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May 9

Random questions

1. Are there any countries that currntly drive on the left but are proposing to switch to drive on the right?
2. Are there any non-scientific newspapers in the US that use metric units in their articles?
3. How likely is that the US will have metricated at least some measurements by 2044? I hope that the US will eventually have complete metrication.
4. Why the UK and its former colonies did nor metricate as early as e.g. Spain and its colonies?

--40bus (talk) 09:37, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

1. Why would they? 3. The US already uses some metrics. 4. The UK still uses some pre-metrics. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:07, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not 'pre-metric', it's Imperial (though, to be fair, post-Empire now). -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 15:02, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Spain adopted the metric system in 1849, [1] by which time she had lost nearly all her colonies except Cuba and the Philippines. The UK retained a huge empire well into the 20th-century and had no need to conform to anybody else's standards. Times have changed however. Alansplodge (talk) 15:55, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Also, metric measurement was invented in France, so traditional British anti-Gallicism provided an additional barrier to its being adopted. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.175.176 (talk) 18:39, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I have thought that the metric system should have been invented in the UK. Why there was no need to invent that there? Why the French tried to decimalize everything, including time? Why Brits didn't try that? --40bus (talk) 19:55, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

40bus - this is a country that still provides it's lawmakers with a piece of tape to hang their swords on. Bishops sit in the legislature. Men in funny costimes count the monarch's swans. Tradition trounces logic here every time. Alansplodge (talk) 20:04, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Speculation: The system of English units, together with the succeeding Imperial units, were legally established by Governments which were still very much working for and with (sometimes) the monarch. There was a natural tendency to conservatism and tradition. We still have a king, so we still hold by those units.

The Système international d'unités or SI units were developed at a time when the monarch was overthrown, traditions were cast aside, and all things were (theoretically) being made anew. It was an ideal time to create a rational and integrated system of measurements. It also means that Metric units are, in origin, left-wing (if not Communist) and so are still looked on askance by the USA. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 20:34, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

One might have expected the young revolutionary Americans to have felt disdain for the imperial units of the Empire whose chains they had just broken free of and a willingness to embrace the new revolutionary Continental units, but the Quasi-War stifled any possible enthusiasm. In any case, the Treaty of the Metre was concluded on 20 May 1875, signed by, among others, the USA, which ratified it in 1878. The UK followed in 1884. The adoption of the international yard and pound ensures exact interconvertibility of measures of length and mass between imperial units and SI units.  --Lambiam 06:21, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Just a reminder that it's confusing and incorrect to refer to United States customary units as "imperial units". In particular the gallon is significantly different; this was an issue for Americans buying gasoline in Canada before Canada started pumping liters. (My dad, an engineer, used to call US customary units "English units", but never "Imperial".) --Trovatore (talk) 06:29, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Good point. When I was in grade school, we called it the "English system". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:39, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

When the Fench worked on a new, international system of measurements to replace all national and regional systems in use at that time, they invited to UK and USA to join them in the effort. Initially, they indeed cooperated, as the UK and USA also saw the advantages of a common system. Later, they backed out. The French continued their effort, now only together with some smaller nations. They didn't unilaterally impose the metric system on Europe. The Dutch, who had just kicked out their stadtholder (who didn't mind, as he very much preferred playing croquet in the UK over ruling a country), voluntarily adopted the metric system at the same time as the French. Parts of Switserland followed soon. Maybe no coincidence that those were two countries without a monarch. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:44, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Metric system § History of the current metric system claims that the UK ignored invitations to participate. Should that be a bit more nuanced, or did they stop cooperating before anything actually got done?

Incidentally, Anglo-French Survey (1784–1790) (the effort to link London and Paris observatories by triangulation and measurement, which preceded metrication) expresses all lengths in feet, to two decimal places (about 1⁄8 inch). To my eye the article is rather Anglo-centric; did the French records disappear during the Revolution? and what units did the French use? -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 10:24, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

The Survey was based on an effort cooperative, yet not entirely concomitant. On the French side Gaspard de Prony visited Greenwich and wrote a report and translations for the French Academie des Sciences. The unit then that had been used by French cartographers before the metric system must have been the toise, unfortunately affected by the pressure of gravity on its standard ( see the illustration for Standards units in en:Fathom) so possibly too randomly reformed, around the 1670's already. --Askedonty (talk) 17:11, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

4) Nelson. DuncanHill (talk) 19:57, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Many of the former British colonies metricated pretty soon after independence. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:46, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

1) Hong Kong, although not a country, seems likely to change over to driving on the right at some point, although I expect that the costs and complexity of such a change are just as much of an issue there. Currently, drivers have to switch sides as they cross over to the mainland, although that seems to be achieved very simply. There is talk of this happening in 2047, so maybe not anytime soon. Mikenorton (talk) 15:36, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

