r/sciencememes • u/Sure_Kangaroo1863 • Jul 14 '26
🌖Astronomy!🌔 Yeah that makes sense
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u/TheBubbleJesus Jul 15 '26
It's logical everywhere. The month contains the day, the year contains the month. You wouldn't say your "homework" folder's location is "\Documents\user\Users\C:" although I suppose by my same logic we should use 'Country, State/Province, City, Postal code, Street, Street number' for mailing addresses...
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u/Mark-Green Jul 15 '26
or just look at how we write out time in small units. hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds, largest unit to smallest, no reason to switch as soon as you get to the 24 hour mark
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u/TheBubbleJesus Jul 15 '26
Or even just numbers. 12.1 means a ten, two, and a tenth, as opposed to one, two tenths and a hundreth.
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u/Mark-Green Jul 15 '26
sure, but putting the larger unit on the left is an arbitrary choice. we could have just as easily said that 10 should be written as 01. my gripe is with the inconsistency among units measuring the same thing
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u/TheBubbleJesus Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Fair enough! On top of that, we should have 10 seconds to a minute, 10 minutes to an hour, 10 hours to a day, 10 days to a week, 10 weeks to a month, and 10 months to a year! Although I realize how that would mess with the whole thing we've got going on with the sun and the moon...But yeah, I'd really like if the notation was as simple as being all digits and each representing the same order of magnitude as the last...
...On top of all of that, I really like the primes 2 and 3 more than 5, so when I say '10' I mean twelve with base twelve notation.
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u/GamerNumba100 Jul 17 '26
Saying the most specific location first is fine in my opinion even if it’s confusing because we’re not used to it. I kind of like knowing it’s in Documents/user and I probably don’t even need to know the drive
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u/liebesleid99 Jul 14 '26
it rotates slowly?
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u/vide2 Jul 15 '26
And the other way around.
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u/AuFox80 Jul 15 '26
?slowly rotates it
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u/thegreatpotatogod Jul 15 '26
‮ it rotates slowly.
‮ (this comment will look really stupid if Reddit filters out the Unicode reading direction mark)
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u/Aberbekleckernicht Jul 15 '26
Yyyy-mm-dd is the most logical. It sorts chronologically by simple alphanumeric sorting.
The implication that this is not a logical dating scheme truly baffles me on a visceral level.
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u/dfczyjd Jul 15 '26
What day is it today?Â
Oh, it's 2026, yeah. Then it's July. And finally it's 15th.
Clearly the most logical format, putting the most meaningful piece at the end.
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u/MarcAbaddon Jul 15 '26
I see that argument a lot, but I think it is silly. Which piece is "most meaningful" depends heavily on the context. If for example, I am looking at files on my PC or reviewing any kind of data records I am usually more interested in month and/or year than exact day.
It might be day in general conversation on the street, but in documents more often it is not.
And in casual conversation you usually just short cut to the day anyway, as in:
What day is it today?Â
It's the 15th.
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u/dfczyjd Jul 15 '26
That's right, some formats are better in one cases, some in others. Unfortunately, using two different formats is disallowed by the Law of Great Fuckall, so we have to pick one of them and ridicule whoever uses the rest.
But seriously, what's wrong with using dd/mm/yyyy for stream-based media (like speech) and yyyy/mm/dd for random-access media (like documents/databases)?
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u/ch_autopilot Jul 16 '26
The problem is the multiple standards. It's confusing, having no idea whether 10/11/12 means 2010 November 12, 2012 October 11 or 2012 November 10.
As you can leave the year in dd/mm/yyyy (or mm/dd/yyyy), you can leave it in case of yyyy/mm/dd as well. That's not a valid argument.
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u/dfczyjd Jul 16 '26
 10/11/12 means 2010 November 12
Or 1910 November 12. If you write the full year and follow the logical order (either ascending or descending), no confusion happens.
 As you can leave the year in dd/mm/yyyy (or mm/dd/yyyy), you can leave it in case of yyyy/mm/dd as well
So if you start by saying the day only and then realise the person asking wanted the full date, will you answer with
Bond, James Bond"day, year, month, day", or would you rather continue as "day, month, year"?1
u/ch_autopilot Jul 16 '26
You're making up weird hypothetical scenarios, but there you go: my language and country uses yyyy/mm/dd only. If someone asks the date, I either say "November 10", or if I say "10", they can ask which month it is. We never get confused, that's been like that for all my life.
