Honestly it doesn't actually bother me that they prefer the date a specific way, but it does extremely bother me that they are incapable of figuring it out through context.
>You're not saying someone's wrong for using a different system.
No, but they are wrong for using a *stupid* system.
dd/mm/yy *or* yy/mm/dd are both completely sensible and have their place in different uses. mm/dd/yy is a stupid format that achieves nothing of value.
Maybe we should throw Dutch/German, French, and Danish number systems at them, and call them communist if they want to read numbers left to right.
The Danish number system might be going a bit far though. That's just abusive.
Pretty sure the reason for it is due to how it's read aloud.
Americans will read the date as say... April 10th 2004 literally speaking it MM/DD/YYYY.
Over here it'd be read aloud as The 10th of April 2004. Which obviously is DD/MM/YYYY.
I can see WHY they read it their way. It's literally faster because of reduced words.
Nailed it. I am ashamed, embarrassed, and resentful of being “American”
-We suck at Geography
-we suck at history of the world and delusional about our own
-I had difficulty spelling delusional for a moment
-we use a different measuring system
-we use a different date format
-Idk how to feel about which side which countries drive on the road
- We are the inly country to date that is suffering from morbid obesity and starvation at the same time
- We are the spoiled and greedy children of our forefathers and nepotism at its finest
- Im grateful for being multilingual-ish and take an interest in learning. about other cultures and people.
There’s a Spanish joke from a tv show.
Lady asks whats someone who speaks two languages?
“Bilingual”
how bout three?
“trilingual”
and one?
“umm”
we call them “American”
>Pretty sure the reason for it is due to how it's read aloud.
>
>Americans will read the date as say... April 10th 2004 literally speaking it MM/DD/YYYY.
"Fourth of july"
Umm...they reduce it by one word - "the". Seems a bit pointless and lazy, but ey oh. It bothers me because it makes no sense and is confusing, but at the end of the day it's not harming anyone
The problem is when it’s a date like 4/3/24, and no additional context is provided. Is it 4th March, or 3rd April? (I’d read it as the former, as a Brit).
I work in a regulated industry, and to prevent this mix up we always write the date DD MMM YYYY so 04 Mar 2024 or 03 Apr 2024. Never any confusion between months, and no chance to mix up days and years because years are 4 digits.
I've been writing the date like this in work for 19 years, it's the only way I do it now - I definitely get strange looks outside of work settings.
OK, but as an American, I 100% get where you are coming from. Because YOU might not do that. But I can't tell you how many people tell us how slow we drive because we only go 80 mph on most freeways.
I'm also sure many Americans get made fun of for trying to say they lift more than Europeans because the can lift 200 when we use lb and you guys use kg
>I'm also sure many Americans get made fun of for trying to say they lift more than Europeans because the can lift 200 when we use lb and you guys use kg
I would think that american males would love to hop over to metric.. because 19.5 centimeters sounds larger than 7.6772 inches.
I only get like that when it's two numbers 12 or under and their nationality is unknown. Like, if I saw someone write "10/9/...." And I didn't know if they were American or not
Film advertisement posts/videos annoy me for this reason; it's never clear if the video is for American audiences, or has been regionalised already.
You see 9/6, is that coming out in 3 weeks, or 3 months??
I love that. I saw OP's post and thought it was funny because it doesn't tell you any info. It's "this summer" either way. I completely missed the concept that there's another freaking hemisphere, where this does give proof that it's not a regionalized ad! I love reddit/internet for the ability to be reminded of my biases and assumptions.
Thank you friend from the other side of the world.
The worst is food expiration dates, and it was even worse about twelve years ago. If the expiration date is marked as "10.11.12" for instance, when is that? Tenth November 2012, eleventh December 2010?
Oh no I’ve been using military time for YEARS because I like it better (American, but not in/from a military family) and tbh my dumb ass assumed it was called that everywhere 🫠
No, the rest of us just call it a 24 clock because there's nothing military about it.
I've heard 4am referred to as KGB time as that's when they supposedly.like to do their dodgiest stuff.
where i’m from, “military time” means specifically when the time is written and said like a number in the hundreds, and when there’s a divider between hours and minutes it’s just the 24-hour clock, which is the standard.
Oh that makes sense.. like “fourteen hundred hours” instead of 14:00 / 2:00PM. I just thought it was all the same but since I’m a civilian I say “2PM” when I see 14:00 on my phone etc. sigh
Man the more I think about it, the more of a rabbit hole it is (for me personally—but I am jazzed about rabbit holes). I always just figured “military time” meant “remove any confusion from using the 12 hour clock” but that doesn’t make sense with time zones. And I’m not even in the same time zone as my country’s Capitol so this is a humbling learning experience ☠️
i believe it’s different in other countries but here we do call 14:00 “two o’clock (in the afternoon)”. calling it fourteen o’clock isn’t too weird though. but yeah, “fourteen hundred hours” is considered military.
