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Cake day: May 14th, 2024

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  • Using seconds as the base unit of time would work in various situations, but not all. For example, kiloseconds (ks) would be handy for measuring the runtime of a movie or the length of a workday. In that regard, it’s just a matter of getting used to it. However the length of a solar day is about 86.4 ks and a year is about 31.54 Ms, which would be annoying numbers to memorize. Then again, remembering numbers like 60, 24, 52, 365 is about as annoying too, so that’s a problem for another day.


  • Also known as a sidereal day. Check the animation. It’s pretty cool.

    This topic also touches upon the concept of reference frames. When people say that the earth takes 24 h to make a full revolution, it’s in relation to the sun. From a universal perspective, the heliocentric reference frame moves and rotates. From the heliocentric perspective, the usual earth based reference frame also moves and rotates. Nothing is truly stationary, and measuring revolutions is impossible unless you define your frame of reference.

    If you say a full revolution takes 24 h, it’s not wrong, but it’s only true in one reference frame.



  • That addresses the calendar problem, which is another pet peeve of mine. Oh, where do I even begin. The calendar system is just the next level of curses and barrels of rotting worms.

    At least time units have fixed, but inconvenient conversion multipliers. Months and years involve numbers that aren’t even constants!

    Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, someone reminds you about time zones. That’s just pure cosmic horror.

    It’s a miracle we don’t trigger a nuclear meltdown every week while using a system like this.


  • Time units are just as cursed as American units.

    Conversion between days, hours, minutes and seconds is a total mess. If you never have to do anything with those numbers, you don’t need to worry about it. The moment you need to do calculations or compare devices you run into completely unnecessary problems that would have been easy to avoid. Just think of pumps and fans with units given in l/min or m^3/h.

    Just pick the standard time unit and stick with it. Use prefixes to deal with big or small numbers.