Comment on Midnight is a stupid time for the clock to roll over to the next day
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 2 days ago
I would say it isn’t that stupid. The old humans picked one of the extremes, in this case the most complete absence of the sun (which includes the lowest point in the sky for some of the Vikings etc.) to mark this change. I think if they had picked midday we would have the same argument just about the daytime. And if they had picked any other time there would have to have been a “good” reason, like a religious one. It’s the time of day Mohammed went to Medina or the Buddha looked at nirvana. Otherwise the old humans wouldn’t have been onboard with that decision for centuries.
Time keeping is like the imperial system of measurements. It works but it doesn’t make a lot of fucking sense.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I hate it, because each calendar day has two half-nights.
Like… So if you say “the night of the 5th” is that before dawn or after dusk?
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
If you say night of the 5th, that will mean the time from sunset to midnight on the fifth.
After that it’s morning/pre-dawn of the 6th.
This isn’t new or controversial.
hedgehog@ttrpg.network 2 days ago
It’s night from sunset until dawn. And if someone said “in the morning” I would never interpret that as meaning before dawn.
It is controversial, because one definition of “morning” is dawn to noon and another is midnight to noon. And saying “night” is “sunset to midnight” is also new because you just came up with that.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Morning and predawn are typically the times immediately surrounding dawn, not the time immediately after midnight.
If you told me “were going out to take photos at predawn” I’d assume you meant blue hour photos, not moonlit photos.
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 2 days ago
i've never seen someone who takes that as "before dawn"
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Right.
But 00:01 is clearly still night. Night is typically considered from dusk til dawn.
So if we say “the night of the 2nd” then that’s from dusk til 23:59:59 of the 2nd.
Which is then followed by night that isn’t the night of the 2nd nor night of the 3rd.
And I’d say “before dawn” or “early morning” of the 3rd would be problematically ambiguous.
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 2 days ago
"early morning of the 3rd" and "before dawn of the 3rd" definitely would not become 00:00—8:00 of the 2nd, and that's all that matters imo for the practical utility of delineating borders between days in the first place
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 2 days ago
You have a choice in life. You can accept certain things you cannot change. This one, you won’t change. Even if you spearheaded a popular movement I doubt you’ll get it changed. Everybody hates DLST and we still can’t get rid of it.
So I suggest you adapt your language. You don’t talk about the night of the fifth but the night from the fifth to the sixth. Three additional syllables in this case and the confusion evaporates quickly. You’re focusing on the perceived problem and not on the solution. If you do resolutions for the new year, maybe add that point to your list.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I mean, I’m having fun arguing pedantics, but this is a pretty silly post. There is no room here for real practical solutions!
foggy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The night of the 5th would be sometime after 4pm on the 5th.
What is confusing about this?
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Right, but then how do you refer to before 5am on the 5th?
That’s not morning, and it’s not the night of the 4th. It’s awkward.
But more importantly, it’s ugly. It’s not how we intuit about days. It’s unsatisfying.
CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I’ve heard people say “the wee hours of the night” to refer to time between midnight and dawn.
I think one of the reasons that there’s not a good word for that in English is because it’s the time anyone is least likely to be awake, so there’s not much reason to talk about it. And then by the time humans built enough lights to do something worthwhile at 02:00, we also had clocks and started to describe that period in reference to clock readings.
foggy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
5 am is the morning. This isn’t negotiable. You’re wrong.