
The Death and Life of the 13-Month Calendar - baddash
https://www.citylab.com/life/2014/12/the-world-almost-had-a-13-month-calendar/383610/
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wallacoloo
In grade school I would hold out for about a month after the switch to
Daylight Savings Time: anytime somebody asked me for the time, I would provide
it with an hour offset to what they were expecting, and when they quoted a
time in their system, I was vocal about correcting it to the original time
zone.

Somehow I was the nuisance for doing this, even though I think it’s quite
clear that _they_ were the ones making time-keeping more difficult here -
everything was working out just fine until they decided to change the meaning
of 2pm for half of the year.

If we’ve somehow got an entire society that can play gymnastics with time in
this way, and claim to wrap their head around it, I don’t think changing the
calendar is really a huge ask. But I think the only way to pull it off is for
the government to mandate its use. There's just not enough interest in
fighting the currents for this to reach critical mass otherwise.

That said, I’m not convinced of the value of this calendar. Months are
constructs that don’t have much meaning, but so are weeks - we could ax them
both and just quote dates in terms of the numerical day within the year, for
example. Or we could keep around weeks, but divide the year into quarters
instead of months — that seems the most business friendly thing, and people
already tend to think of the year in terms of four seasons outside of
business; I wonder if Kodak considered it. Or, we could keep around the idea
of weeks but rearrange them to be 10 days long to better fit with our decimal
number system (7 days on, 3 days off? I might be amenable to that).

I guess months are valuable for businesses which provide long-term services
and bill by the month, like ISPs or credit cards. But I’m hesitant to rebuild
our time system to suit a business use-case that’s particularly widespread
_today_ without some plan on how to easily change it when it no longer is
useful. DST was founded in a similar way, and now we’re stuck with it for way
longer than it ever made sense to keep it around.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> If we’ve somehow got an entire society that can play gymnastics with time
in this way, and claim to wrap their head around it, I don’t think changing
the calendar is really a huge ask. But I think the only way to pull it off is
for the government to mandate its use. There's just not enough interest in
fighting the currents for this to reach critical mass otherwise._

While we’re at it let’s convert to the Metric System too. Rip all the bandaids
off at once.

~~~
stephengillie
How about the metric time system?

1 day = 10 hours

1 hour = 10 minutes

1 minute = 10 second minutes

1 second minute = 10 third minutes

Or should it scale at 1:100? Why or why not?

~~~
Entangled
I built and android app just like this that marks ten hours, ten minutes, ten
seconds and ten ticks being each tick 0.864 ancient seconds. Midnight starts
at 000 and noon at 500.

~~~
stephengillie
Link?

~~~
jhbadger
Not the original poster, but I have decimal time as part of my (free) Android
French Revolutionary Calendar app.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttaxus.the...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttaxus.thermidor)

or the source [https://github.com/jhbadger/Thermidor-
Android](https://github.com/jhbadger/Thermidor-Android)

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Entangled
I wonder why we haven't thought of a decimal calendar synced with the seasons
like:

    
    
              W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W6 W7 W8 W9
        SPR 1 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
        SUM 1 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
        AUT 1 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
        WIN 1 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 1 [1]
    

So we only have four months (seasons) and each has nine weeks of ten days
each. Each season starts with a neutral day (equinox and solstice) then follow
the weeks with ten days each. At the end of the year there is a universal
holiday and an extra holiday for leap year.

We could also name all days of the week after the eight planets and the sun as
initially intended (including moonday). We could have seven working days and
three days off or three working days then two off then three more working days
then two off per week.

