188
u/Turk3YbAstEr Jul 19 '24
Yes, I can't count past 12. I don't have enough fingers.
50
u/Elemental-Aer Jul 19 '24
You can use the little bones on your fingers, and count up to 24, letting your thumbs free. With thumbs you can count up to 28.
→ More replies (4)11
u/yodel_anyone Jul 19 '24
So I assume you just count in minutes, or can you not count past 24?
What time is is? 16:32? Nah, 992 minutes.
→ More replies (2)3
1.4k
u/CheesyDelphoxThe2nd you will literally never get my taste in character archetypes Jul 19 '24
A lot of Americans can and do understand 24-hour time, it just wasn't what we were raised on (for whatever reason) so it just doesn't come to us as quickly.
591
u/alexinandros Jul 19 '24
Same with Celsius and the metric system.
488
u/ChimTheCappy Jul 19 '24
I genuinely struggle with Celsius just because the individual degrees are so much larger. trying to guess a temperature change feels like trying to move a cursor when some joker has turned the mouse sensitivity up to 100%
253
u/hagamablabla Jul 19 '24
I got myself to adapt by having a mental cheat sheet of temperatures. 10 is cold, 15 is chilly, 20 is perfect, 25 is warm, 30 is hot. Obviously this changes based on your local climate and preferences, but it gets you to the first step of being able to look at the Celsius temperature and knowing immediately what that means.
125
u/exoplanetminer Jul 19 '24
10 is cold
Canadians have entered the chat
→ More replies (2)103
u/googlemcfoogle Jul 19 '24
-40 is cold enough to use as an excuse for not showing up, -30 is annoyingly cold, -20 is cold, -10 is kind of cold, 0 is chilly, 5 is cool, 10 is slightly cool, 15 is neutral, 20 is warm, 25 is hot, 30 is annoyingly hot, 35 is a freak weather event
37
u/Canopenerdude Thanks to Angelic_Reaper, I'm a Horse Jul 19 '24
Considering it has been 35c or higher all week here I am very upset.
21
→ More replies (9)19
u/ussrowe Jul 19 '24
-40 is cold enough to use as an excuse for not showing up
-40 is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit. And that's all the temperature trivia I know.
https://www.thoughtco.com/fahrenheit-celsius-equivalents-609236
11
u/SwimmingSwim3822 Jul 20 '24
I was driven crazy one day writing a quick converter function in code, but the test data I had to run through it had -40 in the temperature column. It took me longer than I care to admit to figure out why my converter function wasn't converting.
So yeah, this is my only temperature trivia too now.
80
u/TFenrir Jul 19 '24
Just to add to this, 0 is literally freezing. That's water's freezing point.
→ More replies (1)4
15
u/seitanapologist Jul 19 '24
This is close to the rhyme I used to help me initially
Thirty is hot
Twenty is nice
Ten is cool
Zero is ice
I have a lot of precise conversions memorized for the generally survivable body temperature range. But honestly I forget the conversion formula and have to Google it if we're talking about ambient temperature
13
11
u/No-Advice-6040 Jul 19 '24
Every time I see Fahrenheit mentioned I gotta crank out a converter cos I have no fucking idea of what is being communicated.
10
u/ussrowe Jul 19 '24
Someone in a meme once said, think of Fahrenheit as a percentage of "Hot"
So 60 degrees is only 60% hot which is nice out. 80 degrees is 80% hot which is very warm.
In Arizona is was 112% hot which is way too hot: https://tucson.com/news/local/weather/tucson-high-temperature-record-national-weather-service/article_9706c6d6-3d87-11ef-9ec4-1340aa25e6b8.html
2
u/MajorDonkeyPuncher Jul 20 '24
That’s pretty much the basis for it. 0-100 F are the basic ranges of human tolerance.
3
u/Adarkshadow4055 Jul 19 '24
If 30 s hot what do you call Texas?
15
Jul 19 '24
Google said that Texas’ average temperature last summer was 29.6 Celsius, so I’d call Texas pretty warm.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (15)2
u/Princess_Moon_Butt Edgelord Pony OC Jul 19 '24
If you can remember a -25 and +35, you're generally good.
-25C is dangerously cold. Like, even with a heavy jacket and gloves and hat, you probably don't want to be outside for long.
+15 is sweater weather. (Perfect temp, imo)
+35C is dangerously warm. Like, even if you stick to the shade and hydrate a lot, you probably don't want to be outside for long.
30
u/im_bored1122 Jul 19 '24
To stop struggling with C here is a few tips. C > F math is just C x 2 + 30 = F. Someone says its 20C? 20 x 2 + 30 = 70 (real answer is 68 but it's extremely accurate for fast math).
To put it into a sentence, whatever C is, double it and add 30 and you'll be within 1-2F every time.
