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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.
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 😅
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
I know someone who would always say "we go on three" and then just shout "three!" Without counting or anything. I told him that was super confusing and he just didn't agree and moved on
I think he was making fun of you.
He was an EMT and it was about lifting someone in sync so they don't fall...
I think it's so the person being lifted doesn't tense, when ready for it. So you kind of surprised them but it's an acceptable surprise, as they are expecting a move.
These are usually either unconscious or screaming people, not the kind to care about what an EMT says.
Pretty good joke, to be honest.
Well, five is right out.
Playing Let’s Go Eevee with my 6yo niece the other day, and when I counted trying to time our pokeball throws she would demand to be the one who counts. Her method was to try and surprise me, it seems. She would change the timing between each number independently every time, like “3, … ….. 21GO!” Sometimes, she would just throw on 1 but keep counting. Realized it was easier just to watch her arm.
I've also heard people do "three... two... one!" and then do the thing on "one"...
Obviously for this case we need to add a signifier for the countdown so it's clear to the other parties that you are aware of the standard and adhering to it before you even begin the countdown.
Like "ISO three two one GO!"
This is semi-backwards compatible, but still confusing for normies.
Even better, just make up new words where the ambiguity never existed. No numbers at all, just "glarp dook peow" and we always go on "peow" and always have. No backwards compatibility, but you'll be guaranteed that a person who doesn't understand will need clarification, and won't go unexpectedly through imagined agreement.
Or, if backwards compatibility is required, we could count up from 1 to 3... and our signifier phrase could be something like "awnthree". As a label for the standard we're using! Like, "awnthree, one, two, three".
I think that could work 😛
Unconfusable:
Ready, Set, Go!
Ready, set, on your mark, get set, get ready, here, we …
I just say "THREE!". It's the "ONE TWO THREE!" variant but I skip "ONE" and "TWO".
If you're not ready now, you won't be after the count down.
In Finnish we typically say "Än, yy, tee, nyt!", because our word for "now", nyt, is composed of letters N, Y and T.
The "y" is pronounced roughly the same way as "ew" in "new". "ä" in the same as "a" in "cat", and "e" is the same as "e" in "well".
How about translating this to English and using the following as the standard?
"Aehn, oh, double you, now!"
🙃
Left out the Arthurian "One... Two... Five... No, Three... Go!"
What about 3, 2, 1, 0, segfault?
In T2: Judgement Day, when Miles Dyson has to turn two keys simultaneously to open the vault to get the Terminator prototypes, they go
3-2-1-turn and then AFTER that, they turn. How many times would people have messed that up, learning such a weird pattern? That's totally unintuitive!
Same wifh rock paper scissors
The real problem in my opinion is people count too slowly and irregularly for a precise sync up. Better to learn from the world of music and count off
One ee and ah, two ee and ah, three ee and ah GO
Apollo 11 voice goes '4, 3, 2, 1, 0, liftoff'.
Liftoff is a non-integral byproduct of the countdown, not an actual canon part of the sequence.
One, two, five!
