the date. Instead of "The 12th of May" we just say "May 12th" cutting two completely unnecessary words from British English. It also lets you know the season of the year right off the bat. If we ask when a movie, game, or book is coming out, "in March" is the best way to say it if you had to choose only one piece of data of the three. "This year/Next year" or "the 25th" give less info. We leave off the year if the future event is in the current year so that comes last naturally. As objectively as possible, we improved the date format.

Yeah that didn't fly at all ..

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The Greeks also had variable length hours, and early water clocks attempted to adjust automatically over the year.

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.

Because base ten sucks for practical use and anything that needs division.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time?wprov=sfla1

The French tried at the same time they adopted the rest of the metric system but it just didnt offer much advantage vs changing out clocks.

With digital clocks it would be simpler now.

Military plus all of mainland Europe

Also, if military and show up late, fuck you, you're fired. Which I'm actually OK with.

A slow clock might not be right in your entire lifetime.

Time zones are kind of useful though.