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US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

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Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#221

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

The weirdest thing about DST is that from what I recall of history, it came about at a time when unions were pretty strong. I don't know why the unions didn't just insist on getting off an hour early at a certain time of year.

Though it's possible they were the ones paying lobbyists to get it through Congress in the first place. Sometimes paying someone else to do your dirties is the most efficient way.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#222

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

I think I speak on behalf of most computer people when I say this: we prefer our extra hour of sunshine in the evenings not mornings.

As a computer person, I really could care less when the sunshine is. I prefer my days to be exactly 24 hours. Not 24 hours +/- 1 hour.

Also, where I live there's a max of 16 hours of sunlight, and a min of 8 and a half. In the summer, it doesn't matter what the clock says, it's going to be bright when you wake up and bright when you go to sleep; so much sun. In the winter, it's most likely dark when you get up and dark when you go to bed, not enough sun that fiddling with the clocks is going to be really helpful anyway. Maybe there's a little more twilight in the morning the week after Halloween, and then it's back to morning commute in the dark. And it's pretty chilly, so while sure, I don't want to bike in the dark, I also don't want to bike in the cold, either, even if there is sun.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#223

Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time. There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.

People who live on the eastern extreme of a timezone likely feel quite different than those who live on the western extreme. Boston, MA and Marquette, MI are in the same time zone. Boston's sunset today is 6:51 PM. Marquette's sunset today is 7:55 PM. It's no surprise that residents of each of those cities would have a different view as to "what should we do about DST?"

I agree. I live in Boston and winters are oppressive in large part because sunset is at 4:30 (or earlier). For Boston at least, I strongly feel we should just move to Atlantic time and just bite the bullet on the difficulties this causes with teams elsewhere. This proposal effectively does that for Boston, but I understand why the people of Marquette would be opposed.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#224

We did this before. 46 years ago. And it went badly. https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-sav... Why do we have such short memories?

"WE" didn't do this 46 years ago. I wasn't born then. Hopefully "we" can do a better job of handling the change this time.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#225

Can someone explain why they actually care about this? I always see such strong opinions on it but really, why does it matter to you? Most clocks are digital and change automatically these days and otherwise changing your clocks twice a year is such a minor inconvenience. And whether or not the light should be preferred in the morning or vending is probably a pretty even split. Maybe it’s better to get rid of it (I d…

For 1-2 weeks post-time-change, I used to adjust okay, it was just annoying. But kids and pets have no clue what's going on, and their bodies are basically jolted into a different sleep schedule since society doesn't have any ramp-up/ramp-down into the new hour difference. We have basically been fighting to get our kids up (fighting against their own bodies' sleep schedules and instincts) this week. And when the time…

I propose we add add/subtract a second from every other minute over a 5 day smear.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#226

Obligatory: https://archive.ph/Aro0a Barro is very fond of pointing out that we tried this once in the 1970s and almost immediately rolled it back. Permanent DST means that it's dark between 8-9AM in large swathes of the US. Among other problems, having kids go to school in the dark or twilight hours is unsafe, so schools responded by adjusting their schedules, which is an even bigger problem than DST, because the re…

That doesn't pass the smell test. In my areas different schools start at different times and always have.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#227

People literally die more because of these changes. Statistically measurable increase in mortality on these days. Save lives, stop changing the clocks.

What are the modalities of these deaths? Are they a result of the time change, or are they coincident to the time change?

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#228

More info here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-tha... Important note: "Senator Marco Rubio said after input from airlines and broadcasters that supporters agreed that the change would not take place until November 2023."

No post body was provided.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#229

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. There's a reason why "Standard Time" is called that. Now the words "Midday" and "Midnight" are meaningless. The measurement of time is a science, and science should not be decided by politicians. This seems trivial, but if this, then what next? Edit: I'm getting a lot of replies saying that "midday" isn't precisely the middle of the day, and therefore I am wrong, but even s…

Hate to break it to ya - but midday and midnight are already meaningless ever since we adopted standard timezones.

So basically - since 1883.

Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent

#230

Does this mean that I will no longer be able to smugly remind people that there is only one 's' in "daylight saving time"? It was really the only reason I could see for keeping the biannual time change around.

Now when people write the time in the format 9:00 EST you can smugly correct them that it should always be EDT (for Eastern time zone).
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