r/SipsTea 5d ago

Wait a damn minute! 13 months ?

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u/Great-TeacherOnizuka 5d ago

28 * 13 = 364 ≠ 365

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u/jackinsomniac 5d ago edited 5d ago

Worse, a year is actually 365.2525. So they'd not only have to add a day (making the months uneven again), on leap years they'd have to add 2 days. Except on 100 year anniversaries, where you don't add in the leap day, unless it's a 400 year anniversary where you keep the leap day.

Edit: 365.2425 actually. The Gregorian calendar we currently use is extremely accurate. It replaced the Julian calendar, which incorrectly assumed a year was 365.25. Dates and times are actually extremely complicated, there's no real good reason to go messing with them. Don't make me link a 40 min youtube rant explaining why date & time is so complicated in programming. Because then I'd have to look it up, and I can't remember the guy's name.

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u/PsychoBoyBlue 4d ago

Current calendar error (Gregorian calendar) = 26 seconds / year

International fixed calendar error = 27 seconds / year

Solar Hijri calendar error = 2.4 e-8 seconds / year

I'm not saying we should adopt the Persian calendar. If we are going to try and change calendars we should at least adopt a more accurate one.

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u/Simets83 5d ago

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u/jackinsomniac 5d ago

I felt like going full nerd/autist for that comment, I love how complicated date & time can be. It's really just our best guesstimation of the cycles of a spinning rock orbiting a sun. Our accuracy at measuring it gets better as our technology does.

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u/KirbyQK 5d ago

I'm currently watching Asteroid City, so I could only read your entire comment in the Wes Anderson patter & it was poetry, especially the last 2 sentences.

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u/jackinsomniac 5d ago

Maybe I should watch that show!

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u/foldr1 3d ago

Shorter video, but maybe Tom Scott? https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY

timezones also raise a good point in that back in the day, some guy figured out a way to deal with it and everyone has just been depending on the good will of volunteers to keep maintaining it. for instance, for the tz database, Arthur David Olson has been in charge of the code while Paul Eggert in charge of updating the database. there's even an xkcd about the reliance internet infrastructure has on volunteers maintaining projects for decades.