First Minutes and Second Minutes

 Episode 101 of I Hate Talking dives into the Latin roots of “second,” exploring how time was divided into minutes, seconds, and even smaller units. The hosts then spiral into a funny and surprisingly deep conversation about nanoseconds, internet speed, metric versus imperial measurements, and a child’s determined refusal to abandon Celsius in a Fahrenheit world.

What starts as an etymology lesson becomes a broader reflection on how people measure, describe, and adapt to time and change. Along the way, they compare old and new internet speeds, joke about family-made units of measurement, and end with their usual reminder that talking is how understanding begins.

Keywords: episode 101, second etymology, Latin roots, pars minuta secunda, minutes and seconds, nanoseconds, microseconds, internet speed, ping, metric system, imperial system, Celsius vs Fahrenheit, family measurement joke, Gilmore Girls, acropog, I Hate Talking podcast.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:29

Welcome to episode 101 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. So I suppose we'll keep going on our Latin theme from last time because I learn something new and interesting about the word second. Second, like S E C A O. O N D S E C O N D. Yes, as in the measurement of time. 21 2nd. 2. The 2nd of something. I'm the 2nd child. Well, that's actually how 2nd got its name. OK, tell me about it. I wanna know. So Basically, it's a medieval Latin phrase that developed the word minute because they had hours and then Basically, minute became a smaller part of the hour. So, paramuta. Meant The next smallest part. Dividing up an hour into minutes. And then The phrase or word second came about because the Latin phrase was pars menuta secunda. The 2nd smallest part. Hm, but why is it the 2nd smallest part? It's smaller than a minute. Yeah, as in, like, the 2nd step in terms of reducing something. OK, so my brain saw it as like, there's a small one, and this is the next smallest. No, it's more sequential, so minute is the 1st small part, -- and then 2nd is the 2nd small -- part. OK. Well, there you go. So Do they have one for the 3rd? Is that the 3rd smallest part? Yeah, cause then I think the metric system took over and then you'd have nanoseconds and things like that. Oh, OK, but 2, so like a second is 1 Mississippi. Right, I don't know if medieval Latin people would have really a need to divide time smaller than a second in terms of the lives that they lived at that time. But do they still use it the same as like I'm the second born in my family? Does that mean the same thing? Yes, Sekunda would just mean the second thing, as in a sequential thing after the 1st. But then, like, the next thing after that is still 2nd. And then that would be 3rd. OK, well, you said that you didn't have a 3rd. Well, I don't think they had a 3rd division of time. OK, so it's not like. Minutes, seconds, and Thirds, whatever the word for third would be in Latin. OK. The second means comes after. The first, wait, what is that again? What? 2nd comes after 12 comes after 1. Yes. Give me the definition again. Pars Menuto Secunda. The 2nd smallest part. So I'm the Ps Mundo Kuma of my family. No, because I think it has more to do with Division rather than. Well, maybe not, it's a sequential division. That's what I'm trying to say. It's sequential division, not. Sequence exclusively and nor division exclusively. OK, so give me another example then, because all I can think of is a 2nd like, one Mississippi. Or I'm the second born. So what are you getting at? The etymology of the word 2 in terms of the time measurement. -- Which -- is The 2nd smallest part. Bars Manuta Sekunda. OK, I can't be the only one that's confused right now, cause when I think of the second smallest part, I think it's not the smallest, it's the next smallest. I suppose so. So I'm dividing something that's a whole, an hour into smaller parts. Minutes And then I divide that. Small part into even smaller parts. Seconds OK. Well, this is probably why we as Westerners don't think like Latin people. Because I picture that, that's a good explanation. I see that and then, OK, that's why it's seconds. But when you say second smallest, I think of. Not the smallest, but the next. In that line Yeah, another explanation here is that it says it's the 2nd reduction. OK, so you divide it and then you divide it again. OK, so I can see that, that maybe I'm, am I lost in this, because that makes sense to me, like, you have a circle, you cut it in half. And you cut that in half again. Like that makes sense to me that. Saying the second smallest makes me think. You're not the smallest, but you're the next smallest. If you have someone that's 4 ft. The person that's 42 is the next smallest. Yes, you're ranking things, yeah, but that's not what they're getting at. They're getting at you cut it in half and then you cut it in half again. Yes, and actually the way that they would have literally said that is that the division of an hour. I Literally 1st minute, which would be 1 minute, and then 2nd minute, which is seconds. Which is probably why it came to be developed as minutes and seconds because that is confusing if you just said. There's 31st minutes in an hour. -- And -- there's no, there's 60 minutes in an hour. Oh yeah, see, I'm even confusing myself. -- And then -- there's 60. Seconds in a minute. -- So it's so confusing to say's -- 62nd minutes in a minute. In a first minute. Yes, there's 602 minutes in a first minute, and there's 61st minutes in an hour. I think