Hilariously, Star treks "stardates" are not uniform. The format shifts season to season and show to show.
Metric is about measurements, not formatting. The date measurement is in days, months, and years for both ISO 8601 and what's shown.
America officially switched to the metric system decades ago. We just don't use it on a daily basis, but officially the US is metric.
In 1988 Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, which made the metric system the preferred system of weights and measures for U.S. trade and commerce.
In 1991 President Bush issued Executive Order 12770, which mandated the transition to metric measurement for all federal agencies.
I remember learning all metric in elementary school in the early to mid 80s much to my mother’s chagrin (any thing I learned that was different than what/how she learned in Catholic school was bad, including a second language). Then having to relearn standard in middle school. I still have to count all of the lines on a tape measure.
As a metric-raised guy I find extremely difficult following the tutorials of woodworkers that start putting 2feet 3 inches and 9/16 in the measurements that converts to 700,0875mm wich i guess is an approximation of 70cms
Things like woodworking are exactly where the imperial system came from. Because daily usable lengths like a foot are using base 12 not base 10, it can be divided much more evenly even before needing fractions.
I was taught the metric system in US Schools in the late 80s and 90s.
Sure we don’t use it daily but I still know it.
I know that I need to convert to it and how to convert to it if necessary.
For anything that’s not interacting with a human I’d use the metric system, for anything interacting with a human I’d display both.
While you're at it, switch over to DD/MM/YYYY for the date format. The only 2 configurations that make sense is that or YYYY/MM/DD. Either go general to specific or specific to general, MM/DD/YYYY makes no sense.
Overly strict for anything day to day, overly permissive for anything important.
RFC 3339 is where it's at.
TIL.
For purposes of this post though, RFC 3339 and ISO8601 are identical. Dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD, so 2024-08-29 is both RFC3339 and ISO8601 compliant.
Not an expert, just spent around 2 minutes looking at https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/
Just draw the triangle the other way for DD/MM/YYYY. It makes sense that people want to know the day first, that is the most important part tbh
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
It makes sense because of the way we say the date - eg today is November 21st, 1999. We don't usually say it's the 21st of November in conversation.
Eta: I wasn't giving any value statement for the date order lol. Just explaining the rationale for why the date is written in that order - that's how people talk. If linguistics as a concept bothers you, well... that's on you.
Well bully for them. They aren't 'Murica, and you can't make us do anything we don't want to!
/s but not really. It's far too accurate for far too many of my countrymen
Sure, other countries do and that's fine too. I'm not saying it's good or bad or placing any value on it because it's not that big of a deal to me. And I used to regularly deal with this because I'd write dates for official international paperwork pretty often.
I'm simply saying the reason we order our dates the way we do, and are resistant en masse to changing it, has to do with the way we say the date and so it makes the most sense to the general public to write as we speak. I literally don't care how the date is written because I can and have done both. I'm not prescribing action here either.
Here in the UK we would say "I will visit you on the 19th of September" for example. I have never heard anyone say the month first. It's just different custom. We also drive on the other side of the road..! At the beginning it would have been helpful if the world would have agreed on a standard either way. Then it would stop confusion. (And less car accidents from people on holiday/vacation on the wrong side of the road! 😅
Right, we'd automatically just say September 19th here.
It's also why we say September 11th, and why "4th of July" is said the way it is - it's a special day so it gets ordered differently to draw attention to it and to make it appear like a more formal holiday, since saying Day of Month is considered a more formal way of speaking here. Juneteenth also follows the Month/Day naming scheme.
Try this...
"What date is it today? "
"Today is the 31st"
"31st of what?"
"The 31st of August"
"...?"
"Today is Saturday the 31st of August, 2024"
Etc.
See. It works even more so
“Today is Saturday the 31st of August, 2024”
No one says that in the US like that lol. Like say that sentence out loud, that's so long and exhausting and stilted for no reason. If my friend said the date to me like that, i would think they were upset about something or being weird. We'd automatically switch it over and say "August 31st, 2024," or even "8/31/24" because when people ask for the date while writing a check, for instance, they are going to write it numerically anyway.
Idk what's the point of your argument. To gaslight me in how everyday Americans talk?
“31st of what?”
You had to invite the other speaker in this scenario to mirror your format before they'd actually imitate the stilted way of saying "31st of August." Not even in your fantasies do Americans talk like that naturally.
I'm not even saying we SHOULD keep it that way - it makes things confusing at times. Just that common use has kept it ordered this way.