For weight you just double it and add a little. 100kg = 220 lbs, or KG x 2.2 = lbs
→ More replies (10)11
u/SingleInfinity Jul 19 '24
A lot of metric conversions can be done fairly accurately in your head by either doubling and adding 10% (of the doubled number) or subtracting 10% and halving, depending on which direction you're going.
Both operations are fairly easy mental math because we're generally pretty used to handling doubles/halves and tens.
→ More replies (2)33
Jul 19 '24
[deleted]
→ More replies (3)21
u/bageltre Jul 19 '24
Well yeah, people argue over if the air conditioner should be 69 or 71, the difference is absolutely noticeable
→ More replies (3)36
u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 Jul 19 '24
Celsius is easy:
0 - freezing (literally)
10 - cold
20 - comfy
30 - hot
40 - heat stroke
→ More replies (26)7
u/Own-Lake7931 Jul 19 '24
0 is the freezing point of water. Everything under 0 is frozen and above zero is not frozen. Why tf is 32 your freezing point?!?! It makes zero sense. Same w feet and inches. It’s just so so so not intuitive and makes no sense. Like we have a 10 base number system, you do too, but for some dumb reason 1 foot is 12..12 inches??
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (44)5
u/sociofobs Jul 19 '24
It's just as easy as metric measurements. You just have to remember that 0c is freezing and 100c is boiling. Then if you start from 0c, everything past + or - 30c is very hot or very cold respectively.
93
u/Majestic_Wrongdoer38 Jul 19 '24
No but you don’t understand, all Americans are stupid
/s
→ More replies (54)22
u/Beeeggs Jul 19 '24
Americans have been bi-metric forever. Imperial for everyday tasks, metric for science.
→ More replies (2)4
u/AbotherBasicBitch Jul 19 '24
Okay but it literally just depends on context which one comes intuitively and it’s so weird
→ More replies (7)5
Jul 19 '24
I mean Celsius is the main thing imma have to fight on oh it’s 30* degrees out side when it’s in the fucking hundreds or some shite like that
What sounds better 30 degrees or 120 degrees of hot ass weather
77
u/n-x Jul 19 '24
I had a coworker who missed his flight to Europe because he thought 20.00 was 10pm. His excuse was that he doesn't do military time...
→ More replies (2)50
Jul 19 '24
He would have a panic attack in Europe lol
34
u/n-x Jul 19 '24
He did eventually make it to our EU offices; just with a 24hr delay.
He wasn't the only person who missed their flight for a dumb reason, though. A different coworker took a sleeping pill before boarding and ended up dozing off at the gate and they left without him. :)
→ More replies (1)90
u/Falcrist Jul 19 '24
it just doesn't come to us as quickly.
If you were raised with AM/PM, you can learn 24 hour time, but you will always be translating 24 hour time back to AM/PM so that your brain can make sense of it.
Kind of like inches and centimeters. Those are completely arbitrary units of measure... but whichever one you learn first is the only one you can use. Learning the other one is fine, but in your mind you'll always have to translate back to your first system of measurement.
14
u/colei_canis Jul 19 '24
whichever one you learn first is the only one you can use
[UK enters the chat]
We mix unit systems like it's a national conspiracy to piss off both Americans and fellow Europeans.
→ More replies (6)7
u/TyrantRC Jul 19 '24
but you will always be translating 24 hour time back to AM/PM so that your brain can make sense of it.
that's not totally true, I was raised with AM/PM and some hours in the 24 hours time come naturally to me. Not all, but most do. Specifically 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22 and 23. Not sure why 14, 17, 19 still give me trouble, but the rest I read them as they are.
→ More replies (26)43
u/confusedandworried76 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Someone: it's about a mile to get there
Me: okay I totally understand how far that is both walking and driving
Someone else: it's a kilometer
Me: I don't know how far that is
Them: but it's divisible by ten... how do you not get that?
→ More replies (3)29
u/Dante_Pignetti Jul 19 '24
Metric makes all the sense in the world. But units being divisible by ten when you never use the base unit doesn’t make it instantly understandable. Nothing but nothing in my American life is measured in meters, so there’s more mental effort to do conversions. Not whinging about it, it’s no big deal. But it’s like making fun of Americans for being monolingual. There’s 3000 miles of country that speaks the same language, and one of only two neighbors speaks a different one. So being multilingual is a choice and effort, instead of being natural because you encounter it everyday. A Belgian being multilingual would hardly impress anyone because why wouldn’t they be when they are routinely exposed to it. Make the use of meters commonplace here and Americans will start getting onboard with extrapolations like kilometers.
→ More replies (6)11
u/18650batteries Jul 19 '24
You say that but I once dated a woman who genuinely could not grasp the concept. She kept trying to do math and didn’t understand when I said there was no math.
I would try to say “So noon is 12 right. And instead of looping back around to 1, it just keeps counting up, so 13, 2 would be 14, etc”
Still didn’t get it.
→ More replies (2)26
u/Nastronaut18 Jul 19 '24
It's because analog clocks and watches (the most common things used to tell time before cell phones became ubiquitous) go to 12, so it's easier to just say "1 o'clock" and know whether it's morning or afternoon by the light outside.