we're so confused and I'm sure everyone driving right now, whatever they're doing is confused too. So, OK, there's 60 minutes in an hour. We all agree on that, right? And, and in the Latin 61st minutes. Oh man. And then there are 60 seconds in a minute. Or in the Latin, there are 62nd minutes in. One first minute. Oh man. So they're saying a minute, and then they're dividing that. Is it sort of, it reminds me of cousins, the whole like, you're my first cousin, you're my second cousin once removed, and how it's hard to track all that. That's what it makes me think of, or it's like 1 minute, a 2nd minute. Right, and they, like I said, apparently have never divided. Seconds into. An additional 60 increments because that would be like. Is that nanosecond? No, because they would have, if they had a need to do that, would have divided by 60 again. Because they're using base 60 for time, and that would be Tertius. OK. 3rd, and what is a nanosecond? A nanosecond is a metric division of a second where they are taking 1 2nd and dividing that by a billion, is that right? Yes, 1 billionth of a second. Can you give us an example of that? According to Wikipedia, a nanosecond is to 1 2nd, as 1 2nd is to approximately 31.69 years. A microsecond is 1/1000 of a second, so it's faster than it's even taking a breath. Again, quick. Right, and that's why people in the 13th century would not have needed to talk in even microseconds, let alone nanoseconds. OK, can I get deep for a minute? OK. Why do we need to now then if they don't back then? So with more advanced scientific methods and especially computing and things like that where we're measuring electrical currents and circuit boards and things like that, that there is a need to go down to that level of granularity to be able to program things and understand. Mostly probably electrical type devices. Mm. So like, maybe when they send a rocket into space. That has to be that precise. I'm like in my real everyday life, I don't need it, right? Probably not, though, you use devices that are built on science that uses nanoseconds, so computing, telecommunications. I wonder, it reminds me of, we've talked about how we've moved recently and we used to live in the country and now we live in a city in suburbia, outside the city. I am shocked at how fast the Internet is, which sounds insane. I feel like a mill. Midi, what do you call it? Medieval, medieval. I feel like a medieval person almost. If I can exaggerate, because the Internet is so quick. And I forget now if we're not at home using our home internet, and I'm just using my cellular internet on my phone, how slow it is. But there was a time when we lived at our old home that my internet was the fastest out of everything, and we used mine when we had to do something quick. Now I am annoyed when I'm not at home and I have to wait for my phone to load. But it's not slower, it's just I got so used to it being immediate. Um, perhaps I think it actually is a little bit slower. I think we actually maybe had better cell service at the old property versus here. So you're saying that like, so I have AT&T for my phone. So AT&T at our old home was faster than it is here? I think so, and I have Verizon, and I think that has the same experience. So we just might not be as close to a cell tower or we're now in a more populated area, so more people have more devices connected to the cell network. -- But -- do you notice that your home internet, if you're on the home Wi Fi, it's much faster than your cell? Yeah, why is that then? That was not the case at home. If we needed anything quick, we had to go onto our cell phones or even do our hotspots on our cell phones. Right, well, I'm saying that, yes, our internet is faster here, home internet. And it is faster than the cell service, but I'm saying that the cell service at the old property was better than cell service here. I'll believe you. I don't know if that's true, but I feel like I just got used to. Immediate response. Maybe, I believe you. Right? And then our old internet at our old property was still slow even after upgrading it. Remember how slow it was even before we had that upgrade? Yes, um, yes, I do. We used to only be able to watch one movie. A month on our cell service or on our Wi Fi at home. Before it went to like a crawling, buffering, constant speed. We could watch one full movie, maybe 1.5. And we were done for the month. And we had family visit and they always kind of joked about how insane it was that we lived so far in the country that this was an issue. And then they came and visited after the upgrade and they were shocked. And again, they admitted that this is not good, it still wasn't good, but it was significantly better than. What we had cuz we could watch. I don't want to exaggerate. What did you say? Maybe 34 movies without buffering? Right. Well, there was a certain allotment that you were guaranteed the higher speed and then it would slow down after that. -- So -- yes. Yeah, 12, maybe 3. Yes, even they noticed they were like, wow, what happened? This is so quick. I'm like. It got upgraded, even then we all knew this wasn't good. It wasn't a great service, but. It was infinitely better. And so, yeah, just the, how quick we get used to upgrades, because then we started getting annoyed at the upgrade. And we'd have to remind ourselves this is so much better than it was. That's true, and there's a use of milliseconds because You not only measure your download speed and your upload speed, but also your ping. That's basically how fast you are getting responses from the