Whatever, just wanted to leave a stinky brainfart in this room for posterity.

~~~
tzs
A season-based calendar, The World Season Calendar, was proposed by Isaac
Asimov.

It consisted of four seasons, named A, B, C, and D, corresponding to
Winter/Spring/Summer/Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and
Summer/Autumn/Winter/Spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

Each season looked like this:

    
    
      Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       01  02  03  04  05  06  07
       08  09  10  11  12  13  14
       ...
       85  86  87  88  89  90  91
    

That gives 91 x 4 = 364 days.

An extra day, called Year Day, occurs between D 91 and A 01 of the next year,
and is not part of the 7 day week cycle. In leap years another extra day, also
outside the week cycle, called Leap Day is added between B 91 and C 01.

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mixmastamyk
I like this idea. The novelty of “what day is holiday X this year” has long
worn off.

Also found weird the author goes to so much trouble to explain then insults it
in the last sentence.

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forinti
The transition would be painful, but it would make so much stuff easier that
we should just do it.

We would end up doing away with calendars. You would just know that the 16th
is a monday.

~~~
Reedx
Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff we should do to make things better in the long
term. Unfortunately we seem to be stuck with short term thinking and can't
even manage to transition away from daylight savings or imperial units or the
penny...

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geofft
This calendar would cause the seven-day week to get out of sync. I was curious
about this some time back and couldn't find an exact history, but it certainly
_seems_ like the seven-day cycle has been maintained continuously for
millennia - probably dating from Babylonian and early Jewish practice, then
spreading to Europe via Christianity, without skipping/adjustments. The shift
to the Gregorian calendar, for instance, removed days but kept the cycle of
weekdays - in continental Europe, 4 October 1582, a Thursday, was followed by
15 October 1582, a Friday.

Wouldn't this proposal cause nations that adopt it to shift their weekdays
from nations (and religions) that don't, at the rate of one a year?

~~~
Falkon1313
We already have leap years that add a day. The months have different lengths,
so the days of the week fall on different dates all the time. More like it's
always been out of sync, and this would bring it _into_ sync.

~~~
geofft
Yes - it would bring a lot of things into sync, but the tradeoff is that you
wouldn't be guaranteed that seven days after a Monday is another Monday. That
is true and has been true since before the Julian calendar even existed, as
far as I can tell.

~~~
jacobolus
Strict 7-day weeks were a Jewish thing from sometime before 500 BC, unrelated
to the Roman calendar. Even in other cultures that split time into weeks based
on lunar phases, weeks were adjusted to match the moon (a lunar week is ~7.4
days).

From what I understand the Romans didn’t adopt a 7-day week as a core part of
the calendar until after the emperor had converted to Christianity. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae)

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ken
I'm torn between preferring this (13x28+1) or a Coptic/Ethiopian calendar
(12*30+5). Having each week start on the same day of the week is nice, but 12
months has advantages, too, and at least the first day of each month is
consistent from year to year.

~~~
jacobolus
The Maya had 18 20-day months plus a 5-day intercalendary period.

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Mountain_Skies
A bit of a thought experiment: Do we really need years? In the past a calendar
based on how long it took to make an orbit around the sun was useful for
agricultural and other planning. Now we could have a 500 day cycle if we
wanted to for some reason. Or maybe a hundred day cycle. Our ability to plant
crops wouldn't be effected. There are many more variables involved now in
determining when to plant or harvest than the Earth sitting at roughly the
same spot as the last planting or harvest time. The Islamic calendar has long
be out of sync with the solar calendar but still holds importance in Islamic
culture. I'm sure there are others that likewise don't strictly abide by the
solar year.

Instead of having a celebration on the day that the Earth is roughly in the
same place in its orbit around the sun as it was when you were born, why not
celebrate in increments of thousands of days you've been alive? Maybe broken
down into once every hundred day celebrations before hitting the 5000 day
celebration so children will experience them more often? I understand that
some countries have a "Name Day" for the different common names in their
culture, which is a celebration on par as one's birthday. We are very use to
anchoring things to the orbital position on the Earth relative to the sun but
we no longer live in a time where such things are of primary importance.