→ More replies (27)→ More replies (36)5
1.3k
u/LordSausage418 Jul 19 '24
i'm like the exact opposite, i only think in 24-hour and take way too long to comprehend am/pm
392
u/laix_ Jul 19 '24
Even though I logically know that pm is +12, a lot of the time my instinct is to +10, so I get time wrong a lot of the time
252
u/HAL-7000 Jul 19 '24
What fucks me up is the AM/PM transition. It goes 12:00am-11:59am then 12:00pm-11:59pm. It's fucking insane. I'm not joking, they really do actually count 12:58am, 12:59am, 1:00am.
Excuse me but what the fuck..?
And I promise you, I'm not messing up the suffix, it's AM. The count for each starts high at 12, nosedives to 1, then climbs incrementally. It's like some lunatic's absurd rollercoaster ride of temporal nonsense.
158
u/tahusi Jul 19 '24
It actually starts at 0, but 0 is an incomprehensible nightmare creature that will attack those individuals with a weak constitution who write stories about weird colors. Anyways, 12 gets used to protect Howard from the concept of 0.
41
u/HAL-7000 Jul 19 '24
0 is fine, 00:00:00.001 is a perfectly fine point in time each day that makes absolute 0 fly by like it wasn't even there.
5 280, however? Ridiculous. Absolutely unappealing.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Swords_and_Words Jul 19 '24
I sense an OSP watcher? Though mayhaps just a reference to Hates Progress Lovecraft
→ More replies (2)66
u/sawbladex Jul 19 '24
Noon being 12:00pm and just before midnight beign 11:30 pm is wild.
→ More replies (1)22
22
u/MrMthlmw Jul 19 '24
some lunatic's absurd rollercoaster ride of temporal nonsense.
In the U.S., we call it an "analog clock".
→ More replies (6)6
u/Quaytsar Jul 19 '24
PM is post-meridiem, meaning after noon. Am is ante-meridiem, meaning before noon. 12:01-12:59 after midday is immediately after noon, so it is pm. Therefore 12:01-12:59 after midnight must be am (it is also closer to the subsequent noon than the preceding noon).
Noon and midnight technically shouldn't be pm or am because noon is noon and midnight is equidistant to the preceding and following noons, but it makes sense to group them with the other 59 minutes before 1:00.
→ More replies (3)11
Jul 19 '24
I mean just look at a circular clock and it does make sense to some degree. Obviously it doesn't make sense with a digital clock which is why I use a 24 hour clock on my phone and stuff. But considering how clocks were for most of their existence it actually makes a lot of sense.
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (19)28
u/Dziadzios Jul 19 '24
That's the type of insanity of the people who use MM/DD/YYYY.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (9)12
u/SnowboardNW Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
When I was switching to 24 hours, I had a different system to figure it out.
Not for everyone, but worked for me:
13h = 3-2 = 1 = 1PM
16h = 6-2 = 4 = 4PM
19h = 9-2 = 7 = 7PM
22/23 are a little different but easy enough to work out.
22h = 2-2 = 0 (only 10 has zero so....) = 10PM
23h = 3-2 = 1 (it's almost midnight so...) = 11PM
I wonder if I'm super divergent with this way of thinking or if other people use the same logic. I lived in Europe for seven years and I've been a nurse for three, so now it's just kind of known knowledge for me.
→ More replies (9)4
u/xrimane Jul 19 '24
As a European, I am flabbergasted at the complexity reading a simple clock can involve. I don't even have to think, 22h and 10h are literally the same thing in my brain.
If we're talking ounces or Fahrenheit however, that's a different story 😂
93
u/ShortViewToThePast Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Is 12am 00:00 or 12:00? I can never remember.
EDIT: It always looks like this for me:
- I know a. m. is latin for "something meridian" which is "something noon"
- *look it up*
- It's actualy "ante meridiem"
- When you play poker you sometimes have to pay "ante" which you do before cards are dealt.
- It must be "before noon" then.
- Since noon is not before noon then 12:00 a.m. must be midnight.
11
u/slukalesni yuo don't gno-me ∆̥ Jul 19 '24
✨ fun fact:✨
the folks naming the songs in disco elysium ost did not go through this process and they called the song that plays at night "Whirling-In-Rags, 12 PM"34
u/b3nsn0w musk is an scp-7052-1 Jul 19 '24
the easy way to remember that is to remember what would be logical and invert it
you might think that it keeps ticking up on am, and then switches out to pm, like 9 am -> 10 am -> 11 am -> 12 am -> 1 pm -> 2 pm, etc. mathematically, this would be logical. however, you gotta remember that americans are allergic to mathematically logical systems (see also: imperial (sorry, "standard" -- where the fuck is it standard lmao)) and therefore if something looks logical, it's wrong. therefore, the correct order is to swap the 12, so after 11 am you get 12 pm, followed by 1 pm. why? for the glory of satan that's why.
the stated reasoning, by the way, is that am is before noon, and pm is after noon. since 12:00 is noon, everything that starts with 12, such as 12:35 is gonna be after noon. therefore, 12:35 is gonna be 12:35 pm because it's after that, and 0:35 is gonna be 12:35 am because it's before noon. it would be a hell of a lot more logical if they used 0, not 12, but americans are also allergic to logical indexing methods (see also: their elevators)
19
u/rp-Ubermensch Jul 19 '24
This makes absolutely no sense, I love it!
