[HN Gopher] U.S. senators reintroduce bill to make daylight savi...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. senators reintroduce bill to make daylight saving time
permanent
Author : prostoalex
Score : 357 points
Date : 2021-03-10 20:22 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fox8.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fox8.com)
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I don't care if you eliminate DST or make it permanent. One or
| the other. Just do it.
| fattybob wrote:
| rather silly i feel, why not spend money on researching slowing
| the earths rotation! or maybe just wake up later all year round.
| Or - abandon GMT and pick a spot like Paris, maybe you can call
| it the new "Euro time" - that way Britain can happily ignore it
| and stay with GMT.
| px43 wrote:
| No, no, no. Just kill DST.
|
| Noon should be about when the sun is highest in the sky, not 1pm.
|
| Sunrise and sunset math is so much easier if solar noon happens
| around clock noon too, because sunrise and sunset are equally
| distant from noon. If the Sunset is around 7pm, then sunrise will
| be at (12-7) 5am.
|
| It makes no sense at all to have solar noon shifted one hour for
| the entire country, especially because for most of the world,
| solar noon happens around noon, for obvious reasons.
| 8note wrote:
| Up north, is it noon all day during summer? Or does noon move
| around a whole bunch?
| globular-toast wrote:
| You're not alone in seeing the madness but it looks like it's a
| losing battle. I think fundamentally people can't disconnect
| themselves from the clock on the wall. The day starts around
| 09:00 and ends around 17:00. You can only start work at 08:00
| if the clock is set to 09:00 and you can only leave at 16:00 if
| the clock says 17:00. Apparently everyone believes that
| everyone else is too dumb to just get up an hour earlier, so
| they feel more comfortable into tricking everyone into doing it
| by setting their clocks for them. It's the only explanation I
| have. It really says a lot about how much faith everyone has in
| the rest of society.
| echelon wrote:
| > Noon should be about when the sun is highest in the sky, not
| 1pm.
|
| That's impossible to achieve across all latitudes and
| longitudes, and it's totally arbitrary and _has zero benefit_.
|
| Solar noon matters to precisely nobody. No one is looking at
| the sky to tell time.
|
| People want sunlight after work. They don't want to be
| depressed because they finish the day and it's dark outside.
|
| This benefits restaurants, retail, and many industries that
| thrive on increased leisure activity.
| jmwilson wrote:
| > That's impossible to achieve across all latitudes and
| longitudes, and it's totally arbitrary and has zero benefit.
|
| > Solar noon matters to precisely nobody. No one is looking
| at the sky to tell time.
|
| That's why the OP said "about when the sun is highest" not
| "exactly when the sun is highest". And it matters if you like
| the idea of midday being at, well, the middle of the day.
| Deliberately adding another ~4% error on top of whatever is
| there because of arbitrary time zone boundaries, and things
| begin to add up and eventually you end up like Spain.
|
| > People want sunlight after work. They don't want to be
| depressed because they finish the day and it's dark outside.
|
| To state the obvious, changing the clocks doesn't change the
| amount of daylight available. As another commenter said, if
| we've learned anything from the pandemic, maybe it's that we
| can be flexible about work hours instead of warping our sense
| of time and the rhythm of the day because managers and office
| workers can't fathom the idea of seasonal work hours.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I understand why some people want light in the morning. I
| understand why some people want light in the evening. I
| don't understand why anyone would care when solar noon is.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Did you know that DST is 2/3 of the year? If we're going to
| remove something, we should extend DST to 100%, not shrink it
| from 65% to 0%.
| glennpratt wrote:
| Still, I'll take all DST over switching twice a year.
| jedmeyers wrote:
| Some states, like Washington, have already introduced permanent
| DST. The only thing they lack is federal permission to stay on
| DST. States can already permanently stay on non-DST time, like
| most of AZ does.
| falcolas wrote:
| Like they've done (or Congress has done) every year for the past
| decade or so, only for it to die in-situ.
| Thorentis wrote:
| I much prefer sleeping when it gets dark, and this fits in much
| better with our body's circadian rhythm. If doing things in the
| dark is such an issue, why not change business/school hours to
| work around that? Who decided that 9-5 is the optimal time to do
| business? Why should we disrupt our body's natural attunement to
| daylight just because our bosses won't let us leave until it's
| already dark? Why not look at "summer business hours" instead of
| "daylight time"?
| ravi-delia wrote:
| All of that is correct, very smart, and impossible to implement
| from the top. At this point the idiotic way to do things is
| just too ingrained. All that can be done is play with DST a
| little.
| watwut wrote:
| Most od the year, if not whole year, there is dark long before
| going to sleep.
| lproberts wrote:
| So the morning people may win yet another round, after having so
| many advantages already.
|
| Of course they cannot go to work at 7 instead of 8. No, everyone
| has to jump and tamper with the natural time.
| seniorsassycat wrote:
| Are you arguing for adjusting clocks by an hour twice a year as
| natural time?
| lproberts wrote:
| No, I'm for keeping the natural time that is called "winter
| time" these days all year long.
|
| People who want their DST in the summer should just get up
| one hour earlier; laws would need to be made that jobs have
| to accommodate that choice.
|
| I think most jobs are that flexible these days.
| thelean12 wrote:
| > I think most jobs are that flexible these days.
|
| Are you joking?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Presumably they're in the salaried middle class bubble.
| Most hourly workers, factory workers, and service workers
| have no or little choice or flexibility with their
| schedules.
| watwut wrote:
| What are you talking about. Everyone praises a guy who stays
| late basically regardless of when he came in. No one praises
| dude that comes in soon.
| wruza wrote:
| Did anyone consider pros and cons of shifting just by 10 minutes
| every month? 60 minutes per 6 months divides so nicely (and maybe
| unleashes hell to time duration calculations, but who cares).
| Edit: same for timezones.
| [deleted]
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Pros: - No increase in heart attacks
|
| - Nice fluid shift from month to month
|
| - Minor errors less important
|
| Cons:
|
| - Rewriting of timezone code takes 8 years, claims over 800
| lives as every programmer either quits or commits suicide after
| working on project for a few weeks
|
| - The staggeringly difficult to detect under low load
| timestamping errors cause constant stress for distributed
| systems engineers, making the job among the most deadly in the
| world.
| wruza wrote:
| Re cons, we already have _tzdata_ with all irregularities
| like DSTs and leap seconds built in. I believe that it
| wouldn't be _so_ hard for libraries who already use tzdata.
| And those who don't, they couldn't handle time intervals
| properly anyway.
| adolph wrote:
| What's wrong with just using NTP?
|
| http://www.ntp.org/rfc.html
|
| https://pypi.org/project/ntplib/
|
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/ntp-client
|
| https://www.nuget.org/packages/Rebex.Time
| mminer237 wrote:
| Imagine having to adjust every clock in your house every single
| month.
| wruza wrote:
| Honestly my only non-internet clock doesn't tick for few
| years, since I moved in and stopped it because silence. But
| yes, that is a valid con.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I'd do what I always do when we shift our UTC offset:
| mentally add or subtract to get to the real time until I
| finally stop being lazy.
| mtinkerhess wrote:
| Let's take it one step farther, and have each second be 99.999%
| of a second from December 20 and June 20, and be 100.001% of a
| second from June 20 to December 20. Problem solved!
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| This switching is finally over in France (and in the EU, each
| country had a choice).
|
| One last switch in March to summer time and we are done!
|
| I am fortunate to leave on the western edge of the timezone
| though.
| fanf2 wrote:
| The abolition of DST in Europe has not yet been confirmed - it
| seems to be stalled in the Council
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/summertime_en
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_time_in_Europe
| mey wrote:
| I'm not sure if this would introduce more or less bugs in
| software. It would at least make this Google Cloud SQL for MySQL
| issue less annoying. They don't support tz_info, so you have to
| manually adjust for DST offsets. Guess what I'm doing this
| weekend at 2/3am PDT/PST?
|
| https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/74600960
| seniorsassycat wrote:
| At the very least let states choose to use daylight or standard
| time. Federal law allows states to permanently adopt standard
| time, but prohibits the year-round adoption of daylight time.
| Washington passed a law to adopt permanent daylight savings in
| 2019 but it was contingent on changes to Federal law.
|
| I'm not familiar with the federal laws governing timezones but
| I've wondered if Washington could have adopted Mountain Standard
| Time, which is the same as Pacific Daylight Time, without Federal
| approval.
|
| EDIT: seems Department of Transportation can assign timezone
| based on petition from state government.
|
| https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/procedure-moving-...
| cafard wrote:
| Arizona does not change its clocks. It could therefore be
| considered to be on PDT or MST depending on the season.
| seniorsassycat wrote:
| https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/usa/arizona
|
| > Most of Arizona observes Mountain Standard Time (MST) all
| year. However, because the Navajo Nation observes Daylight
| Saving Time (DST), the corresponding DST designation,
| Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) is also listed here.
|
| > There is a common misconception that Arizona is on Pacific
| Daylight Time (PDT) during the summer and on Mountain
| Standard Time (MST) during the winter. Because MST and PDT
| have the same UTC offset of minus 7 hours (UTC-7), Arizona
| has the same local time as neighboring states California and
| Nevada during the summer season.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't see why the state should be able to force a
| timezone on the Navajo Nation. They're more of a state than
| Arizona is
| SamBam wrote:
| I find the idea crazy.
