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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

#541

This is ridiculous. Why don't they make the regular time permanent? And if people want to have more light in the evening, then they just leave work earlier. Surely that is easier than permanent daylight savings time. I know people will say it's too hard to change habits and (clock) work hours, but with permanent DST you will have to change that anyway, when people realize how dark winter mornings will be. I predict a…

"...then they just leave work earlier."

I don't like when people accuse others of living in a "bubble", but this is a particularly egregious example of being deeply out of touch with the lives of most working people.

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

#542
post #320

My personal pet peeve is when people write the Standard Time acronym when scheduling cross-timezone meetings, despite the fact that it is Daylight Saving Time. (Eg. "I'll call you tomorrow at 4pm PST.") In the past, I've gotten paranoid that they may live somewhere that doesn't observe Daylight Savings, but I also don't want to seem like a pedant by bringing up their mistake. I'm curious if this change will make this…

When there's an obvious reference city for at least one side of the conversation, I just use that. "Talk to you at 3pm [New York, SF, Tokyo] time." Apart from avoiding any possible confusion about what PST/PDT means, this is also less likely to suffer from typos, and it's more likely that the recipient actually reads it and notices any mistakes. Easier for people from different countries too, if they aren't familiar with each other's timezones.

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

#543

Making DST permanent is essentially forcing everyone to wake up earlier in the day. All we're doing is calling 7 am, now 8 am to get people to psychologically accept this. This is a win for morning people who function better earlier... AND this is a loss for all the non-morning people who will now be forced to work, go to school, etc at a time when they don't operate optimally.

I work in another time zone and have to shift my hours pretty aggressively so I get >3 hours sunlight total, most of which happen when I'm working.

No idea why it's preferable to have the sun go down sooner... lol.

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

#545

Watching Americans freak out about post-8AM sunrises is surreal to me. The sun doesn't rise until 8:45 during the darkest times of the year here in the Netherlands and its really not much of an issue. Whether standard time or summer time is the better choice here is something I hold no opinion on, but the sheer hysteria some people here express is very overblown.

I guess you're used to it. Making that change for people who were born and raised in early morning sun will probably not be good for them.

I'm from the Netherlands, and I'll never get used to it.

I don't care about the hour of more or less sleep, I don't even notice it nor do I ever suffer from jet lags.

It's the torturous period from roughly October to March where daylight roughly aligns with the workday or less. Meaning I drive in the dark to work, sit inside all day under artificial light, then drive back home in the dark. Months without daylight, and the little you get to experience is moody, not direct sun light.

The flip side is that we get ridiculous amounts of light in the summer. All the way up to 10:30 PM and even around midnight there's still a hint of faint light.

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

#546
I hate daylight savings time.

I get up everyday at 6:00 AM, with a large segment of the population whose workday starts at 7:00 AM every day. They have no choice. And just as it was getting to be light a little at 6:00 AM, we just 'leaped ahead' back into darkness.

I would prefer that we just run on standard time all the time. You want more light in your evening? Get up earlier. Go to work earlier, so you get home earlier.

Daylight Savings Time sucks.

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

#547

It feels like we live in such a post-truth world, even the clock will now be an untruth. Couldn't we just use standard time, and let people wake and sleep when they choose, instead of creating an illusion for them?

All of time is an illusion. I mean yes, time is constant but our units of measurement are 100% made up. TZs are just as much of an illusion as picking DST/Standard year round, clocks are only "true" because we say they are. If you want to live in a world where time is not an illusion then drop all measurements except seconds, measure things in mega-seconds/kilo-seconds/etc, and remove TZ/Hours/Days/Weeks/Months/Years. All of those measurements only make sense on Earth. Once/if we become a starfaring species then this will get even more complicated. Maybe "day" will still make sense if only because we are used to that circadian rhythm but week/month/year? Not worth much in space.

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

#549

Watching Americans freak out about post-8AM sunrises is surreal to me. The sun doesn't rise until 8:45 during the darkest times of the year here in the Netherlands and its really not much of an issue. Whether standard time or summer time is the better choice here is something I hold no opinion on, but the sheer hysteria some people here express is very overblown.

It's mostly because US is a big place (lng/lat diversity) and folks are rather mobile within it's borders. So, it becomes common to hear stories of the Floridian that moved to Seattle and how depressing it is.

Having lived in both Hamburg (55deg lat) and Seattle (46), I can say that northwest Europe daylight hours are _brutal_ in the winter.

The first winter I was in Hamburg, I think we got 10 hours of sun all of December.

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

#550

Watching Americans freak out about post-8AM sunrises is surreal to me. The sun doesn't rise until 8:45 during the darkest times of the year here in the Netherlands and its really not much of an issue. Whether standard time or summer time is the better choice here is something I hold no opinion on, but the sheer hysteria some people here express is very overblown.

It's mostly because US is a big place (lng/lat diversity) and folks are rather mobile within it's borders. So, it becomes common to hear stories of the Floridian that moved to Seattle and how depressing it is.

I can't imagine that large latitudinal moves are common enough to be a notable driver of public opinion in favor of nationwide daylight saving time.
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