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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1944 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 22, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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If it were up me to update the calendar for the next century, I would put us on 13 months of 28 days each, and make the Saturdays of every month line up with the moon phases; full, half, and new moons would all be on Saturdays.

There would be only one leftover day in three out of four years, and two leftover days in the leap years. I would put the annual leftover day on the winter solstice, and call it New Year’s Day, the day without a month, and I would put the leap day between October and November, and call it Election Day.

The 13th month would be between May and June and it would be called “Leftober”.

I love it.

Isn’t the lunar month 29.5, though? You’d precess off of Saturdays pretty fast.

Also, I suppose programmers would be upset at the concept of a “day without a month.” It would totally get counted as December.

the lunar month 29.5

You're right; just keep it a solar calendar, and let the moon precess as much as it wants.

New Year's Day would actually be a bonus for programmers: the zeroth day of the new year, and the first and only day in the zeroth month, keeping all the Saturdays divisible by seven.

Since you've dropped the lunar aspects, you can just intercalate a whole week at a time instead of having an orphan day every year, although this would cause the equinoxes and solstices to drift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Calendar

Your proposal seems to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar

I independently derived it, and chose a different location and name for the new month, but it’s fundamentally identical to the IFC, yes. I chose the name Leftober because it’s made from the leftover 2 or 3 days from the other months. Also, from the article:

Every year has 4 equal-length quarters of 91 days, each 13 weeks or 3+1⁄4 months long.

13 is my favorite prime number and 91 my favorite nonprime. It’s 7x13, a semiprime, and the only composite below 100 which can’t be factored by tricks and must be memorized:

  • Multiples of 2 and 5 end in 0,2,4,6,8 and 0,5 respectively
  • Multiples of 3 and 9 have their digits sum to 3,6,9 and 9 respectively
  • 49 is the square of 7 and is typically memorized in the square sequence 0,1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81,100,121,144

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