|
| I get DST, I understand its benefits. But I think it only makes
| sense _because_ it 's not the norm. Because it's not the norm, we
| get used to the time for half the year, stick with our long-
| established timetables, and then want more evening sunlight in
| the summer.
|
| Making it permanent means we are saying that even 100 years from
| now, children will ask "why isn't the sun at the top of the sky
| at noon?" and we'll say "a hundred years ago people thought it
| was easier to permanently change the clocks because businesses
| would never, ever let people go home at 4:00."
|
| I think that, if the pandemic and a year from remote work and
| school has taught us anything, it's that getting people to stop
| work or school an hour earlier is actually within our grasp.
|
| (Speaking of which, it's 4:00. I'm going to get off the computer
| now.)
| nomercy400 wrote:
| Does it matter if it is on top of the sky at 11h, 12h or 13h?
| Noon or mid-day is still when the sun is at its highest point.
| Only noon does not have to be at 12.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| No, it doesn't matter. Where I live, the time the sun is at
| its highest varies from 11:53 to 13:18 and at no time in the
| history of my city (I checked all the records) has a child
| ever asked why the sun isn't directly overhead precisely at
| noon.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Well, you must not live where I grew up, because I asked
| this very question...
|
| ...which lead to me grokking time zones, time, solar noon,
| etc in a way I don't think I would have if I hadn't asked.
| Somehow solar noon not being noon didn't have a negative
| impact on me as a kid. Weird, right?
| ravenstine wrote:
| The pandemic, in my opinion, has revealed that a lot of the
| things we used to say "can't be done" could actually be done.
| Vaccines in a year? Check. More white collar jobs working from
| home? Check. Closing down a huge portion of businesses without
| economic armageddon? Check. _I think we can handle getting rid
| of DST. (or just making it permanent)_
| globular-toast wrote:
| > want more evening sunlight in the summer.
|
| This is so backwards... There's loads of evening light in the
| summer. I want more evening light in the _winter_.
| treespace88 wrote:
| While I agree moving to permanent DST is kinda nuts. It's less
| nuts then flipping clocks twice a year.
|
| Once we have stopped flipping we can then move back to Standard
| time at a future date.
|
| Fighting insanity one battle at a time.
| Jedd wrote:
| I wonder what your preferred answer would be to these
| hypothetical children that noticed the sun's location at noon
| is not 'at the top of the sky' for half the year already.
|
| And where do you live such that the sun _is_ at the 'top of
| the sky' at noon?
|
| Timezones aside (which basically average out an arbitrary time
| for the 1/24th of the planet you are standing in) there's the
| 23.5 degree axis, which means there's _nowhere_ on the planet
| where the sun is at the 'top of the sky' all year.
| mdavidn wrote:
| "Top of the sky" means equidistant from sunrise and sunset.
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| 'Top of the sky' is often the colloquial phrase for 'on the
| meridian line'. Which is valuable to know in itself.
|
| Now, of course, there are differences between the mean solar
| day and the actual day, and the analemma, and all that, but
| to a first approximation, the sun is really closest to the
| top of the sky at noon, local time.
| weaksauce wrote:
| Where I am there is a two fold component to it... you have
| shorter usable days in the winter AND you also have earlier
| darkness for people because they shift it one hour earlier.
| that means that you go to work when it's dark out and come home
| when it's dark out. having an "extra" hour after work to relax
| would be a win. permanent DST is a win in my book.
| brainfish wrote:
| What tangible benefit does society gain from the sun being
| straight up at noon? Furthermore, how is this a valid argument
| when timezones are +/- an hour wide, meaning that even if local
| noon == noon in one part of the timezone, that is not true in
| other parts of the same timezone? This is the worst reasoning
| to base this decision on.
| Asooka wrote:
| Circadian rhythms are fixed to the sun, not to the number on
| a dial. For a concrete example on how permanent DST will mess
| up people, look at Spain. The entire country should be on
| GMT+0, instead it's on GMT+1 because of Hitler not wanting
| separate timezones across the Reich. Spain has a reputation
| for getting up late, having lunch late, etc. The truth is,
| the Spanish people do all these things at the usual time, but
| their clocks are one hour fast. I doubt America will be
| pragmatic enough to just shift everything one hour forward,
| so you'll end up torturing school children to rise early to
| appease some desire for the clock to be showing 6 when you
| wake up. I certainly don't want office hours to start at 8
| all year round. For another example - Russia tried permanent
| DST but after a year changed to permanent astronomical time
| because of such problems. DST is tolerable in summer, but
| awful in winter.
|
| Still, maybe if that's the only way to kill switching clocks
| twice a year, it might be worth it and we could end up with
| later hours like Spain.
| cgriswald wrote:
| For me, winter without DST meant going to school in the
| dark and coming home in the dark. That certainly didn't
| help my circadian rhythms...
| throw0101a wrote:
| It helps with circadian rhythms. I seem to post this for
| every DST story, so I might as well continue the tradition:
|
| The folks who study this:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology
|
| Seem to have come to a consensus that if we're going to get
| rid of DST, then health-wise it is best to have Standard Time
| year-round:
|
| > _As an international organization of scientists dedicated
| to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the
| Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged
| experts in the field to write a Position Paper on the
| consequences of choosing to live on DST or Standard Time
| (ST). The authors take the position that, based on
| comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on
| western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of
| permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or
| permanently._
|
| * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419854
| 1...
|
| For a longer-read, referencing quite a bit of academic
| literature, but a conclusionary snippet:
|
| > _In summary, the scientific literature strongly argues
| against the switching between DST and Standard Time and even
| more so against adopting DST permanently. The latter would
| exaggerate all the effects described above /beyond/ the
| simple extension of DST from approximately 8 months/year to
| 12 months/year (depending on country) since /body clocks/ are
| generally even later during winter than during the long
| photoperiods of summer (with DST) (Kantermann et al., 2007;
| Hadlow et al., 2014, 2018; Hashizaki et al., 2018). Perennial
| DST increases SJL prevalence even more, as described above._
|
| * https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.009
| 4...
|
| Other position papers that I've dug up over the years when
| curiosity got the better of me:
|
| > _Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) is
| dedicated to advancing rigorous, peer-reviewed science and
| evidence-based policies related to sleep and circadian
| biology._
|
| * https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/
|
| * (refs, with pro and con): https://srbr.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/DST-References-S...
|
| European Sleep Research Society:
|
| * https://esrs.eu/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...
|
| American Academy of Sleep Medicine (with 36 footnotes if you
| want to dig further):
|
| * https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780
|
| * https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8780
|
| The Centre for Chronobiology, based at the Psychiatric
| University Hospital (University of Basel):
|
| * http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...
|
| * http://www.chronobiology.ch/
| Jedd wrote:
| > It helps with circadian rhythms. I seem to post this for
| every DST story, so I might as well continue the tradition:
|
| All these arguments _against_ a timezone change, removing
| the shifting to /from DST, etc are predicated on the
| assumption that the times that schools, work places,
| restaurants, public amenities, etc open and close through
| the year are not _allowed_ to change.
|
| This seems to be a surreptitious strawman argument against
| TZ/DST changes, as there's no legal or regulatory reasons
| to prevent any of these institutions changing their hours
| of operation.
| hajile wrote:
| The name of a particular hour has ZERO connection to that
| hour's use. You body doesn't know if an hour is called noon
| or 5:00. It only cares in relation to the position of the
| sun and the length of the daylight hours.
|
| If people stay on DST and it turns out that starting the
| day an hour later is more beneficial, then life will simply
| gradually adjust.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Tell that to the chronobiologists and sleep researchers
| and their peer-reviewed papers, I'm just the messenger.
| MattSayar wrote:
| I'm just so, so thankful I don't maintain any kind of time zone
| libraries
|
| https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...
| meepmorp wrote:
| Just take things to the logical conclusion - everyone should
| switch to UTC and quit all this screwing around with timezones
| and clock changes.
| tzs wrote:
| Since switching to universal UTC would not also change the
| Earth from an oblate spheroid to a flat Earth, it would not
| eliminate the need for timezones. At most, it would perhaps
| cause us to rename them to spacezones.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Not logical at all.[1]
|
| [1] https://qntm.org/abolish
| oblio wrote:
| Time is a super sensitive topic.
|
| If you want to take things to their logical conclusion, we
| should be using a sort of UTC decimal time (10 hours in a day,
| 10 (was it 100? can't remember) minutes in an hour, 10 (same
| question as for minutes) seconds in a minute.
|
| Switching to a single timezone would mean that days are upside
| down. Imagine some timezone where the sun rises at 23:00 and
| sets at 13:00. Let alone the fact that a decent chunk of the
| world doesn't even use 24 hour time (I'm looking especially at
| you, US!).
| function_seven wrote:
| > _Imagine some timezone where the sun rises at 23:00 and
| sets at 13:00_
|
| You _just might_ convince me to adopt that kind of
| timekeeping, if "Monday" didn't suddenly become "Tuesday"
| while I was eating breakfast!
