Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?
So you’d have states like North Dakota and Negative North Dakota?
Why do we have subtraction when we can just add a negative number?
Why do we have down when we can just use negative up?
Why do we have 2 separate words for good and bad? Good and ungood are totally sufficient.
Spin it further and get rid of “great” and “outstanding”. I suggest using plus good and double plus good.
That’s actually how it works in Irish. The word for good is deas, while the word for bad is deas prefixed with the negating particle mí, so mídheas.
(There are still separate words for tge cardinal directions).
Is it? I tried checking in a dictionary but it didn’t list mídheas as a word and “deas” was defined as right/nice/honest, not just “good”
The complement of good, u good, I cludes things that are neither good not bad (neutral)
I think the idea of directions came before the idea of negative.
Walking backward is just walking negatively forward by another name
Why do we have 26 letters? Why not just communicate in binary!
01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101110 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100001 01101100 00100001
On the other hand, 8000+ characters seems kinda fun…
握草泥马币
hint
The joke is “wo cao ni ma bi”, change the tones and you got 我操你妈逼 🤭
oh you salty dog you
…(🤷♂️)
55 73 65 20 68 65 78 20 66 6f 72 20 74 65 72 73 65 6e 65 73 73 20 62 72 75 68 0a 0a 41 6c 73 6f 20 74 68 69 73 20 69 73 20 73 74 69 6c 6c 20 61 73 73 75 6d 69 6e 67 20 55 54 46 2d 38 20 6f 72 20 61 74 20 6c 65 61 73 74 20 41 53 43 49 49 2c 20 73 6f 20 77 74 68 20 6c 6d 61 6f
I would not be surprised compasses were invented before negative numbers
edit
negative numbers : 200 BCE
compasses : as early as 202 BCE(these are just from a cursory search, I am not a specialist)
Just guessing here, but I would think it’s for for clarity and brevity. West and South are shorter to say and distinct enough to avoid being easily misheard causing somebody to go in the opposite direction than intended.
Left and Minusleft
Exactly, we don’t need to be right at all.
Clockwise and anticounterclockwise
Double plus ungood
I dunno. That seems double plus ungood to me.
Plus and minusplus
This is just the Minecraft coordinates system and it sucks. “OK I’m at the coords, where’s the–oh fuck, it was -3002, 108 not 3002, 108.”
Negative north negative east airlines doesn’t have a good ring to it though.
How about 225° airlines?
You probably already know this, but for others’ amusement… Southwest’s Pilot Training pathway program is called Destination 225, and I doub’t that many prople even in the airline business get the reference. So if nothing else, they’ve got a branding headstart.
I didn’t! Had to look up online compass that had degrees on it.
But it doesn’t surprise me that any company’s PR guys would come up with things like that.
An even funner Southwest PR story is the Malice in Dallas. I don’t have a good resource to point you to, but you can google it. it was an armwrestling match between CEOs to settle a corporate dispute. The two companies holstered their lawyers and settled the grudge with a big PR event.
If the four cardinal points bother you, better not look up wind roses or rhumbline networks…
Mind officially blown. 🤯
Why stop at two, when you could stop at just one? North
Negative North = south
Negative 90 North = west
90 North =east
Better idea! What if we use 0 for North and then divide the circle around by exactly 360 points? That way we don’t need NSEW, we have 0, 90, 180, 270!
Ah… I love airplanes… To be clear, the issue with this is that magnetic 0 is not the same as true 0. There’s a slight offset that can cause issues. So why not have like… True 0 and magnetic 0. T0 and m0?
Fun fact… there is an ICAO effort to “get rid” of magnetic headings for runway numbers. I listened to a presentation they did last year, and as much as I went into it thinking it wasn’t needed, I was a convert listening to them.
Btw, magnetic variation is pretty significant in some places. It’s 13 degrees where I am.
What’s the new one? I must have missed the presentation. Probably because I wasn’t invited.
I don’t remember where I watched the presentation. I think it might have been one of Brian Schiff’s videos, but I don’t remember. Here’s a link to it I found online. https://www2023.icao.int/safety/OPS/OPS-Section/Pages/Truenorth.aspx
I suppose it makes sense but it feels wrong. I’m so used to having and using magnetic but that isn’t a reason to continue doing less efficient things.
The redundancy aspect is there as when systems would fail (GPS for true), the magnetic redundancy would still come into okay and still work enough to get by.
Why not?
Because what happens when your referent changes? Which direction is Mars from Earth? We obviously need a single navigational system that works anywhere in the universe.
Easy! Assuming the earth is the center of the universe, coordinates are 360,360
± the current position of the Earth in the solar system ± the current position of the solar system in the Milky Way. In the Local Cluster, in the Local Group, in the Virgo Supercluster, in the Local Mesh
In order to return, we just go that way:
There is no center of the universe.
Huh, guess you are right
Mars would be that way I assume
Plus or minus?
We could use one, and assume we’re operating in the field of complex numbers:
1 N = North
i N = West
i2 N = South
i3 N = East.And we could use the complex modulus to indicate distance or speed… or we could map the Riemann sphere onto the surface of the earth and use a single complex number to indicate location.
Now you’re talking!
Directions from maps: turn pi at the nearest i intersection
Why stop at one when you could stop at just zero and not use a compass?
This reply was brought to you by The Lost MC.
In emergencies when you need to use a compass you can save time by using these maximally efficient cardinal names:
Yes! Now we are getting somewhere.
“negative Eastern countries” has a nice ring to it.
east and eastn’t
East and weast.
Dammit Patrick…