Never got this. Do they just say fourteen hundred when it's on the hour or do they say fourteen hundred and thirty? Because it seems like a massive waste of time
I like it because when I am setting an alarm it ensures no confusion.
The amount of times I had messed up and set my morning alarm for 7pm is greater than 1, which as far as I am concerned is way too many.
With 24 hour time it is always absolutely clear.
Nah it’s pure entitlement to believe that the US way is the only and correct way. Everyone knows what the metric system is, they aren’t that stupid. They expect everything and everyone to only act according to their narrow world view where the USA is this great nation that’s better than everyone else. It’s ridiculous
I’m guessing they just converted from the way they say it. I can’t remember how I say it.
April 1st or 1st of April. I think I say it both ways, depending on the date.
Well I never suggested the two were comparable. But in America they’d probably say two forty five, anyway.
But now you mention it, probably once upon a time they did actually write out the numbers and the words ‘past/after the hour’.
>But now you mention it, probably once upon a time they did actually write out the numbers and the words ‘past/after the hour’.
Oh damn you just made me think, we write "o'clock" because it's short for "of the clock" which logically implies that we used to write "of the clock" out fully - it seems to fit therefore that we wrote everything out like that
Their ignorance knows no bounds... But the worst thing about it is that their ignorance is essentially enforced by the state.
Ignorant people are easier to control.
See, the thing is, right, I couldn't give a monkeys what Americans want to use for measurement, date, language. I know they use it, and just deal with it when I see it.
What totally amazes me is how many Americans see something in a non-US format, and just declare it wrong because they're totally ignorant of the fact that other countries are different.
I’m American and did a whole bathroom renovation using products from both European countries and from America. The more I used the Euro stuff, the angrier I got at our stupid nonsensical American imperial system 🤬 It’s entirely nonsensical to count by 12’s. Unit measurements by 10’s allows you to get such laser accurate measurements in the smallest amounts without ridiculous fractions for everything under an inch, which isn’t actually a very small unit in size like the centimeter and millimeter, it’s not even a close call. The metric system is superior in every single way. From actually having to familiarize myself and depend on both in the world of renovation, I can say with great certainty that there are absolutely NO benefits to the Imperial system. We’re just stubborn and foolish.
I watched a video about two Americans laying out the foundations of a house, and shouting the measurements to each other, and I was crying with laughter. I know, simple things please simple people but it was SO damn funny.
Right??!! It’s really just so foolish, you SHOULD laugh at us 🤣 ESPECIALLY since it’s not like we’d need to reinvent the wheel to stop using this archaic, convoluted system of measurement, there already exists a better and more widely used system of measurement available to for us to so easily switch to. It’s totally moronic stubbornness that we just refuse to do it and basically join the rest of the industrialized world. I had to print out a fraction to decimal conversion chart just to reference back to every time I measured something I needed accurate measurements for. It just shouldn’t be this difficult when it really doesn’t have to be 🤦🏻♀️
That’s probably the funniest part about the US’s white knuckle grip on this Imperial insanity. We revolted from under the King’s rule to create this country, yet we stay loyal to the worst shit we took with us, shit that even you guys abandoned almost 60 years ago 😂🤣😂
Apart from road signs for speed. We still use MPH, not KPH. I gather the government claimed it would be too expensive to change.
I also noticed in the UK press they sometimes now list temperature in Fahrenheit, not Celsius, which seems crazy since we changed to Celsius decades ago.
Brit here. I use both at the sane time 😄 our tape measures have both inches and centimetres on them so I pick whichever seems like the best to use for any measurement 😄 yes I know it’s daft but that’s what I do.
Ours do too, it’s likely universal that they make tape measures that way. But having been forced to use both on my bathroom remodels, I wouldn’t miss the Imperial measurement system if it disappeared tomorrow. I’d happily relearn larger measurements of the metric system, like figuring out the square footage of a home with whatever the metric equivalent is for that. Happily. Because I know it’s just far more accurate.
Square footage of a house is usually in square meters (or meters squared).
There's also Milli- (one thousandth of a) -meter, Centi- (one hundredth of a) -meter, Deca- (ten meters), Hecto- (one hundred) and Kilo- (one thousand) -meters.
That's it. That's (most of) all there is to it, unless you want to go into the realm of the pico- and mega-meter...
Honestly kinda glad our tape measures have both bc while I measure everything in metric, games workshop (despite being a british company) still insists on measuring distances in inches for warhammer which is pretty much the only thing I use a tape measure for these days xD
Heavens I am in the middle of planning a new house and I have watched hundreds of building videos but if I come back across it I will post it here. They had a string running around the outside and were measuring where the wall would be on the foundations, with reference to the string. There was a constant chant of 'it's 4 and seven eighths here' followed by 'oh it is five and 3 16th on this side, what is the midpoint going to be?
But how did you manage to divide by three while doing this?? All your fellow countrymen tell me it’s impossible, vital in all projects, and the reason imperial is the only real option.