|
| But seriously, every time someone floats the idea of
| worldwide UTC, I can't imagine they've thought through all
| the new problems that would arise.
|
| We have different time zones, not because we're dumb. It's
| because the Earth is round. The time zones are an intrinsic
| property of {ball Earth} + {human biology}
|
| If we lived in Flatland, it wouldn't be an issue. If we were
| robots with no circadian rhythm or desire, then it wouldn't
| be an issue. But we're humans on a globe. Different locations
| are going to be out-of-sync no matter what. Might as well
| reflect that in our timekeeping.
|
| (EDIT: I'm agreeing with you, BTW. Just re-read this and it
| sounds kinda like I'm arguing with your comment. I'm not. I'm
| yelling at the strawman :)
| butisaidsudo wrote:
| Oh, this segues nicely from my DST, my favorite bikeshedding
| topic into my second favorite one!
|
| Base 12 is better than decimal in every way. It divides
| cleanly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. Compare that to decimal,
| where you have 1, 2, 5, 10. It's much better for scheduling.
| With decimal you couldn't have a nice, clean schedule for a
| factory with 3 shifts per day for example. 60 minutes (which
| is a multiple of 12) gives you a lot of ways to break up an
| hour, vs 100 minutes.
|
| I had a friend once rant about how we should switch
| everything to base 12. It's obviously crazy given the effort
| vs reward, but I think we would have been better off to have
| done so way back when.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| also just switch to metric system while we are at it.
| jiri wrote:
| Haha, this is mainly "programmer" viewpoint, for most people
| around the globe, timezones works flawlessly. And for
| programmers, they do/should use UTC everywhere already ;-)
| binarymax wrote:
| I love that in 50 years, the youth of that time will be taught
| that we used to change clocks twice a year, and they can laugh
| and wonder at the old-timey silliness of it all.
| aksss wrote:
| well, it's largely automated now days.. I think my stove clock
| (aka the power outage event recorder) is the only clock I
| manually adjust these days.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Yes, please.
| paxys wrote:
| > Opponents of the bill say DST makes it hard on school children
| and parents who have to wait at the bus stop in dark hours of the
| morning.
|
| Here's an idea - let students (and parents) sleep for an
| additional hour rather than make them wake up before the crack of
| dawn for no reason.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| > Opponents of the bill say DST makes it hard on school
| children and parents who have to wait at the bus stop in dark
| hours of the morning.
|
| Probably easier to just give them all flashlights, than to have
| everyone shift their clocks to accommodate this use case.
| croes wrote:
| How about standard time instead of DST especially in winter
| garmaine wrote:
| Or here's an idea: we can do DST in the summer, and
| standard time in the winter. Best of both worlds!
| croes wrote:
| The problem is the switch, so it's better to get rid of
| it and then Standard Time is the better choice
| nabilhat wrote:
| North of about 45 degrees latitude, the winter time change
| centers daylight perfectly so that for part of the year
| students leave home in the dark, go home in the dark, and sit
| in class through all of the daylight. When the days finally
| start getting long enough to see a little sunlight at each end,
| it's time to move the clocks forward and they're back to going
| to school in the dark. It's brutal.
|
| Way back when I was in school there were a couple that had 10
| hour days, to better accomodate parent's schedules. Drop junior
| off when it fits your morning schedule best, same for pickup in
| the afternoon. Teachers worked on the early end, late end, took
| a long lunch, worked four 10 hour days, whatever suited the
| needs of their students and their own lives. The pickup and
| dropoff zones didn't get gridlocked with every single parent
| showing up at the same exact time. My point is, there are far
| better options available than fooling around with time itself.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > let students (and parents) sleep for an additional hour
|
| To complete the sensible set, elementary schools open first,
| high schools last.
|
| In brutal southern climates, end the school year on Halloween
| when kids can play outside w/o heat stroke - with kids inside
| air conditioning during worthless summer months.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Some places have year round schooling.
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _Here 's an idea - let students (and parents) sleep for an
| additional hour rather than make them wake up before the crack
| of dawn for no reason._
|
| When exactly is the "crack of dawn"? Unless you live near the
| equator the "crack of dawn" changes every day. If "additional
| hour" is relative to the clock then you can always start things
| an hour late relative to the clock, regardless of where the
| clock is relative to daylight hours.
| guyzero wrote:
| American high schools have to be out around 3 PM to allow for
| enough time for sports teams to practice. Other schools end up
| synchronizing to this schedule. A non-trivial reason is that
| high school teachers with young children need to have them
| synced with their own work schedules and teachers have some
| level of control over how school days are scheduled.
|
| Anyway, like everything in the US, blame the obsession with
| high school athletics.
| pbronez wrote:
| I have no great love for high school sports, but at least
| it's a mechanism to get kids moving. Given the obesity
| epidemic, a solid physical education option seems useful.
| Definitely has grown into something way beyond that though.
| marshray wrote:
| PE class is one thing, building the whole school schedule
| around the football team's needs is another.
| exabrial wrote:
| Yep.
|
| Or just close the schools permanently, sell the assets, commit
| to at-home learning or micro-schools.
| tony101 wrote:
| How about we do it the other way: Eliminate daylight saving
| time and make standard time permanent?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's my preference too, but making DST permanent is better
| than continuing to change twice a year.
|
| When confronted with three choices and none of the three have
| majority support, society usually chooses the "status quo"
| option. Even when a proper ranked choice vote would end up
| with one of the other two options.
|
| So I guess I need to keep quiet to ensure that we end up with
| our second choice rather than our third choice.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Let's split the difference: Spring ahead 1/2 an hour and
| then keep the clocks there.
| saalweachter wrote:
| So the big problem is springing ahead. No one likes it.
| On the other hand, everyone loves falling back.
|
| I'd like to propose making the day approximately 9.86
| seconds longer, so that each year we accumulate 1 hour of
| extra time. Then, each fall, we set the clocks back one
| hour.
|
| You get the benefits of DST (more sunlight later in the
| day in the summer) without the jarring "spring ahead"
| each year.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| It would be quite annoying to have your clock off a
| minute every week. The first couple weeks wouldn't be too
| big of an issue, but when you start getting 10 minutes
| off you would need to fix your clock.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Nah, it'd be "trivial" (in the way that generates
| employment for programmers, win-win) for your cell phone
| and computer to adjust automatically. You might be able
| to just get the NTP servers to make the adjustment daily
| and everyone else would just follow along without knowing
| it. Fancier wall clocks, too.
|
| If you've got a fancy watch, just go get its movement
| adjusted to run 10 seconds slow. Full employment for
| watchmakers too, it's a shovel-ready proposal!
| DavidAdams wrote:
| That's only good for early birds, because you end up with it
| being light for hours before most people are awake (during
| the summer). If you keep DST in place permanently, sundown
| happens later, and you eliminate the need for an extra hour
| of lighting every evening, which presumably saves
| electricity.
| croes wrote:
| It's easier to stay awake when it's getting dark than
| become awake if it's still dark in the morning
| mtoohig wrote:
| I live in a timezone that begins with hints of light
| appearing at worst somewhere between 4 and 5 am. A
| combination of location and our timezone shifted to match
| a neighboring country for ease of tourist made it this
| way.
|
| I have lived where the sun doesn't appear early in the
| morning too and I greatly favor it. Living here the sun
| can set before 5 pm and during the longest days of the
| year I only see sunset at 730 pm. Yes, I can do more
| things after dark but I consider it so much worse since
| it makes me feel like the day is over so early and I only
| just finished work.
|
| Then when you want to rest in the morning the heat and
| light creeps in 5 in the morning it also kills your
| energy for later in the day. So not sure if you are
| talking from experience living in a place like mine but I
| would prefer to return to longer evenings and quieter
| mornings.
| DavidAdams wrote:
| Yeah, but I'd 1000x rather commute to work when it's
| still dark than have it get dark before I get home.
| croes wrote:
| If you get to work by car it's safer with Standard Time.
| leetcrew wrote:
| assuming you're talking about daylight, it depends on
| your latitude and where your longitude falls in your
| timezone. with the current system, I drive to work in the
| dark and I drive home in the dark at different times of
| the year. I think it's more or less even for me, but
| maybe there's an optimal timing that minimizes everyone's
| commuting in the dark time. not that I feel particularly
| unsafe driving in the dark anyway, I only care if the sun
| is at an angle where I can't block it with my visor.
| either way, this seems like a marginal concern.
| ghaff wrote:
| When I used to commute semi-regularly, part of it was
| along a highway (to use the term generously) that I swear
| was laid in a way to maximize the solar glare in some
| locations. One of those places is where it intersects
| with an interstate and semi-regularly you'd see cars that
| had been in accidents or the remnants of same at the side
| of the road.
| onychomys wrote:
| Yeah, but none of us really get anything done at work
| before like 10am anyway no matter which time system we're
| in.
| watwut wrote:
| No. Standard time is the worst one.
| axaxs wrote:
| States can already make standard time permanent if they want
| to. Obviously, not many do.
