After the French revolutionaries beheaded their king, they had a bright idea: Let's make the day 10 hours long! This is not a joke: Left-wing "experts" actually changed the length of minutes, hours, and weeks in the name of science. This is the story of that disaster.The designers answered 'solely to the principles of Reason and Science.'The French revolutionaries adopted a new calendar for three reasons:To eliminate religious consciousness from French society;To make time more “rational”;To announce the birth of an egalitarian era.In their zeal, they forgot an important factor: human nature. This is a story of political arrogance. The revolutionaries overestimated science's power and underestimated religion's stickiness. In their new utopia, one hour equaled 100 minutes, and one minute equaled 100 seconds. The new year shifted from January 1 to September 22. A radical attempt to redefine time itself.Rutgers sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel notes that the 10-day week was meant to disrupt the “traditional, sacred seven-day cycle.” The purpose was to disorient people and make them lose track of “Sunday.” That is, the day for going to church and having a weekly sitdown with the divine. The French Revolutionary calendar was designed by the top experts of the day. The chief designer was C.G. Romme, a physics professor, and mathematicians and astronomers chipped in. In the minds of these experts, tradition/old habits didn’t matter. The designers answered “solely to the principles of Reason and Science.”“The Revolutionary Calendar was introduced in an age which advocated the total obliteration of the old order in the name of progress and modernity,” Zerubavel observes. “The beginning of the new Republican Era marked the total discontinuity between past and present.” Ring a bell?Every calendar has “critical dates,” which are imbued with symbolic importance. The revolutionaries changed the first day of the year from January 1 to September 22 — the day of the “foundation of the French Republic.” Society was to spin not around religion but politics.Days that had a unique flavor due to their religious significance, like “the saints’ days, Sunday and the Church's religious holidays,” were abolished. Each day became mathematically and symbolically alike. Differences were to be erased — whether among people or on the calendar.By adopting calendrical rhythms alien to the rest of the world, the French created artificial barriers to communication, understanding, and ultimately, trade.How would you fix delivery schedules with a country whose calendar is untranslatable into yours? Imagine you're a Frenchman in 1793. The revolutionaries have not just beheaded the king and slaughtered their own but have also made the week 10 days long. The day is now 10 hours, not 24, and your old clocks — and instincts — need to be thrown out. By denouncing all authority as arbitrary, the revolutionary finally harms himself. On what grounds will he govern once the king is gone? In hindsight, we can see the “boomerang effect” of the calendar redesign. If the old dogmas were random, why are the new ones any better?The people hated the new calendar. It made them work for nine days straight instead of six, and it was confusing. Special clocks were made to translate the French Revolutionary calendar into the Gregorian calendar and back. People’s age-long habits were redesigned without their consent.Stalin imposed a new calendar, too. The week was cut to five days to eliminate the holiday of Sunday. Days were assigned colors, and workers were given colors. When it was your colored day, you took a day off. Families and friends had different colors, so they never hung out.Here’s the French Revolutionary calendar, designed by the biggest scientific minds of the time. A failed dream ... a symbolic warning. An attempt to restructure time by politics instead of the sacred. Reasonable, rational, and, hence, doomed. An emblem to the madness of equality: Heritage Images/Getty ImagesAnd here’s the man who ended the tyranny of artificial time and took his country back to the Gregorian calendar, 218 years ago: Hulton Archive/Stringer/Getty Images

