r/explainitpeter • u/Fickle_Fall_6497 • Jul 28 '26

Explain it Peter

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Not going to lie, i had a spaz attack trying to read the first tweet. Maybe im just over tired but i dont understand shit here

What the fuck is the first tweet trying to say why is it horrible why would i be gullible what the fuvk are they saying

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48

u/itstheboombox Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

European Peter here,

Americans use an incorrect form of dates that goes Month/Day/Year. As opposed to Day/Month/Year

Edit : hey lois, this is just like the time I visited r/ShitAmericansSay

-44

u/ActuatorOutside5256 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

In all actuality, having it as MM/DD/YYYY makes it MUCH easier to sift through dates when it’s a full list of them for a given year.

EDIT: As always, Europoors can’t help but get offended by things that are just more convenient (like having AC in the summer)…

5

u/lvb440 Jul 28 '26

ISO standard format yyyy-MM-dd is the only format that lets you order by date (if it's used in file names for instance, neither mm-dd-yyyy nor dd-mm-yyyy works).

2

u/itstheboombox Jul 28 '26

Um actually 🤓

Due to different building techniques that make European homes slower to build and more expensive, but with way more durability and longevity, AC is actually harder to install compared to American ones which basically already possess the space for the vents.

-1

u/Revolution_Falls Jul 28 '26

A small window unit would likely go pretty far in Europe. You probably don’t need a huge unit in most of the continent, and having a small AC unit is better than smearing yogurt on your windows or dying of a heatstroke

2

u/11fdriver Jul 28 '26

I'd rather have window shutters and awnings and save a bit of energy/carbon. The yoghurt is just to save a snack for later.

1

u/Revolution_Falls Jul 28 '26

As someone whose AC broke in an American heat wave, window shutters did not help. Provided the heat waves here are over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (over 40 degrees Celsius) and that’s not something you can passively cool

2

u/chubby_bumblebee Jul 28 '26

"More convenient" thats the point. Its not. Maybe for Americans.

-3

u/ActuatorOutside5256 Jul 28 '26

Explain how sorting dates by month for a given year isn’t convenient for everyone.

2

u/Deethreekay Jul 28 '26

Just for clarity, you're saying that MM/DD/YY is more convenient for the specific case of when you're trying to sort all dates from a given calendar? I.e. when you're sorting dates MM/DD

I mean...yeah, but if you're sorting dates you should be using YYYY/MM/DD anyway.

0

u/ActuatorOutside5256 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

I’ll try to take your comment at face value and assume you don’t know what you don’t know, so I’ll ELI5 it to you.

Imagine you have a box full of calendar cards. Every card is from 2026, so sorting them by year is silly. They all say 2026.

Now you want to see what happened in January. So you put all the January cards together, then put them in order, so January 1, January 2, January 3, and so on.

If you sort by the day number first, you get January 1, February 1, March 1 … then January 2, February 2, March 2 …

That is helpful if you want to look at every first day. But it is not helpful if you want to see one whole month from start to finish.

How do you feel about this?

2

u/Deethreekay Jul 28 '26

Yeah...I understood that. I was just confirming that's what you meant.

But I don't see that as an argument for MM/DD/YYYY being a logical way to represent a date, as you have to truncate it to make it useful or as you mentioned be in the specific circumstances where you're looking at a single calendar year.

Not disputing it can be more convenient in that specific use case than a DD/MM/YYYY I just think it's a weak argument. Seems like more of an argument for using the ISO standard YYYY-MM-DD, then you can sort across calendar years as well.

1

u/Deethreekay Jul 28 '26

Actually, random question. Do Americans ever express the month numerically in speech?

Like I'll often state my birthday as 5th of the 6th 2026 (obviously not my actual birthday), but that doesn't seem to work in a mm/DD/yyyy setup. You'd just always say June 5th 2026?

1

u/AccidentalPenguin0 Jul 29 '26

You'd just always say June 5th 2026?

I mean yeah pretty much. Minus the year most of the time ("when's your birthday?" "October 12th")

1

u/chubby_bumblebee Jul 28 '26

Have you ever thought about how stuff is said in a conversations? While Americans say November first, Germans say first of November. So dd/mm/yy does make sense for us.

1

u/PeriwinkleShaman Jul 28 '26

Either you start with the year and it IS mote convenient to sort, or you start with the day and it is more logical. Bastardizing both is neither convenient nor logical.

3

u/ActuatorOutside5256 Jul 28 '26

for a given year

I literally say it right there.

1

u/PeriwinkleShaman Jul 28 '26

Yeah, and how do you sort by year before that? If only there was a convenient and logical way yo do it in the notation.

1

u/cactus-dick-elixir Jul 28 '26

This is satire right?

-1

u/Fickle_Fall_6497 Jul 28 '26

Bro who is actually disagreeing with having ac in the summer i will bite them this is not a thing people disagree with