|
| This change just allows states to make DST permanent.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Oh hell no. The late day light is WAY better than early day
| light. I am not going to mow my lawn at 5 a.m. and piss off
| all my neighbors (plus the grass tends to have dew and be wet
| early). Mowing my lawn at 7 pm (if it is still light out), is
| not a problem.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Daylight time proponents are effectively advocating that
| the standard work day start an hour earlier relative to the
| sunlight.
|
| I tend to disagree - better to let people sleep. There's a
| reason "standard" time was set up that way in the first
| place. I suspect it works better with our circadian rhythm
| that way.
| thelean12 wrote:
| > I tend to disagree - better to let people sleep.
|
| I'm not advocating to move around the standard work day,
| but grown adults could just go to sleep an hour earlier.
| "let people sleep" makes no sense. It wouldn't take away
| an hour of their sleep.
| watwut wrote:
| Adults are sleep deprived not because of sun, but because
| of evening activities - games, reading internet, movies.
| They value a bit more entertainment or a bit more work
| more then sleep.
|
| Half a year there is dark long before adults go to sleep
| and also dark in the morning. Sun is not preventing
| sleep, but people dont sleep.
| throw0101a wrote:
| I seem to post this for every DST story, so I might as well
| continue the tradition:
|
| The folks who study this:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology
|
| Seem to have come to a consensus that if we're going to get
| rid of DST, then health-wise it is best to have Standard
| Time year-round:
|
| > _As an international organization of scientists dedicated
| to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the
| Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged
| experts in the field to write a Position Paper on the
| consequences of choosing to live on DST or Standard Time
| (ST). The authors take the position that, based on
| comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on
| western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages
| of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or
| permanently._
|
| * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198
| 541...
|
| For a longer-read, referencing quite a bit of academic
| literature, but a conclusionary snippet:
|
| > _In summary, the scientific literature strongly argues
| against the switching between DST and Standard Time and
| even more so against adopting DST permanently. The latter
| would exaggerate all the effects described above /beyond/
| the simple extension of DST from approximately 8
| months/year to 12 months/year (depending on country) since
| /body clocks/ are generally even later during winter than
| during the long photoperiods of summer (with DST)
| (Kantermann et al., 2007; Hadlow et al., 2014, 2018;
| Hashizaki et al., 2018). Perennial DST increases SJL
| prevalence even more, as described above._
|
| * https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0
| 094...
|
| Other position papers that I've dug up over the years when
| curiosity got the better of me:
|
| > _Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) is
| dedicated to advancing rigorous, peer-reviewed science and
| evidence-based policies related to sleep and circadian
| biology._
|
| * https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/
|
| * (refs, with pro and con): https://srbr.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/DST-References-S...
|
| European Sleep Research Society:
|
| * https://esrs.eu/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...
|
| American Academy of Sleep Medicine (with 36 footnotes if
| you want to dig further):
|
| * https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780
|
| * https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8780
|
| The Centre for Chronobiology, based at the Psychiatric
| University Hospital (University of Basel):
|
| * http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...
|
| * http://www.chronobiology.ch/
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It's bad enough as it is in the northern latitudes where you
| wake up at about 5:15AM in June because the sun is already
| pretty bright. Keeping it on standard time would mean waking
| up at 4:15AM. Also, it's nice having more daylight after
| work.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot depends on where you live. In Boston which is fairly
| northernly by US standards and very far east in a time zone,
| for example, staying on Eastern Standard Time year round
| would mean it's sunrise at about 4AM on the summer solstice
| and it gets dark at 8:30pm rather than 9:30pm like today.
|
| Now, these days, I have a lot of schedule flexibility and at
| least for activities I'm doing on my own I could just get up
| earlier in the summer. I'll be a bit out of sync with
| business schedules but I could largely do it.
| ISL wrote:
| That way noon has the sun at zenith, which makes sense.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I don't think it ultimately matters. Shifting the schedule
| forward or backwards doesn't change the fact that the students
| will only have so many hours in the day. The only way to give
| more time to students is to cut school shorter. That's to say
| nothing for the students who would feel compelled to
| immediately fill that time with another extra-curricular.
|
| IMHO what would help is colleges putting a stop to the resume-
| padding they implicitly encourage students to do to gain an
| edge on their peers for acceptance.
| sokoloff wrote:
| When elite colleges get 15-20 applicants for every student
| they admit, how would you propose they implement this? Roll a
| d20, score a critical hit, get into Harvard?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Just cap the criteria they consider for entry and lottery
| the qualifying applicants on in.
|
| That's basically how it works now anyway.
| PLenz wrote:
| Yes, that's EXACTLY how it should work. Lottery
| sokoloff wrote:
| Prediction if Harvard did that: Within two years, Harvard
| gets 100+ applicants for every spot. 10 years later:
| Harvard is no longer considered elite (or Harvard after
| Class of 2030 is no longer considered elite).
|
| That outcome might be aligned with your goals; it's
| probably not aligned with Harvard's goals nor that of
| their alumni.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Here 's an idea - let students (and parents) sleep for an
| additional hour rather than make them wake up before the crack
| of dawn for no reason._
|
| Turns out that that doing just this has quantifiable
| benefits[1].
|
| [1] " _Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and
| attendance with later school start time, researchers find_ ":
| https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/12/12/high-school-start...
| hammock wrote:
| Here's an argument for DST I haven't seen yet - circadian
| rhythms. Forget about "maximizing daylight."
|
| Your circadian rhythm is actually
| mediated/regulated/communicated to every cell in your body by
| a diurnal oscillation of YOUR BODY TEMPERATURE, which is
| coolest around 3am and warmest around 3pm.
|
| These times just so happen to correspond with the times of
| coolest and hottest surface air temperatures on earth - and
| it's not a coincidence that our bodies evolved that way.
|
| Now, in the summer, the hottest time of the day is actually
| LATER than it is in the winter, since the sun spends more
| time in the sky and the earth has more time to heat up. So it
| makes sense to align our circadian rhythms with that by
| springing forward one hour before summer, and then falling
| back one hour before winter - when the hottest time of day
| starts to edge earlier.
| stormbrew wrote:
| All of this is extremely dependent on latitude so if you
| _actually_ wanted a system that accounted for it it would
| have to be a lot more complicated than wide vertical bands
| that go from basically the tropic to the pole.
|
| Where I live these things vary by a lot more than an hour,
| so DST has a meaningful effect on any of these supposed
| benefits for about, if I'm being generous, 2-3 weeks a
| year. It's silly.
| kcanini wrote:
| That is the whole point of DST, although many people seem
| not to realize it. It allows us to wake up around sunrise
| all year long, which is our bodies' natural tendency.
|
| Another thing nobody seems to realize is that we've already
| tried this experiment once before, and it was an utter
| failure. Quoting Wikipedia:
|
| Permanent DST in the US was briefly enacted by President
| Nixon in 1974, in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The
| proposal was initially supported by an estimated 79% of the
| public; that support dropped to 42% after its first winter,
| owing to the harshness of dark winter mornings that
| permanent DST creates. An estimated six school children
| were also killed by motorists due to the new law. The new
| permanent DST law was retracted within the year.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in
| _...
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _" Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and
| attendance with later school start time, researchers find"_
|
| But that's relative to the clock, and where the clock is
| relative to daylight hours has no relevance.
| xeonoex wrote:
| I think it's mostly the teachers and the administrators who
| advocate for the earlier times. Well, that and parents who
| drop off their kids before work. A later start would be great
| for students.
| aksss wrote:
| Work schedules would have to change. Schools are basically
| a child care service with varying qualities of value-add
| education thrown in. Maybe after a year of WFH being
| normalized, companies will be more accepting of flexible
| schedules.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Work schedules would not need to change if one salary
| would be all you need to support a family. This world
| we've raised for ourselves was underpinned by a primary
| wage earner, and a primary homemaker. We even used to
| subsidize homemaking. We've gone backwards all in the
| name of progress.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Dual-income households were always a thing, even in the
| most gender-restrictive days of the 1950s. The idea that
| one male breadwinner would provide for a whole household
| was always an upper-middle-class fantasy.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Dual-income households were always a thing, even in the
| most gender-restrictive days of the 1950s. The idea that
| one male breadwinner would provide for a whole household
| was always an upper-middle-class fantasy.
|
| Source? because this isn't my partner's experience. Her
| grand parents owned a house, cars and raised more than 5
| kids on a single factory worker salary. It would be just
| impossible nowadays in most of the west.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Well, maybe, but many parents would probably both work
| anyways because they would be competing with other dual
| income family units for housing, schooling and other cost
| intensive resources.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _We 've gone backwards all in the name of progress._
|
| It's not done in the name of progress, it's done in the
| name of profitability.
|
| The rate of profit and worker productivity are at all
| time highs, but who benefits? Worker compensation has
| been stagnant and decoupled from profitability and
| productivity increases for close to five decades now.
| Even engineer compensation hasn't kept up with
| productivity, inflation and cost of living increases.
| polyomino wrote:
| Single parent household needs to be a supported scenario
| for public services.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I agree with that as well. Supporting single parent
| families can be much cheaper in the long run.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Feminism did advocate for compensation for unpaid
| domestic labor. I'll use the terms domestic duties and
| domestic labor to cover this work, but it includes being
| a mother/father, chef, teacher, landscaper, nurse,
| butler, cleaner, farmer, and more.
