At least we're not mixing in letters

If the day started at 1:00 then by the second hour you would be at 2:00, even though only 1 hour has passed. Effectively the day starts at 0. In fact in 24-hour time that is how it's depicted, 00:00 with midday being depicted as 12:00, so it isn't confusing
- Careful, there are Americans around
  
  Americans love units based on 12
- As a programmer I'd rather it start at 0
  
  Yeah but now you can't enjoy the delights of python
- In the roman empire the day/night cycle was divided into 24 segments. 12 for the day and 12 for the night which also meant a day hour in summer was longer than the night hour.
- If the day started at 1:00 then by the second hour you would be at 2:00, even though only 1 hour has passed.
  When the second day of the month starts, the day of the month is 2, even though only 1 day has passed.
  I mean, numerically it does make sense to start at zero but it doesn't seem to correspond to the way people think and talk.
  
  Feel free to take it up with the Romans. It's their stupid calendar system.
  I also take issue with there being 7 days in a week rather than 10, it's just messy.
- Which is also why I hate that our calendar starts at year 1.

"At least we're not mixing in letters"
- I see IIII in there and I cry a little on the inside.
  
  This has become a standard on analog clocks and watches (presumably to avoid confusion with VI), but for some reason IX and XI (for 9 and 11 respectively) is fine.
  Personally I’d like to see IX and IIIIIIIIIII.
  ETA: I guess IX and XI are ‘fine’ because they’re not upside down, but my point still stands.

At least we're not mixing in letters
Zulu Time: Am I a joke to you?

It's the same logic that was used by ancient astronomers to arrive at 360 degrees for a full revolution.
The math is easier if you have to do it by hand.
- These are called "superior highly composite numbers" apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_number
  
  It's also the one advantage Imperial has over metric. It's easier to do mental math in a lot of cases in base 12 rather than base 10.
  Now excuse me while I bar my windows and doors from the mobs of angry people that show every time I point this out.
  
  Poor 70. Imagine being the objectively "weird" one out of a hundred.
- You've gone 360 on me.

IIRC they counted the bones in their fingers using their thumb and that gives 12. The first sundial was around the equator and there is always light for half a day, so half a day becomes 12 hours.
To count large numbers often one hand was used to count using 5 fingers and the other to count the bones, so you get 5x12 for 60 minutes.
- AIUI there was an aspect in the divisibility of the numbers being convenient.
  12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30.
  10 is divisible by 2 and 5. 100 is divisible by 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 50.
  If you want to minimize dealing with fractions, 12 and 60 are far more convenient than 10 and 100.
  
  That's an interesting thought, but I believe it to simply be a coincidence.
  The base 12 counting being based on counting the division of your fingers is historically verified, but if the division aspect was so compelling to them you'd expect it to carry forward into their writing system.
  By the time you get cuneiform math though, they actually go back to base 10.
  https://images.app.goo.gl/9GR6VEiT7GHYF3KaA
  As you can see base 12 is not in the written system, or for written mathematics. It just was convenient for counting on their hands.
  They used mixes of base 10/base 12 and base 60.
  Base 10 would be used go determine the symbols for a specific "digit" in base 60.
  So similar to how our 13 is 1 ten and 3 ones, their 13 was the symbol for 10 then 3 symbols for 1. 13 = 𒌋𒁹𒁹𒁹 But 73 would be written 𒁹 𒌋𒁹𒁹𒁹
  Which would be interpreted as 1 sixty and 13 ones, or 60 + 13

The french:
- Goddamn metric time
  
  Even the French figured out that decimalized time was stupid after a couple of years.
  Which has added credence to the old saying that "The French follow no one. And no one follows the French."
- Why the 'IIII' insted of 'IV'?
  
  Prevents confusion between the four and the six: III, IV, V, VI, when the watch is not held perfectly vertically for viewing.
  
  i'm pretty sure that IV is a modern typographic thing
- The Swiss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
  
  Now I really want a .beats watch. That's so retro cool.
  
  Why does everything that comes from Switzerland always seem to be owned by Swatch? Do they not have any other brands there?

At least our hours are the same length regardless of latitude now, so let's be grateful for that.
- oh god, thanks for making me imagine something terrible

For some reason I heard this in a combination of the voices of Mitch Hedberg, and Nate Bargatze as George Washington.

Somebody never had a clock with roman numerals and it shows
I remember getting into an argument with a grade school teacher over IIII because most such clocks put that for 4 instead of IV because of some fuckin reason
- I despise these so so much. IIII was historically NEVER correct. Some doofus decided to put that on a clock because it looks more symmetrical with the VIII on the other side. Terrible reasoning.
  