Late-night comedians returned to work this week knowing their lies had finally caught up with them.Colbert. Fallon. Meyers. Stewart. They all admitted President Joe Biden’s mental failings are no longer “cheap fakes” but stone-cold truths. They had no other choice following the June 27 debate.Hollywood stars can no longer afford to insult half the country. Streamers are feeling the economic pinch. The Biden economy is crushing film and TV crews in LA (and beyond).And boy, was it delicious to behold. Not necessarily funny, of course. They gave up that ghost a while ago.Stephen Colbert opened his monologue by pretending to take a stiff drink. Then he got down to business — i.e. dismantling his spin from three-plus years.“I don’t know what’s going on in Joe Biden’s mind, something I apparently have in common with Joe Biden.”“Biden debated as well as Abe Lincoln ... if you dug him up right now.”Jon Stewart teed off on both the president and his administration.“For a campaign based on honesty and decency, the spin about the debate appears to be blatant bulls***, and the redemption tour hasn’t gone that much better.”Seth Meyers, the nakedly partisan “Saturday Night Live” alum, pulled most of his punches. He sounded more like an MSNBC pundit than a comedian, but that’s par for the “Late Night” course.He seemed madder about Biden staying in the race than a media landscape that hid the truth from the country.“If you truly believe American democracy is at stake, and it is, then you have to act like it ... you can’t claim to be the last bulwark against fascism, and also have a more-sleep plan. If you think this is serious, you need to act like it’s serious.”Perhaps if Team Late Night had spoken truth to power a few months, or even years, earlier, this train wreck could have been avoided.Michael Moore decries Biden 'elder abuse'We’re living in crazy times. That’s certifiable. Need more proof? Michael Moore is a voice of reason on the Biden front.The far-left filmmaker, who hasn’t made a film of consequence in eons, is aghast at how Democrats are treating President Biden. He called shoving Biden onto the June 27 debate stage “the cruelest form of elder abuse I’ve ever been forced to watch.”Here's a pitch: Crusading documentarian starts knocking on doors to get some answers from current Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison. Call it ... "Jaime & Me"? Hey — we'd watch it.Minnie mopesMinnie Driver didn’t get the memo, apparently.Hollywood stars can no longer afford to insult half the country. Streamers are feeling the economic pinch. The Biden economy is crushing film and TV crews in L.A. (and beyond). Stars like Charlamagne tha God and Dwayne Johnson have retracted their past political endorsements. Even awards shows have cut back on the partisan lectures (the recent BET awards notwithstanding).Tell that to the “Good Will Hunting” actress. She just tore into Trump supporters as if it were 2017 all over again.She recently blasted MAGA nation, describing its fans as “70 million people who really quite like a bit of a racist attitude and non-existent immigration policies and dismantling the environmental agencies.”Oh.She also said she’d never live in a red state but feels safer in Los Angeles. She might be the only soul who finds that hellscape preferable to Heartland, USA.She later praised her native Great Britain for being more open to debate and conversation than the U.S. Of course, if you label half of a country “racist,” it makes conversations a wee bit harder.Rogan's gains“Jokes, folks. Just jokes.”That's how Joe Rogan teased his upcoming Netflix comedy special, “Joe Rogan: Burn the Boats," which the streaming giant will broadcast live August 3.Rogan has every reason to be in a laughing mood. Just a few years ago, the Austin-based comic's contrarian COVID-19 views sparked furious efforts to crush his Spotify podcast. Aging rock stars lobbied for his removal from the service while news outlets erroneously dubbed a medication he used to recover from the virus as “horse de-wormer.” (In fact, ivermectin has been so effective at treating parasitic infections in humans that its two creators were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2015.)Since then, Rogan's been racking up the wins. He’s re-upped his lucrative Spotify contract, expanded his reach across YouTube, iTunes, and other platforms, and created a free speech comedy mecca in Austin, Texas.Maybe his special could use an opening act. We hear Neil Young's available.

Want to buy American? Many Americans do. In fact, a recent Cars.com survey found that 58% of American consumers are willing to pay as much as 10% more for a vehicle if it creates domestic jobs. But how do you know you're buying American? When it comes to cars, the answer is particularly complicated. "You can't trust the brand on the hood or the legacy of an automaker's history," says Cars.com's Patrick Masterson, who led the website's 2024 American-Made Index. "This goes back to the complexity of the global supply chain," says Masterson. "Just the littlest tweak can affect where a vehicle lands on the list and that's why we keep doing it."Now in it's 19th year, the American-Made Index takes more than 400 different mode-year 2024 vehicles available in the United States and judges them by five criteria: assembly location, parts content, engine origin, transmission origin, and U.S. manufacturing workforce. Taking the top spot again this year is Tesla, once again the only American car company on the list, with its Model Y. While last year's list saw the EV company sweep the top four slots, this year it faces increased competition from Honda (the Passport is at number 2, while the Ridgeline is at number 5) as well as Volkswagen. The latter company's electric ID.4 hits number 3 this year. Masterson says that reflects the ongoing trend of carmakers diversifying their powertrain lineup to include EVs. "If you got one of the handful of model year 2021's and then the 2022's, those were all German made" says Masterson. "But since then they've retooled their Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant and now every ID.4 you buy is rolling off those plants."Tesla's Model 3 dropped from the number 1 position all the way to 21, thanks to its long-range model and its low percentage of American parts. "That was a big surprise to me," says Masterson. On the other hand, Masterson points out that the Model 3's performance variant has 75% percent American parts, a level only equalled by the Honda Passport. As for the least American-made cars, Masterson acknowledges that "that's a longer list." More than half of the cars bought in the United States last year were imports, including some iconic American brands. This includes the Buick Envista (made in South Korea) and the redesigned Lincoln Nautilus (China), as well as the Ford Bronco Sport (Mexico) and the Ford Maverick (also Mexico). "The big takeaway is that no vehicle is 100% American," says Masterson. "No vehicle is 100% top-to-bottom from the U.S."Additional key findings from this year’s list include:51% of vehicles on the list were assembled in the South, followed by 45% in the Midwest, and 4% in the West.While over half of Americans say they prefer auto brands that are built by union labor, none of the top-10 vehicles were produced at a union plant.Lexus TX made the top 10 with its first appearance on the AMI list, while the Toyota Camry and Jeep Gladiator both jumped 19 spots for a top-10 finish.All of Honda's luxury-brand Acura models are made in either Ohio or Tennessee. The complete top-10 list:Tesla Model YHonda PassportVolkswagen ID.4Tesla Model SHonda OdysseyHonda RidgelineToyota CamryJeep GladiatorTesla Model XLexus TX

