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it's inconvenient that the number of days in a week is a prime number.
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Valmond lemmy.dbzer0.com Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2025-11-13
#52 · Quote Reply

You say tomato, and I say tomato.

But do you start with tomato or tomato?

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DagwoodIII piefed.social DagwoodIII@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-06-17
#53 · Quote Reply

But do you start with tomato or tomato?

You finish with the tomato.

The natural acids help rid the knife of any odors.

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MaggiWuerze feddit.org MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-07-02
#54 · Quote Reply

Weekly and bi-weekly pay cycles are much more common than monthly or semi-monthly. It would be easier to budget if bills directly corresponded to pay cycles.

Maybe in the US. In Europe its either monthly or annually

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FunStuffIsFun eviltoast.org FunStuffIsFun@eviltoast.org
Joined: 2026-03-22
#55 · (edited) Quote Reply

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, the overall number of extant digits would increase six-fold. I was trying to express the idea that the number of digits in an operation would decrease.

Just use Arabic numerals, but modified 5 additional times. Like 1-9, then 1-9 with a dot on top, then 2 dots on top, and so on.

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morto piefed.social morto@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-07-03
#56 · (edited) Quote Reply

Maybe in the US. In Europe its either monthly or annually

Same here in south america. Never heard of weekly payments.

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someguy3 lemmy.world someguy3@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-04
#57 · (edited) Quote Reply

Babylonians divided their lunar months into 4 weeks, the number seven was significant as the number of celestial bodies they could see other than non-moving stars. It wasn't until later that the seventh day got any association with resting. I read about it in a few places it this sums it up: https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-do-we-have-seven-days-in-a-week

That whole article is reaching. Like holy cow. "7 celestial bodies, therefore!!1!" I forget the proper name of it, but it's backwards looking. The lunar cycle holds a little bit, but they could have broken 29.6 days into any number of parts for any reason.

It's because 7 days of work (6 days 1 day off) is the maximum we can work, and then we wrote it backwards into religion and everything else.

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Remember_the_tooth lemmy.world Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-01-23
#58 · Quote Reply

Just use Arabic numerals, but modified 5 additional times. Like 1-9, then 1-9 with a dot on top, then 2 dots on top, and so on.

That's probably the most pragmatic approach.

I also like this one system founded on primes:

https://jakubmarian.com/base-60/

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MajorasTerribleFate lemmy.zip MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2025-08-27
#59 · Quote Reply

Wasn't (Julius) Caesar and some other dude responsibles for adding 2 months to the year (Augustus I guess) ?

Yes, Augustus. But they didnt add months; they renamed existing months, and also got days added to them by taking off from the last month - which was February at that time. Related fun fact: September, October, November, and December are just names from the root words in Latin for 7, 8, 9, and 10 because they were the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months. When the calendar was rearranged to start with January, it threw that off.

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tocopherol lemmy.dbzer0.com tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2023-08-18
#60 · Quote Reply

That whole article is reaching. Like holy cow. "7 celestial bodies, therefore!!1!" I forget the proper name of it, but it's backwards looking. The lunar cycle holds a little bit, but they could have broken 29.6 days into any number of parts for any reason. It's because 7 days of work (6 days 1 day off) is the maximum we can work, and then we wrote it backwards into religion and everything else.

That's not the best source necessarily but I read a few, maybe they did have the 6 and 1 days because of our working ability, but to say that would be an assumption whereas there are records about the reasoning of the seven days being based on the primary celestial objects in our sky. Why do you assume that's the maximum we can work? Plenty of people have worked more or less in different societies or careers.

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Valmond lemmy.dbzer0.com Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2025-11-13
#61 · Quote Reply

Yes, Augustus. But they didnt add months; they renamed existing months, and also got days added to them by taking off from the last month - which was February at that time. Related fun fact: September, October, November, and December are just names from the root words in Latin for 7, 8, 9, and 10 because they were the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months. When the calendar was rearranged to start with...

Time keeping back in the day was wild. Let's just jumo 8 days, change everything and so on lol.

So there were already 12 months before the julius/augustus, interesting!

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TranquilTurbulence lemmy.zip TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2024-05-19
#62 · (edited) Quote Reply

The number of days in a week wasn’t chosen as an arbitrary number, it was chosen because it’s the length of 1 moon phase. 4 phases of the moon is 1 cycle (new moon to new moon), or 1 month (28 days). The fact that we now have most months with 30 or 31 days is basically a hack to try to line up 12 months to 1 year (1 orbital period of the earth), but that was never going to work!

By that logic, the length of the week would have to be variable, since the phases don’t line up perfectly with the day night cycle. Most of the time, it could be 7 days, but occasionally you would get a bonus day.

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pgs aussie.zone pgs@aussie.zone
Joined: 2025-09-13
#63 · Quote Reply

The number of days in a week wasn’t chosen as an arbitrary number, it was chosen because it’s the length of 1 moon phase. 4 phases of the moon is 1 cycle (new moon to new moon), or 1 month (28 days). The fact that we now have most months with 30 or 31 days is basically a hack to try to line up 12 months to 1 year (1 orbital period of the earth), but that was never going to work!

It's 29.5 days for the moon cycle, not 28.

https://moonlightphase.com/guide/lunar-cycle

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