May 10

Instagram stars

How old are Kristina Musatova and Jessgotjugs? 176.200.133.219 (talk) 11:16, 10 May 2024 (UTC):

"Musatova was born on August 6, 1995, in Russia." Wikipedia will not allow a direct link to the source (blacklisting), but you can find it on starktimes.com using the search box. No idea how reliable the source is. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 13:32, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

This YouTube clip says that Jessgotjugs was born in 2005. Again, probably not a reliable source. Alansplodge (talk) 13:06, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

But it's published by the most beautiful YouTube channel? Zanahary (talk) 03:13, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

May 14

California Electoral College Result (2020)

Hi. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not an English speaker and maybe it was some kind of slang, I certainly didn't quite understand: when the Secretary of State announced the result of the vote cast by the Electoral College, at 0.12 in the link below, what exactly did she say? Thank you very much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ-tXzmMIHk 2.39.110.85 (talk) 11:10, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

She announced that there had been 55 "aye" (note that this word is pronounced exactly like the pronoun "I" or the body part "eye".) votes and 0 "no" votes. "Aye" is a word that is uncommon in general English usage, but is often used in the context of voting. It is an affirmative or assenting response. Basically it means "yes". So, 55 people said "yes, I am voting for Biden". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:43, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

It would have been in common use in the 18th-century at the time of Independence. "Aye" is also used in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. It survives in everyday use in some English varieties and dialects, notably Scottish English, and also in Anglophone navies, where "Aye, aye sir!" is the required response to an order. Alansplodge (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I've just seen that Wikipedia has Yes and no#Aye and variants. Alansplodge (talk) 15:20, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to mention the stereotypical New England "ayeh". I don't know whether that still exists, really. My wife and I were in New England recently to see the eclipse and I don't recall hearing it, but maybe we just didn't talk to the right people. --Trovatore (talk) 20:15, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Trovatore now added. The reference that I found says "chiefly heard in Maine" (not mainly in Maine). Alansplodge (talk) 10:38, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

green fringe

If you look at this pic in full size, you'll see a green fringe to the right edge of the Moon. What made that? Delay between a green-filtered scan and others? —Tamfang (talk) 19:09, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. The EPIC instrument is described as using a filter wheel [2]. That means it captures one channel in one exposure, rotates the wheel, captures the second channel in a second exposure, and so on. You can see a similar pink-purple fringe on the left edge of the Moon, and if you look carefully, a very faint version around the dark craters and other features on the lunar surface. —Amble (talk) 19:35, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Kona low

I've been through many different Kona lows, and one thing I've noticed just by way of keeping an eye on modeling and reporting is that they appear more chaotic and difficult to predict. Is this true? If so, why? Viriditas (talk) 22:19, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

More than other types of lows, or more recently than in the past? [I won't be able to answer either way, but the question isn't fully clear to me.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.173 (talk) 19:18, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I can't say with any certainty. My question is, is there something about the Kona low that makes it more difficult to predict at a microclimate level? I've noticed that whenever we get a Kona low, all the forecasting goes out the window. Is this expected or unique to the phenomenon? In other words, are stochastic climate models of Kona low systems less accurate than other types of weather events? Viriditas (talk) 19:38, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I thought you were asking whether the coffee maker needed refilling with a particular variety of beans. Phew. MinorProphet (talk) 21:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

MinorProphet, I have always appreciated your sense of humor. Not everyone has that, so I thank you for it. Did you know Kona coffee is now more than US$50 a pound? That's nuts to me. Rumor is that it's getting very difficult to grow now with climate change, pathogens, insects, etc. I don't think it's all that different elsewhere, now that I think about. Single origin coffees from Mexico and South America are hovering around US$40 a pound. Viriditas (talk) 19:29, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I think that's a pont that climate scientists and activists should make a bigger point of. "Act now/Give now or prepare for the end of coffee." --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 21:09, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