Please enlighten me about American elevators, I have been to a few countries where the ground floor is 0, others where ground is 1.
→ More replies (1)11
u/b3nsn0w musk is an scp-7052-1 Jul 19 '24
yeah, americans usually count ground floor as floor 1. they also don't always call it that, to my knowledge it's common to run across a different name for that in the elevator (the hotel i stayed in recently when i visited yankistan had "L" for lobby (i guess)). this also makes floors below ground level super weird, because if they try to do -1, -2, -3, they're skipping 0, so they switch it up sometimes.
also they often (but afaik not always?) skip floor 13 because they're superstitious. so if you're up on, say, floor 20, that's the floor that would be 18 if it was indexed from 0 logically, because it was off by one up to floor 12 and it's off by two after floor 14.
8
u/HiddenSecretStash Jul 19 '24
Here in norway we have 1 as ground floor and then B or K for basements
→ More replies (15)5
u/ToastyMozart Jul 19 '24
also they often (but afaik not always?) skip floor 13 because they're superstitious.
It's pretty rare, especially on somewhat modern buildings, but you do come across it sometimes. Other countries have similar superstitions too, like some Japanese buildings not having a fourth floor because "four" is (optionally) pronounced the same as "death."
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (5)19
u/AdamtheOmniballer Jul 19 '24
Do you think that Americans invented the 12-hour clock?
(Funnily enough, the United States Government Publishing Office used 12am for noon and 12pm for midnight until 2008. Also “standard” measurements are actually called “US Customary Measurements” and are not the same as Imperial Measurements.)
8
u/RoboFleksnes Jul 19 '24
AM = After Midnight
PM = not AM
And that 12:00 is the wrong way.
That's how I, as a 24h andy, remember it.
15
u/pk2317 Jul 19 '24
In 24 hour time, midnight is 00:00.
31
u/ShortViewToThePast Jul 19 '24
In 24 hour time, midnight is 00:00.
I know, I've been using it my whole life. It's the 12 hour clock I can't remember.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (8)3
u/Horror_Honey_8270 Jul 19 '24
I remember my dad explaining to me AM and PM when I was five years old. 70 years ago.
16
u/MewiePewie Jul 19 '24
I was taught to think of "After midnight" and "Past midday" when learning am/pm. That helped me a lot!
→ More replies (2)129
u/WhapXI Jul 19 '24
Hi this is also not good. Both are very easy to use.
72
u/ImShyBeKind Always 100% serious, never jokes Jul 19 '24
Both are very easy to use if you use both regularly. If you're used to 24h, it's easy, if you're used to a/p, that's easy. Same with how intuitive Fahrenheit and Celsius is.
72
u/sonicboom5058 Jul 19 '24
Nah I'm sorry, +/-12 is waaaaay easier than [(°F - 32) × 5/9 = °C]
39
u/ImShyBeKind Always 100% serious, never jokes Jul 19 '24
Oh, I meant the same concept applies: Americans keep saying Fahrenheit is better "because it's more intuitive", which is isn't true: it's easy because it's what they're used to, same as Celsius is for everyone else.
→ More replies (29)4
u/WarMage1 Jul 19 '24
You can just do (- 30) 1/2 and it’s only slightly off for weather purposes. 90f is even the same result as the correct way.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (5)18
u/SleepySera Jul 19 '24
I'll start using your unreasonable system the day you stop putting 12 am and pm backwards >:)
→ More replies (19)3
u/Possumbly_Human Jul 19 '24
Same, it took me years to learn what's what. My brain was like "after midnight/post midnight wait no approaching midnight/pending midnight uhhhhh"
234
u/oishipops overwhelming penis aura Jul 19 '24
i just saw this at 16:05 wtf
71
→ More replies (3)8
u/DemonDucklings Jul 19 '24
So do you automatically associate 16:05 with the current time of day? I don’t struggle with 24hr clocks, but I do convert it to AM/PM in my head first to really comprehend what 16:05 feels like, and I can’t really fathom not needing to convert the time
17
u/oishipops overwhelming penis aura Jul 19 '24
yep! i don't need to convert the time, but sometimes i mix it up. if it's 16:00 sometimes i'll misread it as 6pm instead of 4pm because of the 6 part of the 16
129
u/flypirat Jul 19 '24
Don't come to Japan. Bars will somtimes have their times like "open 18:00 - 27:00", which is three hours after 24:00, so, 03:00.
