We have rules and ways of describing things to other people so that everyone understands the same things. It’s why we have a glorious number of words that specifically describe a particular thing. We can use language to be highly specific and be very clear our meaning. When we use words most people have an understanding of the subtle differences in words and their meaning.
You’re acting like an idiot.
This phrase often gets complaints “you called me an idiot”. And while I might be suggesting you are acting like an idiot I am definitely not calling you an idiot. This type of language is used all the time by politicians where they say one thing, hope the populous interprets in a particular way but also have the deniability that they didn’t say what everyone thought they did. This happens more these days with all the fascists in charge in the USA and the rising of Reform in the UK. If you listen all their language is veiled so that racists understand what they are really saying. Apparently it would be bad form to say overtly racist things, people don’t like that.
I didn’t expect to get going about language in this communication but there’s always going to be some form of political messaging behind what I write. It turns out that 2026 is the tenth anniversary of me being permanently angry. I’m permanently angry because of the obvious lies promulgated during the Brexit campaign and when called out people ignored it. The fact that Johnson et al lied to force the Brexit vote a particular way just to try and heal the divisions within the tory party has boiled my piss for ten years. Here is the image I saw that started this communication:
I’m not going to discuss the remnants of humans that appear in the image because I don’t have enough space on this server to get that vitriol exorcised. My problem with the image is more to do with the time stated that the State Of The Union will start.
This took place on Tuesday 24 Feb at around 2100 EST. This would have been around 0300 GMT on Wednesday 25th February. As you can see in the image the broadcast via C-Span was due to start at midnight. BUT there is a problem here caused by how midnight is defined.
The general understanding would be that the broadcast was due to start at midnight Tuesday into Wednesday. So Tuesday night time. If I had arranged to meet you at midnight on Tuesday you would assume that we are meeting Tuesday night. However, 1200am is defined as the very start of the next day. So the C-Span graphic, because they used 1200am and not “midnight” means the midnight in the Monday to Tuesday night time. Had C-Span written “midnight” then I think we would have had a better idea of what they meant but the fact they went with the highly specific 1200am means we should interpret that as the specific time in the Monday night time.
Now, because how we speak and the way we use language is versatile, it can be argued that the real meaning of 1200am 24th Feb should be interpreted the way most people would interpret it. If I was to say to you “let’s meet at midnight on Tuesday” only an absolute pedant would turn up on the Monday night time. Midnight Tuesday is the absolute start of Tuesday and not the time going into Wednesday. But, because of how language works we know that Tuesday night time was meant. It could be that we even add some form of qualifier: “I’ll meet you at midnight Tuesday night” which is still ambiguous but less so.
I guess there are two possible outcomes that result in a correct meeting of people. Outcome one is that someone asks a clarifying question to ascertain the correct evening people are meeting. Outcome two is that both assume the correct evening without any clarification. The moral is if someone says “at midnight” then we need more clarification about which actual night time they require.