They do! There’s been a lot of coverage on this point within the last two years. But, a lot of this is very late. I first got interested in this subject in the mid to late 1980s, just before Hansen gave his famous testimony to the Senate. It’s really sad to see how much the oil-controlled governments have dragged their feet on this. And now the same people are complaining that people aren’t having enough children? Our leaders don’t get it, and maybe never will. I am reminded of the famous Upton Sinclair quote (which I have deliberately altered for modernity): "It is difficult to get someone to understand something, when their salary depends on not understanding it." This seems to be true across the board in government. A good example is the official poverty measures used by the US government. It is based on archaic, out of date ideas from 1963 that have zero relevance to the actual world in 2024, and most surprisingly, does not account for what we in the modern world take for granted: "costs related to housing, clothing, transportation, and other expenses commonly considered basic human needs are not considered. And the official measure does not account for variations in the cost of living across the country." This is what insanity looks like. This means, essentially, that the US government has absolutely no idea who is actually living in poverty, and if that wasn't enough, does not want to know, as proposed congressional legislation that would improve these metrics has been fought by conservatives at every level. This is occurring now in the US, as "29% of Gen Z and 32% of millennials fear their financial situation could lead to experiencing homelessness". The government is doing nothing. The same thing is occurring with climate change and every other problem. We have a government that is blind and is being led by the blind and cannot do a single thing to help its people. In other news, just yesterday, a Florida Man signed HB 1645, a bill that bans offshore wind power and "removes most references to climate change in state law", in spite of the fact that 90% of Floridians accept climate change and 69% want the state to take action. This is what an oil-run oligarchy looks like. Viriditas (talk) 23:43, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know about Kona lows specifically. Our article doesn't say much about size, but raises the impression that they're quite compact. I do know that weather phenomena get more difficult to predict when they're more compact. That's a consequence of the finite resolution of the computer model used for weather forecast and the finite resolution of input data. I suppose there aren't that many weather stations in the Pacific. PiusImpavidus (talk) 18:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! We've had a Kona low here for a week or so now and things have been really weird. Hot one moment, cold the next, windy then calm, rain then suddenly dry, etc. Lots of property owners spent a lot of money to put sandbags out to prevent flooding, but there hasn't been any yet on my island. Viriditas (talk) 19:22, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Huh, that doesn't seem that odd to me. We have weeks like that all the time in NC. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 21:10, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Keep in mind, the Kona low event is not considered normal or usual. I am curious how many times it happens in the Hawaii region per year. If I had to guess, 2-4 times per year? I don’t know. Viriditas (talk) 21:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

You mentioned stochastic forecasting (related to this?), which presumably involves basing forecasts of a weather event on the way previous instances developed. If a type of weather event is infrequent, there will inherently be less data on which to calculate a forecast than for more common events. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.173 (talk) 11:07, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe weather in Hawaii is most of the time more predictable than in most places in the world. PiusImpavidus (talk) 07:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

May 15

Why is there an iron cross painted on top of this building?

https://imgur.com/a/Rg2DpRy

In the image posted above, there is an iron cross painted on the roof of an NYPD training facility. A friend of mine said she's seen one in aerial photographs of a Naval building in Florida as well. What's the purpose of the iron cross? I thought maybe something to do with helipads but it's not standard markings. Thank you! †dismas†|^(talk) 15:22, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Just a guess, but maybe a representation of the Police Combat Cross? Alansplodge (talk) 18:30, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

But it certainly is a helipad: NYPD Air Operations Heliport (Floyd Bennett Field) New York, New York, USA says "Runway edge markings: WHITE PAINTED MALTESE CROSS". Alansplodge (talk) 18:32, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not a Maltese Cross, it's a cross paty. That said, our article on the Maltese Cross does mention aviation uses. DuncanHill (talk) 18:46, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes, Maltese Cross#Aviation says:

In 1967, laboratory tests, and flight tests at Fort Rucker and Fort Wolters, were conducted to determine the most highly visible and effective way to mark a helipad. Twenty-five emblem designs were tested, but the emblem depicting four blurred rotor blades, referred to as the "Maltese cross", was selected as the standard heliport marking pattern by the Army for military heliports, and by the FAA for civil heliports. However, in the late 1970s, the FAA administrator repealed this standard when it was charged that the Maltese cross was antisemitic. In the United States today, some helipads still remain bearing their original Maltese cross emblems.

I suspect that heraldry is not a skill required of helicopter pilots :-) Alansplodge (talk) 11:40, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The Iron Cross, which is often confused with the Maltese Cross, has been used by Nazi Germany. It has also been used before by the Weimar Republic and is used today by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is a bit strange to call the symbol antisemitic. The Nazis also used circles and the colour white.

The abolished helipad symbol did, moreover, not really have the shape of either the Maltese Cross or the Iron Cross. If they had faithfully represented the cross as the area swept out by four rotor blades in about one tenth of a full rotation, the four outer edges would not have been straight but like 36° circular arcs, making an association with Germany even less plausible.  --Lambiam 19:22, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, since meaning inheres in how a sign is used and understood, and nowhere else, if a significant number of people apprehend a word or symbol as racist, antisemitic, or just plain offensive, then that is (part of its meaning) whatever anybody may intend by it. Telling people that it does not mean that is not only useless, but false. See pejoration ColinFine (talk) 14:51, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Meaning is not absolute. It also depends on context. In English, applying the term git to a person is an insult. In Poland, someone so designated may feel honoured. When a swastika on a Hindu temple is understood by a tourist as being antisemitic, it is a misunderstanding. It is neither false, nor necessarily useless, to point this out.  --Lambiam 07:39, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

In American English, "git" as an insult is unknown (other than in the Monty Python "argument sketch") but instead is a hickish pronunciation of "get [out of here]" (as in "go on, git!") ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:27, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

