this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
182 points (95.0% liked)

Showerthoughts

30808 readers
838 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
    • If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
vatlark
forkball
Thekingoflorda
182
Why do we use base 60 for time and base 10 for everything else. Why has no one decided to integrate it. (self.showerthoughts)
submitted 2 years ago by atrax to c/showerthoughts
57 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Thought of this in the shower this morning, if anyone has an answer I'd be very interested!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Decimal time was introduced in Revolutionary France, just like the metric system and a decimal calendar. They made it non-mandatory after 17 months, partly because of the enormous costs to replace all clocks. The decimal calendar survived longer and was abolished by Napoleon as part of his reconciliation strategy with the Catholic church.

Decimal time is still used by the way. Astronomers use fractional days because it's easier to do calculations with. And that very same ease of use is why Microsoft Excel uses fractional dates to calculate dates, as it requires less calculations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Love the modified Julian date. You’ll also find some satellite-based astronomers measuring their observations in kiloseconds (I think Hubble does it in orbits but most of the X-ray satellites use kiloseconds).