Val

And because I really can’t help myself here is a static file version of the same calendar: https://files.catbox.moe/idfrdf.html. Running this is as easy as downloading the file and dragging it into your browser. Thanks to being able to quickly move between the years you can really see how little actually changes between them. I think this could actually be a viable calendar.

A day is defined as a single rotation around earths axis. A year is a single rotation around the sun. The 356.2422 is the result of those two definitions. Earth takes 356.2422 rotations around its axis to rotate around the sun. That is a fact. You could define a unit to be 366th of a rotation around the sun, you could even call it a day, but as a result you lose the reason a day is a useful unit: It’s the time it takes for earth to spin around its axis, a far more useful definition than 366th of a year.

A year is a rotation of seasons. It has nothing to do with the day-night cycle. That should absolutely be separate.

And the 365.2422 isn’t a math error. It’s a mathematic ratio, rotation around the sun / rotation around itself. and it should absolutely be upheld.

If you like the idea you’ll probably appreciate the comment I just left were I made a program to generate it.

Time zones are complicated. One one side I like them because 12 is always noon which means you can get used to the sunset times. On the other hand I think the time shouldn’t be related to sunrise at all and everyone should use UTC (or equivalent). Let sunrise and sunset be their own thing. Again let’s not try and contain nature but instead define a simple method and just use that. Let the natural world tick according to it’s own clock. We have our own atomic ones.

This also brings me to the idea that we should just use a single clock. Take an atomic clock, make it start counting and build all timekeeping around it. Basically the same thing computers are doing but for everyone. Let Sunrise, Noon, Year all be it’s own thing and have a single timestamp for most timekeeping. Due to liking base6 I’d advocate for this timestamp to be in base6 instead of base10. By using it we are going to get an intuition of how much some length of time is that is separate from days.

Because I don’t really have anything better to do today I made a JS generator for this calendar: https://codeberg.org/anaVal/misc/src/branch/main/cal.

Here is the full year 1 I generated using it:

Interestingly the 1st days of the 4th quarters are quite close to the starts of Gregorian months (June 1st, September 2nd, Dec 5th, March 4th).

The UTC is completely 100% arbitrary. The only reason it’s there is because an observatory happened to be on a specific hill, and then it drifted a bit (like most human things do), but the UTC/GMT has since it’s conception been completely arbitrary measurement. There isn’t a way to define a 0 latitude on a rotating sphere without making it an arbitrary point.

This was the first thing that made me realise that calendars could be changed. I myself don’t like it because it because It doesn’t use fixed points. But it is an inspiration for the calendar that I described in the other comment. It’s the “don’t do this” kind of inspiration but I think it counts.

I mean we define year as being from one spring equinox¹ to the next, no matter if it’s 365 or 366 days. So if we made next year 1 it would be from 20th of March 2026 14:46 UTC to the next 20th of march 2027 20:25 UTC (The first day of the year could be day 0, the last of the old year but still also in new year, to account for the fact that it’s not midnight.). The months would be replaced with quarters(seasons), ending on: June 21, September 23, December 21. Every year the dates would slightly shift because of the way orbits work, but there is no leap year math.

The first quarter, spring, has 93 days, the second, summer, 94 and so on. These will probably be subdivided a multitude of ways. Quickly sketching I found 6 * 4 * 4 - (3 or 4) which seems to work, though I’m naturally draw to base6 due to it being highly composite. This makes 24 days in a quarter-season. A nice analogue to the hours.

I think this calendar works better because it doesn’t attempt to add any human control over a completely chaotic system: Earths orbit speed and rotational period. The underlying principle is chaotic and humans should build systems that are build on top of this natural disorder. By attempting to define and control disorder you must create so many convoluted rules (Like the leap day rule). Our calendar is an example of the human desire to “fix” nature to our own way of life instead of leaning to coexist with the natural disorderly processes that govern our lives. It’s the same mindset that gives us the blatant disregard for the natural resources or climate.

This is a rather anarchic position but that’s because I cannot help but inject anarchic rhetoric into my thought process due to so much of the way we live has been in blatantly build using archic concepts, even the calendar is dripping with it.

¹: Accidentally called it solstice sense I forgot there’s a different word.

♪All I ever wanted. All I ever needed. Is Here. In my arms. Words are very unnecessary, They can only do harm.

Actually this is a fair point. What counts as arbitrary? For me the slight drift is just due to the way calendars and culture works, and while it is more arbitrary than having it on the solstice. It is less arbitrary than having it on your(anyone who happens to read this) birthday. It’s ultimately a matter of where you draw the baseline. Even if new year was on the winter solstice you could still argue that it’s arbitrary because there are four others. Arbitrarity is relative.

Is the fact that the start of spring is 2 months after the solstice arbitrary? Seems a pretty clear cause and effect.

But honestly we should make a new calendar that starts on the spring solstice, is subdivided by solstices, and doesn’t have weeks (I just don’t like them).

The fact that the other hemisphere exists did cross my mind, but I decided to ignore it because clarifying would have reduced the quippy nature of the comment.

The comic is also saying that the entire world lives by the Gregorian calendar but that isn’t true as well.

The point isn’t arbitrary. It’s the winter solstice. It just drifted a bit due to history and stuff.