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.

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Source: https://xkcd.com/3232/

explainxkcd for #3232

Anyone who is caught counting 'three ... two ... one ... zero ... GO!' will be punished with a lifetime of eating only ISO standard food samples.
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[–] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    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.

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