xkcd #3232: Countdown Standard
Title text:
Anyone who is caught counting 'three ... two ... one ... zero ... GO!' will be punished with a lifetime of eating only ISO standard food samples.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3232/
This, and standardizing what "this Thursday" and "next Thursday" mean. These terms have become functionally useless (to me) because of how they're used differently by different people. Whenever someone uses these terms to try to intimate a particular date to me, I just ask for the exact calendar date rather than the day of the week to avoid ambiguity.
"upcoming Thursday" is the way I try to solve that
Biweekly is another one. Two times a week, or once every two weeks (also called a fortnight)?
This is one of those ones that's a tragedy. Biweekly "should" always mean every two weeks. Twice a week is "semi-weekly", aka every half a week.
But regardless of what it "should" mean, people use it wrong often enough that you have to check every time, not because the word is ambiguous, but because people are often mistaken.
It's a shame, but it's part of human communication 😅
Human communication sucks. It should be illegal.
Tell me about it.
sorry that's illegal
There's also semi monthly, which is two times a month, as opposed to every two weeks, which is what biweekly is
Semi monthly results in 24 events per year while biweekly events happen 26 times
I can't express the amount of visceral discomfort this brought me.
if we're taking financial payment periods, i believe that some years turn into 27 periods 😄
Approximately 26 times a year.
Fortnightly already exists as a term though, why would biweekly mean the same thing?
We can have more than one way of describing things. Sometimes there is subtle nuances between the words.
Check the podcast episode “A Problem Squared - 121 = Bi-annuals and Diagonals”. In it, Matt and Beck discuss what these terms even mean, and propose a solution.
A significant portion of the population thinks that “X times more” and “X times as much” mean the same thing. It drives me insane. I don’t think it’s ever formally taught because they use more rigorous language in school problems, but I’d like to think most people would agree “50% more” means 150%, and “50% as much” means 50%. 2X seems to cause confusion though.
So yeah, codifying that first chance.
Edit: What have I done, I knew better than to post a pet peeve in a comment chain.
Strong disagree, I've literally never seen someone say "X times more" to mean X+1 times as much
I posted a source below explaining it. If you can find an expert saying they are the same I’d love to see it, as it would rationalize the insanity that’s been peeving me for so long.
Lol, the way that people actually use language holds way more water than the opinions of an expert
Except a majority of people do use language the way I do, you simply have been misunderstanding a lot of people your whole life. Language experts love to change language with the times. If you were in the majority, they would.
That only works if X is a fraction or percentage though? Because 3 times more and 3 times as much do mean the same thing.
They do not.
I can absolutely see where you and that article are coming from, but it takes me so much more brainpower to reach that conclusion, whereas it intuitively feels like they should mean the same thing. And maybe that is because the two are used interchangeably in everyday speak so I've never had to think about the difference.
I’ve been through this conversation so many times it haunts me. What I’ve found is that people don’t use that verbiage outside of casual conversation, so when they misunderstand each other nothing comes of it, so they never find out. Someone triples his salary and tells you “I’m making two times more now!” and you think “Cool, he doubled his salary” and never find out that you misunderstood each other.
Once I walked around with my best friend after having this exact disagreement and polled people at work for their thoughts. The vast majority went by my understanding, as do any grammar authors you can find online. It just never comes up unless someone like me makes a whole thing about it.
You are correct in that enough people share the misunderstanding that it becomes technically correct use of language, like using “literally” to mean “not literally”.
It’s clear use of language though, more than means a number is more than another.
Pete has —— more apples than John.
P = J + (described amount)
(3) more > P = J + (3)
(2 times or 200%) more > P = J + (200% J) = 300% J
If you want to say they are interchangeable, you are saying “50% more” and “50% as much” mean the same thing.
Certainly agree that I've never asked or been asked about this before!
My original thing, though, was that it couldn't be used interchangeably for fractions or percentages, but could for whole numbers. So your example with 50% clearly doesn't work, but 3 times more and 3 times as much could more easily mean the same thing.
There is a rule but it's not really well known so people just follow whatever rule they deduced from usage. People have to qualify which one they mean almost every time. I usually say "this coming Thursday" (this week), or "Thursday next week" instead.
The rule makes perfect sense (and is how I’ve always used it), but this article actually misses a major point which I just learned last week when talking to some native Spanish speakers. In most English speaking countries, the week starts on Sunday. This isn’t the case for many, many other countries though. So saying “this Friday” on a Sunday really really confuses people. That’s exactly what happened to me last week because it was a Sunday and we were talking about a Friday and she got very very confused.
