We have Babylon to thank for this
this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
1185 points (96.2% liked)
memes
14893 readers
4207 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
And I thank them.
Our mistake was not embracing base-12 time, it was failing to embrace a base-12 counting system.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(13 replies)
Sundials.
Now if you want to get really pissed, the magnetic North Pole is actually the South Pole of the Earth’s magnetic field. We call it the North Pole because the north side of a magnet points to it.
Actually, we call it the North Pole because we already had a concept of North from the North Star. Then we invented magnets and decided that the part that points North is the North side of a magnet (despite North Pole being magnetic south).
load more comments
(2 replies)
Hour hand -> hour = n
Minute hand -> minute = n * 5
It makes sense, there's just an algorithm attached to each pointer.
Hour -> 3 = 3
Minute -> 3 = 3 * 5 = 15
The first clocks didn't have a minute hand though.
When I become dictator of the world, this will be the new time unit: https://metric-time.com/
The year will also have 13 months: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
The year will be 12025: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar
Because these things just make more sense. You will thank me after a few generations, because habits are hard to change.
load more comments
(6 replies)
Well it’s because noon means nine because the day starts at six o’ clock, so three is noon, but we use it to mean twelve which is closer to midday, obviously
Also see this: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca
It amazingly explains all the insanities for handling dates and times.
Relatively funny but gets worse the more you think about it.
The 6 stands for 6, not 30.
When we have AM and PM it would be dumb to have 1-24.
1 is the end of the 1st hour. 2 the end of the second. This is why it starts at 0.
load more comments
(9 replies)
If you want to be mad about time then I'd like to introduce you to a little thing I like to call the Gregorian calendar.
Also why clockwise?
Earth rotates and orbits counter clockwise. It just seems more right
Earth rotates and orbits counter clockwise.
No it doesn't. It depends on the human perception of "up" and "down" which are completely arbitrary. We by convention see the North Pole as the "top" of the world but it could as easily be seen as Antarctica.
load more comments
(18 replies)
Gift from ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians love 12 & base 60. They also liked 7. Those numbers recur in their mythology.
Americans have a weird fixation with 💯. Where Americans might use percentages, I've seen Japanese plot values in [0, 1] (ie, pure proportions).
load more comments
(2 replies)