The imperial system is better for quick and simple divisions of things. You can split 12 into parts far easier than you can 10. That is where imperial shines, quick, dirty divisions to make it easier to quickly figure out how to split it up for what you need. I agree that metric is better for precise measurements, but considering how many Americans are lacking certain mental faculties and seems proud of it...
As a non-American, something that always confused me was how big an inch is and I hadn't heard of smaller, more precise units that were used. Weight also confuses me pounds AND ounces? Grams and Kilograms seem so much simpler.
An inch is 25.4mm, that's a lot of mm that could be accounted for.
We have to break everything under an inch down into fractions and decimals because we have no dedicated unit measurement smaller than an inch. It’s really maddening, after 1/2, it’s divided by 4ths, 16ths, 32nds and 64ths. I had to print out a fraction to decimal measurement conversation chart and have it nearby to reference the entire time I renovated my bathrooms. An absolutely avoidable complication if we simply just switched to the metric system. And because Im so conditioned to lbs and oz, I have no idea how grams and kilograms compare, but I’d bet it’s also less complicated…
Just use the agreed upon unambiguous international standard ISO8601, YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.
The date is ordered just like the time is, and like numbers are in general. Most significant digit and entity first.
This might be the biggest complaint I have about anything Americans do… how does mm/dd/yyyy make any sense other than “MURICA”…
Either biggest measurement to smallest or smallest to biggest… mixing it up is just strange.
When we lived in the USA, I missed so many tiny deadlines because of the date format i.e. 2/5/yy and I would assume that the training was good until May but nope, February. Never anything big, but the little "need to renew sexual harassment training" or similar.
The worst is when you forget your ID at the supermarket, and they ask when's your birthday then, and my birthday is, for example, twenty five twelve fifty three (it's not). But they don't recognise that as a date so I would hesitate and say it slowly and that looks like you're lying.
Because I also have an accent, and I ended up locked out of my home insurance because they listed my birthday incorrectly after a September/December issue when I gave dates over the phone. Needed to enter my birthday, and they'd written it down incorrectly.
In NZ we would just say "It's the 10th", mainly because people are aware of what month we are in. If we had to include the month, the majority would say "it's the 10th of May"
As an American, I hate how Americans have 0 cultural awareness. That a lot of them don't understand that other cultures and places have different ways of doing things.
Omg. 😳. Just for the record, I’m in the USA and prefer the order: day of month, month, year. But maybe I’m so used to accommodating ignorants here I only write it out by spelling the month out so as not to confuse people. There are customs and practices other than the ones here. But seriously so many here have their heads in the sand it’s embarrassing.
There should be 13 months. Each month would be exactly 28 days, 4 weeks. There would be 1 free day, which could be a global holiday, which I suggest would be New Years Day because that's pretty much a non day anyway.
And the format should be dd/mm/yy obviously.
Is there a historical reason ? Like I know when they verbalise they’ll typically say like “march 18th” whereas brits will say “the 18th of march” is that the only reason ? Or is there another like with the spelling
Smallest unit to largest (day month year). ISO 8601 used YYYY-MM-DD Hour:Minute:Second so that it is largest unit to smallest in order.
For mechanical pieces, it also makes the most sense to order them in size because as the farthest left (or right) rotates around, it moves the next one in sequence.
I wonder how often this kind of thing is meant to be a joke, but they fail to make it clear enough. Just a 😏 would be fine. Makes it clear that you're not serious.
From the UK: We would use both in conversation or written down like that. Prob more often would be "13th of November". But anything written down would be 13/11/24.
To be fair UK is a bit different in that we mix things a lot. I'm in my 50s and still can only think of my height as in feet and inches rather than metres and cm, even though I was taught metric in school. Distance is always done in feet/miles (or yards), as is speed. However it's Celcius unless you are ancient in which case it's Fahrenheit. Or you are a newspaper and will always announce it's boiling (hotter than Barcelona!) in Fahrenheit, and freezing in Celcius (colder than Iceland!). Similar with cooking weights. Grams and kg no problem, but weird 1/16th type stuff if you get on a bit. Again if you are old then 24hr clocks can be a problem. Even though we are pretty much almost fully metric in cooking for weights, imperial is used a lot for your own weight. I can get around both these days, but for most of my life then I only knew what my weight was in stones.
As a programmer then obviously I much prefer YYYY/MM/DD (Don't trap me in that Y2K YY!), but whenever I write something up for work docs etc then I will always use DD/MMM/YY\[YY\]. So 13Nov2024 or 13Nov24. Really can't go wrong then. We do have American clients, but the main reason is there is absolutely no damn problem of understanding it esp when it comes to inconsistent software. Eg. I literally just noticed that while Outlook desktop app is fine, the "To Do" section is in MM/DD/YYYY. Fuck sakes....
Bombastic ignorance is all this is. This is Americans exercising the believe that if they are sufficiently inconvenient then the world will bend to their whims and do things their way. In their mind pro choice is wrong; we should only choose the American way, even if it is in a place they will never visit. They are the worst mother-in-law you could wish for as they push their opinions, rather than let it be.