Starting the week on Sunday makes zero sense. Where does that even come from? Obviously Monday is the start of the week and everyone hates it for it.
why does monday makes more sense than sunday?
Excellent point. Same for most European countries, I think.
Another date confusion things is weeks. Europeans use week numbers a lot ("I'm on vacation weeks 34-37") but that's very rare in the US. And the week numbers aren't (always) the same anyway. In the US we use "I'm on vacation the week of ", which honestly is a lot easier to understand without referencing a calendar.
The day of the week shouldn't matter, it's either the Sunday that is coming up next or the one exactly a week after it. "This Sunday" should be the upcoming one and "Next Sunday" should be the one after. Doesn't matter if it's this week, next week or in two weeks.
I find Thursday (for this week) and Thursday next (for next week) adequate and am seldom called on for clarification, seems to follow the pattern of the rule (thanks for that) but is more economical.
Another problem is that system requires agreeing on what a week is, and there's disagreement over whether Sunday starts or ends the week.
"This thursday" is the thursday on this current week. It might be in the future or in the past, which will be obvious from the context.
"Next thursday" is the thursday on the next week after this current one.
"Last thursday" is the thursday on the last week before this one.
In Norwegian we operate with "førstkommende" which translates more or less directly to "first-coming". It's extremely practical when planning dates, because you can always just say "Not the first-coming Thursday, but next Thursday", or "On the first-coming Thursday", and it's completely unambiguous that you mean the first Thursday we encounter from the moment of speaking.
Very nice.
This Thursday is already in the future. It has no meaning of you say it on a Friday. Then it’s ”this Thursday coming“ or just “Thursday coming”
At least here in the UK that’s the only way I’ve ever heard it used
I'm from the UK too and I've definitely heard things like:
"Yeah, I saw her this thursday"
If you used 'last thursday' in that case it would still obviously be understood, so I'm not sure it really matters. The importqnt distinction is between 'this' and 'next' thursday.
I had a roommate leave early once before the end of the month, and on Wednseday they said I'm leaving next Friday. They left a couple days later on Friday.
*Said in a meeting on January 5th
"Our last discussion on this was last year."
.......
Edit: I've realized this definition was wrong and sleep-deprived and that the actual definition I use is: "This" refers to within this 7-day period of Su–Sa, "Last" refers to the last 7-day period, and "Next" refers to the next 7-day period. I was depriving myself of sleep to finish some work and came up with this. So "this" remains the same, but I just made up some definition of "next" that's inconsistent with how I'd describe months in years. Hopefully the work is okay.
Is this not universal? It seems so obvious.
"This Thursday" is the closest Thursday coming up, "next Thursday" is the next one after that. The exception is if you're already passed "Thursday" that week, then it's "next Thursday" until the new week starts.
Internal consistency test:
It's May 2024. You're talking about February 2025. Given the choice only between "This February" and "Next February", which do you call it?
Edit: In fairness, I realize I fail this consistency test too. If, in January 2024, someone said "Next February", I'd assume they're referring to February 2025, since I would only ever say "this February" to refer to February 2024 to avoid confusion (even though February 2024 technically is "next February"). Urgh, my brain. "You're making me think about this way more than I ever have. Come with me!"
I think scale matters. A year is quite a lot longer than a week or two. It's easy to consider both the next Thursday you're going to encounter and the one after that as subjectively "soon". The same can not be said of a month at least nine months away.
I would agree that your ruleset works on a longer timescale, but not on a shorter one. There's too much ambiguity and crossover for it to work properly. Having exclusivity in definition allows for better communication, especially for something much more personal like something sooner rather than later.
So if it's a Friday, "This Thursday" was yesterday? How does that make sense?
"This Thursday" is always the upcoming Thursday.
Last Thursday was fucking yesterday.
I’m with you so far as “next” should always the next occurrence of the day, and maybe in some places it does. But practically it doesn’t work. In every place I’ve lived it works like this: “this week” isn’t a set Monday – Sunday like you suggest, but a rolling seven days. Its Monday as I write this, “this Wednesday” is two days from now, while “next Wednesday” is the following. Same for this vs next weekend. If it’s Friday, “this Monday” is three days away. Rolling seven days.
“This” cannot be used for the day of week you are currently on, nor can it be used for previous days.
on Sunday my friend said we should hangout "this weekend" (he meant Saturday) and i corrected him saying that would be "next weekend" ... I'm right, right?
Yes, youre right