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[Culise]

Use the long scale for numbers too.

Eight and half-fives (98)?

... The fuck?

Quantum arithmetic: Denmark's leading contribution to mathematics.

...it's just a very, very strange language when it comes to numbers.

It makes perfect sense in base 20: eight is the ones place, and half-fives refers to five 20s less a half-20: 100-10 = 90.

Of course, this pretty much sums up my own thoughts on it, since I don't typically think in base 20. 

[scriver]

Yes but you see, the thing that makes Danish numerals difficult is has retained parts of both the old base 12 and base 20 systems, and use them together with the modern base 10 way of thinking in different places.

[Max™]

I like to count in binary on my fingers because I get to flip people off legitimately when I get to 5!

Thumb
Index
Index+Thumb
Middle
Middle+Thumb
Middle+Index
Middle+Index+Thumb
Ring
Ring+Thumb
Ring+Index
Ring+Index+Thumb
Ring+Middle
Ring+Middle+Thumb
Ring+Middle+Index
etc, etc, etc

Lets you hit 31 on one hand!

[Dorsidwarf]

isnt 90 being eight-ten also a french thing

[hector13]

I think it’s 40-20-10

[ChairmanPoo]

isnt 90 being eight-ten also a french thing

Same in basque-  laurogeita hamar, literally four-twenties and ten

[Reelya]

I like to count in binary on my fingers because I get to flip people off legitimately when I get to 5!

Thumb
Index
Index+Thumb
Middle
Middle+Thumb
Middle+Index
Middle+Index+Thumb
Ring
Ring+Thumb
Ring+Index
Ring+Index+Thumb
Ring+Middle
Ring+Middle+Thumb
Ring+Middle+Index
etc, etc, etc

Lets you hit 31 on one hand!

You can do better than that. Point your thumb at each of the three joints of your fingers, giving you 12 "thumb positions". But each of the fingers your thumb isn't pointing at can be up or down, so you have 12 * 8 combinations this way. But, if your thumb isn't touching one of the joints you count that as binary, so you can add those 32 additional combinations too, making 128 combinations, or 128 * 128 on both hands.

[Trekkin]

You can do better than that. Point your thumb at each of the three joints of your fingers, giving you 12 "thumb positions". But each of the fingers your thumb isn't pointing at can be up or down, so you have 12 * 8 combinations this way. But, if your thumb isn't touching one of the joints you count that as binary, so you can add those 32 additional combinations too, making 128 combinations, or 128 * 128 on both hands.

I think you may be evaluating on the wrong rubric there. The point of counting on one's fingers in binary is not to actually count more things; after all, one can count to arbitrarily high values without using any fingers at all, and if you want a mechanical thing you can always grab an abacus or a phone app or a series of rocks or tally marks or a clicker counter or any of the other countless tools we've developed to not immobilize our hands while counting things.

The utility of counting in binary lies not in its ability to enumerate but in its ability to communicate. Much like memorizing mathematical constants to ludicrous precision, it's a way to appear intelligent (if only to people who don't recognize how useless it is) without any of the effort involved in actually doing anything useful with the time spent on parlor tricks. It's like a hazard sign, really.

[Kagus]

There are signs for counting up to ten  On one hand in ASL, but I apparently managed to memorize 6-9 backwards.

So there's that.

[scriver]

I've never figured out why asexual people need their own language

[Starver]

It's just a tradition, handed down from one generation to.

[Max™]

You can do better than that. Point your thumb at each of the three joints of your fingers, giving you 12 "thumb positions". But each of the fingers your thumb isn't pointing at can be up or down, so you have 12 * 8 combinations this way. But, if your thumb isn't touching one of the joints you count that as binary, so you can add those 32 additional combinations too, making 128 combinations, or 128 * 128 on both hands.

I think you may be evaluating on the wrong rubric there. The point of counting on one's fingers in binary is not to actually count more things; after all, one can count to arbitrarily high values without using any fingers at all, and if you want a mechanical thing you can always grab an abacus or a phone app or a series of rocks or tally marks or a clicker counter or any of the other countless tools we've developed to not immobilize our hands while counting things.

The utility of counting in binary lies not in its ability to enumerate but in its ability to communicate. Much like memorizing mathematical constants to ludicrous precision, it's a way to appear intelligent (if only to people who don't recognize how useless it is) without any of the effort involved in actually doing anything useful with the time spent on parlor tricks. It's like a hazard sign, really.

Pfft, I have no qualms about informing people that I am a master of useless trivia and useless tricks. The binary thing is just another one of many such pointless tricks I picked up because they amused me at the time or seemed fun.

[PTTG??]

Once you realize that everyone dies eventually and money, fame, and power have no lasting value, you actually get to start enjoying life itself.

I think one of the biggest problems in America is people who think they're going to have infinite time to spend their money, so they keep accumulating it. If you have more than (annual expenses * remaining years of life expectancy * safety factor (maybe 2?)), why keep accumulating wealth? And yet people do it.

To be fair, for many people "annual expenses" is a pretty large category. Elon Musk's taste for rocketry costs more than most other hobbies. But Trump doesn't seem to be enjoying his "wealth" such as it is. He'd be a tragic story of a life wasted if he wasn't a tragic story of systemic failure of the American political system.

[Egan_BW]

Continuing to accrue wealth might be due to annual expenses and safety factor both being numbers that increase along with the amount of money you already have. >.<
The other side of it is people not having a plan or thinking too hard about it, and getting more money because money is good and useful so it's good and useful to get more money.

Or maybe they're just extra dimensional achievement hunters, going after that high score.

[Kagus]

Or maybe there are indeed a lot more expenses going out on a regular basis, but they're under the table.