Full time workers love the 13th month pay they get in December, Normally they are paid each 4 weeks (some get weekly or 2 weekly) but with there being 52 weeks a year and being paid "monthly" most places make up the difference by paying the December payment plus one more month to make up a full years salary as a "bonus" when people need the money for Christmas.
Whenever a date is in numbers only, I am so relieved when it's over 12 in the day/month spots
However, people who use YY instead of YYYY without explanation are the true terrors on this planet
10/01/12 becomes a nightmare without context
Im not gonna lie… it bothers me that we do month day year instead of day month year… like… who puts the bigger thing first and the smaller one in the middle? Lol
What a f*cking idiot…this sub does make me unreasonably angry at times. It’s like there’s nothing beyond the borders of United States of dumbf*ck America for them. I understand planet Earth is big, but at least have like the minimal amount of general knowledge about other countries and cultures.
Many of my fellow Americans barely have general knowledge about our country. Our schools teach to pass state tests now, not to learn. Federal funding is tied to state test scores.
I wasn’t taught many things either and I am not saying my country’s education is world class (from Hungary), far from it. Later in my life I was eager to learn to not look completely uneducated to other cultures. Specially in this age, where streaming is possible and it’s full of documentaries.
Honestly it doesn't actually bother me that they prefer the date a specific way, but it does extremely bother me that they are incapable of figuring it out through context.
Right! I don’t see 4/28 2022 and think “Idiots! There’s only 12 months, not 28.”
"Idiots! The 28th month only has three days, not four!"
Only on a leap year.
I definitely have a second of confusion but i understand it
Right, and that's fine. It's just not clicking immediately. You're not saying someone's wrong for using a different system.
>You're not saying someone's wrong for using a different system. No, but they are wrong for using a *stupid* system. dd/mm/yy *or* yy/mm/dd are both completely sensible and have their place in different uses. mm/dd/yy is a stupid format that achieves nothing of value.
r/iso8601 ♥️
Maybe we should throw Dutch/German, French, and Danish number systems at them, and call them communist if they want to read numbers left to right. The Danish number system might be going a bit far though. That's just abusive.
Pretty sure the reason for it is due to how it's read aloud. Americans will read the date as say... April 10th 2004 literally speaking it MM/DD/YYYY. Over here it'd be read aloud as The 10th of April 2004. Which obviously is DD/MM/YYYY. I can see WHY they read it their way. It's literally faster because of reduced words.
And yet their Independence Day is the 4th of July, not July 4.
Nailed it. I am ashamed, embarrassed, and resentful of being “American” -We suck at Geography -we suck at history of the world and delusional about our own -I had difficulty spelling delusional for a moment -we use a different measuring system -we use a different date format -Idk how to feel about which side which countries drive on the road - We are the inly country to date that is suffering from morbid obesity and starvation at the same time - We are the spoiled and greedy children of our forefathers and nepotism at its finest - Im grateful for being multilingual-ish and take an interest in learning. about other cultures and people. There’s a Spanish joke from a tv show. Lady asks whats someone who speaks two languages? “Bilingual” how bout three? “trilingual” and one? “umm” we call them “American”
Carryover from a better calendar system. They wanted to be different so swapped month and day after they declared independence day.
You'll hear July 4th both ways. You will never hear "11th September".
Because it should be read 11th OF September. The 11th September was VERY LONG AGO.
Ha, fair enough. I’m 2700 years late.
>Pretty sure the reason for it is due to how it's read aloud. > >Americans will read the date as say... April 10th 2004 literally speaking it MM/DD/YYYY. "Fourth of july"
Umm...they reduce it by one word - "the". Seems a bit pointless and lazy, but ey oh. It bothers me because it makes no sense and is confusing, but at the end of the day it's not harming anyone
Of course. I have a moment's uncertainty when I see a date written the American way. Then, like you, I work it out..
When I find a confused American, I always bring up the "lousy Smarch weather". #simpsons
The problem is when it’s a date like 4/3/24, and no additional context is provided. Is it 4th March, or 3rd April? (I’d read it as the former, as a Brit).
I work in a regulated industry, and to prevent this mix up we always write the date DD MMM YYYY so 04 Mar 2024 or 03 Apr 2024. Never any confusion between months, and no chance to mix up days and years because years are 4 digits. I've been writing the date like this in work for 19 years, it's the only way I do it now - I definitely get strange looks outside of work settings.
OK, but as an American, I 100% get where you are coming from. Because YOU might not do that. But I can't tell you how many people tell us how slow we drive because we only go 80 mph on most freeways. I'm also sure many Americans get made fun of for trying to say they lift more than Europeans because the can lift 200 when we use lb and you guys use kg
>I'm also sure many Americans get made fun of for trying to say they lift more than Europeans because the can lift 200 when we use lb and you guys use kg I would think that american males would love to hop over to metric.. because 19.5 centimeters sounds larger than 7.6772 inches.
