xkcd #3232: Countdown Standard
Title text:
Anyone who is caught counting ‘three … two … one … zero … GO!’ will be punished with a lifetime of eating only ISO standard food samples.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3232/


What the fuck. 😭 But “next Thursday” clearly has a well-defined 7-day period. Given a bus stop with 20 minutes between buses, the “next bus” doesn’t just start arbitrarily applying 10 minutes after the last bus left. Who would use it like this??
The next bus is the next bus to come 🤷🏼♂️ But the answer to your question is enough to not know for sure what the other person means without clarifying. It happens especially when someone is talking about “next Thursday” on a Friday for example. Because that’s in next week.