The only more disturbing news I got from the U.S. after those helipad pictures came after the end of the seventies [3], that was the Glock, not a mention of git. --Askedonty (talk) 14:52, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you all!! I'd done numerous searches for helipad markings but didn't find that the Maltese Cross used to be used for them. Thanks again! †dismas†|^(talk) 20:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

That airport's dated as fuck. Built to woo 1931 airlines from Newark but never did (too far from Manhattan), every few years or decades would get more irrelevant (every time a bigger NYC airport opened or aviation user left, most of it's been owned by National Park Service for 50 years, you can camp and fly model planes on the runway). The main cop thing's probably been Rodman's Neck for decades (a peninsula in a different side of the city). Tons of cop stuff there (i.e. buildings to practice SWATting probably also firefighting, shooting ranges, bomb squad practice tip, probably the only gun shop(s) in NYC...) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:31, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

May 18

low gi cereal foods

in this section what do they mean by "low gi cereal foods"?

Healthy diet#Research 58.161.160.223 (talk) 13:13, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

See glycemic index, the effect of a particular food on blood sugar levels two hours after consuming it, oats would be an example of a low gi cereal. Mikenorton (talk) 14:03, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Because consumption of a lot of high gi foods tend to result in reactive hypoglycemia or "sugar crash". Alansplodge (talk) 22:30, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

May 20

usefulness of complex-input FFTs in audio spectral analysis

Since I've implemented a feature to treat stereo audio as complex numbers in one of my own audio spectrum analyzer projects over CodePen, I'm curious about whether or not is there any useful cases of complex-input FFTs as in the case of I/Q signals on any SDR-related stuff, being performed in typical two-channel audio? BTW, I'm not talking about the performance benefits of using one complex-input FFT to visualize two spectrums for each channel, which is the same, plus the "unscrambling" operation to make it look like individual FFTs of each channels. 2001:448A:3070:DF54:98E8:4EDF:605:8379 (talk) 00:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

The Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) that converts a sequence of data samples to a set of complex coefficients of frequencies is directly applicable for spectral analysis. The frequency domain representation of the input sequence allows many useful signal processes, including frequency-selective filters, and the filtered frequency coefficients can be converted back to real data by means of an Inverse DFT.

Mathematically a DFT converts a sequence of N complex numbers $\left\{\mathbf {x} _{n}\right\}:=x_{0},x_{1},\ldots ,x_{N-1}$ into another sequence of complex numbers, $\left\{\mathbf {X} _{k}\right\}:=X_{0},X_{1},\ldots ,X_{N-1},$ which is defined by:

Discrete Fourier transform

$X_{k}=\sum _{n=0}^{N-1}x_{n}\cdot e^{-i2\pi {\tfrac {k}{N}}n}$

()

The operation is computationally intensive as N must be large enough for a required frequency resolution but it can be speeded by the digital FFT (Fast Fourier transform) algorithm. A further simplification is that for a real signal such as audio from one microphone, only real values of $\{\mathbf {x} _{n}\}$ need be processed i.e. the imaginary value of each sample can be zero. Such real-data-in, complex-values-out usage of FFTs is commonplace. However it is useful to note that the zeroed imaginary data points potentially offer themselves as a second, independant data stream. The OP cites a .pdf that correctly demonstrates that two stereo audio signals can be combined as real and complex inputs to a single FFT. That one FFT can process two signals without interference is demonstrable by recovering the signal samples in an IDFT thus:

Inverse transform

$x_{n}={\frac {1}{N}}\sum _{k=0}^{N-1}X_{k}\cdot e^{i2\pi {\tfrac {k}{N}}n}$

()

While the economy of using a single FFT to process both stereo channels is obvious it is less obvious that any two real input data streams may be applied as there really is no interference between them. Noting that the algorithms for forward and inverse DFTs are similar, a system programmer will usually write code that is reusable for both and has provision for complex input data, even if that is superfluous for the DFT, because it is always demanded for IDFT. Apart from audio applications, an IDFT/DFT pair is useful as digital Codec in digital carrier Phase-shift keying modulations BPSK (real values) and QPSK (complex values). Philvoids (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

@Philvoids Thanks for a lengthy explanation but what I meant by "complex-input FFTs" as in this CodePen project is simply treating stereo pairs or even Mid/Side representations as complex numbers and do no postprocessing at all and simply display two graphs with different colors; the first one is as usual as regular FFT spectrum, and the second graph is exactly the same but the ordering of FFT bins is reversed since we provided an FFT a complex-valued input, the output is no longer conjugate-symmetric, which could display stereo FFT in a different way (one graph is higher in amplitude than other means being closer to 90° out-of-phase, either clockwise or counterclockwise) and might have practical uses or is it? 114.5.253.252 (talk) 18:50, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

