Comment on Whoever invented the 12-hour clock never doubted that people will always know if it's day or night
biofaust@lemmy.world 2 days agoEverything before midday is AM, etc. etc.
Comment on Whoever invented the 12-hour clock never doubted that people will always know if it's day or night
biofaust@lemmy.world 2 days agoEverything before midday is AM, etc. etc.
Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 2 days ago
Yeah. Which is what I said. 11:59:59.9999999 is indeed AM. And then comes a tiny sliver of time that is precisely at the border, but a trillionth of a picosecond after that, you’re in the PM world. After the infinitely short moment that is the actual precise noon.
biofaust@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Sorry, I answered without giving enough thought. You are right in your reasoning of course.
Still, I find it confusing to have 2 completely different moments of the day represented by the same number.
In phrases like “After 12 PM on Monday”, “Before 12 AM” etc. I always need to think an extra second.
Another example is setting automatic responder on the mail, where I need to rely on 11:59, because the date is selected before the time of day.
Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 2 days ago
Have you noticed how common it is for buses and trains to leave at 23:59? The idea is to make it clear what evening the train is really running.
In Finnish we call noon “12 o’clock” and midnight “0 o’clock”. Makes things a lot more clear.
And the first hour of a calendar day is indeed 0:00 until 0:59:59.99.. Since there are only 24 hours in a day, there cannot be a “24:30”. (Except in internal timetables of bus companies, that typically run until 30 o’clock, as it still officially counts as the same working day)
sukhmel@programming.dev 2 days ago
Japan has something to say about that: 30-hour day time — clock doesn’t wrap if it’s a continuation of a previous day
biofaust@lemmy.world 2 days ago
So you call them 2 different things. Good. Now imagine doing the same for all the other numbers in between. That is what I get by “speaking 24 hours”. And it takes less sillables.