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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

#561
post #394

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 think it's not so much post 8am sunrises as pairing it up with pre 5pm sunsets that drive people insane.

Well that's winter for ya.

Changing the clock isn't going to create more hours of sunlight (except arguably if you switch to DST at noon and back to winter time at midnight).

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

#562

The whole world going to the same time zone, usually proposed in these discussions, doesn't work - sun-time dissociates with clock-time, making words like "night" and "noon" confusing. However, I would like to see a North American Standard time (NAT): Set the clock at half-way between US Mountain and Central times and apply it to all of North America (with maybe a few extreme exceptions, such as western Alaska and Ha…

And I think we should move to ultra-local time zones for IRL conversations, local retail, etc. that get auto-translated to the universal time.

I want Noon to be the time when the sun is highest in the sky on that day.

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

#563
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…

My personal pet peeve is giving times in their local time zone when they know full well everyone is going to be in different time zones. Convert it to UTC so everyone can just worry about their offset.

I'd rather people not do that, simply because I wouldn't trust most people to do the conversion in either direction. At least if the person setting the meeting gives the time in their local time time I can be relatively confident that at least they'll be there on time.

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

#566

I will never understand why we change the clock instead of changing our habits. Well, maybe in a time when we didn't have computers it was simpler to just put the clock ahead or behind an hour, but nowadays it creates a ton of complexity for nothing. Isn't it simpler to just shift our times, for example in the summer start to work at 9:00 and in the winter at 8:00? Beside, if we have to choose a time, why not choose…

> Isn't it simpler to just shift our times, for example in the summer start to work at 9:00 and in the winter at 8:00?

You make this sound so simple, but the "our" you're referring to is "hundreds of thousands of employers". Yes, it is simpler to change the time than to convince every single employer to voluntarily shift their working hours in tandem with everyone else. Even one would be practically impossible: everyone would have to sit down and adjust every single meeting by an hour.

"Meeting's at 10am!" "Wait, is it 10am before or after fake-DST?" "I don't remember, did you change it?"

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

#568
Wonderful news! I grew up without time changes in permanent "summer time" and watching the glorious sunrise winter mornings. I already wake up in the dark in the morning in the winter, so a few more precious moments of daylight in the afternoon will be great.

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

#569

I'd kill for a peek into the parallel universe where it was permanent standard time that was likely to get adopted and see how much effort went into researching the ill effects of that choice to convince people with enough FUD to keep daylight time switching going. Here's the thing: If you're a proponent of permanent standard time, you should be in favour of turning off the switching no matter what. Even if it means…

Quoted post unavailable.

Read the whole reply. If you want permanent standard time, then one path would be to adopt permanent daylight savings and then change your local time zone to compensate.

It would take more effort up front but eliminates the need to change clocks twice a year

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

#570

We did this before, about 50 years ago. Going in, close to 80% of people supported permanent Daylight Saving Time. After experiencing a single winter, that dropped to close to 40%, and it was repealed. Looks like we may be doomed to repeat the experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_...

All I'm going to say is that - after experiencing about a decade of living in AZ and not worrying about toggling time - I'd still be in that camp that support permanently choosing a time.

This is key. We can adapt to anything. Just stop making me lose an hour of my sleep once a year. It takes me > 1 week to adjust.
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