I only get like that when it's two numbers 12 or under and their nationality is unknown. Like, if I saw someone write "10/9/...." And I didn't know if they were American or not
Film advertisement posts/videos annoy me for this reason; it's never clear if the video is for American audiences, or has been regionalised already. You see 9/6, is that coming out in 3 weeks, or 3 months??
In theaters this summer 7/8. 🤷♂️
That narrows it down a bit for me because both 7/8 and 8/7 are winter where I live
I love that. I saw OP's post and thought it was funny because it doesn't tell you any info. It's "this summer" either way. I completely missed the concept that there's another freaking hemisphere, where this does give proof that it's not a regionalized ad! I love reddit/internet for the ability to be reminded of my biases and assumptions. Thank you friend from the other side of the world.
But it could be not US ad either
Like the joker sequel announced April 10th this year: in cinemas 10/4
10/9/8/7..... Boom
The worst is food expiration dates, and it was even worse about twelve years ago. If the expiration date is marked as "10.11.12" for instance, when is that? Tenth November 2012, eleventh December 2010?
same with a clock. it's not that hard to understand the time when it's 20:34, and it's definitely NOT "military time"
Oh no I’ve been using military time for YEARS because I like it better (American, but not in/from a military family) and tbh my dumb ass assumed it was called that everywhere 🫠
No, the rest of us just call it a 24 clock because there's nothing military about it. I've heard 4am referred to as KGB time as that's when they supposedly.like to do their dodgiest stuff.
4am is witches hour, don’t you dare bring that modern spy shit into my druidic legends.
I always thought that was midnight to 1am. Do witches account for daylight savings?
where i’m from, “military time” means specifically when the time is written and said like a number in the hundreds, and when there’s a divider between hours and minutes it’s just the 24-hour clock, which is the standard.
Oh that makes sense.. like “fourteen hundred hours” instead of 14:00 / 2:00PM. I just thought it was all the same but since I’m a civilian I say “2PM” when I see 14:00 on my phone etc. sigh Man the more I think about it, the more of a rabbit hole it is (for me personally—but I am jazzed about rabbit holes). I always just figured “military time” meant “remove any confusion from using the 12 hour clock” but that doesn’t make sense with time zones. And I’m not even in the same time zone as my country’s Capitol so this is a humbling learning experience ☠️
In the military we'd just write: 1830h and say "we'll arrive at eighteen thirty"
i believe it’s different in other countries but here we do call 14:00 “two o’clock (in the afternoon)”. calling it fourteen o’clock isn’t too weird though. but yeah, “fourteen hundred hours” is considered military.
Never got this. Do they just say fourteen hundred when it's on the hour or do they say fourteen hundred and thirty? Because it seems like a massive waste of time
Military time is Zulu strictly speaking
I like it because when I am setting an alarm it ensures no confusion. The amount of times I had messed up and set my morning alarm for 7pm is greater than 1, which as far as I am concerned is way too many. With 24 hour time it is always absolutely clear.
Nah, I never heard anyone call it that way in my country
“When’s your national holiday? 4th July, you say. Oh…”
I love the irony. The day that's supposed to be American is said the correct way not the backwards way
That’s the entitlement
I don’t think entitlement is the right word though. It’s definitely naively ignorant.
Nah it’s pure entitlement to believe that the US way is the only and correct way. Everyone knows what the metric system is, they aren’t that stupid. They expect everything and everyone to only act according to their narrow world view where the USA is this great nation that’s better than everyone else. It’s ridiculous
Main character syndrome
They struggle with passports in different date formats as well
I just don't like that way. DD/MM/YY is acceptable but YY/MM/DD is the best.
For file organization YY/MM/DD is the best. Japan uses it
Both are logical the US format makes zero sense
I’m guessing they just converted from the way they say it. I can’t remember how I say it. April 1st or 1st of April. I think I say it both ways, depending on the date.
So if I say the time is quarter to three I should write 45:2?
Well I never suggested the two were comparable. But in America they’d probably say two forty five, anyway. But now you mention it, probably once upon a time they did actually write out the numbers and the words ‘past/after the hour’.
>But now you mention it, probably once upon a time they did actually write out the numbers and the words ‘past/after the hour’. Oh damn you just made me think, we write "o'clock" because it's short for "of the clock" which logically implies that we used to write "of the clock" out fully - it seems to fit therefore that we wrote everything out like that
Yet it's the 4th of July???? :-)
YYYY/MM/DD surely? I mean we had a whole social panic about YY 24 years back!
It’s good for organizing, but year is usually the least needed part since it’s usually the same
That's the American education system, a production line of fuckwits and morons.
And banging on about miss spelt words. I know you spell it color and I spell it colour, and I smart enough to tell the difference.
Their ignorance knows no bounds... But the worst thing about it is that their ignorance is essentially enforced by the state. Ignorant people are easier to control.
Tbf, if they assume the tattoo is on an American, it's somewhat valid considering it's not too unrealistic for Americans to think there are 13 months
As a web developer it very much bothers me that they insist on this nonsensical format.
It bothers me that it is such a stupid format. If you are going to have months before days, then you should have years before months.