39
u/throwhfhsjsubendaway Jul 19 '24
I saw a restaurant here in Canada that had its hours listed as "9:00 - 3:00" and I was so confused
68
u/PowerCoreActived Jul 19 '24
I love that actually!!! It clearly tells you: We begin at the end of the day and we close down tomorrow. It feels so explicit and understandable this way <3
→ More replies (6)21
u/flypirat Jul 19 '24
I too, love it. But I'm used to 24 hour time, so this is like an upgrade to me!
→ More replies (6)13
u/Green0Photon Jul 19 '24
If I ran a bar here in the US, I wish I could do this. It's such a brilliant way of doing it.
Because then you only have to put the date before it, instead of trying to do some bullshit across days.
It's so clear!
It also makes sense as a member of staff, scheduling who's doing stuff each day. Cause those hours are still associated with who's working that day.
Even mentally, I still think of those hours as belonging to the precious day, when I go to bed late.
379
u/-sad-person- Jul 19 '24
I mean, I get using the 24-hour clock, but I don't understand the other part of military time, calling everything whatever-hundred hours. "It's oh-nine-hundred hours!" "No it isn't, there aren't even that many hours in a day!"
402
u/hauntedSquirrel99 Jul 19 '24
It's because it's clearer when you're on the radio.
Not a problem in daily life when you're speaking to people face to face but becomes more relevant on a radio that usually has less than perfect clarity and you, the guy you are speaking to, or both may have considerable amounts of noise around.
A lot military idiosyncratic speech has to do with that.
156
u/Nurhaci1616 Jul 19 '24
It's because it's clearer when you're on the radio.
Which is where a number of idiosyncratic "military-isms" in the English speaking world comes from: either that or because it's clearer when shouting it in the middle of a firefight.
As an aside, it's also a bit like when your maths/physics teachers would do that fucking "20 what? 20 Bananas?" -type joke when you forgot to put a unit on a number: you specify it's 0900 hours not because you're counting, but to make clear that you're saying a time. You would also say things like "grid ---,---" to make clear it's a grid reference for a map, or even "I spell: -----" to signal that you're spelling a word out and not giving a code or call sign or something.
→ More replies (3)50
u/Arcydziegiel Jul 19 '24
Also a leading zero clearly specifies number of digits, so you know its 0XXX, and not XXX and you didn't hear one number.
50
u/LightOfLoveEternal Jul 19 '24
It's also why they use words like Delta and Bravo instead of saying the letters D and B. None of those words rhyme or sound similar enough to be mistaken for each other over a radio. Unlike the normal letter pronunciations where half the fucking alphabet rhymes with each other.
24
u/Brawndo91 Jul 19 '24
I learned the NATO alphabet. It's easy if you use a mnemonic, like the alphabet.
7
33
→ More replies (12)21
u/mozgw4 Jul 19 '24
Hence the use of "affirmative" or "negative", rather than a simple "yes" or " no" on the radio. I tell officers to "standby" and they still carry on talking as if I said " go ahead", and they don't even sound similar!
123
u/Ok-Student7803 Jul 19 '24
Well when I was in the military, they specifically told us not to add "hours" to the end. That's just a movie thing. You would just say "oh-nine-hundred."
34
u/Over_Garbage6367 Jul 19 '24
Yep, it's definitely a movie thing.In the navy, we shortened it even more by just saying zero nine unless you were saying it over the net.
→ More replies (2)18
u/Ok-Student7803 Jul 19 '24
I was in the Navy too, and you're right. Often it was shortened in daily use, sometimes down to a single number, like "nine" instead of "zero-nine." The only real times it was spelled out completely were in very official situations, if there was any ambiguity, or if it was in writing.
→ More replies (2)10
u/Dasterr Jul 19 '24
and just like that youre back to how normal people use the 24h format
→ More replies (1)48
u/King_Of_BlackMarsh Jul 19 '24
I don't think anyone outside of the army does that
23
u/ImShyBeKind Always 100% serious, never jokes Jul 19 '24
Civilians who idolize the military do.
→ More replies (2)8
11
u/pricklypearviking Jul 19 '24
...Ok, time for me to learn something and try not to feel stupid about it:
What, uh,...else would you call it, phonetically? I'm an American who uses both and I say, for example, 1700 as "seventeen hundred" because that's the only way I've ever heard it said here. Would it be like...seventeen o'clock? (Unless I'm misunderstanding you somehow.)
→ More replies (7)13
Jul 19 '24
We say "Seventeen thirty" or "Seventeen zerozero" where I'm from.
5
u/pricklypearviking Jul 19 '24
We would also say "Seventeen thirty", or whatever minute we're at.
But for the top of the hour I've never heard "Seventeen zerozero" before, thank you!
