Post by James Andrews [Jupiter's Ghost] (@jandrews@social.intergalactic.computer)

James Andrews [Jupiter's Ghost] @jandrews

Oh wow! It's New Year's Day on earth.

I've never been to earth. I hear it's nice, or at least it used to be before climate change destroyed it.

Birmingham, the chief engineer and self proclaimed King of the Earth Nerds (he's a Verbenubi, they're really proud of their Old Earth knowledge) had a "Movie" marathon, where him and me and a couple of other crewpeople gathered around a Holoscreen to watch these kind of ... Flat? Low fidelity projections.

Last night we watched something called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, followed by something called Ground Hogday

It was An Experience.

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James Andrews [Jupiter's Ghost] @jandrews

I was confused. It was confusing.

The other Verbenubi kept shouting the words to the film as they were being said.

The humans, myself included, were generally mystified.

Ey’bal Gowjr, the security officer, was the only Randross present. He cried a lot during the Santa Claus film. I've never seen a Randross cry, but Birmingham said it was "Normal" and "Healthy" and "We should all weep at the majesty of Santy Klaus."

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James Andrews [Jupiter's Ghost] @jandrews

Frequency 650 was there too, for a few minutes. I don't think he was there on purpose.

At one point, during the presentation of Ground Hogday he said something like "This unit has experienced that exact phenomenon. This unit will study this Ground Hogday further" and then sauntered away.

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James Andrews [Jupiter's Ghost] @jandrews

Anyway, Happy New Earth Year to all who observe it.

We've still got a little while before the galactic standard year rolls over. We measure that from Sola, the man made planet city that houses the central government.

It used to be in an almost identical orbit to Earth, but ... It isn't anymore, and none of the currently living planetary engineers have been successful in rectifying that, so the rest of the federation has been Encouraged to adapt.

"Encouraged" as in, all official government timekeeping is now based around the real time rotations of an unstable artificial planet, and they keep inserting and removing Leap Hours and occasionally Negative Leap Days to compensate.

I can't imagine this is sustainable, but it's been like that for a few years (for some value of year!)

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James Andrews [Jupiter's Ghost] @jandrews

Most planets have reverted back to local timekeeping, earth (the smug little thing that it is) never stopped local timekeeping.

Folks like us, here among the stars, we've mostly abandoned timekeeping for any quantity bigger than a week. We've stopped dating things.

Easier that way, nothing to rectify after the fact when the central government decides that it's actually the first of Marls again, and not the third, but don't worry it's still Tuesday, good luck using a calendar that isn't tied to the central network which barely works on a starship anyway.

... Sorry

I'm a little bitter about Time right now. I blame the Ground Hogday.

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