We could fix this though. Throw this julian calendar nonsense in the trash, and instead do this: 360 days divided into 12 months of 30 days each. Every 3 months is a season, and then between each season we insert 1 or 2 extra days for synchronization. These inbetween season days are called "Quietus", and by law and custom most people should stay home and pretend that time doesn't exist. Quietus could be enforced by a deadly cloud emanating from the Seaslight, a giant lifegiving magical cryst
@aeva Use a deck of playing cards instead. 13 months of exactly 4 weeks (28 days) = 364 days, plus an extra 1.25 day New Years holiday. (The sum of 4 suits in a deck of cards numbered 1 thru 13 is 364.) All the months always start on the same day of the week too. Makes calendars trivially simple.
@aeva it also gives astrologers and numerologists a whole new way to do fortune-telling, with every day of the year corresponding to a specific playing card. I'll take the Ace of April...
@hyc@aeva why not the Discordian calendar? It has 73 weeks of five days, and it has five seasons of 73 days, they all begin on a Sweetmorn, and leap days are outside the normal flow of time.
@aeva 13 months of 28 days each, so every month is always exactly 4 weeks. One extra day to end each year (two days on leap years). Alas, 13 isn't nearly divisible into quarters, so no-one ever goes for it...
@aeva personally I am all in favor of the 13 months of 28 days calendar (364 days) + 1 festive year day "outside" of the week (2 if leap year), with weeks always staying aligned, but I like the extra quietus days your proposal entails.
@aeva what do we do with the weeks then? If we're fixing the calendar I would like each month to have an exact number of weeks.
Maybe we can have 5 weeks of 6 days. Get rid of Mondays.
@aeva I know that was whimsical, but I actually like having cycles that are relatively prime introducing variety in how things scheduled on the different ones fall relative to one another.
If I was in charge of a large corporation, I'd definitely be rolling into the office today to ruin everyone's day with a company-wide mandate to switch to the "Kodak Revolutionary Calendar" (it wouldn't actually be the International Fixed Calendar, it would just be a random calendar I drew up on a napkin that morning).
I think we should also throw out this "base ten time" farce, and make everything below an hour base 60.
In this malicious world we live in, the humble 60hz interval we all live and die by is 16.666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666~ milliseconds, but we could live in a better world. If we base 60 all the things, that same interval would just be 1 (whatever the sexagesimal subunit of a second is called).
I'm genuinely impressed. This joke got like 90 boosts today and not one of you corrected me about the julian calendar bit. I've definitely found my way into one of the better corners of the internet. https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aeva/110900153447478513
@aeva this was a good joke - also I figured the reference out without ever having played the game, which, from what I've heard about it, makes that a win-win.
@aeva oh! You're the first person I've heard say good things about it! Now I wanna hear why you liked it because tbh it looked cute; it just had bad reviews.
@tess ok so 1) the game is absolutely gorgeous, 2) the best way I can describe it is like if we got a Chrono Cross sequel in a FFXIV expansion (but you replace the mmo bits with a fun and breezy farming sim), and 3) this is the sound track https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4kpsbL_fJyTgUtLjxnbuOJqOKlYSwnO5
@antimnguyen well, the default frame rate would still be 59.94 Hz, and we'd still call it 60 frames per second... unless we also switched everything else to base 60 🤔
@aeva there are a few examples of calling 1/60th of a second a "third" (or a tertiary) and 1/60th of a third a "fourth" (or a quaternary). An alternative that doesn't sound like 1/3rd might be a "jiffy" which, while having no formal definition, is sometimes used to represent 1/60th of a second in the electronics world when referring to one cycle of AC power
@aeva IIRC this is how Kim Stanley Robinsons' Mars colonists dealt with the fact that Mars days are ~40 minutes longer than Earth days - they decided that the extra time was after midnight and was "free time" - people just pretended that it didn't exist, and nothing could be scheduled then.
@aeva this is very close to my own proposal. I would make the intercalary days align with the soltices & equinoxes, and they would be celebratory days rather than deadly cloud troglodite days, however....
@aeva In actual fact, this was basically the French Revolutionary calendar - 12 months of 30 days with three 10-day weeks, plus 5 extra days at the end of the year. But 10-day weeks means a lot fewer weekends so people hated it. :P
@boredzo@aeva TBF, that's a financial function, so they just follow the convention there. If anybody is at fault, I would blame the finance people for that.
@aeva To make it even simpler, on many planets, a year is a perfect 1 day long.
When I mean "simple", that's mostly for calendar makers, not for everyday people (everyyear people?). At least they have many birthday presents
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