UTC exists as a historical compromise because the British felt that GMT was the bees knees and the French felt differently. The letter order is most definitely a compromise between French and English word order. You can call it Universal Time Coordinaire.
Historically, GMT became the international time reference point because the Greenwich observatory used to be the leader in the field of accurately measuring time. It probably helped that the British navy had been dominant earlier and lots of countries around the world and across time zones had been colonised by the British.
UTC is an international standard for measuring time, based on both satellite data about the position and orientation of the earth and atomic clocks, whereas GMT is a time zone. Nowadays, GMT is based on UTC not independent telescopic observation.
What’s the difference? You can think of a time zone as an offset from UTC, in the same sense that a 24h clock time is an offset from midnight. GMT = UTC+0.
Technically, UTC isn’t a valid time zone any more than “midnight” is a valid 24h clock time. UTC+0 is a time zone and UTC isn’t in a similar sense that 00:00 is a time in 24hr clock and “midnight” isn’t.
Of course, and perfectly naturally, I can use midnight and 00:00 interchangeably and everyone will understand, and I can use UTC and UTC+0 interchangeably and few people care, but GMT = UTC+0 feels like the +0 is doing nothing to most eyes.
Fun fact: satellite data is very accurate and can track the UTC meridian independently from the tectonic plate on which the Greenwich observatory stands. The UTC meridian will drift slowly across England as the plates shift. Also, the place in the stars that Greenwich was measuring was of by a bit, because they couldn’t have accounted for the effect of the terrain on the gravitational field, so the UTC meridian was placed several tens of metres (over 200’) away from the Greenwich prime meridian. I suspect that there was a lot more international politics than measurement in that decision, and also in making the technical distinction between UTC and GMT, but I’m British, so you should take that with a pinch of salt.
The problem isn’t having empty values, it’s not tracking that in the type system, so the programmer and the compiler don’t have any information about whether a value can be null or not and the programmer has to figure it out by hand. In a complex program that’s essentially completely impossible. The innocently created bomb that causes your program to crash can be in absolutely any value.
There are ways to track it all by disallowing null and using optional values instead, but some folks would rather stick with type systems that haven’t moved on since the 1960s.
In a discussion about whether null should exist at all, and what might be better, saying that Optional values aren’t available in languages with type systems that haven’t moved on since the 1960s isn’t a strong point in my view.
The key point is that if your type system genuinely knows reliably whether something has a value or not, then your compiler can prevent every single runtime null exception from occurring by making sure it’s handled at some stage and tracking it for you until it is.
The problem with null is that it is pervasive - any value can be null, and you can check for it and handle it, but other parts of your code can’t tell whether that value can or can’t be null. Tracking potential nulls is in the memory of the programmer instead of deduced by the compiler, and checking for nulls everywhere is tedious and slow, so no one does that. Hence null bugs are everywhere.
Tony Hoare, an otherwise brilliant computer scientist, called it his billion dollar mistake a decade or two ago.
Well, UTC didn’t exist in 1800, it would have been GMT, and that might not have been too popular so soon after the war of independence. Even if you convinced all of the USA to use one time zone for the railways, it would be different elsewhere and you’d still get time zones.
Maybe you’d get further with the project with the airlines in the first half of the twentieth century, but I’m not sure that that level of internationalism would have gone down well in a rather war torn world.
Yeah, Seasonal Affective Disorder is a recognised medical condition and its symptoms get worse the further from the equator you live. Don’t know why folks are downvoting you for having it.
Not any more. But some of the IRS guys are smokin’ hot, I’m sure, if that’s what you’re into.
But I’m scared of Monad transformers and lenses. Can’t I just use elm? Elm is so perfect, so pure, so very very pure. And so pretty. And so robust. And so instantaneous to compile, and with such helpful error messages. Come to me, haskell programmer, you’ll never want to leave. Never leave… Always elm… Lovely lovely elm…
You can tell that they find the answers absurd and the WAT memes are universally funny.
Thank you for being on the Internet.
That was helpful, thanks. I’m very much looking for insight, explanation and experiences.
If I’ve grasped what you’re saying (and please re-steer me if not), the male gaze is a kind of societal expectation that women would present themselves in certain ways to walk the tightrope of some sort of impossible-to-attain universal male approval, and where women are harassed on the one hand for for not pleasing male eyes and on the other hand, harassed for pleasing male eyes - an obviously lose-lose situation. As such then, this male gaze would exist in the way some men behave towards women and in the head space this takes up in the minds of women who have been repeatedly hit with these expectations.
I wanted to learn more about women’s perspective on this. Sometimes my “don’t be a dick” plan needs more detail, and being more aware of what kind of behaviour is problematic might steer me better. I’ve heard the phrase male gaze but I don’t think I fully understand what is meant by it, and I feel your question may point to and illuminate a kind of discrimination that I want to avoid.
Sorry to look twice, but wow, nice cock, bro.
I took care of our young kids for a fortnight “instead of working” when my wife was rushed to hospital. It was far more exhausting than doing the day job. I don’t know how single parents cope at all.
Well, I’m not going to get you to admit that Trump and the Republicans plan on being far, far worse for Palestine, and I think that if you really did care about Gaza you’d do whatever you could to keep Trump out of the White House, but you really, really, really don’t want to hear it.
I warned you, though. I warned you as best as I could.
Factually incorrect:
Biden: Don’t bomb Rafah.
Trump: …
Biden: Cancels some of the armament shipments
Republicans: object loudly to Biden cancelling armament shipments
Biden: We should have a permanent ceasefire
Trump: PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that Israel must “finish the problem” in its war against Hamas, his most definitive position on the conflict since the terror group killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages on Oct. 7.
The Republicans would accelerate it all. The Republicans share Israel’s aim to “finish them”.
You don’t admit any moral difference between trying to slow the killing down and trying to speed it up, and the reason is that you’re only pretending to care about Gaza what you really care about is discouraging left leaning voters from voting so that your guy Trump can win.
You’ll deny it, I’m reasonably sure, but that’s the effect of your outright condemnation of Biden and your extreme head in the sand refusal to admit that the Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, are far more committed to the Israeli military and its aims, always have been and likely will be for decades to come.
Now stop pretending that allowing Trump to win means worse atrocities in Gaza and more encouragement for despots everywhere, including for Russia winning the war invading Ukraine.
Personally, I think it’s the Israelis who are committing the genocide with America’s support from pretty much all of the Republicans and most of the Democrats, but you didn’t answer the question: Up to now, Trump has a slight lead in the polls. Who would be worse for the people of Gaza, Biden or Trump?
This one right here. ⬆️