And don't even get me started on the possibilities of alternates to the
primary school system being divided up into thirteen grades. Could each six
week grading period (or a grading period of some other length) be its own
grade? Do we really need to have so much of our culture and society tied so
closely to the agricultural needs of the past?

~~~
chrismcb
Actually I think we do need years. It is kind of nice to know that the snowy
season is typically dec-feb. That the warm summer months are July and August.
And so on. Without having to do some mental arithmetic

~~~
ada1981
Yes I think this is true.

I’m curious how future humans will relate.

You could imagine an intergalactic mission in which the calendar was kept as a
keepsake from earth.

And if a new planet is colonized, would we work to stay in sync with earth in
some way? Keep the same basic names but morph them?

What happens when two different civilizations meet with different calendars
(we have some historical data on that).

~~~
ZenPsycho
if you’re talking intergalactic, you have relativistic time shearing effects
to deal with as well.

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a3n
> A month is a wholly irrational division of time. It has no relation to
> anything in astronomy, ...

Well, except for its name. And its basis in the phases of the Moon.

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/Month](https://www.etymonline.com/word/Month)

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dzuc
A year or two ago I wrote a thing to generate up to date versions of these
calendars based on the design of the 1928 Kodak one.
[https://github.com/dzucconi/a-month-
is/blob/master/app/javas...](https://github.com/dzucconi/a-month-
is/blob/master/app/javascripts/index.js) &
[http://work.damonzucconi.com/a-month-
is/?year=2018](http://work.damonzucconi.com/a-month-is/?year=2018) (can change
the year with the query parameter)

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nkkollaw
I love the idea, but in all honesty it would be a real problem making the week
start on Sunday.

In all countries I've been but the States the week starts on Monday, not
Sunday.

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crazygringo
I love the logic behind it... although I guess quarterly planning would get a
little annoying, since 13 isn't divisible by 4 or _any_ number.

You have Jan 1 - Apr 7, Apr 8 - Sol 14, Sol 15 - Sep 21, and Sep 22 - Dec 28
(+ year day). Not the end of the world... but not exactly elegant either.

~~~
bluejekyll
Planned month for paying down technical debt.

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yitchelle
In my office, we run out projects based on calendar weeks. I keep thinking why
can't we take this idea to the general public. It would make life a little bit
simpler without having to bother about months and its irregular amount of
days.

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ericzawo
If this is what it will take to impose a 4-day work week then sign me up. :)

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ubiyubix
Explanation in the style of cpggrey
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57G1Q8BW6Mw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57G1Q8BW6Mw)

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veganjay
Maybe I missed it in the article, do the four seasons start the same time
every year? I assume they are adjusted, especially with Sol coming in the
middle of Summer.

~~~
azernik
It's a 365-day calendar with the same leap-year rules as the Gregorian
calendar, so yes, it should stay synchronized to the seasons.

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avip
I’m all for ditching the superficial Gregorian calendar, but do we really need
inventing new one from scratch? There’s plenty of calendars out there, just
pick one.

~~~
SllX
Not actually in favor of ditching the Gregorian calendar, but if you’re going
to do it, this isn’t the worst proposal I’ve ever seen and at least one
(formerly) major US corporation was able to make it work for them internally
for just over 60 years. It wouldn’t make a difference if the calendar was from
1902 AD or 1902 BC as long as it could work for society. They’re all pretty
much made up. You draw some lines in the sand till you have a calendar,
denominate a few standard units of time labeling some of them with the names
of the gods or Kings or Emperors or whoever and count upwards from there.

My only problem with making the switch to any different calendar is no matter
how uniform or predictable, you’re breaking something that works pretty
decently well to replace it with something that might be different, but
probably isn’t actually better.

A calendar is a calendar is a calendar. We’ve gotten pretty good as a society,
as a civilization, marking time on the Gregorian calendar, ticking off
holidays and making plans around our availability. A change like this would
benefit a small number of people at a large up front cost to society, and the
supposed benefits for the masses at large ring more as superficial
justifications to get this imposed by the government than any kind of genuine
benefit.

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123fakestreet
lousy Smarch weather

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al_chemist
Year-day would be the day when all computers stop. Truly an exceptional day!