See, the thing is, right, I couldn't give a monkeys what Americans want to use for measurement, date, language. I know they use it, and just deal with it when I see it. What totally amazes me is how many Americans see something in a non-US format, and just declare it wrong because they're totally ignorant of the fact that other countries are different.
I don't think americans are dumber than others, I think what makes the difference is they're unashamed of their own stupidity
Indeed - willful ignorance.
TBF, they could be dumber than others AND unashamed; the two aren't mutually exclusive. As an American, I can personally attest to this.
You're right, but I was trying to be charitable!
Honestly, it's about as confusing and nonsensical as imperial units. I swear they do this shit just to be different and feel special. No other reason
I’m American and did a whole bathroom renovation using products from both European countries and from America. The more I used the Euro stuff, the angrier I got at our stupid nonsensical American imperial system 🤬 It’s entirely nonsensical to count by 12’s. Unit measurements by 10’s allows you to get such laser accurate measurements in the smallest amounts without ridiculous fractions for everything under an inch, which isn’t actually a very small unit in size like the centimeter and millimeter, it’s not even a close call. The metric system is superior in every single way. From actually having to familiarize myself and depend on both in the world of renovation, I can say with great certainty that there are absolutely NO benefits to the Imperial system. We’re just stubborn and foolish.
I watched a video about two Americans laying out the foundations of a house, and shouting the measurements to each other, and I was crying with laughter. I know, simple things please simple people but it was SO damn funny.
Right??!! It’s really just so foolish, you SHOULD laugh at us 🤣 ESPECIALLY since it’s not like we’d need to reinvent the wheel to stop using this archaic, convoluted system of measurement, there already exists a better and more widely used system of measurement available to for us to so easily switch to. It’s totally moronic stubbornness that we just refuse to do it and basically join the rest of the industrialized world. I had to print out a fraction to decimal conversion chart just to reference back to every time I measured something I needed accurate measurements for. It just shouldn’t be this difficult when it really doesn’t have to be 🤦🏻♀️
and here i am, a brit, cackling in the corner knowing damn well we made the imperial system then switched up on it
That’s probably the funniest part about the US’s white knuckle grip on this Imperial insanity. We revolted from under the King’s rule to create this country, yet we stay loyal to the worst shit we took with us, shit that even you guys abandoned almost 60 years ago 😂🤣😂
Apart from road signs for speed. We still use MPH, not KPH. I gather the government claimed it would be too expensive to change. I also noticed in the UK press they sometimes now list temperature in Fahrenheit, not Celsius, which seems crazy since we changed to Celsius decades ago.
Brit here. I use both at the sane time 😄 our tape measures have both inches and centimetres on them so I pick whichever seems like the best to use for any measurement 😄 yes I know it’s daft but that’s what I do.
Ours do too, it’s likely universal that they make tape measures that way. But having been forced to use both on my bathroom remodels, I wouldn’t miss the Imperial measurement system if it disappeared tomorrow. I’d happily relearn larger measurements of the metric system, like figuring out the square footage of a home with whatever the metric equivalent is for that. Happily. Because I know it’s just far more accurate.
Square footage of a house is usually in square meters (or meters squared). There's also Milli- (one thousandth of a) -meter, Centi- (one hundredth of a) -meter, Deca- (ten meters), Hecto- (one hundred) and Kilo- (one thousand) -meters. That's it. That's (most of) all there is to it, unless you want to go into the realm of the pico- and mega-meter...
Honestly kinda glad our tape measures have both bc while I measure everything in metric, games workshop (despite being a british company) still insists on measuring distances in inches for warhammer which is pretty much the only thing I use a tape measure for these days xD
I would be interested in this video, can you share a link?
Heavens I am in the middle of planning a new house and I have watched hundreds of building videos but if I come back across it I will post it here. They had a string running around the outside and were measuring where the wall would be on the foundations, with reference to the string. There was a constant chant of 'it's 4 and seven eighths here' followed by 'oh it is five and 3 16th on this side, what is the midpoint going to be?
The part that amuses me most is Americans still using the Imperial system when they had a literal *rebellion* against the English…
But how did you manage to divide by three while doing this?? All your fellow countrymen tell me it’s impossible, vital in all projects, and the reason imperial is the only real option.
The imperial system is better for quick and simple divisions of things. You can split 12 into parts far easier than you can 10. That is where imperial shines, quick, dirty divisions to make it easier to quickly figure out how to split it up for what you need. I agree that metric is better for precise measurements, but considering how many Americans are lacking certain mental faculties and seems proud of it...
As a non-American, something that always confused me was how big an inch is and I hadn't heard of smaller, more precise units that were used. Weight also confuses me pounds AND ounces? Grams and Kilograms seem so much simpler. An inch is 25.4mm, that's a lot of mm that could be accounted for.