|
| When a child is involved some of this labor is optional
| for a woman and others are mostly not, from a biological
| perspective.
|
| The domestic labor at home has always been necessary for
| survival but now and before (in the USA) it's been
| uncompensated for. Its great importance in the world is
| completely unvalued by capitalism, which led to women
| getting the worst of it all. Now we've turned to
| capitalism to correct the problem by bringing women into
| the workforce where they still face biases, have unfair
| compensation, and in the vast majority of cases
| ultimately work for an overwhelmingly male board of
| directors. The absolutely most successful women may
| achieve a board seat or a position as a director, but
| obviously this will continue to be unsuccessful in
| eliminating inequality for both sexes. For the embrace of
| capitalism by both sexes, we've now begun to neglect the
| important domestic duties because as before they go
| uncompensated. Some will substitute nannies, day cares,
| and cleaning crews, if they are able, but most dual
| income households will not be able to afford an equal
| level of care as would be common if one adult stayed
| home.
|
| Furthermore, the jobs in the current economy, even at the
| higher levels, are largely bullshit unfulfilling labors
| that neither men or women look forward to. Their work is
| decoupled from any owned capital, which is now owned by
| corporations, and their continued livelihood is dependent
| on the success of the larger corporate body, and the
| profits of the elites. It's less of a choice to join the
| economy as a worker than it is a survival need.
|
| The recent COVID legislation passed does actually begin
| to address the issue some by including compensation and
| tax credits for children. This is a large change, but
| monetarily not a big amount. We will see if that has any
| effects on the broader economy and people's need to work.
| tempestn wrote:
| That assumes one parent from each family wants to forego
| a career to focus entirely on raising kids though.
| hctaw wrote:
| Those families shouldn't have children then.
|
| I know that borders on callousness, and obviously I don't
| think we shouldn't take care of single parent households
| that don't have an option or that the child tax credit
| shouldn't be high enough so kids don't go hungry. Just if
| you reduce this to the choice to have a child and a lack
| of outlying circumstances, you shouldn't have a kid if
| you don't have someone ready to take care of them and the
| freedom to make that choice.
| bigethan wrote:
| If they both want to work, then child care should be
| affordable for the dual income family. Generally it's not
| which is why schools are required to fill that care gap
| and be in sync with working hours.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| There's a bit of a math problem there, though. It's hard
| to make things work out so that the child care is
| affordable for the parents, the teachers get reasonable
| compensation, _and_ you 're meeting reasonable (and,
| depending on where you are, legal) standards for child-
| caregiver ratios.
|
| Doubly so if "affordable for the parents" means
| "affordable for parents who are in the same income
| bracket as your average pre school teacher."
|
| Source: I've served on the board of a day care.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is where subsidies or government programs should
| come in to patch over where the market fails to meet
| families' needs.
| tempestn wrote:
| True, although kids are only of childcare age for a few
| years, so if all adults share the cost burden of
| childcare for everyone throughout their working lives
| rather than just paying for their own needs for a few
| years, the math works out a lot easier. (IE, childcare
| paid or subsidized by the government.)
|
| The other piece of the puzzle though is that there need
| to be sufficient providers, which can't happen
| instantaneously. So you'd have to scale up such an
| initiative in a sensible way.
| watwut wrote:
| This wouldn also imply return to same domestic violence
| rates as used to be, because half population would be
| dependent again with no power to change own situation.
| Even currently the rates of it goes up and down with who
| is getting jobs.
|
| Also, there are other reasons why the situation you
| desribes as ideal sparked the protests back then - for
| many people ir was unhappy unsatisfying sitiation.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Being completely dependent on another to be able to live
| your life can lead to all kinds of abuse.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Alternatively, let both parents work, have careers, and
| be theoretically capable of supporting themselves
| independently, and also reduce the minimum number of
| hours people are expected to work in a week in order for
| it to count as a "real" job, so that both parents are
| also able to spend adequate time with their families.
|
| I'd like to see some change, but I'm not sure that just
| going back to some version of how it was done when my
| generation was young necessarily counts as progress.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I used to tutor at a Boys & Girls Club in a _very_ low-
| income area in Massachusetts. The way they assign
| students to schools is weird (at least to me, I didn't
| grow up here). Students need to apply, even to public
| schools, and they're offered spots through some
| combination of lottery, location, and grades /test
| scores. One of the girls I tutored went to a school that
| was pretty far away from her home - something like a 90
| minute bus ride thanks to traffic. When I asked her about
| how she ended up at a school so far away she casually
| explained that her parents had to be at work early so she
| had to go to a school where she'd get on the bus as early
| as possible. It broke my heart.
| mattmanser wrote:
| I had a 70-80 minute bus ride every day for 7 years,
| while pretty annoying, I wouldn't call it "heart-
| breaking". You did homework, read books, listened to
| music, etc. It was just a thing you did.
|
| As a kid, it just was.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Sure, and I'n glad that worked out for you, but we have a
| lot of research suggesting that early wake up times are
| detrimental to outcomes for a lot of students.
| plank_time wrote:
| Later drop offs would be exceedingly difficult for lower
| income families because their schedules are fixed and not
| as flexible as higher income jobs. I think permanent DST is
| a long time coming, but after the pandemic, it's clear the
| lack of flexibility that lower income families face.
| VLM wrote:
| Earlier times are for high school sports competitions.
|
| Everyone has to get up early all year, so the track team
| does not have to stay up late a couple times per year.
| Well, also football, basketball, etc
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| After a study with the same findings came out the school
| district my son was in changed it's start time. To an earlier
| start time. This is in Texas so not surprising.
| JDulin wrote:
| It's not for "no reason" - Public education's primary purpose
| in the United States, other than indoctrination, is daycare for
| the workforce.
|
| So school must start early enough parents can get children to
| school before heading to their jobs.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Before school programs exist. Daycare exists. School does not
| need to start early enough for parents to get children off to
| school first. Folks working retail, in factories, and in
| health care deal with this all the time.
| vmception wrote:
| In my area this was actually a logistical thing. Other schools
| in the area bussed children at different hours.
|
| I don't think people are considering this reality in this
| debate.
|
| I am not advocating for anything.
| Retric wrote:
| Adding more buss drivers is relatively cheap. Bussing is ~3%
| of the total cost of primary school.
| garmaine wrote:
| One bus can't be in two places at once, no matter how many
| drivers you have.
| Retric wrote:
| That 3% already includes busses, maintenance, fuel etc.
| garmaine wrote:
| Amortized. If you wanted to double the bus fleet at once,
| that would be a heck of a budgetary challenge.
| Retric wrote:
| The physical buss represents ~1 year worth of the cost of
| bussing students up front. Financing that isn't a major
| issue for most local governments.
|
| Again assuming there is some net benefit to the economy
| to offset this cost.
| notJim wrote:
| I don't know if this is still happening, but there have
| definitely been issues with bus driver shortages.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-28/there-
| s-a...
| [deleted]
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Other schools in the area bussed children at different
| hours.
|
| Do you mean other schools in your school district or schools
| in other districts?
| baron816 wrote:
| Yeah, what's stopping schools from having their own
| "DST/Standard Time" switch. Schools should set their hours
| according to what makes sense for students. We don't need the
| whole country to set its clock around students.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if part of what drives school start
| times to be earlier is the prevalence of dual income
| households, where both parents need to get to work, and
| (particularly with younger children) children need to be
| cared for.
|
| This brings to mind my own memories of childhood; I have a
| sense leftover from that that afternoon daycare is relatively
| common, but early morning daycare perhaps less so?
| sokoloff wrote:
| If elementary schools changed schedules by an hour, some
| parents of elementary school kids would need to change their
| schedule by an hour as well. When the whole society does this
| all at once, the individual parents/coworkers/bosses don't
| have to negotiate or coordinate anything; it "just happens".
| Spartan-S63 wrote:
| Exactly. We, the people, need to exert back pressure on a
| deeply flawed system to force it to happen. Such a change
| wouldn't be nearly as problematic if union membership, for
| example, was widespread.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How does union membership help align a work team that
| needs two members for a team job (for task-related or
| safety-related reasons) and exactly one of the two needs
| to change schedules because their kid's school changed
| schedule by an hour?
| sjg007 wrote:
| A lot of elementary schools have before and after school
| programs so it'll be a mixed bag.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| If we switch to permanent DST, and the whole of society
| compensates by setting schedules back an hour, all we've
| done is create de-facto permanent standard time. That's the
| best-case scenario.
|
| I have a better idea. Let's just actually switch to
| permanent standard time, so we don't have to _hope_ that
| society shakes itself out.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I highly doubt that would actually happen, though. During
| the last year, we've encouraged folks to work at home and
| schools have been closed. Yet those folks that work retail
| or healthcare or factories still had to go to work like
| normal. Considering how much of the population that covers,
| I highly doubt folks would be changing their schedules.
|
| After all, if one group of folks can figure out how to work
| around the change, there is no reason for everyone else to
| need changes.
| Arubis wrote:
| IIRC, parents--particularly parents with younger kids. The
| highschoolers need (in their view) to be home earlier than
| the middle- and elementary schoolers to be the responsible
| party so the parents can come home at the end of the workday.