While agreeing that a single FFT can treat samples of a stereo pair as complex numbers, I have not found more useful references than those already given for your on-going project; it feels more like a "solution looking for a problem" than a "problem looking for a solution"! We also cannot speculate or know whether your interest is theoretical curiosity or you have an application or product plan. Philvoids (talk) 03:04, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @Philvoids and this DSP related thread about the same topic in regards of treating stereo sample as complex numbers, I'm just curious why people bringing up some performance improvements of stereo FFT by treating an input as complex numbers for a single FFT and doing "unscrambling" operation afterwards instead of other niche stuffs using same FFT as for I/Q radio signals but for audio? Sure, it could identify TSAC-encoded music with the same complex-input FFTs as for I/Q signals as "holes" in one (red) graph at higher frequencies (around 15kHz) as in this image on this HA thread about the same topic. 114.5.249.110 (talk) 21:40, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Calendar change and historical procrastination

Initially, only a few countries already switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1582. But then, as the centuries go by, more and more countries followed the calendar change, including Great Britain in 1752. This continued all the way until the year 1923 in Greece.

So, could such a long waiting be considered as a kind of procrastination? Procrastination means putting off tasks to a later date, and the task relevant to this question is that of switching to the Gregorian calendar. One of the negative consequences is that the longer you waited, the more days you had to drop from the Julian calendar. Changes in the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s required 10, 10, 11, 12, and 13 days to be dropped, respectively (note that 1600 was a leap year in both calendars, so no additional day needs to be dropped until 1700).

GTrang (talk) 16:21, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

It could depend on each country's rationale for resisting. One possibility could be anti-Catholic bias. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:03, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Specifically, the head honchos of the Eastern Orthodox Churches felt that adopting this calendar proclaimed by a papal bull would be seen as admitting the supreme authority of the head honcho of the Roman Church.  --Lambiam 19:21, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

We must be patient. An agreement on the term honcho picked up 1947-1953 by U.S. servicemen from Japanese hancho "group leader" has still not been reached in catholic churches since the East–West Schism of 1054. Philvoids (talk) 21:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

This is a little off-topic, but does anyone understand why they didn't just say, OK, we're changing the schedule of leap years going forward, but we're not dropping any days from the current calendar? It's weird to me that they preferred to set the correlation between seasons and the calendar to something it hadn't been in living memory. I could maybe understand if it were a date-of-Easter thing, but Easter has never gone by the solar calendar anyway, so that also doesn't make sense. --Trovatore (talk) 19:32, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

325AD was important, Christmas (second most important after Easter) is solar and Easter falling up to 7+30 or 7+29 days later than the Sunday after the first spring Full Moon and up to ~10 days later in spring than could in 325 made them feel icky. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:45, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

On a smaller scale, we have the 19-second difference between GPS time and International Atomic Time, and the running difference between those and Coordinated Universal Time, occasioned by one of the worst ideas in the history of human timekeeping. When they finally get rid of the stupid thing and treat the pose of the Earth as just another ephemeris, like they should have done for at least fifty years, it will be interesting to see whether they attempt some unification, or just have three separate clocks with a fixed difference of a few seconds. --Trovatore (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

That would be a sin and make astronomers and some sailors feel icky. Astronomers deal with way more than three clocks per location and the 70 second difference from the endlessly slowing spin crossing 24 SI hours in like 1820 all the time, suck it up programmers. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:45, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

It's the astronomers who need to suck it up and treat the Earth's pose as just another ephemeris. --Trovatore (talk) 00:49, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

The astronomers have to do that anyway, because leap seconds only get you to the nearest second or so, and that is often not good enough. The UT1-UTC ephemeris can be predicted pretty well into the future, except for leap seconds. Leap seconds throw it off completely because they are a political decision and cannot be reliably predicted beforehand. They also introduce a discontinuity so that you have to be careful when interpolating. [4] So getting rid of leap seconds would probably make it easier for the astronomers. (It might still be true that it would also make them feel icky.) —Amble (talk) 02:46, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

According to the linked article, the current plan after leap seconds are ended by 2035 is either for a leap minute or leap hour in the future, so I'm not sure it makes sense to unify them when they're going to drift again in the future. I mean it would be slightly cleaner since whatever they chose future changes would be in that whole number and so the difference would always be in that number of units. OTOH, it doesn't seem like that number is that significant for most purposes, so I wonder if they will care. Also I wonder if the more likely plan if it's decided to keep the difference in whole units, might be for the first "leap minute" or "leap hour" to actually be slightly less or more than an actual minute or hour and use that to hit on a whole number of unit. Note that there's some suggestion that a negative leap second may be coming perhaps before 2035 and so that may need to be dealt with either by eliminating leap seconds sooner, or simply skipping it even if it's technically required under the current system; rather than risk finding out what software bugs may exist for something which won't be needed for much longer [5] (although assuming the leap minute or leap hour ideas go ahead, it's theoretically possible they would need it). Nil Einne (talk) 11:06, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