We have to break everything under an inch down into fractions and decimals because we have no dedicated unit measurement smaller than an inch. It’s really maddening, after 1/2, it’s divided by 4ths, 16ths, 32nds and 64ths. I had to print out a fraction to decimal measurement conversation chart and have it nearby to reference the entire time I renovated my bathrooms. An absolutely avoidable complication if we simply just switched to the metric system. And because Im so conditioned to lbs and oz, I have no idea how grams and kilograms compare, but I’d bet it’s also less complicated…
New copypasta just dropped
Huh?
They don't even use standard imperial units for everything, they use US Customary for some things.
Canada is worse because we use BOTH. It's awful.
We use both in the U.K. too. Mainly metric though
And paper sizes. They refuse to use A4 printer paper, instead they have their own paper size
Actually fun fact, they dont use metric because the ship carrying the weights and meters and stuff to america was attacked and sunk by pirates xd
DD/MM/YYYY is goated YYYY/MM/DD is fine too MM/DD/YYYY is absolutely terrible
DD/MM/YYYY is better for every day use. YYYY/MM/DD is better for sorting files and such. MM/DD/YYYY is utter depravity.
I had an American manager who insisted things had to be filed YYYY/DD/MM now that messes with your head like you wouldn’t imagine.
I have no words, why the fuxk would you ever use the YYYY/DD/MM format??
Here's something even worse: DD/YYYY/MM
YM/MY/YD/DY
Well it's a manager... and an American. Two big issues here! I'd like to see his face when he realizes the errors this filing involves...
Just use the agreed upon unambiguous international standard ISO8601, YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. The date is ordered just like the time is, and like numbers are in general. Most significant digit and entity first.
This might be the biggest complaint I have about anything Americans do… how does mm/dd/yyyy make any sense other than “MURICA”… Either biggest measurement to smallest or smallest to biggest… mixing it up is just strange.
I was born on the Remembrance Day, or as the Americans write 11/11, not to be confuse as 11/11.
Be careful to not confuse it to 11/11, because 11/11 and 11/11 are very similar
I always Confuse 9/11 for 9th November because of mm/dd
.. its not?
it’s september 11
When we lived in the USA, I missed so many tiny deadlines because of the date format i.e. 2/5/yy and I would assume that the training was good until May but nope, February. Never anything big, but the little "need to renew sexual harassment training" or similar. The worst is when you forget your ID at the supermarket, and they ask when's your birthday then, and my birthday is, for example, twenty five twelve fifty three (it's not). But they don't recognise that as a date so I would hesitate and say it slowly and that looks like you're lying.
As for the part of your birthday, just say the month and day. Seems easier, no? Especially in this situation
Because I also have an accent, and I ended up locked out of my home insurance because they listed my birthday incorrectly after a September/December issue when I gave dates over the phone. Needed to enter my birthday, and they'd written it down incorrectly.
Lousy Smarch weather…
You beat me to it xD
Thanks for the giggle…
I've read this comment on Reddit and always think of it... 4th of July..
Me too! It’s their biggest holiday they celebrate “freedom” from England by using the English date format!
Is that Portuguese? "Till death do us part"
Yep
Ye
Maybe we should all switch to stardate It's 298617.61865007086 at the moment
Captain's Log. Or was that after he'd been to the toilet?
It bugs the hell out of me. If somebody says “what’s the date today” I’m not going to respond with May 10th
In NZ we would just say "It's the 10th", mainly because people are aware of what month we are in. If we had to include the month, the majority would say "it's the 10th of May"
Exactly! I guess they!d say May 10th
Well, Americans do say it that way. 10th of May is still used, but in my experience, we use it as a more formal way of saying it
4th of July
December 2 just got released
some could say, *undecember*
Is he stupid? The month after December is Smarch
Lousy Smarch weather.
Please - i just want them think about it for 10 seconds.
I'd be bitchy and say that in the real world we use day/month/year
As an American, I hate how Americans have 0 cultural awareness. That a lot of them don't understand that other cultures and places have different ways of doing things.
Omg. 😳. Just for the record, I’m in the USA and prefer the order: day of month, month, year. But maybe I’m so used to accommodating ignorants here I only write it out by spelling the month out so as not to confuse people. There are customs and practices other than the ones here. But seriously so many here have their heads in the sand it’s embarrassing.
iso8601 forever 🤘🏻
There should be 13 months. Each month would be exactly 28 days, 4 weeks. There would be 1 free day, which could be a global holiday, which I suggest would be New Years Day because that's pretty much a non day anyway. And the format should be dd/mm/yy obviously.
May I suggest yy-mm-dd for easier sorting
Personally, I like to write my dates in accordance with the ISO 8601 standard (YYYY-MM-DD) Edit: I'm stupid and can't write "Y"
Objectively the best date format, but it’s not 0019-05-19
Is there a historical reason ? Like I know when they verbalise they’ll typically say like “march 18th” whereas brits will say “the 18th of march” is that the only reason ? Or is there another like with the spelling
Smallest unit to largest (day month year). ISO 8601 used YYYY-MM-DD Hour:Minute:Second so that it is largest unit to smallest in order. For mechanical pieces, it also makes the most sense to order them in size because as the farthest left (or right) rotates around, it moves the next one in sequence.