The Fallout universe is full of ‘what ifs?’ What if you side with the Enclave over the Brotherhood of Steel? What if you shoot the Powder Ganger outside Nipton? What if Preston Garvey left you alone for five minutes? Conceived by Black Isle, the studio behind the original Fallout and its sequel, Van Buren was the codename for a would-be version of Fallout 3. Canceled as of 2003, the Fallout game that never was is now resurrected courtesy of a huge Fallout 2 mod. If you’re through with Fallout 4, finished with New Vegas, or want to experience another ‘what if?’ ahead of Fallout 5, this might be perfect. Continue reading Canceled Fallout game Van Buren rebuilt and playable now thanks to mod MORE FROM PCGAMESN: How Fallout 2 defined the series, Best Fallout companions

Four of AMD’s forthcoming Zen 5 CPUs have apparently just been benchmarked, and their results show a definite uptick in performance compared to the company’s current chips. This latest AMD Ryzen benchmark leak comes straight from the Geekbench results browser, and purportedly reveals the performance of not only the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X, but also the new Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X. All four of these new CPUs are based on the upcoming AMD Zen 5 architecture, and are prime candidates for our best gaming CPU guide if AMD can get the pricing right. The Ryzen 7 9700X has eight cores and a maximum boost clock of 5.5GHz, while the Ryzen 5 9600X has six cores and the ability to boost its clock speed to up to 5.4GHz. Meanwhile, the top-end Ryzen 9 chips include the 12-core 9900X and 16-core 9950X. Continue reading Four new AMD Ryzen CPUs just had benchmarks leaked, and they look good MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Ryzen 7 7800X3D review, Best gaming CPU, Radeon RX 7800 XT review

Right now you can grab a 165Hz Asus gaming monitor for just $119, making it among the cheapest displays of its type available. With a 26% discount, this gaming monitor deal saves you $40 off the usual cost and puts this display at its lowest price ever. Despite its low price, the Asus TUF Gaming VG247Q1A display shares several features in common with some of the screens listed on our best gaming monitor. It not only covers all the essentials, but it also gives you a fast 165Hz refresh rate, for a very reasonable price. Continue reading Get a 165Hz Asus gaming monitor for just $119, if you act fast MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ review, Asus ROG Raikiri review, Best gaming motherboard

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Image: Apple The “Music Dance Experience” is on its way back. Apple just released the first teaser trailer for the much-anticipated second season of Severance, along with the news that the show won’t be returning until 2025. The first episode will start streaming on Apple TV Plus on January 17th and last 10 episodes. The short teaser doesn’t reveal much about what to expect in the new season, but according to Apple, “Mark (Adam Scott) and his friends learn the dire consequences of trifling with the severance barrier, leading them further down a path of woe.” A day before the trailer dropped, Apple released an appropriately cryptic teaser: pic.twitter.com/046vNV03vz— Apple TV (@AppleTV) July 9, 2024 Severance debuted on Apple TV Plus in 2022,... Continue reading…

Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge Renting bins is convenient, slightly more sustainable, and not once did I miss cardboard boxes. Continue reading…