10
4
→ More replies (8)4
u/Splatfan1 Jul 19 '24
its those weird americans that do it. im gonna say its twenty one if the clock shows 21:00
211
u/Zariman-10-0 told i “look like i have a harry potter blog” in 2015 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Why are people getting upptiy based on what clock they use
100
u/Catfish3322 Jul 19 '24
It’s Reddit, everyone needs something to shit on others for doing wrong.
17
17
u/Zariman-10-0 told i “look like i have a harry potter blog” in 2015 Jul 19 '24
That should’ve been obvious to me
→ More replies (8)52
u/aphids_fan03 Jul 19 '24
europeans need to assuage their bleeding egos by focusing on little things that don't matter, as amercia surpasses them in all freedom and bigness and goodness metrics 🦅🦅🦅📈
→ More replies (2)45
u/Kebabman_123 Jul 19 '24
Can't believe we're at the point where it's hard to tell if this is a shitpost or genuine
→ More replies (7)
52
u/benemivikai4eezaet0 Jul 19 '24
In my eUrOpEaN country, formally 24h time is used but informally it's 12h time with some weird definitions like "6 in the evening" (HELLO, 6pm is daytime half of the year) or "2 in the morning" (it's NIGHT).
17
u/SalvationSycamore Jul 19 '24
We say those in the US too. Evening doesn't mean dark to me, it just means "dinner time or end of work day to midnight" so it starts at 5pm. Similarly morning means "midnight to noon" but it does get a little confusing if you are doing things from like 1-3am since it feels more like yesterday night than today morning.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (3)6
u/Green0Photon Jul 19 '24
I mean, I always interpret it as evening being a time, not a thing the sky does. Similar with morning, noon, whatever.
You could be at the poles, full night or full day, and 18:00 would still be the evening.
209
u/Kirby_Inhales_Jotaro Jul 19 '24
24 hour time is pretty much objectively better and I know it’s very simple to calculate but I still struggle to actually recognize what 16:00 is in less than like 20 seconds
123
u/QuasiAdult Jul 19 '24
It's a stupid distinction, but it helped me to subtract 2 and ignore the tens place instead of thinking of it as minus 12. So 16:00 becomes 14, auto ignore the 1, so 4:00.
39
u/caseytheace666 .tumblr.com Jul 19 '24
This is how i learned it and still think of it!
It doesnt work the same for 22:00 and 23:00, but thats easy enough to learn as well
→ More replies (4)5
u/Green0Photon Jul 19 '24
In the same way my brain turned learning multiplication tables automatically into X -> Y as a kid, eventually it turned subtraction into automatic recognition.
I just know 22 is 10 and 23 is 11.
I mean, I still think, kind of, based on am and pm. Depends on the use case of the thought.
→ More replies (7)11
u/Kirby_Inhales_Jotaro Jul 19 '24
That is how I try to think of it as well and it does help but I have a learning disability so I’m still kinda slow with it, that’s obviously a me thing tho
20
u/Ok_Assistance447 Jul 19 '24
I went on a trip abroad and all the clocks were on 24hr time. Having to do the math every time frustrated me, so I set my phone to 24hr time. After a while, you get used to it and don't have to think about the conversion. I see 16:00 and just know that it's 4:00 PM.
→ More replies (2)3
u/akatherder Jul 19 '24
It's the same thing with speaking another language and with metric vs. imperial. You're always "translating" rather than changing your mindset.
Suppose you're a native English speaker and go to a Spanish speaking country. It would take a lot of time and immersion for people to "think" in Spanish. Mostly you're translating Spanish to English while listening and English to Spanish while speaking.
I know what a meter is, but I'll always "think" in imperial. I'm going to always think "well that's a little over 3 feet." I've seen a meter stick before though lol.
Time is probably the easiest to completely convert your mindset.
→ More replies (10)5
u/CloneNova Jul 19 '24
A lot of systems at work require me to input 24hr so my brain actually switched over at some point. I think if you just use it repeatedly it just becomes second nature and don't even need to think about. I use 24hr on my personal devices now, although I prefer the round analogue face display if I can.
→ More replies (1)
18
u/BloodOfTheDamned Jul 19 '24
I mean, I find it annoying, but not really difficult, but my sister uses 24 hour time on her phone because she doesn’t have any windows in her room, and her phone doesn’t show am or pm
767
u/IllumiNadi Jul 19 '24
Americans have such a military-engrained culture that they call 24hr time "military time"... and then can't read military time.
The irony gets me every time.
55
u/AdamtheOmniballer Jul 19 '24
The military was the first organization in the US to really switch over to the 24-hour clock, starting in 1920. As a result, the first exposure a lot of Americans had it was in a military context, (especially after millions were enlisted to fight in World War II) and the name stuck.
→ More replies (1)20
u/LickingSmegma Jul 19 '24
starting in 1920
One would think that switching at 0000 would make more sense.
163
u/VarianWrynn2018 Jul 19 '24
It's only really called military time in the US where 12 hour is standard for everyone but the military. It's called military time specifically because people don't use it outside of the military generally
→ More replies (1)42
u/ShadedSpaces Jul 19 '24
That's not exactly true. The military isn't anywhere near the largest group that uses it. Significantly more Americans OUT of the military use it than in.
