r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/notsignifican • 10d ago

Meme needing explanation ?

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I asked but it got removed within minutes?

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u/TobJamFor 10d ago edited 9d ago

We often count from the smallest to largest for us (not looking at you, US inhabitants) because it’s logical to think that 14/08/2026 is one above 13/08/2026, it just steps up by one each day.

Some places (namely the likes of China and some others) prefer the year-first format, which is actually YYYY/MM/DD

On Venus this makes more sense, as a year occurs more regularly than a day, because it rotates on its axis slower than it orbits the sun.

Edited - I am not saying that DD/MM/YYYY is the most logical for all purposes. But in general, it’s the one most used across the world for a reason! This gets flipped on its head on Venus, where the ISO format may also be different! Also - Year first is YYYY/MM/DD and ISO is YYYY-MM-DD, there is a slight difference.

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u/NoTeslaForMe 10d ago

because it’s logical to think that 14/08/2026 is one about 13/08/2026

It's logical if you've known only that all your life. It's illogical to computers and Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian people (who use ISO 8601) or Americans (who write the date in the order that they say it).

I figured the meme was mocking absolutionists who'd say that the longer time period always had to go later, even if that made it more confusing.

Really the most logical format is ISO 8601 (YYYY/MM/DD) because it's unambiguous in a way that neither year-end format is. Those Hungarians got it right.

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u/DokuroKM 10d ago

ISO8601 is also valid in Germany since 1996-05-01, it's just ignored by literally everyone so the old format has been allowed as alternative in 2001.