I wouldn't even notice it as unusual, even though it isn't my usual order. It could vary by region or profession, or maybe it's just you that notices it this acutely. In plain English emails and other narrative text, I always use "Sat Aug 31" (adding the year only when ambiguous), which is short but complete, and includes the day of the week, which is much more important to humans than the month anyway.
Just start being that pedantic asshole that people hate, and insist on using it. When someone asks what the temperature is, give it to em in c and make them do the conversion.
I set all my stuff to metric years ago and use it pretty much exclusively. I don't actually make other people convert, I do it for em. But still.
I use metric temperature when I talk to my kids. Now they give me a hard time when I give them a Fahrenheit value! Keeps me honest I guess. I've also got my oldest using a 24 hour clock.
I never understood why people get their panties in a twist when I use 24h times. I get that it's confusing if I drop the colon and just write 1854, but 18:54 isn't that hard to figure out, is it?
Edit: Corrected 25h to 24h, thanks to MindTraveller for mocking pointing out my error
Temperature was the first thing that really clicked for me, and the only one I never have to think about to translate, I just "know" what the temperature is both. I learned it by thinking of it as percentages. 0 is freezing, 0% of boiling. 100 is boiling, 100% of boiling. Lol. 30-40% of boiling is hot, and pretty good for a bath. Haha
From what I can tell Americans used to use scales for dry measures (in ounces) but somewhere along the line, they switched to volume measures for everything.
As a Canadian, it’s really frustrating because often will get the American versions of UK cookbooks here which are both not metric and not weights.
I enjoy my Australian cookbooks with metric weights.
Yeah, it's sort of rare outside of, like, foodies and and YouTubers to use weight for cooking. We switched to it about a decade back, and it's been amazing. That's actually what got me to switch to metric for just about everything.
Leave off the word "metre" and it doesn't matter whether you're using metres or cm. You're "one eighty-six". Is that a lazy way of saying "one [hundred and] eighty-six", quite common when talking about numbers in the hundreds, or the lazy way of saying "one [metre] eighty-six [centimetres]", a common shorthand similar to shortening "six [feet] five [inches]"? The answer is it doesn't matter!
I’ve been doing that. I’m noticing it working. People around me may not like it, but they’ve figured out about how much a meter is
It works pretty good, and you eventually you figure out which of your friends don't actually like you! Lmao
day should be first because it's the one that changes the most often and we read left to right.
Putting the year first makes archiving easier. Your computer literally puts everything in order that way. Day first, and it will be sorted by the most frequently changing element.
Also year first allows you to timestamp your files, so they are sorted by what time you created them that day.
Sorting by day, at the end of the year you'll have files from the first day of each month grouped together, then the second day, and so on. Still searchable, but not as orderly.
yea but I was talking in the context of a clock. for the uses you described YYYY MM DD is obviously better
Next you're going to suggest that 2000 should come immediately after 1000 (instead of 1001) because we read left-to-right.
People be hatin but I agree. in instances where the only goal is for a human to read the date, dd-mm-yyyy or even dd mmm(m) yyyy are better UX.
How do you abbreviate a date in YYYY/MM/DD format?
In the DD/MM/YYYY format I can tell someone I am available to meet on 26/07; the year is known contextually as it only changes once a year.
If I start to tell people I am available 26/07 am I available for all of July in 2026?
•
YY/MM/DD or casual short MM/DD (where the year is understood). It's no different, you just skip the year if it's a given 😄 But for archival purposes, file naming etc, the YYYY part is mandatory.
way to long just short it down: 3248
clearly the best way to show date
::: spoiler … This should be obvious, but just in case people take this seriously. It' a joke :::
2024-08-30, but yes. Is that a German notation? Boo! ISO8601/RFC3339 or DEAAAAATH!
This was something I found strange in the new Alien: Romulus film, why were the temperature readings in a science vessel for a space faring civilisation in Fahrenheit!?
They all keep dying in Alien films though, so it tracks with the level of incompetence shown elsewhere.
I'm with the whole 'metric is better crowd', I mean base 10, c'mon that makes shit easy. On the other hand, I prefer Fahrenheit for temp 100%, Celsius is just not good for it (personal preference I guess). A lot of that is probably due to growing up in the USA, but having lived in a few other countries I just prefer Fahrenheit.
