You don't need to argue it out with HN, if you want to negotiate landlords generally are happy to at least consider it. I've paid rent as an annual lump sum before.
Makes more sense since most live week-by-week. Similar to how AM/PM notation makes more sense since it's how we tell time. US date format is harder to defend, but...
I'll be called a heretic but, a couple of years ago (after being back in a country that uses day/month/year instead of the US), I came to the conclusion that the month/day notation is actually more useful to me.
Quite often, the month of the date is more relevant to me than the day. Knowing at a glance whether something is happening in the same month as the current day, or in the same month as some other date, is more convenient, as is being able to easily group things by month visually.
And yeah, I can definitely acknowledge month/day/year makes no sense, but it works for me.