|
| The problem is deeply structural.
| watwut wrote:
| Where do highschoolers end school sooner then elementary?
| pionar wrote:
| All over the place. When I was in school, the same buses
| that serviced the high schools also serviced the
| elementary schools. So the high school students would get
| picked up, and then the elementary kids would be next
| after that.
| watwut wrote:
| Highschoolers here all use public transport. They have
| more classes then small kids.
|
| Small kids have few classes and before/after optional
| program that basically do childcare for parents. They are
| free to go much sooner. Many of them come in and out by
| public transport too.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Suburban Chicago, at least 15 years ago. I'd get home ~30
| minutes before my siblings and I'd keep an eye on them
| until my mom came home.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Interestingly enough, it was the exact opposite when I was
| in high school. Elementary got out at about 2:45, middle
| around 3:15, and HS at 4:20. I was very appreciative of our
| 9:05 start time.
| djrogers wrote:
| This has never been the case anywhere I've gone to school -
| outside of special classes, every school got out at the
| same time.
|
| That said, there'd be nothing to prevent a school district
| from adjusting _both_ school times if local parents
| demanded this be accommodated.
| jeffchien wrote:
| Some school districts are K-8 or 9-12 only, which I've
| experienced myself. Taking California as an example: http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_districts_in_Ca.
| ..
|
| > In California there are 560 Elementary districts, 87
| High School districts, 330 Unified districts.
|
| (I do think that this isn't a great argument against
| switching to DST permanently. I think if this was
| legislated then the school districts would just adapt
| now, especially since a significant chunk of students are
| still doing remote learning.)
| hc-taway wrote:
| Sports are another big reason parents want older kids to
| get to school earlier than younger kids (as they can't take
| everyone at once, or else you need way more busses)--longer
| daylight hours after school for practice. Any attempt to
| change the schedule to get older kids to school later and
| younger ones earlier, will run into _strong_ resistance
| from Sports Parents(tm), no matter the benefits to health
| or academics.
|
| ("why don't they just have the sports teams do one short
| practice in the morning, and one short practice in the
| afternoon?" 1. some of them actually do that already,
| despite the crazy-early school start time, and 2. for the
| less-insanely-dedicated sports that can't rely on parents
| to drop all the team members off before school, you'd need
| to run extra busses just for the sports kids, if they're
| showing up earlier than everyone else, and 3. Depending on
| the sport, one long practice is better and/or a lot more
| convenient than two short ones)
| slg wrote:
| >"why don't they just have the sports teams do one short
| practice in the morning, and one short practice in the
| afternoon?"
|
| Another reason is that most older kids don't want to be
| covered in sweat for their entire high school career and
| having kids communally shower at school is seemingly
| something that is rightfully being phased out.
| bsder wrote:
| > having kids communally shower at school is seemingly
| something that is rightfully being phased out.
|
| For a sports team, that seems silly.
|
| Most sports have enough weird contact that the showers
| are probably the least of the problems.
|
| Now, if you want to argue that sports, in general, and
| school should be separate, I'm all ears.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Schools also have to take bus schedules into account. A
| district with elementary / middle / and high school will have
| 3 separate bus schedules if there's enough population.
|
| My 8 year old nephews' school day doesn't begin until 9:40,
| but it ends after 5pm and allows very little sunlight for
| play time in the evenings. I know that when I was that age, I
| was far more concerned about being able to go out and play
| than whether the sun was up when I got up.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > We don't need the whole country to set its clock around
| students.
|
| Don't we, though? Parents have jobs, jobs have schedules, and
| those schedules need to be coordinated with school drop-off
| and pickup times.
| stouset wrote:
| And if it's functionally impossible for the overwhelming
| majority of employed adults who are parents to meet those
| schedules due to school times being shifted... businesses
| will either adapt their schedules to meet the new reality
| or they'll fire 75%+ of their staff.
|
| I know which one I'd bet on.
| joezydeco wrote:
| It's a great idea, and would work fine for younger kids. High
| school kids with after-school jobs and sports might find a
| conflict, though.
|
| I'm in the camp of "seriously, fuck high school sports"
| because entire districts bend their will and finances to
| support football programs (other sports? what other sports?)
| to the detriment of everyone else in the school.
|
| But that POV is spitting into the wind. And god help you if
| you're in a smaller area where high school sports are the
| entire social center of the community.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > makes it hard on school children and parents who have to wait
| at the bus stop in dark hours of the morning
|
| I can't even understand what is 'hard' about it?
| drtz wrote:
| Adding adequate street lighting near bus stops really isn't
| that hard.
| belltaco wrote:
| Possibility of crimes in dark hours in crime-prone regions?
| It's hard to imagine if you don't experience it where you
| live.
| leetcrew wrote:
| is the one time of the day when every child and parent on
| the street is standing outside together really the best
| time to commit a crime, dark or otherwise?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| It's a bizarre "con": Pros: better health, less accidents
| fewer deaths during the switch, etc. Cons: it's "hard" on
| some kids and parents to wait for the bus in the dark which
| they already do anyway, just now it's for a few more weeks.
|
| Seems a no brainer.
| croes wrote:
| Con: more accidents in winter time because it's harder to
| become awake if it's still dark than stay awake if ut
| becomes dark. More accidents of children if they have to
| walk to school or the bus. The pros refer only to the
| elimination of the switch but not to the permanent
| implementation of the DST. Standard Time would be the
| better choice.
| cafard wrote:
| Montgomery County, Maryland, is quite prosperous, but wishes
| its school buses to make more than two runs per day. So the
| high school students are out at the curb early in the
| morning, since nobody wants the elementary school students
| out in half-light. The high school students--who would prefer
| to sleep in--are groggy from lack of sleep, the elementary
| school students--who wake early--have an extra hour at home
| to do nothing in particular. I don't know what the story is
| with the middle school kids.
|
| I commuted to college long ago one winter with DST. I did not
| enjoy it. I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed it even living on
| campus.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > since nobody wants the elementary school students out in
| half-light
|
| Lol why? What do they think happens at half-light?
| eMSF wrote:
| Just so I understand what you're saying: we should first move
| the clocks an hour ahead (permanently), then delay our
| schedules an hour, then ???, and then, I guess, profit?
|
| How exactly does this differ from not moving the clocks an hour
| ahead permanently and not delaying our schedule for the day for
| an hour?
| paxys wrote:
| This problem (if it even is a problem) affects a small number
| of students in a handful of regions in the country.
| Individual schools/school districts are free to come up with
| their own personalized solutions. There is no reason to
| involve the other 95% of the population in this game.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| If schools want to start at 8am instead of 7am in the
| winter, then they should just do that.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| There are 70+ million children in US, so at least 70+
| million parents affected by this "game". That would be half
| of the working population of 150MM.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Is changing the definition of the hours the best way to
| solve this problem though? It seems tangentially related
| at best.
| paxys wrote:
| Not all children are of school going age. Not all parents
| work strict 8am-5pm office jobs. Some schools/school
| districts already start late. A large chunk of the
| country doesn't have problems with daylight because of
| location.
|
| My overall point is - the equations of labor,
| electricity, fuel, school, daycare, geographical times
| and more are complex enough in this country today that it
| is okay to let individual schools/offices etc. pick what
| timings best work for them rather than artificially
| trying to fit everyone in the same mold.
| poopypoopington wrote:
| You have more daylight in the evening and can actually have
| some time to enjoy said daylight rather than spending the
| entire day indoors and going home when it's dark out.
| baron816 wrote:
| Just abolish time altogether
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in
| the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be
| he who has stalled The battle outside ragin' Will soon shake your
| windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'
|
| Hehe
| FunnyLookinHat wrote:
| For the sake of every parent of a child under the age of 5 -
| please pass this. Twice a year we have to spend an entire week
| slowly shifting sleep schedules in the hopes of a successful
| switch. :)
| thehappypm wrote:
| This would benefit the Northeast quite a lot.
|
| Assume that your average adult works 9-5, and your average school
| child is in school 8-3. Broad strokes, these are the two groups
| to focus on. I know most adults commute earlier than 9, and most
| students are up earlier than 8, but it's safe to say that most
| Americans are up-and-at-'em from 8-5.
|
| On the shortest day of the year in Boston, sunrise is at 7:10am
| and sunset is at 4:14PM. Including civil twilight ("it's still
| kind of daytime") extends it to 6:38am to 4:46PM.
|
| Even on the shortest day of the year, if you wake up even before
| 7 you're waking up in daylight. But, sunset is super early. Every
| working adult is commuting home in actual nighttime.
|
| Shift that forward 1 hour, and it gets light at 7:30AM and gets
| dark at 5:45PM. While slightly darker for students in the
| morning, it's immensely better for working adults, who at least
| get some daylight in the evenings, and not actual nighttime
| before 5PM.
| 3JPLW wrote:
| Benefits are highly regional. Where I live, the current latest
| sunrise is 8:06 am on December 5. I can't imagine a sunrise
| after 9am being very fun.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Agreed. I bet a lot of places would simply switch timezones
| if DST was removed.
| stevehawk wrote:
| and it would absolutely F the state of Indiana. We'd have to
| switch time zones.
