This is the most impactful, positive piece of legislation that affects my life that has been enacted since marriage equality in 2015. How sad is that?
US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
611–620 of 1001 posts
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#612We 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 After experiencing a single winter, that dropped to close to 40%, and it was repealed.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_...
I don’t get this at all. Why would people want the sun to go down in the afternoon? In my time zone it sets at 4:30 part of the year! That’s awful, and sunrise is at around 7:00am. We have way more sun in the morning.
Because we don't want to get up too early. If you want more sun, you're free to get up early yourself.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#613If dawn is more important than noon , we could redraw the timezones so they slant as they go north, keeping dawn at roughly the same time.
Wow, now that's coloring outside the lines. I had never considered this idea before. Interesting.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#614Watching 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 have lived my entire life in 3 different cities, all of which have regional reputation for "it rains a lot".
I do NOT understand the complaining, I'm sorry. First of all, "grey" isn't dark - grey overcast days are still plenty bright. Blue skies are lovely, sure. But you know what every place I've lived in gets for all that rain? LUSH, GREEN FOILAGE. Grass, trees, everywhere. LIFE.
You know what else comes with all that rain? Temperate climates. It's never too hot or too cold. We don't need airconditioning in the summer (except for a couple of days), nor have to shovel snow in the winter (except for a couple of days).
I look at something like Arizona that people rave about the climate over and I see dusty desolate deserts, where people have to spend exhorbitant amounts of water to keep tiny patches of parks and grasses alive.
I understand comparing tropical oceanfront climates like Florida and California unfavourably - there is a reason we think of these areas as vacation getaway hotspots. But most people complaining aren't from those climates - they are just from other parts of the world that are more "seasonal" and so they expect big snowstorms in the winter, and long hot days without rain in the summer. But all complaints about needing the sun, or the lack of vitamin D, are all subjective personal experiences.
Having grown up and lived with it all my life, I think it's highly offensive how people complain about the rain without acknowledging all the benefits that it brings.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#615Watching 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'm from the Netherlands as well, and I'm very scared of the talks of permanent DST over here. Which means that the sun would rise at 9:45 if we permanently switch to DST. Our country would be better suited at UTC, instead of UTC+1. Keeping it permanently at UTC+2 would be a special form of hell for me.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#616We 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?
This is exactly what I was wondering. Why do we think it will go better this time? Also isn’t 9 months a relatively short warning given all the systems that will need updates?
Everybody carries a phone that knows what time it is. And, looks the same sun-up or sun-down. Nobody needs to look out the window anymore.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#617Such 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.
Why not just ditch time zones altogether and have everyone on the same clock? DST was good enough to implement while in an agrarian society, so why not the universal clock in a global connected society? Just imagine the precision.
Natural time wasn't good enough while in agrarian society. Natural time was good enough in an unconnected society. When it took days to traverse the country, solar time worked. You couldn't really keep pace with the sun. People were academically aware of the difference, but it didn't mean much. The fact that it was daytime for the king of England while it was nighttime for the emperor of Japan didn't matter. That trip would take months regardless. So coordinating events was expressed in terms where even half-day variances didn't matter.
Planes, trains, and automobiles changed all of that. That and modern communication. Today, it matters. Now if I need to talk to someone in Japan, I have to coordinate things so that we're both awake. It matters if it's nighttime to them. Which is why we do have a universal clock. It's just expressed differently based on your distance from the prime meridian.
But, it's not the expression that matters.
Daylight Savings Time (DST) is a very stupid way to deal with a lot of stupid people. Everyone here arguing about making people adjust schedules, etc. That's exactly what DST is. But instead of your local grocery saying "Yeah, we're opening at 5am for these months" we just tell the entire country to change their clocks. Which is the same net effect. It's a fiction we engage in to pretend we're not inconveniencing ourselves. And in some ways, it probably is easier this way. It's controlled, determined, and doesn't require a ton of signage to be changed. We already have to set clocks, so it all works out.
I think a lot of the arguments about the "extra hour of sunlight" are kind of stupid. Because, it's not an hour. It's not going to be pitch black regardless. And most of what people do after work involves walking from the inside of one building to the inside of another. But then again, I wake up between 5 and 6 and go to bed between 10 and midnight.
I'd prefer for it to be on Standard time year round because if you are X zones from the prime meridian, you should be +/-X based on that. But, once again, time zones are really stupid because they don't conform to distance from the prime meridian. Morocco is +1 UTC despite being completely to the west of prime meridian. Most of Greenland is -3 despite spanning 5 zones, with one small section actually observing UTC despite being in the zone that should be -1 and the section that is -1 actually should be observing -2.
And look at the US on this map (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/World_Ti...)
Central Time is the most dominant zone going from the westernmost point of Texas to most of the Florida panhandle. Most of Texas should be -7, not -6. And so on and so forth. I bet if you "fixed" this kind of bullshit, more people would be in favor of Standard time year round. Or at least less opposed to it.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#618I guess this is removed useless complexity.
EU should follow soon hopefully.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#619I'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…
Does permanent DST mean :
A. The sun rises earlier and sets earlier.
B. The sun rises later, but sun sets later too.
Re: US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent
#620We 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_...
I think they should just make a one time half-hour adjustment and split the difference. Not sure how much of a technical challenge that would present to implement.
Well, as far as technical challenges go, we would all have to change our clocks (or the clocks would have to receive some kind of signal to adjust their time accordingly).
Might be doable though.