Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

The problem with only having one central clock is that you no longer have relative time. Right now, I can say something like "I woke up at 11am", and you understand what that means, regardless of which timezone I'm in or you're in. It means I woke up late.

But now imagine I said "I woke up at 16:00 Z." That's meaningless without the context of what timezone I'm in. That could be early, it could be late, it could be waking up from a nap in the late afternoon.

If you force people onto centralized time, then they'll still start using arbitrary (and worse) measures of relative time, like they'll say stuff like "I woke up two hours after sunrise".

It is very frustrating to small children who don't understand what is happening, and thus it is also very frustrating to their parents.

Assuming the feds don't change on their end, what's stopping Florida from joining Atlantic Time (and declining D.S.T.)? I looked at 15 USC 261-264 which defines the time zones, but except for some exceptions about Idaho and Texas/Oklahoma, I don't see anything that specifies which zone each state needs to be in (or other geographical specifications)

Nearly good job Florida. I hate DST for personal and professional reasons, but this is a very "Florida" reaction to dealing with this problem.

Except if we did abolish time zones rather than asking Google "what time is it in Melbourne" you ask it "is it the waking hours in Melbourne".

In either case you don't know what time to call Melbourne. You either need to know a complicated and inconsistent system of time zones, or you just ask the same question in terms of when the sun rises and sets. You don't get out of asking a question, you don't lose any information (there is a 1 to 1 equivalence between what time it is somewhere and when its noon there, you could ask either question and have the exact same thought process comparing a time to "safe" hours to call someone).

That article argues that the current system is some miraculous saver of sanity by solving all the problems associated with telling if someone is "awake" or not in a certain time zone. Except I have two cousins, both living in the same time zone, one of which wakes up at 6am and the other wakes up at 4pm.

Also, from personal experience calling people both without and with substantial time zone difference, you never know when its a good time to call someone else. They might have had a long day and took a nap. They might not be home when you think they would be. They might be engaged in an activity they don't want to be distracted from. For practical uses of synchronous communication you need to have agreements on when to call in the first place.

If I'm calling someone I know, its because I know from experience when they are available, relative to my time. It does not matter if they are in Munich or Tokyo or down the street, I need to know in advance their availability for that call regardless of silly contrivances like the culturally normative sleep cycles of the region I'm calling into.

Because at the end of the day, there are still tens of thousands of people in Melbourne working the night shift.