Edit: dang ya'll, didn't mean to cause all the drama, I'll calm down now... I guess personal preferences get taken as personal attacks sometimes lol
Quick Celsius breakdown from a Canadian:
- 40+ - most Canadians stop eating food and hope for a quick death
- 35 - you might just be able to live with this if you do nothing at all
- 28 - right about the place where comfort gives way to a general sense of warmth, something that makes any Canadian uncomfortable
- 23 - room temperature, and why "room temperature IQ" is an insult only Americans could have come up with because their scale was made by a madman
- 15 - If it's Autumn you are wearing a light jacket, if it's Spring you are sweating
- 5 - sweater time
- 0 to -10 - that stereotypical TV winter experience, where everyone is skating and sipping hot chocolate? Yeah that's like half the year here. You better like hot chocolate.
- -15 - We enjoy the fresh air, others will probably find it painful to breathe directly; put on a scarf! Do not brush your teeth immediately before going outside unless you want to experience mint-flavoured pain.
- -20 - Canadians put their boots on by now. Exposed skin on a windy day can get frostbite in as little as 10 minutes.
- -30 - We will debate putting a coat on to put the garbage out at this temperature, usually erring on the side of caution in case your kids lock you outside again. Seriously invest in good winter gear for this, this temperature can kill surprisingly fast and it only gets increasingly unpleasant from here.
- -40 - turns out you can't form snowballs in hell because the snow is too crispy
@CancerMancer @ITGuyLevi i once went on a TV shoot near Winnipeg with a reporter who thought it pretty funny that i was wearing a hat when it was only -20 and windy
@CancerMancer
Very much depends on both the humidex and wind chill. Basically, it’s the ‘feels like’ temperature that matters rather than the literal one.
I live in one of the more humid areas of Canada and when people tell you it can't get humid when it's that cold I wonder if they've ever experienced how the cold can just cut right through your clothes.
Summer humidity is absolutely the worst though, and people die here every year because of it.
@CancerMancer
I spent my summers in Toronto growing up, but never experienced a Toronto winter until I moved there. I’d experienced –40 in Edmonton. But I’d never experienced –10 in Toronto!
The increased measurement in the Fahrenheit scale allows for more precise representation of the temperature between humans.
Whole numbers and a larger scale for human ranges.
That said, the same thing can be done with metric by using the magical decimal, though idk if I’ve ever seen a temperature in C related that way.
For weather prediction it usually isn't that accurate anyway, and varies over time and location a lot.
For the thermostat it does matter, but usually you can set these in steps of 0.5°C. Mine reports back in 0.1°C steps.
What? 1 °C is absolutely a fine enough stepping for everything the average human will want to convey about temperature.
Some people actually think they can tell the difference between 70 and 72 Fahrenheit and those people could save a lot of money on medications by switching entirely to placebos for everything.
That said, the same thing can be done with metric by using the magical decimal, though idk if I’ve ever seen a temperature in C related that way.
People using Celsius that ever cared that temperatures didn't add decimals for increased precision in weather reports, please raise your hand.
👋
Having grown up with Fahrenheit there is a difference between 78 degrees (26ish) and 80 (still 26ish)
The increased granularity for human ranges actually is noticeable.
If you think I’m advocating for Standard over Metric than you’ve wholly misunderstood me.
The metric SYSTEM is hands down the better of the two.
78 F is 25 C and 80 F is 26 C.
Just saying "ish" doesn't suddenly make them the same. In C they are different numbers.
Were you the one sharing some laserdisc screenshots in /c/startrek a while back? I remember being really impressed with the quality.
Is anyone here planning to watch the episodes over the time they're supposed to occur? I'm thinking of watching part 1 tomorrow due to it being the date on the calendar onscreen, and part 2 the next day.
if you were going to do that it would make sense to watch part one tomorrow and part two on Sept 3rd.
True, that would be better. I was just going to watch them two nights in a row, but I might do that instead!
I don't know the episode, but unless that's some extremely official time piece controlled by the government or something, it could just be someone like me. I live in the US, and several of the temp gauges in the house are celcius, including the one I keep at my desk and my in room A/C (set at 25 atm).
I also used to keep my car on km/h instead of mph just for fun and confusing anyone who rode with me why I was going 80 on local roads or 130 on the highway.
25? You must be freezing!
(25°F is below freezing point, -3.9°C, but 25°C is a comfortable room temperature, 77°F)
I think our whole timeline spans from some Romulan plot about something involving handing a compilation of Federation history to some weird guy... What was his name? Gene Roddenberry?