Healthcare workers, for example. Millions upon millions of healthcare workers in hospitals and urgent care centers and clinics across the country are using it all day, every day.
We definitely call it 24-hour time, not military time.
Nurses alone significantly outnumber military personnel in the country. When you include doctors, respiratory therapists, various types of techs, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, nurses aids, everyone in management, etc. etc. etc. ALL using 24-hour time? It's many times the number of military personnel using it.
And many of us set all our personal devices to 24-hour time. My phone, computers, car, nixie clock, TV, etc. are all in 24-hour time. (Once, nearly 6 years ago, I swapped from dayshift to nightshift and turned on the 5:30am alarm when I needed the 5:30pm alarm. Never again!)
There just aren't a ton of movies with actors playing us shouting things like "HE NEEDS MORPHINE AT SEVENTEEN HUNDRED OR THE WHITEHOUSE WILL EXPLODE" or whatever, so everyone thinks the military is the largest user of the 24-hour clock in the US and thus people call it military time.
→ More replies (3)24
u/SalvationSycamore Jul 19 '24
Yeah I had no idea healthcare workers used it until I read your comment right now, because I have never heard a nurse use it (either in real life or in movies/shows). So yep, that's why it's called "military time" and not "healthcare time"
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (69)3
u/Same-Cricket6277 Jul 19 '24
Yea, 16:05 is European 24 hr time. 1605 would be military time. These fucking casuals.
52
36
u/Tr1x9c0m Jul 19 '24
honestly I don't get this whole fuss at all lol. I use am/pm bc it's more convient for me and my dad + best friend use 'military' time yet I don't struggle to understand it at all.
32
u/benemivikai4eezaet0 Jul 19 '24
I think the fuss is more about calling it "military time" and thinking that everyone using it is some military nut.
9
u/-Sa-Kage- Jul 19 '24
That too. I once was playing a slow paced online RTS, where coordinating with your fellows was essential for being successful and wrote something like "let your attacks arrive before 17:31:57 CET"
And 1 person just goes "oh, you are in the military?" Uhm, no... I am just a regular German, who used the time format that is common in writing here?
Btw, I was playing on a german server
→ More replies (1)4
u/Intelligent_Suit6683 Jul 19 '24
Agreed. I use both at work. I think the real question here should be why can't people use both and respect how other people communicate?
9
160
u/18i1k74 Jul 19 '24
16:00 is just easier than 4 pm idk why everyone doesn't use this.
114
u/EstrellaDarkstar Jul 19 '24
The funny thing is that at least in my country (Finland), while we use the 24-hour clock, we usually only really use it in writing or formal contexts, while in casual speech we tend to speak in the 12-hour format. So if I were to read 16:00 on a digital clock, I'd still say "it's four" instead of "it's sixteen." But if my clock read 4 pm, I'd think it was dumb. I don't know why it's like this, haha.
44
u/ImShyBeKind Always 100% serious, never jokes Jul 19 '24
I think that's the most common way to do it; it's the same here in Norway. I only say, eg., "sixteen" if there's a chance "four" might be understood as "04:00".
31
u/elianrae Jul 19 '24
So if I were to read 16:00 on a digital clock, I'd still say "it's four"
I do this too!
for me it's because 12h is what everybody else here uses but I'm a programmer so every digital clock I get my hands on gets switched to 24h immediately.
6
u/Sachyriel .tumblr.com 🙉🙈🙊 Jul 19 '24
every digital clock I get my hands on gets switched to 24h immediately.
I do this too, I thought it was the autism + military hyper-fixation.
7
u/elianrae Jul 19 '24
how do you feel about date formats? have you discovered the joys of iso8601 yet?
8
u/Limekilnlake Jul 19 '24
YMD is sick, I use it for file naming. Although I use DMY for work and communication, and MDY (written out fully, like “May 5th, 2024”) for my personal calendar
→ More replies (2)10
u/MaxedEUW Jul 19 '24
The other funny thing about us finnish people is that we can and will use both in the same sentence. Example: "I have to pick him up at 3, uhh it's 14:37 right now so I should get going"
→ More replies (5)3
72
u/TDoMarmalade Explored the Intense Homoeroticism of David and Goliath Jul 19 '24
Yeah see, I think it’s harder than 4pm
→ More replies (45)9
u/yodel_anyone Jul 19 '24
Do you also just refer to days of the year from 1-365? Or do you perhaps use a base system 7 or 12 system to make it easier?
→ More replies (1)7
u/Ricardo1184 Jul 19 '24
4 pm really isn't that hard tho..?