server. And right now I just did a speed test on our home Wi Fi at our new house and it is 14 milliseconds, which is pretty good. After our upgrade at our old property, we would maybe get like. 200, maybe up to 500, 600 on a bad day, but before the upgrade, we would consistently get 1000 millisecond pings, which is terrible. I, I never quite knew what I was looking at, but you'd occasionally have me check the speed of the internet, and I would, if I knew the ratio of a good day versus bad day. I didn't quite understand it. So you're saying that you're getting 14 right now. 14 milliseconds, yes, -- and -- we used to get like 1000, 1000. OK. And then when it's that slow, you might not even measure it in milliseconds. It might as well be in seconds because that is over 1 2nd paying time. And what, how many milliseconds? I know you told us earlier, a millisecond is how many seconds? I did not say that earlier because we were talking about microseconds. 00, milliseconds is 1/1000 of a second. Is a micro More or less than a male. 2nd. microsecond is Much smaller, it is 1 million of a second. OK, so a microsecond, then millisecond, then 2. From small to large, yes. And Talk to me like I'm a 5 year old. What are we talking about right now? For ping measurements, milliseconds. The smallest or second smallest. Well, if you go by Latin terms, it would be The 3rd smallest of an hour. OK. So not the smallest, smallest, but. The 3rd smallest. Well, when you have the metric system, you can go as small as you want. But I don't. I'm trying to follow this micro and. See, I would go in the Latin order. I would go from largest to smallest, not the other way around. OK, -- and lead me through -- this. Hour, minute, second, millisecond, microsecond, nanosecond. And there might be some descriptions in between there. I don't know. And our internet is in the ping is in milliseconds, which is the 3rd. Yes, hour, minute. 2nd millisecond, 4th. No, a minute is the 1st. OK, well, -- you said our first -- from our Latin friends. Hours 0, minute is 1st, second is 2nd, as we were talking about at the beginning of the episode, and then milliseconds would be 3rd. Right, OK, I believe that. All right. And how many milliseconds are in a second? 1000. So it takes at our old home, it took 1 2nd. To upload something. No, it took 1 2nd to just ping the other end of the internet to say, hey, we have some, something that we want you to download or upload. So I say, dear Google, what is a millisecond? Send, and then it takes one Mississippi. For it to let it know that I asked a question. Right, and then it has to respond back and say, what is your question? And then it has to upload the question and it has to download the answer. So that's part of the reason it was so slow, not only the upload and download speeds, but the extra time just to Acknowledge the communication back and forth between systems, which is why my internet seems so fast now because instead of saying one Mississippi. Here's my question. Now I just say, instead of saying, hey Google, what is a millisecond? It doesn't say one Mississippi to get there, so what is there. Yes, that's a very scientific way of describing it, I suppose. Good. All right. I learned a lot today, thank you. Hopefully, no one else is confused. I was super confused, but I think I'm on the right track. Over, hopefully everyone else is on that same track now too. Well, that does, I guess, give some credence to the metric system and describing time in terms of divisions of 10s and hundreds and thousands instead of 60, where you're talking about. The first part, the 2nd part, and so on. So I know you hate, you've mentioned before that you hate the base 10 system. Do you prefer the 60 system? I think just because it is so ingrained in our society that It's fine. Phase 10. No, be 60. 60. So then why do you hate base 10? The same reason, because miles and feet and inches are so ingrained in our everyday conversation and culture that that is how we just do things, and it's relatively well understood. Like even just something simple where a speed limit would be stated in kilometers per hour. It is not something that is intuitive because we've used MPH for all of our lives. We have a child. Oh, I love him. He has decided that he hates Fahrenheit. And only talks in Celsius. Which is great Except for it is a very obvious when somebody says something here in America, we always talk in Fahrenheit. And he will react as if it's Celsius. And I tell him you can't do that, buddy like. I understand you prefer Celsius, but we live in a Fahrenheit world, and he refuses. Someone says something about temperature. If they say like, what's the temp like, how hot is that? Meat coming out of the oven. He'll give it to you in Celsius, as if it's a fact. It's like you can't, this is not the world you can do that in. And it is um. Sweet and obnoxious, and he hates Fahrenheit and he refuses to live in a Fahrenheit world. Yeah, I mean, it's been more of an issue recently where our weather has been all over the place, and I think that's true for most of the US right now that there's hot days and cold days. So when you say it's 40 degrees out, it could be that it's 40 °F, probably not so likely 40 °C, but maybe. Yes, and the weather, maybe a better example would be like. 20 degrees. 