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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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are Americans really confused with 15:30?
THAT'S 1530, PRIVATE!
NOW GIVE ME 20!
20 factorial, of fuck
No, it's just a familiarity thing and not even rare. It's like switching between metric and imperial units, if you're used to seeing something in one format it can be jarring to switch it in your head at a moments notice. A lot of people in the US use 24 hr time if they have a job relating to documentation or if their working hours can cause confusion.
For example, I have a client that has to document received material and they are open from 04:00 - 22:00. They use the 24 hr format because it is common to receive material at both 04:00 and 16:00 and having to make an extra column to type am or pm on their logs is stupid and is just another opportunity to make a mistake.
It's really not a big deal to anyone, if you get a job that uses it then you switch your phone and within a week or two it's second nature. Every blue moon someone will notice that all your clocks are set to a 24 hr clock and someone might ask why or what you do to need it, but that's it.
I'd wager the imperial/metric change would be harder than the 12/24 change.
Only inasmuch as I have to count from 12 because I don’t have the built-in instinct for that time format.
If you see a two-digit number beginning with 1, drop the first number and subtract two from the second number. If your sum is negative, it's that many hours before noon.
If your number begins with 2, do the same thing. If your number is negative, it's that many hours before 10pm.
Anything to not subtract 12
Yeah lol, that's way more mental gymnastics than just adding/subtracting 12. I dont even bother with the whole 12, I just add and subtract 2 and my mind kind of deals with the extra 10 hours I'm too lazy to deal with.
I didn't even know what that number says
One time I was on shrooms in the PMs and it was really hard to figure out what the time was. The literal digits and the concept of time itself at some point.
Otherwise, never had an issue.
Also, is 24hour time not default on most phones? Or did I do that and forget about it at some point, and it's only me, never paying attention to the time on other people's phones
You'd get that instinct within at most a week though.
Nah, all you need is a little time to get used to it. It's my default setting on most of my devices. Once you get used to it, it's much easier to tell am vs pm at a glance, which is helpful when looking at timestamps (I work in IT, timestamps are important.)
I switched after being in a job where "meeting at 6" or "I'll get in at 9" was 50/50 am or pm and I got sick of guessing and sometimes being 12 hours off.
I got out of the military and switched to 12 hour time when I was living a pure 8-5 work life. Now I work, and work with people at all hours, so I’ve switched back to 24 hour time, though I still speak in 12 hour time. If I’m scheduling something, it is in 24 hour time. If someone asks me what time it is, I’ll look at my phone and it will read 17:00 but I’ll say 5 without blinking.
I’m regularly looking at log timestamps and I still need a very brief half second to think about the time lol
Shouldn't the system be storing timestamps in UTC anyway, and then displaying them in whatever localization settings you have?
I meant more for my personalized reading through logs. Some of our systems do log in UTC without correction, and they're sometimes annoying.
I grew up with a Betamax tape player under the family TV. It had a 24 hour clock and it was the timepiece in the house that was in the right spot to tell us all that it was bedtime. As a result I have an intuitive feel for the 24 hour clock. But if you haven’t used it regularly, which most ordinary Americans don’t, then yeah you just have to stop and do the arithmetic before you can connect 21:00 to your sense of time.
You know what fucks me up is that 21 has a "nine-ness" quality to it now that sometimes makes me mess up real math.
Hah I can believe that.
I’m not technically synaestehtic but I do have strong associations between numbers and colors, days of the week and colors.
Saturday has always been blue. Sunday is red. Number 4 is green, 3 is yellow, etc.
For a time I moved to an Islamic country where Friday is the holy day, not Sunday. So the weekends were Thursday-Friday and not Saturday-Sunday.
What was weird is that my red/blue associations with Saturday/Sunday shifted onto Thursday/Friday after a long time of living like this. And then I left that place and my associations shifted back.
The “nineness” of a thing, as you say, is hard to describe.
Do you think the sat/blue sun/red thing comes from calendars? I don't think about it often, but I do think there is a "redness" to sunday.
oh that's easy. all multiples of three, you add their digits and the digits add up to three.
also if you've made a transposition error (179 instead of 197) you will be off by a multiple of 9.
sorry bookkeepers i just gave away your trade secret. the one.
I think they see it as some kind of metric time, and therefore something to be avoided at all costs.
They think it’s military time. I don’t know why because it doesn’t even read the same. Military would be something like thousand five hundred and thirty hours, we (people with 24h clocks) read it like fifteen thirty or three thirty in the afternoon, or even three thirty and omit the morning/afternoon part because it’s assumed from context.
In the US, 24 hour time was first used by the military, and that really only started with the Navy in 1920. The Army didn’t adopt it until WWII. So for a lot of US Americans that was their first exposure to using it, and it corresponded to a time when a lot of people were veterans, so the term “military time” just evolved from that perfect storm of consequences.
Alternatively, adoption of 24 hour time in many European countries started on the civilian side.
Not really true either, it's often called military time as a colloquialism because people will know what you mean and it strangely feels more normal/easier to say than "Twenty Four Hour Clock."
EDIT: Also for the nomenclature, I personally still refer to time in the 12 hr format when talking, but if for some reason I have to say the 24 hr format it depends on the number. I would also say fifteen thirty for 15:30, but I would say fifteen hundred for 15:00.
And the military doesn’t say one thousand five hundred thirty like this clueless OP says. They say fifteen thirty. And the reason they don’t speak in 12 hour time like civilians in many countries, is because saying, “we need you on the left flank by 1530” is more efficient and less ambiguous than “we need you on the left flank at 3:30, over.”
“Wait, do you mean am or pm?”
“-m”
“I didn’t copy, you broke up”
Etc etc.
EDIT also I forgot to mention, 1530 is quicker and more efficient to type on a typewriter or teletype than 15:30. As long as everyone is on the same page, but orders would also have a date to correspond with the time, so it is pretty obvious.
which is such a stupid way to tell time.
why tf do they concatenate hours and minutes!!! they aren't even the same units!!!
Written as 1530, mostly only Americans who have been in the military and their friends will know what you mean.
15:30 they'll know it's a time.
And doctors, nurses, lab technicians, etc, plus anyone who can subtract twelve.
what is that, like extra noon or something?
Yes, it angers and confuses them.
No, we just have to do a little kindergarten (age 5) math, the difference between 12 and 15 is 3.
The 3rd-grade math (age 8) of figuring what time it will be 9 hours and 47 minutes later is equally difficult whether using 24h or am/pm. And may be easier using angles on an analog clockface, especially for an old fart like me.
The real problem with time isn't 12h vs 24h. It's the increments 12/24/60/30/15/5 when the rest of our system is base 10.
Oh and Daylight Savings. Jet lag without getting to go anywhere. Fuck that shit.
Pilot here, over been in the habit of using 12 hour for local time and 24 hour for zulu time. "12:45pm, 1745z"
No, it's just associated with military time and those who don't have friends from across the pond don't necessarily know that other countries use that time format.
Just kidding we're all just stupid