BTW, do astronomers really have much to do with it? While not well discussed, from what is discussed and common sense I think the bigger issue may be the desire of some countries for UTC to be fairly tied to TAI but also have 1200 in their local time zone (which is tied to UTC) be roughly midday (depending on their local timezones) rather then for it to potentially be midnight sometime in the distance future. (Well that's a fairly distant thing, but it sounds like some are even unhappy with it diverging by even an hour.) The counter argument that there is already so much variance given the spread of timezones etc seems to have won out for the leap minute or maybe even the leap hour. But as this time, I think they're still unhappy with the eventual possibility it could indeed be midnight during 1200 in the future. Nil Einne (talk) 11:19, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Any large discrepancies would be way in the future, and barring enormous advances in life extension, are not going to affect us. Anyone they will affect would be born in a world in which it's not that different, so they'll have plenty of time to get used to it.

Without leap seconds, a person who lives 120 years will see nominal average sunset times shift by, what, 90 seconds or something? Come on, there's no way this is seriously a problem. Leap seconds are just a really really bad idea, and hopefully they'll expunge them with all deliberate speed. --Trovatore (talk) 18:53, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Anyone so irritated by leap seconds needs to use GPS time or an International Standard Computing Time that equals UTC at the conference creating the standard or maybe TAI. If done soon that would give many, many months to reprogram before the next leap second (Earth's recently been spinning close to the UTC accumulation and unusually close to the SI rate based on human knowledge right before the slowdown was first measured which was based on 18th and 19th century position measurements). Computers already convert UTC to time zone, just use atomic time and leave UTC alone. Also we have to make time impure for all time cause idiots didn't change Unix time to the actual number of SI seconds by the 1990s when computer clocks became accurate enough or 2001 when they made 2100 a leap year? Leap seconds are perfect! Pure unsmeared SI seconds except 1 second every few years on average (6 months happened once) and it can't more than 0.9 seconds wrong. Also you do know it's quadratic right? People shouldn't be boiled to wrongness they wouldn't accept all at once in the same lifetime like the leap hour in 2600 (fucking night owls' sleep by making 8am earlier in the day till it happens. New York Cityans who could wake up 11.5+ hours after sunset and 0.5+ hours after sunrise without risking lateness would have to wake up ≤11 hours after sunset and (c. Jan 4 and Nov 5-6 DST) at sunrise or before like a weirdo morning person). If I didn't grow up in it I'd think daylight savings is an abomination instead of mixed feelings more pro than con (DST also fucks sleep but I never knew anything else). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Time is time; the Earth moves somewhat irregularly with time. There is no reason our timekeeping needs to follow the Earth's foibles.

Just freeze the current difference between UTC and TAI now and forever, and then we can keep using UTC. Sure, our great-to-the-nth grandchildren may be getting up at 3 AM or 3 PM or whatever, and they'll think the name "midnight" is kinda weird and that time references in old literature don't make a lot of sense, until someone remembers that it's drifted since then. Of course human schedules will adjust to move with the Sun, not with the clocks.

So what? It's a little like the scene in It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey is offered the amazing salary of $25,000 per year, beyond dreams of avarice, and is briefly tempted. You can watch that and understand it; even if you don't know just how much that would buy you, you understand it's a lot. --Trovatore (talk) 22:15, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes you don't have to be an astronomer or sextant user to have a desire for SI seconds with an extra second announced in advance to keep it approximately the closest second, it's unsurprising if pro-leap second astronomers and sextant users outnumbered by other pro-leap second humans through sheer numbers. Midnight at 1200 is insane, that's 12 hours wrong even Anchorage doesn't use California time for convenience (2 hours wrong) and they're used to it never getting dark then just a few hours of day. If the south horizon's high enough the city doesn't touch sunlight for weeks and the north horizon's only lit a few hours. Leap minutes would be an unneeded complication increasing the number of things that can't use civil time without extra work fixing it back to mean solar time of the multiple of 15 longitude. For instance Earth spins 11.7 longitude seconds in 0.78 time seconds (eyeballing the most it's been wrong so far on a graph, though they stopped jumping the gun so much over time so it doesn't get that bad anymore, probably they could not pad it at all without risk of it speeding from a 6 month forescast of c. 0.5 seconds to over their 0.9 second mandate in only 6 months). It would hardly affect sextant accuracy to use British Standard Time or Iceland Time (they're UTC all year), if it was leap minute even if it switched at 30 instead of 60 that'd be 7.5 minutes wrong (up to almost 9 land miles/14km). That's as inaccurate enough to put a very low island beyond the horizon from up to tens of yards up, several times the horizon distance of standing on a perfectly flat Earth and not even close to a passing score for sextants, eagle-eyed Tycho Brahe did 14 times better in the 1500s with just a 1.6 meter wood and his eyeballs. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:06, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The non-computerized sextant user already has to carry charts based on the date and latitude and such, right? Let him keep one more table, which is the number of seconds to add or subtract in a given year. It doesn't change that much so he can probably just remember one extra number and it'll be good for some time. Problem solved. --Trovatore (talk) 19:44, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Stop using UTC for computers. Problem solved. Or maybe leap seconds could be abolished and the second could be changed once it's crossed 0.6 seconds, to the value estimated to keep it less than 0.6 seconds wrong the longest. Would that be that bad? The scientists who need to specify this second is 86,400.002/86,400.000ths the early 2020s second probably have complex work already. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:15, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