20 degrees has been probably not in the last month or so, but It has been 20 °C in the last few. Yeah, yeah, that's Celsius for us, yes, um, Fahrenheit, no, but it is obnoxious cause we'll be like, what's the weather like? I'm like, it's gonna be 65. And he's like, Celsius, oh man, it's gonna be so hot. You know, I mean Fahrenheit. It's 65 °F. It's a very pleasant day outside. Right, I don't think it's 149 °F outside. Yes, and I I think it's a bit he's doing, but it's starting to get old, cuz I can't convince him that we live. He tries to tell me all the perks of Celsius over Fahrenheit, and I believe him. But we live in a Fahrenheit world, so he needs to accept it. Or we could just start doing everything in Kelvin. No, no We're gonna do our own. Can we just make up our own family? Measurement, I suppose so. Anything is possible. Um, I think Yale. OK, this might be false, cause I'm a Gilmore Girls fan, so I haven't googled it, you can if you want. But in Gilmore Girls, they go to Yale, and it's a big part of the storyline is called the Yale. University culture. Measurement based on a certain child, like a certain student that went there. Uh, I forget what. His name is at the time, but that's how they measure everything is by this one individual's height. So should we just do that? So it wasn't a temperature unit for Yale. I was just searching for Yale temperature. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm kind of going back and forth. I get it from minutes to temperature to now length. Did you find anything, or is it a Gilmore Girls lore? There's a MIT. One Not finding anything on Yale. But This may be related. Maybe you're not remembering if it's Yale or MIT. No, it's definitely Yale. She goes to Yale, the parents go to Yale. So maybe they stole it from MIT because MIT has a smoot, which is where a particular person laid down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge. And they used his height to measure the length of the bridge. And that was in 1958. They were doing silly things like that. OK, no, it wasn't, it's not smooth, a cropog. It's a fictional unit of measurement in Gilmore Girls. So, OK, it's fictional, fictional, but it could have borrowed from the true story of MIT because Gilmore Girls came after a smoot in 1958. Yes. Supposedly it comes from class of 1944. But it is fictional and humorous, apparently. Acropog is what suppose in Gilmore Girls' world, how they measure length. There you go. So yes, I suppose we can make our own temperature units if we so desire. Yeah, Gilmore Girls does it. The America's do it, so we should. The Americas, I don't know, it's like the one thing that we kept from Britain. What? You don't do kilometers in Britain. Commoners? What is commoners? It's so late, kilometers. I thought you were referring to our imperial units as the commoners units. Kilometers, kilometers. Well, they do now Yes, but the imperial system was officially established by the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824. OK, can you, OK, we're running late, we gotta finish this up quick, but tell me, super fast. Um Britain made our system, we took it here to America and they changed and we stuck with it. Yes, apparently in 1965, the Federation of British Industry told the British government that they wanted the metric system. And The government agreed and supported a 10-year. Quote unquote, metrification program. And then in The rest is history. So our numbers came from that, correct. So it's like when we use their, and we call it the dollar, but if we use their Pound pound. And how like they still use the pound, but they also take the euro in most places. If they get rid of the pound completely, it's that kind of idea. Yes Hm Why I don't want to talk bad about our British friends or our allies. Well, now they are, I think. But Why did they change? Cause in history, it makes it sound like they're like, this is the way it is, and we're not gonna change, and y'all are our people. But they do change They did change, yeah, in 1965 from their imperial system, which the imperial system wasn't really theirs to begin with. It was more of the standardization of all the things that they Gained from all their different. Things that they were doing across the globe similar to how English has a lot of words that are from many different countries and cultures. They took all their measurement systems and consolidated it and standardized standardized it into the imperial system. -- And then we -- got stuck with it. And we're not gonna change because America is too big and too divided as it is. We're just stuck with this now. That's true. I'll be happy if they changed daily savings time, but if we ever went to the metric system, I probably wouldn't be as opposed as I used to be. I think it is. Have its benefits Yeah, theoretically, I'm not opposed. But I am because I just don't want to learn something new. I suppose that's true. It took us 30 minutes to talk about what a microsecond and nanosecond is. Indeed, All right. I'll just keep with how we're doing things now. Well, there you go. So this episode should be about half an hour. Or 30 minutes. 1st minutes. 31st 31st minutes. It's 60 x 30. There would be 1802nd minutes. There's 3600 seconds in an hour. So 1300 milliseconds. Or 2 seconds, 2nd minutes. Half an hour. 31st minutes 1802nd minutes, AKA seconds. That's why we don't use those phrases. We just talk hours, minutes, seconds. It takes so long to say it. So If you are confused this episode, you can always share it with a friend and they can be confused as well. Or perhaps you like this episode and you can like, share, subscribe and share it with somebody else that may like it as well. It only takes a 2nd minute. It only takes a 2nd minute. That's what you're saying, to share, yes. So from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.