this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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Science Memes

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moms rule (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I am interested in learning about this metric time.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

metric time actually was a thing, and it sucked so nobody used it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

It didn't suck exactly, time is just so much more prevalent than other units that switching to a new system was even more contentious. Current time is just as arbitrary (although maximizing for maximum number of prime factors is pretty nice, even if it doesn't mesh nicely with other metric units)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

Metric really missed out by not being dozenal. SMH

[–] [email protected] 8 points 17 hours ago

The French tried to impose "metric" time way back in the day. Even they learned that was a bad idea and quietly dropped it. The solar system seems to prefer it's base12 time.

I think it maybe helped give rise the the saying: "The French follow no one. And no one follows the French."

[–] [email protected] 16 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Oh?

"450 mothers ago" is roughly 363,500 megaseconds ago.

To be fair, measuring that in moms seems more intuitive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

From your link, I rabbitholed to there and found gold

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I’d like mothers represented metric tbh, I’m in a meeting and not able to do the math rn but if anyone else can oblige …

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

You can probably propose a new SI-base unit of "a mother", but what does it measure?

"Metric" just essentially comes from "metering". People confuse "metric" with "decimal", which is sort of the point of the person I replied to. While metric time technically exists insofar as you just use seconds as the base unit, omit minutes and hours and just do SI-prefixes, the French did also try decimal time, but it was just horrible.

So if "mother" was the base unit and it measured something, in this instance time, the advent of agriculture was roughly four hectomothers ago. Or 0.4 kilomothers, if you will.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Mother as a unit of time.

Ty

Edit the mother epoch presumably is the same epoch as all time, just … related to the mothers as above.

Ty

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago

But see we already got the base unit of a second for time. But for generations, perhaps?

One kilomother would've been the early modern human, roughly. Ten kilomothers ago homo sapiens was just coming into being. A hundred kilomothers ago homo erectus would've just been coming into existence. A megamother ago we would've been diverging into great apes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago

It's also about the speed of light in millifortnights (2.9e8), within a 4% error margin.