And pre-electric navigating tools will survive solar and military electromagnetic pulses that would melt all metal too many kilometers long and probably fuck all navigation that needs electricity. They'd survive an anti-satellite or computer virus war. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:31, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

If you want to avoid leap seconds, but keep the local time in sync with the sun, you can just periodically shift all the time zone boundaries. Instead of a leap second, you’d shift the boundaries by 15 arc-seconds of longitude, which is about 300 m at the equator. You can call them leap-meters. I suspect this idea will not catch on. —Amble (talk) 15:52, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

That would decouple time zones from longitudes that are multiples of 15 and no one would want to move the line till most of a metro area or at least rural county has passed through it. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:38, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The biggest headache from leap seconds is that they are incorporated into things like Unix time / posix time that really ought to be a continuous count, or at least monotonic. At a leap second, the same timestamp gets replayed and no longer corresponds to a unique moment in time. Whatever we end up doing with leap seconds, leap minutes, and leap hours, all of the not-quite-continuous-count time coordinates need to be banished ASAP. Then you’d only need to worry about leap seconds when converting a single, continuous time coordinate into a formatted local time. —Amble (talk) 15:52, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Stop using UTC for things where monotonicity is important and leave UTC as it is. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:38, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Sweden maximized the inconvenience by procrastinating several times in different directions: Swedish calendar. First they decided that the big jump was too much to do all at once, so not to switch all at once, so they spread it out over the course of several decades, by simply skipping leap years. Then they got distracted and forgot to forget some of the leap years. Then they decided the whole thing was a lot of trouble, and switched back to the Julian calendar by observing a double-leap-year, which had a February 30. Not too many decades after that, Sweden finally switched to the Gregorian calendar in the usual way, by skipping a block of days all at once. Some of these decisions have got to be worse decisions than leap seconds... —Amble (talk) 20:28, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I did say "one of the worst". --Trovatore (talk) 20:38, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

That’s fair! In the history of timekeeping there have been enough questionable decisions that it would be difficult to pick just one. —Amble (talk) 00:18, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

The advantage of stopped clocks is that they are right twice a day in all systems of timekeeping.  --Lambiam 08:38, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I feel like you're missing a pretty obvious counterexample. --Trovatore (talk) 20:19, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

A clock running backward is even better! —Tamfang (talk) 22:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I wonder why no state did it by dropping each 31 for a couple of years. —Tamfang (talk) 22:35, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

That would have put them into an analogous situation that Sweden faced. In those intervening years they would have been out of synch with both the Julian and the Gregorian, and thus out of synch with every country in the world that uses any version of the Western calendar. Hopeless confusion would have ensued. Referring to those dates in later years would have required a tripartite code: Old Style, New Style, and Our Special Temporary Style. Life's too short for that sort of shit. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:58, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Internet Archive

When archiving web pages with an option to switch between metric and imperial units, in many times the imperial units come to the archived version. Why does this happen? It may occur when the menus have imperial option in just one place. Which is the reason for that? --40bus (talk) 19:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

The archiving service loads the page from the web, not from your browser. It does not know what cookies you have set.  --Lambiam 08:23, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

May 21

Any free versions of these issues online?

I'm not posting on WP:RX because I don't need the articles, as I already have the material. I'm trying to link to the pages for use in an article on a footnote.

• The Saturday Evening Post. 212 (42): 115. April 13, 1940.
• Woman's Home Companion. p. 59. November 1940.
• Vogue. p. 58. February 1, 1941.

Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 23:25, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

@Viriditas: for Vogue: [6] requires a login to view the issue but it looks like there is no cost to create account RudolfRed (talk) 02:55, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Good news! Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 02:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

May 22

Measurement units

Are there any recent books with not just contemporary human-scale units but many others all with conversions all listed in size order in sections named mass, acceleration, inverse length (several units like diopter are inverse length) etc (no wasting space blabbing for half the book instead of more kinds of units i.e. Meccan wine gallons and magnetic fluencivity). Maybe it could show multiple conversions per unit but one conversion per unit to either SI or one of the less obscure non-SI units would be sufficient. It'd be nice if the conversions had ~8-24 digits if unavoidable (some unit to different measurement system conversations could get an exact symbol with only a fqew digits (some without fractions or repeating decimal overlines like survey inch=(1/39.37) meters)). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:30, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I imagine such a book would struggle to find a publisher in the age of the internet. I did look through all the online unit converters on the first page of a DuckDuckGo search, and none of them cited any sources for their conversions, although several seemed very robust.

