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Capitalistic Hellscapes Do Not Rule
(slrpnk.net)
The orphan crushing machine continues its implacable work
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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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wait, 12pm is midday, not midnight?
That makes no sense at all.
AM is ante meridian and PM is post meridian. It's referenced to the prime meridian through Greenwich UK. If the sun is to the east of the line (ie. Before noon where it is vertical) it's before (ante) the meridian. If it's after (post) noon it's after the meridian. It's all outdated but that's how time works.
12 pm isn't past noon, it's noon.
12 am is past noon just as much as it is before noon.
So for 12 o'clock, choosing am or pm is arbitrary convention.
So it would make more sense to reverse them, to get a consistant row that starts with 1:
1 am, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, 6 am, 7 am, 8 am, 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 12 am, 1 pm , 2 pm , 3 pm , 4 pm , 5 pm , 6 pm , 7 pm , 8 pm , 9 pm , 10 pm , 11 pm , 12 pm
Except that you don't just use it for whole hours. 12.01 is clearly post meridian, so it has to be PM if you wanna keep the meaning. With your example 12 am and 12.01 pm would either be one minute apart or you'd have to drop the whole meaning of am and pm, which would just make it an entirely arbitrary construct that's even more difficult to understand.
On the other hand, as a European I'm quite happy with 24h time keeping. This whole am-pm system is quite unnecessary.