| eholk wrote:
| Would that mean Indiana goes back to the way they were before
| they started doing Daylight Savings Time?
| mfer wrote:
| What interests me the most about this is that the times people
| use for work and school are set while the way we relate time to
| the cycle of the sun is the thing we want to change.
| treyfitty wrote:
| It's probably easier to change behavior that's arbitrarily
| done twice a year (changing clocks) than to change
| institutions (schools, corporations)
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've always found it hilarious that we consider the 5PM end of
| work day so fundamental, constant and unchangeable that
| changing every clock in the country twice a year is easier to
| do.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Another added benefit is getting sunshine/vitamin D during
| these 'newly found' daylight hours. This will lead to people
| not having as severe colds/flu symptoms, and more time being
| outside which leads to better general health altogether. I
| really hope this passes.
| teeray wrote:
| This would be such a boon for skiing in the Northeast. At some
| ski areas, the sun doesn't strike the ground until 10am
| (because mountains cast shadows). It would be brighter during
| the best skiing of the day. Also, by 4p the Apres Ski scene is
| well underway, so the setting sun would probably help that
| along further.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > "Sunshine Protection Act"
|
| Gag me with a token ring card. I hate these bill names, if for no
| other reason than it introduces severe bias in voting. Anybody
| voting against this now hates sunshine, freedom, etc.
|
| That said, I'm eager for this to pass so I never have to deal
| with a time change again.
| wjamesg wrote:
| I totally agree
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| Welcome to modern discourse. Think that some of the things the
| BLM organization stands for are detestable? Congratulations!
| You're now a racist bigot, because you don't believe that Black
| lives matter.
|
| EDIT: The flagging of this comment only proved my point.
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| I agree, but branding for bills is an important part. For
| example, "The Patriot Act" sounds better than "Spying on
| Citizens Act"
| lsllc wrote:
| Reminds me of the story from Australia about the former
| Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's arguments that the
| curtains will fade due to the extra hour of sunlight:
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/academic-battles-for-qld-day...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Deep down, he did realize that changing the clocks doesn't
| change the amount of daylight..right?
| soVeryTired wrote:
| But it would change the times people have their curtains
| closed.
|
| (Not that I think it's a particularly good argument. And
| no, I'm not in the pocket of Big Curtain)
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| You never new with Joh - he also backed a "hydrogen car"
| with doubtful claims [1 - pdf], the government ended with a
| number of criminal charges for ministers and Joh himself.
|
| [1] https://www.skeptics.com.au/wp-
| content/uploads/magazine/The%...
| exabrial wrote:
| Like ISA or SFP? Two totally different levels of effort.
|
| PS I hate sunshine.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Hold the vampire, bring garlic !
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > PS I hate sunshine
|
| Likewise. The only good weather is whatever obscures the
| giant, glowy, migraine-inducing, cancer ball in the sky.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I can't help but notice the "Sunshine Protection Act" was
| sponsored by a senator (Marco Rubio) from Florida, the official
| nickname of which is "the Sunshine State."
|
| I suspect the bill's name was purposely chosen to subtly
| suggest it protects Florida during the next election cycle.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Either Marco Rubio is playing some kind of 10d chess in the
| hopes of subconsciously suggesting to all 8 people that will
| actually look at his policy record that he is protecting
| Florida, or the bill is intended to make daylight savings
| time permanent. To tell you the truth, I favor the latter
| interpretation.
| ghaff wrote:
| I suppose you could argue over whether ST or DST is
| "better" for Florida; you could probably make the argument
| either way. But certainly in the states in the southern US,
| it likely makes more sense to pick a time zone and stick
| with it.
| ironmagma wrote:
| They should just name bills like they name cloud servers. Vote
| yes on mystical-quagmire-cheesepuff!
| caseyw wrote:
| I'd vote for anything named mystical-quagmire-cheesepuff.
| rglover wrote:
| You joke but this is a great idea.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| No it's absolutely not a great idea.
| junon wrote:
| You must not like awkward, magical balls of fermented
| milk.
| siltpotato wrote:
| You're probably downvoted because you didn't explain. I
| will provide the explanation you've probably got in mind:
| random Github repo style names look frivolous and
| unbecoming. Is that right?
| zeta0134 wrote:
| I don't even particularly care if we standardize on DST or non-
| DST. Just... _pick one._ The constant clock changing is silly.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| As a night owl, I prefer DST. But PST would work too. Just please
| get rid of the time change.
| gh123man wrote:
| DST has become my favorite "holiday" as an adult. Seasonal
| depression evaporates when I can see the sun after I finish
| working for the day. I can go work in my yard, or wash my car
| after work instead of having to cram it in the middle of the day.
| I feel more motivated to go do other things in the evening
| instead of feeling like its time for bed at 5pm.
| ijidak wrote:
| Lol. So I'm not the only one!
|
| I tell people, Daylight Savings in March is my favorite day of
| the year.
|
| I hate that in the part of year we need daylight the most we
| give up more daylight?!?!?
|
| We now have electricity and few of us need to milk cows or plow
| fields.
|
| The 8-5 for us is stationary.
|
| It is never enjoyable to leave the inside of a building
| (factory or office) in darkness. Unless you just finished the
| night shift, I guess ..
|
| I'll let the politicians decide what they want to do, but I
| know I'll never fully understand why we take away evening
| sunlight with our stationary 8-5.
| ghaff wrote:
| The switch to DST for me is something along the lines of:
| "I've been noticing how it's getting measurably lighter in
| the evenings and now it's _really_ light. "
|
| (Of course, ST is the opposite effect.) I care less about
| light in the morning as I tend not to be a particular early
| bird and where I live it's pretty dark first thing in the
| morning even with ST.
| phaedryx wrote:
| I grew up around farms and farmers. I never understood how
| DST was supposed to benefit them. The farm animals can't read
| a clock, they just follow their circadian rhythms and the
| farmers follow suit.
| pwg wrote:
| It did not. That was a marketing excuse that was fed to the
| city dwellers.
|
| The farm animals do not understand the "time of day" on a
| human clock, so the farm work occurs around the animals
| rhythms, not the "clock on the wall". Moving the time of
| day backwards or forwards just changes what number is on
| the clock face when the cows are ready to be milked.
| aksss wrote:
| Counterintuitively, I believe increased sunshine is more
| associated with depression and suicide than decreasing amounts
| of it. Suicides are higher in the spring and early summer than
| in the fall and winter. It's speculated that the increasing
| light may screw with sleep patterns more than decreasing
| amounts of light. Not claiming to understand it, but studies in
| multiple countries across the hemispheres seem to show the same
| pattern.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| The same could be achieved by having different work hours in
| different seasons, no need to change the underlying metric of
| time to achieve this.
|
| It's as if we redefined the density of water in winter so when
| you measure a frozen container of it the different volume
| yields the same weight.
|
| It might have made sense when there was a single clock in a
| whole village!
|
| But now with the planet probably containing 10x as many clocks
| as humans this is just complete lunacy.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Honestly, you're absolutely right. But we don't get to decide
| between a permanent DST and a unified switchover of business
| hours across the nation, we get to decide between a permanent
| DST and the crappy situation we have now. I, for one, would
| be measurably happier if I had more daytime after 5, because
| getting one bill passed is a whole lot easier than convincing
| every single scheduling body that has power over me to switch
| on a seasonal basis.
| saalweachter wrote:
| > It's as if we redefined the density of water in winter so
| when you measure a frozen container of it the different
| volume yields the same weight.
|
| Oddly, this is exactly how the US "bushel" was defined -- it
| measures a mass of a specific type of grain at a particular
| moisture content, the idea being that the "quantity" of grain
| shouldn't change as it is dried.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| The density of water is also temperature-dependent :)
|
| My point is that the chain of determining the measurement
| of a natural value should start at the value, not at what
| we want it to be to then bend the value over backwards to
| be that then.
|
| So the example doesn't fall apart with a
| temperature-/moisture-dependent constant:
|
| The point is that the constant should not be arbitrarily
| changed to achieve a desired value. The constant should be
| measured/defined and stay as such.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >The same could be achieved by having different work hours in
| different seasons, no need to change the underlying metric of
| time to achieve this.
|
| This is a mere pipe dream. Business aren't going to change
| their hours to different seasons. It would be much easier to
| just stay on DST then try and coerce business to change their
| employee hours based off the season.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| The shock to our circadian rhythm, which would occur
| equally regardless of whether due to seasonal DST or due to
| seasonal 1-hour modifications to business hours, is
| responsible for loss of productivity/profitability/etc.
|
| But businesses can elect to smear their seasonal
| modifications with any granularity they want, avoiding
| severe shock to circadian rhythm, thus avoiding the
| financial hit!
|
| I guess DST could theoretically smear as well, but that is
| way more difficult for people to wrap their heads around.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Why are business hours so unchangeable? People seem to just
| take this as a given, like the God Of Business carved 9-5
| on a stone tablet.
| ctdonath wrote:
| DST drives me nuts. Just as spring morning light finally
| brightens the start of my day, it gets plunged back into
| darkness. Light persists into evening when dusk should be
| persuading all to bed.
|
| And coding embedded systems to handle DST edge cases just gets
| obnoxious when unnecessary.