  "However, even though it is now widely accepted that 4 must be written IV, the original and most ancient pattern for Roman numerals wasn’t the same as what we know today. Earliest models did, in fact, use VIIII for 9 (instead of IX) and IIII for 4 (instead of IV). However, these two numerals proved problematic, they were easily confused with III and VIII. Instead of the original additive notation, the Roman numeral system changed to the more familiar subtractive notation. However, this was well after the fall of the Roman Empire."
  https://monochrome-watches.com/why-do-clocks-and-watches-use-roman-numeral-iiii-instead-of-iv/
  
  IIII was the way Romans usually wrote 4. It's associated with simplicity / illiteracy. But also depended on era, region, intended audience, or practicality. I think the most famous example is the coliseum using LIIII.
  There's still variation even now; standardization is relatively new, and it's not common knowledge. And dates... it's like every 50-100 years people decided to write them differently.
- Weird, I've seen many analog clocks with Roman numerals but always IV for 4.
  
  It's actually called the "clockmakers four" or "watchmakers four." it's a thing.
  
  To be fair, Google searching Roman numerals clocks give you about a 50/50 distribution.
  I wasn't aware of this either and I suspect we're not alone. It's not highly noticeable and if there's a 50-50 chance won't even see it...
  
  False. I had a clock that used IIII instead.

I only recently learned the etymology of the word: "second"
Its name comes from being the "second" division of the hour, with the minute being the first.
- I'll see you in 5 firsts, 2 seconds and 7 thirds.
  
  Zero zeros?
- I honestly hate this.
  It's like bad world building for some throwaway fiction story.
- It’s funny how we go straight to metric when dividing seconds

Clocks should use 24h format. AM/PM is completely useless.
- No it's not, with a 12h format on an analog watch you can use the sun to find true north. It is also easier to read it when the hands have double the amount of degrees to indicate the number.
  Edit -- digital watches should use 24h, I fully agree, maybe there was a misunderstanding because it's analog watches we're talking about here and these could stay 12h IMHO
  
  How do you find north on a 12h face that wouldn't work with a 24h face? Because the method I know, requires correcting for the 12h circle.
- It sounds like a joke but I really had someone stop me on the street to ask for the time and when I said 2:30 they asked "AM or PM?" I guess a 24 hour clock would've prevented that.

Somebody gave me this clock…I just need the time.

Don't listen to OP's bullshit.
They work for big clock. They're trying to convince you 12 hour clock is useless so they can sell you double the clock.
- Look at this guy, only one clock. I keep two analog clocks in each room, the AM 12-11, and PM 12-11. The way it was meant to be.
- Wouldn’t you need half the clock if it had twice the numbers?

The 6 means 30, both of which also mean 1/2

Days start at 0h, not 12h
It can't start at 12 hours if there are 24 segments.
And keep your letters out of it too.
- Days start at 0h, not 12h
  Show me where is the zero here?
  
  I have a clock that has 0 at the bottom, 6 in the 9 position, 12 at the top, and 18 in the 3 position.
- The AM/PM bullshit:
  AM: 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
  Then the same for PM. Who counts like that? Whats after 12? 1! What?
  
  The galaxy-brained group known as "Z₁₂ + 1". "What if we did modular arithmetic but one-indexed."
  Edit: Actually, wait, it's worse: zero-indexing but we represent the zero element in Z_n as 'n'. Kill it with fire.
  
  People who lived before the invention of zero counted like that!
  
  Big brain ape like count in many systems
- What clocks do you have that say 0, except for the 0 in 10?
  
  Digital ones.

Also see this: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca
It amazingly explains all the insanities for handling dates and times.

Hour hand -> hour = n
Minute hand -> minute = n * 5
It makes sense, there's just an algorithm attached to each pointer.
Hour -> 3 = 3
Minute -> 3 = 3 * 5 = 15
- The first clocks didn't have a minute hand though.

Sundials.
Now if you want to get really pissed, the magnetic North Pole is actually the South Pole of the Earth’s magnetic field. We call it the North Pole because the north side of a magnet points to it.
- Actually, we call it the North Pole because we already had a concept of North from the North Star. Then we invented magnets and decided that the part that points North is the North side of a magnet (despite North Pole being magnetic south).
- Don't tell them about positive/negative electron movement.
- Where am I?? 🫨🌀😵‍💫

We have Babylon to thank for this
- Well, then I can't complain, lovely sci-fi production.
  
  Yeah but no matter how hard I look I can't find the first 4
- And I thank them.
- Our mistake was not embracing base-12 time, it was failing to embrace a base-12 counting system.
  
  100% this.
- Not true. You have math thank for that and there is a good reason for numbers like that (and why Babylonier used them). They are very useful to do calculations in your head, especially division because the have a lot of factors. The concept is called highly composite numbers (HCN) and superior highly composite numbers (SHCN). They are practically "anti-primes". That's why base-6 or base-12 are objectively a better number system than base-10 but it's pretty much too late to switch now.
  
  Damn that’s genius

Well it’s because noon means nine because the day starts at six o’ clock, so three is noon, but we use it to mean twelve which is closer to midday, obviously

When I become dictator of the world, this will be the new time unit: https://metric-time.com/
The year will also have 13 months: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
The year will be 12025: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar
Because these things just make more sense. You will thank me after a few generations, because habits are hard to change.
- Redefining the definition of a second sounds very problematic.
- If you make the 13th month a holiday with no work, you have my support .
- Seems a bit odd to not use a base 10 number of months.
- Team 13-month-calendar assemble!
  I haven't done enough digging on metric time, but if it's implemented as a UTC/global time I can get behind that. I'm sick of timezones and DST.
  