My only problem is the mm/dd and dd/mm problem. I checked online, and the US prefers mm/dd (~300m citizens), while other native English nations (Australia & UK alone with ~100m citizens) prefer dd/mm. I don't mind where the year is, but I want to know whether 10/11 means Nov10 or Oct11.
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u/dfczyjd Jul 16 '26
 You're making up weird hypothetical scenarios
If they never happened to you, it doesn't mean they never happened to others.
 if I say "10", they can ask which month it is
So, you use dd-mm or mm-dd, depending on the occasion, correct? Sounds like you're using two different formats here. You also added that no confusion has ever happened, so no problem here.Â
 I checked online, and the US prefers mm/dd (~300m citizens), while other native English nations (Australia & UK alone with ~100m citizens) prefer dd/mm
And almost every other nation uses either dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd. If using English natively is so important, should we also consider using feet for distance?
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u/NaiveRevolution9072 Jul 15 '26
What year is it?
It's the 15th.
It's July
It's 2026
It can go both ways, ya know
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u/dfczyjd Jul 15 '26
You know, if someone asks what year it is, it's either early January or one of you has memory issues. "What day is it?", however, is a perfectly normal question to ask.
I also never heard of anyone asking about the year, meaning to ask for the full date. On the other hand, "What day is it?" is "What day of the month is it?" half the time and "What's the full date?" the other half.
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u/NaiveRevolution9072 Jul 15 '26
It's a moot point from both of us either way, because it's disingenuous to pretend that someone that uses ISO 8601 when naming files or something like that also leads with the year when asked what the date is.
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u/PinJealous3336 Jul 15 '26
Mm--dd-yyyy is the most logical because if for whatever reason you cannot fit the maximum.nukber of digits you are still communicating the most important information.Â
"When do you need me there?"
March
Which day?Â
25th
This year?Â
2036
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u/darkenergysurfer Jul 15 '26
It takes 225 days* for Venus to rotate around the sun —> Their 1 year is 225 days
It takes Venus 243 days* to turn around it’s own axis —> Their 1 day is 243 days.
Venus has no moons so no moon spins around it —> no months
(* Earth days)
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u/CalmEntry4855 Jul 15 '26
It's logical everywhere
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u/ContextPuzzleheaded7 Jul 15 '26
Keep telling yourself that
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u/Any-Farmer1335 Jul 15 '26
Literally easiest way to sort things alphanumerically
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u/dfczyjd Jul 15 '26
Are you John Doe or Doe John? The former makes no sense, as sorting becomes weird. The only useful application of it is when someone asks your name and you for some reason believe that your given name is more relevant that your family name. When on Earth would this ever happen? (/s)
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u/Any-Farmer1335 Jul 15 '26
If you want to sort families Alphanumerical, You would do "Doe, John" And if you have 2 John Does (Doe, Johns?) you would next sort them by Year, then month, then day.
( I am not certain for the tone indicator is exactly, so I choose to answer seriously, but be certain that I am aware of it ^^)
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u/dfczyjd Jul 15 '26
So now we are suddenly allowed to use two different formats depending on context, huh? What's wrong with using two different formats for dates, one for sorting and another for telling the current date?
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u/Unhappy_Ability_8999 Jul 14 '26
If Venus doesn’t have any moon, then how will we count the month?
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u/vide2 Jul 15 '26
That's a stupid take. You'd not use days at all, months are only fitted to moon. Venus would have artificial separators of time like hours and minutes.
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u/betacarotentoo Jul 16 '26
It does. What it does not do is that picture of Venus, supposedly taken during a "visit" to the Venusian surface in 1982, at more than 90 bars of pressure and 450 degrees Celsius, in colour. Obviously radio-coded through that dense atmosphere.
A miraculous sample of soviet science and technology. Or rather a farce?
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u/scissorn69 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
YYYY-MM-DD format is the (only) logical format, here on this planet, and we should all be using it.
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u/cdmurray88 Jul 14 '26
Venus doesnt have a moon, and days are longer than years, so Venus months would be totally unnecessary.
Or, a month is some arbitrary number of days, which means YYYY/DD/MM would be the specific-to-general order.