2026-09-04
In The Swamp episode of Avatar The Last Airbender, Huu says "Time is an illusion"1.
This is true in so many ways. Of course, the way that the scene is intended deals with the idea that time persists before birth and beyond death, and that the past and future are always with us. However it's also so arbitrary!
The Earth just happens to be spinning at a certain rate such that the same point on the Earth ends up facing the Sun once per rotation. We've arbitrarily decided to break that into 24 hours (why 24?), arbitrarily picked a moment to start the clock, and here we are.
True midnight shifts just as much as true noon does (based on when the Sun is at the mid-point in time or angle in the sky between sunset and sunrise), as the Earth's tilt with respect to the Sun changes based on where the Earth is in its revolution around the Sun. And then what do you even do about the locations that don't have sunrises or sunsets for portions of the year?
All this to say, I'm going to hold myself to blogging every day, but based on my own (arbitrary) concept of the day being something to the effect of "when I go to sleep" vs "when I wake up". Let's not think about what happens when I pull an all-nighter.