  Nah, instead we'll go back to the local noon standard where the time zone is set by when the sun is directly above you. Instead of a couple dozen time zones we'll have thousands.
- I'd love to have a 13-month calendar.

Relatively funny but gets worse the more you think about it.
The 6 stands for 6, not 30.
When we have AM and PM it would be dumb to have 1-24.
1 is the end of the 1st hour. 2 the end of the second. This is why it starts at 0.
- 0
  She's a witch!
  
  Only if she weighs as much as a duck.

Also why clockwise?
Earth rotates and orbits counter clockwise. It just seems more right
- To be fair whichever direction they made it go would be clockwise
  
  True, but also it’s because of sundials
- Because Sundials rotate clockwise ( in north hemisphere )
- Earth rotates and orbits counter clockwise.
  No it doesn't. It depends on the human perception of "up" and "down" which are completely arbitrary. We by convention see the North Pole as the "top" of the world but it could as easily be seen as Antarctica.
- Well that depends on where you look at the earth from doesn’t it. It’s like saying ‘righty righty, lefty loosey’ which only holds true as long as you’re thinking about the top edge of the screw head.
- Well, depending on which hemisphere you're standing in, at least. We arbitrarily set this idea that north = up in most depictions of the globe, but we could just as easily make Antarctica the top of the world and everything rotates the other way.
  The reason why clockwise is what it is, is because sundials were first used to tell time in the northern hemisphere, where the shadows move clockwise. If it was in the southern hemisphere, they'd have moved counterclockwise (which would be clockwise).
  
  Before the age of exploration, orientation of maps were random. North became the norm so Europe could be placed at the top center.
- Also why clockwise?
  We read from left-to-right, so the front span of numbers continues that visual pattern.
  
  The answer is ‘sundials’
  
  We?

If you want to be mad about time then I'd like to introduce you to a little thing I like to call the Gregorian calendar.

Gift from ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians love 12 & base 60. They also liked 7. Those numbers recur in their mythology.
Americans have a weird fixation with 💯. Where Americans might use percentages, I've seen Japanese plot values in [0, 1] (ie, pure proportions).
- It's not about mythology or Mesopotamia. Those numbers are called highly composite numbers (HCN) and superior highly composite numbers (SHCN) and are great for doing calculations (especially divisions) in your head because they have a lot of factors. That's why they were used everywhere before calculators were a thing.
  
  That's probably why Mesopotamians chose them: the convention traces back to them. Measuring angles in degrees also traces back to them.
  Still, those numbers/units are quite arbitrary & introduce unnecessary conversions. Radians are dimensionless & require no conversion. Converting seconds to a more natural unit like days involves reintroducing those highly composite numbers that fit better in base-60 than the base-10 system we now use.

6 means 30 is some toilet paper math

sub.wetshaving.social?
What is this?
- My guess is there are only so many conversations you can have over whether a Silvertip Badger is superior to a Boar brush.
  
  But there's a million razorblades people can argue about. Platinum, tool steel, carbon. And then there's which holder is the best. And then all the straight razor refinishing/refirbishing you could get into. Not to mention, strops, towels, soaps, sebum oils, styptics and on and on.
  
  You'd be surprised

I'll be there at H:00.

In Ethiopia they still use the tradition time where the day starts at the 1:00 which is our 6am. Then 12:00 is our 6PM, and it starts over. So they have 2 cycles of 12 hours, one for daytime, and one for night time. And it felt somewhat more intuitively in conversation too.
- I think I remember watching a YouTube video about different systems. There are more exotic ones beyond the 12h/24h binary
  
  Sure, but I guess either only used in particular environments (e.g. religious settings) or in pretty disconnected places from the rest of the world.

I say we divide the day into 100 sections. No reason really I just think it’d be cool to party until 100 o’clock.
- The day in 15 increments is close, so that would be better in some ways.... But we can't seem to all agree on the monstrosity of stupid that is daylight savings so I fear implementing logic would never happen.
- You might like reading about decimal time…
- Maybe go SI with day as base unit & SI prefixes? Eg, deciday, centiday, milliday.

Don't forget about π
- τ > π
  
  τ = 2π, but yeah that's another letter that we can't help but get involved

The clocks that use Roman numerals mix in letters.

German has a word for it: historisch gewachsen

This sounds like the "Jason, Jason, Jason" YouTube guy's conversations.

Don't talk shit about duodecimal 😠

Sounds like a Michael McIntyre bit

A lot of people white knighting clocks in this thread

https://youtu.be/0QVPUIRGthI
This is basically a standup routine

There's Metric / Decimal Time.
Next time someone makes a post praising the metric system and making fun of people for using imperial units, feel free to call them out as a filthy casual for using a 24-hour clock.