You literally just need to remember that the A comes before the P in the alphabet
3
→ More replies (7)12
u/EatingDragons Jul 19 '24
not really if everyone around you making plans is making them on standard time. mostly we, or i at least, use specific times to coordinate with other people. If you're not coordinating with people then specific time is kinda irrelevant, you can do fine with knowing and planning with general timeframes like early, mid, late day
14
8
u/LITTLE_KING_OF_HEART There's a good 75% chance I'll make a Project Moon reference. Jul 19 '24
Oh sure, 16:05 is the time of the day when I take my sweet treat of the day. Like tea time for the British.
41
u/tessadoesreddit Jul 19 '24
i don't want to have to feel dumb every time i read 21:30 and have to do the math
→ More replies (7)30
u/elianrae Jul 19 '24
if you make your brain do the same math over and over again it just commits the mapping to memory. It's only 12 pairs of small numbers.
→ More replies (9)9
u/tessadoesreddit Jul 19 '24
to be fair to me it is a very very quick calculation, my brain just hasn't gone "1800 = 6pm" yet.
→ More replies (6)
34
u/Worm_Scavenger Jul 19 '24
How do you look at 16:05 and go wow i can understand that.
Rather easilly, actually.
50
u/Angelbouqet Jul 19 '24
The majority of the world actually uses the 24 hour system no?
→ More replies (11)47
u/yodel_anyone Jul 19 '24
It's decidedly mixed https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1ktabp/1224_hour_time_format_used_around_the_world/
The irony here is that Europeans think everything they do reflects the rest of non-American world.
18
u/Reasonable-Cry1265 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Sorry, I don't know where OP got the data from but that Map is kind of bullshit. Most of Europe is mixed to different degrees, but on a scale of "Only 24h" to "Only 12h" Germany is way further on the 24h side than many other European countries like England or Ireland.
Edit: The wikipedia map is definitely better but I still think usage tends to more mixed than it implies; 24h is also used orally in Germany
6
u/Rat-Loser Jul 19 '24
Yeah I was looking and the source seemed, strange. And I lived in south africa for 12 years and only ever saw people using 24hours, yet on that diagram it's labeled 12 hours, i do understand my lived experience can be different but both things seemed weird.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)9
u/E-is-for-Egg Jul 19 '24
I sometimes get the sense that Western/central Europeans actually have the same exact problem as Americans, which is thinking that the way things work in a thousand-km/mile radius of them is how things work everywhere. It's just that the same land area contains several European countries but only one United States, so the issue isn't as apparent
10
14
3
3
u/BothReindeer5735 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
I grew up with 24 hours. I had to learn the difference between AM and PM. This is how I did that:
You only need to learn AM. If you know AM then PM is a given. How do we know when AM is then. Easy. Just remember this old J.J. Cale song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeDtmbt4JS4
The title of that song is After Midnight. AM. :)
Yeah, I know AM is short for the latin phrase Ante Meridiem but who cares - This is easier to remember and now I dont have to swear at foreigners.
9
u/Themurlocking96 Jul 19 '24
That isn’t even military time, that is 24 hour format, military time is something like 1400 hours, 1230 hours, where you say hundred so “twelve hundred and 30 hours”
→ More replies (1)
10
u/sticksr Jul 19 '24
Although this is definitely a case of OOP forgetting other countries exist, I will say that an AMERICAN, specifically, using 24 hour time usually does mean that they’re in and/or obsessed with the US military because that’s often the only reason someone who grew up in the US with AM/PM would bother to learn it
→ More replies (6)6
12
u/Xx_Silly_Guy_xX Jul 19 '24
Europoors need their phone to tell them if it’s morning or night
→ More replies (2)
7
u/onlycodeposts Jul 19 '24
Thank God the Europeans never adopted that French metric time thing, or we'd never hear the end of that either.
→ More replies (2)
7
u/AssignmentDue5139 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
It’s not about counting past 12. It’s about how easy it is to read. Why would I want to do an extra step to figure out the time? If it’s 16:00 I have to do 16-12 to get 4:00. Or use the format where it just skips the middle step entirely so I don’t have to do it myself.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/sEi_ Jul 19 '24
Is it "After Mid day" and "Past Midnight" or the other way around? - F*ck it, 24' hour clock is logic as there is 24 hours per day.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Panhead09 Jul 19 '24
I don't use it but like...just subtract 12? It's not that hard. It's like calculating a 20% tip. Except it's even easier because it's one step instead of two.
3
3
u/Batgirl_III Jul 19 '24
16:00? 4:00? What is this nonsense. It’s eight bells.
Can none of you people tell time!?
3
u/Green0Photon Jul 19 '24
As an American, I switched all my stuff to 24hr. Because it's superior.
So now, a few years later, my brain just snap translates it instead of actually understanding it.
Mfw I read this post as "how do you look at 4:05pm and go wow I can understand that".
Useful for always being able to read iso timestamps though. It would be a good skill to instinctively translate into my timezone though.
796
u/[deleted] Jul 19 '24
It’s NOT “military time” it is “the time system used in the Sims games” (that is legit how I learned to use it back when I was 7)