this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Samsy@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
 
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[–] words_number@programming.dev 65 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (21 children)

I really wonder how americans were able to fuck this one up. There are three ways to arrange these and two of them are acceptable!

Edit: Yes, I meant common ways, not combinatorically possible ways.

[–] Haraknos@jlai.lu 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hmmm more like 6 ways but I get your point

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Three ways that people actually use. YYYY-MM-DD, DD-MM-YYYY, and MM-DD-YYYY (ew).

AFAIK no-one does YYYY-DD-MM, DD-YYYY-MM, or MM-YYYY-DD... yet. Don't let the Americans know about these formats, they might just start using them out of spite.

[–] arbitrary@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

YYYY-DD-MM, DD-YYYY-MM, or MM-YYYY-DD

What the actual fuck

'hey man, what date is it today?' 'well it's the 15th of 2023, August'

[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lmao, I want to try responding like this and see what the reactions are

[–] Futurama@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I want to try this, too. Make it more possessive, though. The 15th of 2023's August. Really add to the confusion.

[–] naticus@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'll avoid those at all cost and go with the new standard of YY-MM-DD-YY. What's the date today? 20-08-10-23

[–] rustydomino@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

whoa, take it easy there Satan.

[–] hglman@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Need more julian dates, YYYY-JJJ.

[–] luciferofastora@discuss.online 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What, 2023-223 for the 223rd day of the year 2023? That... is oddly appealing for telling the actual progress of the year or grouping. No silly "does this group have 31, 30, 29 or 28 members", particularly the "is this year a multiple of four, but not of 100, unless it's also a multiple of 400?" bit with leap days.

You'll have oddities still, no matter which way you slice it, because our orbit is mathematically imperfect, but it's a start.

[–] ramplay@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So we need to correct our orbit is what I'm hearing!

[–] luciferofastora@discuss.online 16 points 1 year ago

That'd be a wack premise for a crazy scientist story

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Twelve ways if you count two-digit years. My nephew was born on 12/12/12 which was convenient.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My grandmother was born in 1896 and lived to be 102, just long enough for the pre-Y2K computer systems in hospitals to think she was a two-year-old.

[–] Puttaneska@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Ouch!

I lost about an hour of my life trying to create a historical timeline in MS Excel. Eventually learned this is impossible with dates earlier than 1900.

[–] ninpnin@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 year ago

this guy does combinatorics

[–] sift@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

It's how the dates are typically said, here. November 6th, 2020 = 11/6/2020. [Edit: I had written 9 instead of 11 for November.] (We basically never say the sixth of November. It sounds positively ancient.) It's easy to use, but I agree that YYYY-MM-DD is vastly superior for organization.

[–] FurtiveFugitive@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where is here that November = 9? Probably somewhere you've had a long day

[–] GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oct = 8
Nov = 9
Dec = 10

In metric time there are only 10 months per year

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We basically never say the sixth of November. It sounds positively ancient.

When is your independence day, again?

Anyway, in Australia (and, I suspect, other places that use DD/MM/YYYY) we use "{ordinal} of {month}" (11th of August), "{ordinal} {month}" (11th August), and "{month} {ordinal}" (August 11th) pretty much interchangeably. In writing but not in speaking, we also sometimes use "{number} {month}" (11 August). That doesn't have any bearing on how we write it short form though, because those are different things. It's not the defence many Americans seem to think it is of their insane method of writing the short form.

[–] rdh@midwest.social -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When is your independence day, again?

July 4th, why?

[–] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Fourth of July" is the name of the holiday. It happens on "July 4th".

"Independence Day" was a movie in the 90's. We never say "Independence Day" around here unless the topic is Will Smith or REM.

[–] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see this weird argumentation every time the dating system comes up 🙄

[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's kinda tongue in cheek, but that's how we say things in my part of the US. "Fourth of July" is spoken of exactly as if it were the name of the day, like "Thanksgiving" or "Christmas". Just like we still refer to "Cinco de Mayo" even though we don't speak Spanish.

Obviously it's not really called "Fourth of July", but nobody ever says "Nth of Month" here otherwise. And I'm kinda grateful as I like "bigger to smaller" notation. Yeah, mm/dd/yyyy sucks, but saying it that way is pretty expressive because the year rarely matters. So it's like "Hours and minutes" or (yeah, sorry Europeans) Feet and inches. Bigger before smaller quickly expresses precise information to our caveman brains. At least to my caveman brain.

Also, the movie really wasn't that good in retrospect, but we had some sort of fever about it because it was expensive with lots of explosions, and good music licensing. And both patriots and antipatriots had something to get out of it because aliens blew up the White House.

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[–] words_number@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Saying it like that is no problem and not ambiguous. Writing it like that makes no sense though.

[–] yata@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It is a bit of a chicken and egg question though. Because do Americans not say it that way because of the date format or is that the date format because you don't say it that way?

Because in countries using DD.MM.YY we absolutely do say 6th of November.

[–] duffman@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That's probably what happened. Though I do like starting with the larger context when talking about dates, but omitting it when talking about the current month or year.

[–] CoolMatt@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm canadian and I've always prefered this format for the same reason. 11/6/23 is november 6th 2023, not the 11th of June 2023, that's weird.

[–] Zeragamba@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

As a different Canadian, I always use YYYY-MM-DD and a 24 hour clock.

[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Except that mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy can be ambiguous, I definitely prefer the former if I'm not using an ISO date. But normally I just write ISO and my head translates to MMM dd,yyyy

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