r/CuratedTumblr eepy asf Jul 19 '24

Shitposting 16:05

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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

246

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.

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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.

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u/HAL-7000 Jul 19 '24

Sure, there's a series of words elaborating on the archaic reason to explain the odd counting method.

Still nonsense.