|
| You want to shift your hours? Adjust your own schedule, don't
| demand imposing a change that disrupts mine.
| lproberts wrote:
| I agree with this. DST also ruins the summer evenings,
| because you have to wait too long until the sky turns into
| that beautiful dark blue before getting entirely dark.
| Breefield wrote:
| Here is the link to the actual bill. I have it bookmarked
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/69?s...
| gegtik wrote:
| Has anyone considered how many IT systems are going to need to be
| updated to account for this change? This is a little Y2k IT
| bubble waiting to happen.
|
| If this is proactively folded into overhauling systems for the
| 2038 problem I could stomach it
| erichurkman wrote:
| This happened in 2005 when the federal government changed the
| start & end dates of DST.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Chan...
| mattmanser wrote:
| This happens all the time. Governments regularly change DST
| start dates with little to no warning.
|
| If you think this is a problem, you don't deal with dates.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Time zone updates happen all the time. The latest version was
| released in January: https://www.iana.org/time-zones
| shmerl wrote:
| Dropping the switch itself is a good idea. But to which one to
| stick to is more moot.
| SloopJon wrote:
| The first few articles I could find on this topic neglected to
| identify the senators co-sponsoring the bill. Here's a list from
| boston.cbslocal.com:
|
| * Roy Blunt (R-MO)
|
| * Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
|
| * James Lankford (R-OK)
|
| * Ed Markey (D-MA)
|
| * Marco Rubio (R-FL)
|
| * Rick Scott (R-FL)
|
| * Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
|
| * Ron Wyden (D-OR)
|
| Wikipedia has some history on similar, short-lived efforts in the
| past:
|
| > Seasonal observation of DST was first enacted in the US during
| World Wars I and II, as an attempt conserve fuel. The practice
| was unpopular and promptly repealed after each war; however,
| lobbyists from the petroleum industry lobbied to restore DST, as
| they had noticed it actually increased fuel consumption.
|
| > Permanent DST in the US was briefly enacted by President Nixon
| in 1974, in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The proposal was
| initially supported by an estimated 79% of the public; that
| support dropped to 42% after its first winter, owing to the
| harshness of dark winter mornings that permanent DST creates. An
| estimated six school children were also killed by motorists due
| to the new law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_...
|
| On the eastern edge of the enormous Eastern time zone, I'm
| sympathetic to permanent DST, but I'm not sure it's a good idea
| nationwide. I would probably be in favor of the proposed Atlantic
| time zone, though.
| ddlatham wrote:
| Wow that's a huge shift in public support after the experience
| of a single winter. I wonder if we're doomed to repeat it.
| pwg wrote:
| I suspect if this were to go into effect, that yes, after the
| first winter on year-round DST, public opinion about the
| shift will change dramatically in a negative direction.
|
| No one has yet experienced DST in the winter, owing to the
| present practice of shifting to standard time over the winter
| months. The change in morning daylight in the winter months
| will be a big shocker if this is adopted.
| ghaff wrote:
| You're probably right. People at moderate latitudes--say
| 35+ degrees--mostly love their long summer evenings and
| they have tons of light in the morning anyway. And many may
| think they're fine with their cold dark winter mornings
| being a bit colder and darker in exchange for not having a
| time shift (and more light, such as it is, on the other
| end). But they actually aren't.
| ryandrake wrote:
| So tragic that children had to die rather than just changing
| school start times a little later during the winter. People
| were so ridiculously dogmatic about starting at a particular
| number that lives were lost. Insane.
| lowercased wrote:
| Gear everybody up to split the difference and at one point, push
| the time either 30 minutes forward or back, and be done with it,
| forever. Give everyone... 18 months to prepare.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| I'm another in the camp of "Why not standard time?" It seems like
| a lot of experts agree Standard Time is more healthy. Plus two
| whole countries (admittedly in Europe) tried permanent DST and
| either stopped it or flipped to permanent Standard Time. So is
| this just an uninformed position we're pushing forward or is the
| US truly unique?
|
| Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time
| tempestn wrote:
| I support the change, but the timeline seems a bit unrealistic to
| me. There are a lot of systems that will need to be updated to
| not expect time changes, and knowing how long such things tend to
| take, expecting everything to be ready within a few months (minus
| however long the bill actually took to pass) seems unlikely. Plus
| ideally you'd give other jurisdictions like Canada and Mexico a
| chance to see if they want to come along. I'd think planning to
| keep DST in 2022 would be a lot more realistic than planning to
| never change again as of now.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Anyone interested in this topic may enjoy this book:
|
| _Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time_
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1582434956
|
| Alas, there is no Kindle edition nor a "look inside" preview, but
| I found the book very interesting.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Why are we making DST permanent rather than making the standard
| time permanent?
| theodric wrote:
| Light in the evening when you can use it, rather than during
| the day when you're stuck on conference calls.
|
| Also, 'standard' offsets to GMT are fairly arbitrary anyway.
| We're not going to get employers to change operating hours, so
| it's paradoxically simpler to change the hours themselves.
| globular-toast wrote:
| What about all the people who work outside and need sunlight?
| mminer237 wrote:
| People like the sunshine. Getting rid of DST means you're
| always getting off work at 5:00 either in the dark or an hour
| or two before dark. Making it always DST means 5 o'clock will
| be before sunset year-round.
| Zak wrote:
| One thing that comes up every time this is discussed is that it
| has different impacts on people depending on their latitude. A
| solution that does _not_ come up all that often is adding
| latitude-based time zones, and I 'd be interested to read some
| thoughts on it from the HN community.
|
| Edit: as this was ambiguous to at least one commenter, I'm not
| proposing replacing the current longitude-based time zones, but
| splitting them or shifting their boundaries based on latitude.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| So London, England would be in the same timezone as Moosenee,
| Canada and Irkutsk, Russia?
|
| EDIT: This checkerboard would be very difficult to deal with.
| Also, people in northern or southern latitudes are used to
| extremes in day lengths.
|
| But, fundamentally, timezones are so that "noon" is about when
| the sun is overhead for you. People at the same longitude still
| have the same noontime regardless of when the sun rises or
| sets.
| oblio wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding his proposal. He's not
| advocating for <<getting rid>> of longitudinal timezones,
| he's proposing <<adding>> latitudinal timezones.
|
| Timezones now are kind of long lines from pole to pole, he
| wants them to be more like checkerboards. He does have a
| point, the same timezone that's ok at the Equator makes for
| kind of awkward periods of the day around the 50th meridian.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Not the above poster, but I suspect they were referring to
| the fact that in higher latitudes day lengths are affected
| much more by seasonal swings than areas closer to the
| equator. So the reasons for having DST to begin with becomes
| more exaggerated at those latitudes.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I know, I live in Canada. I'm trying to figure out what
| they are proposing.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Not entirely sure what that exactly that would mean
| either.
| Zak wrote:
| No, but Moosonee, Canada might be in a _different_ time zone
| from Key West, FL (they are currently in the same time zone).
| madcaptenor wrote:
| It seems like if you let small enough geographical areas decide
| their own time zones, this should happen naturally. For example
| I could imagine Scotland and England choosing different time
| zones because Scotland, which is further north, might be
| particularly interested in not having winter sunrises be too
| late.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| When I moved to Oregon I was a little surprised at how long the
| evenings were in the summer time and commensurate shortening of
| the day in the winter, but it's only about 20 minutes less
| light in the morning at the worst part of the year.
| staunch wrote:
| This would be great. Could we go so far as to have the entire
| whole world operate on UTC, so we could have an Earth Time?
| wbc wrote:
| agreed! based on the amount of "time" i've wasted converting
| timezones in code, i tell everyone that'd listen we should just
| teach kids to memorize unix timestamps and these problems would
| all go away
| lucasmullens wrote:
| Sounds great in theory, but it becomes too hard to know what
| times are "early" and "late" for people. When telling people
| what time it is, you'd also have to include where you are so
| they know what's early/late, and at that point you've just
| reinvented timezones.
| staunch wrote:
| For the billions of people with smart phones, wouldn't this
| be very easily solved with a default app?
| function_seven wrote:
| Like it is now? Sure. So then what benefit are you looking
| for in changing everyone to UTC?
| makeworld wrote:
| Abolishing time zones has a lot of problems.
|
| https://qntm.org/abolish
| staunch wrote:
| Yeah, of course there are trade offs, and that's not a
| balanced run down of them. Most of the issues raised there
| seem easily addressed in the modern world.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| https://qntm.org/abolish
| breck wrote:
| In Hawai'i time only goes in one direction and it makes life
| easier.
| alborzb wrote:
| > _Our European visitors are important to us. This site is
| currently unavailable to visitors from Europe ..._
|
| Does anybody have an alt mirror for this please? Genuinely
| interested, but can't view the news update from Europe.
| samizdis wrote:
| Here you go: https://archive.is/femP9
|
| A bit disappointing, though. There's not much to the article.
|
| Edited to add: There's more substance in this article in the
| Boston Globe:
|
| https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/10/nation/think-daylight...
| [deleted]
| mdaniel wrote:
| Are they all doing that, or just the one URL in the link?
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sunshine+Protection+Act&iar=news&i...
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