I'm not sure how interested you are in premodern units (I'm unfamiliar with Meccan wine gallons and magnetic fluencivity), but if you're looking at premodern units you should keep in mind that how we think of them in the present is usually an approximation of what their original value was, even if the value was rigorously defined at some point instead of a "just about". The recent book Eratosthenes and the Measurement of the Earth's Circumference (c.230 BCE) (Matthew, 2023) devotes an entire chapter to figuring out the size of the unit used in the ancient experiment. Meanwhile I've at least twice had cause to cite Loewe, Michael (1961). "The Measurement of Grain during the Han Period". T'oung Pao. Second Series. 49 (1/2): 64–95. doi:10.1163/156853262X00020. JSTOR 4527501. That article goes into significant depth about the changing value of different measurements of volume and where the historical sources allow us to estimate the measurements against each other and against modern units. Sometimes we get lucky and there's an extant prototype that allows us to measure premodern units exactly, but much of the time it takes research by subject matter experts laying out careful arguments blabbing half the book to arrive at a good estimate, and 8–24 digits is going to end up in the territory of false precision.

Anyway it's likely that if you cite two online unit converters in your calculations no one will challenge the results. Folly Mox (talk) 08:52, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The subject of reference is Metrology that Wikipedia divides into sections each of which wastes space blabbing gives encyclopedia-worthy information, not least the essential historical evolution of units that overshadows any anachronistic conversion between ancient and modern units. The Metre is an example of a unit that has been redefined several times since it began in 1791 as Earth's circumference/40,000. Philvoids (talk) 12:59, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia has articles for many units with conversion to metric and American, unit systems like SI or Ancient Egyptian with conversions to metric American and other units of the system the article's about, categories of units of the same type like area units, articles on quantities like area with less obscure units noted along with some cross-system conversions like hectare to or from acre. But not really like that book I saw. It probably didn't have every possible conversion factor but that means room for more units and you could derive any unit pair conversion factor from what's on the page anyway. I'm sure there's a massive multi-volume book covering all of metrology (including detailed care instructions for the one true kilogram and extremely dry statistical error propagationolgy) which I could use to find all the info in that book I saw (maybe requiring me to read the entire book and perform data entry just to get a table of every mentioned length unit and its size in SI ranked by size) but a book like that book I saw could be hundreds of US$ cheaper. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Right in some cases it might be less digits to avoid false precision, a range, ±, ~, c., a value written like 1.26(12), listed as Homeric stadion, Ptolemaic stadion etc or something like that. I don't know if Mecca ever had wine gallon(s) or barrel(s) (Britain had many obsolete local gallons and barrels). I don't know if magnetic fluencivity is real, there's so many jargony science quantities like fluence, abasement or absition (displacement times time), specific volume, jerk (physics) (acceleration squared), impulse (physics), specific impulse (not impulse), permittivity, permissivity, reactance, inductance, capacitance, acoustic resistance, acoustic impedance, electrical impedance, radiation resistance, magnetic flux, magnetic field strength, magnetic susceptibility and magnetic coercivity. I saw one such book long before the SI redefinition and remember international inch 25.4e or similar, U.S. survey inch maybe 9 significant digits/25.4000508 I stopped caring after 0005 to 000508 (my calculator could only fit 00051) so don't remember (1m/39.37 exactly but very or impossibly inconvenient to express exactly in the form cm per inch). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:18, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Anyone remember the name of the most recent such book? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:21, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Did the position "Senior Secretary of Cadres for CPSU" Existed

Hello, I'm researching historical positions within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) because Andrei Kirilenko (politician) page, he held a post called "Senior Secretary of Cadres." However, I haven't been able to find much information about it. Did this position officially exist within the CPSU, and if so, what were its responsibilities? Any guidance or references would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! SleepyJoe42 (talk) 14:37, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

non-white acting like white

So far, apples means Indigenous peoples acting like white, coconuts means South Asian people acting like white, Oreo cookies means Black people like white and bananas means East and Southeast Asian acting like white, but is there a term for Middle Eastern people, Arabs, Iranians, Afghanis, Central Asians and Turkish peoples and others acting like white people? Donmust90 Donmust90 (talk) 18:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

There does not seem to be a specific term for MENA individuals acting or identifying as white. 136.54.106.120 (talk) 23:40, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Racially speaking, Arabs, Iranians, Afghanis, Central Asians and Turkish are all Caucasians. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:22, 23 May 2024 (UTC)