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Comment by jaysonelliot | Hacker News Reader

This little bit of snark gave me a laugh: "The red stripe highlights the weekend. For the United States, where week starts on Sunday (but it is anyway considered a part of weekend), alternative frames can be produced."

Can I just say?

Sunday and Saturday are the weekend because they are on each end of the week. If you stack them both up at the back, only Sunday would get to be the weekend. Saturday would just be the day before the end.

A line has got two ends.

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Erm, the rational usual understanding is that you refer to "weekend" as a period and not "week ends" in two separate words. Weekend = the end of the week, i.e. Saturday and Sunday. Isn't Sunday called the 7th Day of the Week in the religious tradition? Therefore Saturday should be 6th and Saturday and Sunday are both at the same "end".

> A line has got two ends.

A counterpoint of equal snark and uselessness: No, it has one "start" and one "end", especially if it's a one-way line.

In which case the last day would be the end. The day before the last day would simply be the day before the weekend.

And yes, it's all meant lightheartedly, as I assume the original sentence was.

I seriously doubt most people think of it like that.

That's exactly how people think of it in the U.S.

And that's exactly opposite of how people in Europe think.

So here we go, it's a perfect example of rationalization - how humans can find any amount of reasons why their arbitrary choice is the natural one.

Really, the "it's both ends of the week" thing? When Americans say "how was your weekend" do they really just mean either Saturday or Sunday? Or do they alternatively say "how were your weekends?", referring to both ends? I suspect the common response to the first is still a list of things you did on both Saturday and Sunday, even in the US.

For the life of me, I could never understand what compelled americans to switch from monday first to sunday first.

This is not a line, it’s a time period.

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