• brianary
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    16 days ago

    Months are the craziest, weirdest, stupidest measure humanity has used for this long. ISO8601 week dates make more sense, or even the French Revolutionary Calendar. Humans organize all of society by weeks, not by months. Compare last January to next January, or last February to next February for metrics. Do they have the same number of weekdays vs weekend days? Even if they do, do they happen at the same point in the month so you can compare the flow of the month? Now compare two weeks, and that’s apples to apples. Group by weeks instead of months and your irregular, bumpy graph smooths right out. We only hang on to Gregorian months out of inertia.

    • Ensign_Seitler
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      16 days ago

      Months are one of the best ways for a low-tech/pre-tech culture to keep track of dates (using the Zodiac for something it can actually do—act as a calendar you can see no matter where you are in the world).

      Keeping them around is a sensible fail-safe in case some nuclear power sets us back into the dark ages.

      • brianary
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        16 days ago

        If that were true, intercalary months shouldn’t have been necessary.

        • Ensign_Seitler
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          16 days ago

          I’m pretty sure that “oh, shoot, things got wonky… toss a 13th month in here real quick” is due to people trying to force months to fit weeks.

          It’s the opposite of what I was saying about the role that months play in timekeeping & how they work.

          ALSO, the same can be said for weeks & leap days… so if it’s a point against months, it’s just as much a point against weeks.

          • brianary
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            16 days ago

            Not a problem for the FRC, and 2023-W20 compares just fine with 2024-W20. Same part of the year, and the weekend is in the same spot.

      • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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        15 days ago

        Keeping them around is a sensible fail-safe in case some nuclear power sets us back into the dark ages.

        Honestly can’t tell if you are joking but I really hope you are