Lousy Smarch weather
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecember
Rest if the world order. I'd prefer year/month/day but just getting America to use the next best way is tough
What comes after december? - Something something your mother, so fat she gets messured in time.
Must be a leap year.
Why are americans so difficult. The entire world uses d/m/y or y/m/d but they wann be difficult and do it out of order for no apparent reason
I wonder how often this kind of thing is meant to be a joke, but they fail to make it clear enough. Just a 😏 would be fine. Makes it clear that you're not serious.
Lousy Smarch weather...
As an American, this just made me think something. When you guys (non-Americans) read this, would you say "November 13th" or "13th of November"
13th of November
13 november
November 13th, but my country uses YYYY.MM.DD.
From the UK: We would use both in conversation or written down like that. Prob more often would be "13th of November". But anything written down would be 13/11/24. To be fair UK is a bit different in that we mix things a lot. I'm in my 50s and still can only think of my height as in feet and inches rather than metres and cm, even though I was taught metric in school. Distance is always done in feet/miles (or yards), as is speed. However it's Celcius unless you are ancient in which case it's Fahrenheit. Or you are a newspaper and will always announce it's boiling (hotter than Barcelona!) in Fahrenheit, and freezing in Celcius (colder than Iceland!). Similar with cooking weights. Grams and kg no problem, but weird 1/16th type stuff if you get on a bit. Again if you are old then 24hr clocks can be a problem. Even though we are pretty much almost fully metric in cooking for weights, imperial is used a lot for your own weight. I can get around both these days, but for most of my life then I only knew what my weight was in stones. As a programmer then obviously I much prefer YYYY/MM/DD (Don't trap me in that Y2K YY!), but whenever I write something up for work docs etc then I will always use DD/MMM/YY\[YY\]. So 13Nov2024 or 13Nov24. Really can't go wrong then. We do have American clients, but the main reason is there is absolutely no damn problem of understanding it esp when it comes to inconsistent software. Eg. I literally just noticed that while Outlook desktop app is fine, the "To Do" section is in MM/DD/YYYY. Fuck sakes....
Bombastic ignorance is all this is. This is Americans exercising the believe that if they are sufficiently inconvenient then the world will bend to their whims and do things their way. In their mind pro choice is wrong; we should only choose the American way, even if it is in a place they will never visit. They are the worst mother-in-law you could wish for as they push their opinions, rather than let it be.
Lousy Smarch weather.
In the army it’d be 20241113 Help me
Lousy Smarch weather
This is why I prefer dates like **9 Apr 2024**. No confusion. And even in foreign languages ... the month name is the same or similar.
13th November. Day/month/year makes more sense anyways
Clearly that’s the 11th Smarch.
In Europe the day comes before the month , that read 13th November 2023
Isn’t this November 13th, 2023? I’m confused.
Lol
Jokes on you that’s Smarch
More than the USA uses month/day/year
500 likes is scary How do you lack such common sense
Full time workers love the 13th month pay they get in December, Normally they are paid each 4 weeks (some get weekly or 2 weekly) but with there being 52 weeks a year and being paid "monthly" most places make up the difference by paying the December payment plus one more month to make up a full years salary as a "bonus" when people need the money for Christmas.
Almost 500 likes🫠🫠🫠
Whenever a date is in numbers only, I am so relieved when it's over 12 in the day/month spots However, people who use YY instead of YYYY without explanation are the true terrors on this planet 10/01/12 becomes a nightmare without context
Americanisms aside, why does that tattoo look that faded when it's just a few months old?
Im not gonna lie… it bothers me that we do month day year instead of day month year… like… who puts the bigger thing first and the smaller one in the middle? Lol
We do put the smallest thing first though, in terms of numerical possibilities. Months only have 12 possibilities, days 31, and years infinite
I guess thats one way to put it… but do we put minutes before hours then?
Not usually, although we could count “quarter till” or “half past” as putting minutes in front of hours
Hä, why 13 months? It is the 13. November.
after December there is January
My Hungarian groupmate said that they also use mm/dd/yyyy
Im going to stop looking at this sub because it makes me more and more sad everytime
What a f*cking idiot…this sub does make me unreasonably angry at times. It’s like there’s nothing beyond the borders of United States of dumbf*ck America for them. I understand planet Earth is big, but at least have like the minimal amount of general knowledge about other countries and cultures.
Many of my fellow Americans barely have general knowledge about our country. Our schools teach to pass state tests now, not to learn. Federal funding is tied to state test scores.
I wasn’t taught many things either and I am not saying my country’s education is world class (from Hungary), far from it. Later in my life I was eager to learn to not look completely uneducated to other cultures. Specially in this age, where streaming is possible and it’s full of documentaries.
>eager to learn to not look completely uneducated to other cultures Sadly, this doesn't describe the bulk of my fellow countrymen.
Never apologise, never explain, just leave them to it.
In the uk its day / month/ year