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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

#771
post #512

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…

Agreed. The posted decision (permanently DST) is stupid, but less stupid than switching.

I think permanent DST makes sense from the biological/physiological point of view. Almost no people go to bed at 20 "solar" time and wake up at 4 -- they have it shifted later, so the "biological midnight" is indeed around 1 or 2 hours after the astronomical one - thus what we call "DST" matches better. This matching also helps against the confusion when writing an email late in the evening (i.e., after astronomical midnight) and use something like "we will meet tomorrow".

(YMMV, I'm describing situation here in .cz)

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

#772

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?

Oh the children! Give me a break. Go to school in the dark, or come home in the dark. Do that one time of year, or another. It all comes out in the wash.

Better to come home in the sunlight. Even if you have indoor sports after school now you have some time to potentially absorb vitamin D. Not much absorbing you are doing in the morning shuffling to get ready for school.

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

#773
post #765

I am extremely surprised at all the people who are against this, saying that "Making DST permanent forces people to wake up earlier." I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun. Everyone I know wakes up whatever time that their work tells them to. I am happy to have more sun after I get out of work. It was a breath of fresh air this week getting out of work and…

In the end, almost all persons wake-up time are dictated by the rise of the sun. Not in the sense that you always rise with sunrise - that makes less sense the more north you go, but that the day rythm is highly dependant on the rythm of sunlight. People are strongly opposed to wake before sunraise, so most time schemes try to minimize that, without having darkness way too early. The typical day schedules are arrange…

How are you not getting more sun after work? In the winter the sun is always setting way too soon compared to summer.

The far east coast sees the sunset at 4:18PM on the winter solstice. Most people aren't even off work by then.

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

#774

I am extremely surprised at all the people who are against this, saying that "Making DST permanent forces people to wake up earlier." I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun. Everyone I know wakes up whatever time that their work tells them to. I am happy to have more sun after I get out of work. It was a breath of fresh air this week getting out of work and…

I would love having more sun after work, but I don't know that it's worth the tradeoff of safety. On the shortest days the sun rises at 8:18am for me, so I usually start biking to work shortly after sunrise. On DST that sunrise would be 9:18am, well after my daily standup time. I'd be biking in twilight, if not nautical night. I already hate biking in the dark for safety reasons, I'd probably start driving more.

You are supposed be to be lit up like a flashing Christmas tree anyway. I don't know why my fellow cyclists insist on rolling the dice when nearly everyone on the road is texting or having a screaming match with someone on their phone.

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

#775

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_...

Its so strange how people on this thread are complaining about the issues you mentioned, but twice every year I see articles on hackernews/other areas about how bad the effects of changing time to DST and back and how detrimental it is for everyone's health. People can't have it both ways. My gut suspicion is why this passed is people are more angrier and stressed out/depressed than they have been in a very long time…

I was always against switching the time twice per year, as it tends to mess up the day rythm. But I am even more against permanent DST, as it is a big illusion. People live by the motion of the sun much more than they recognize. Winters are hell with permanent DST. This is why this is a bad idea. Permanent DST only will cause all time shedules to shift over time.

If permanent standard time is not an option, the time shift two times a year is actually a working hack. The shift is messy, but the time is shifted in the part of the year when the sun is up at raising time. That is why it "works".

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

#777

I am extremely surprised at all the people who are against this, saying that "Making DST permanent forces people to wake up earlier." I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun. Everyone I know wakes up whatever time that their work tells them to. I am happy to have more sun after I get out of work. It was a breath of fresh air this week getting out of work and…

Also, numbers on a clock are arbitrarily assigned. Arbitrarily changing them doesn't change anything fundamental.

It's not like life is radically different on the east and west sides of a time zone either.

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

#778
post #725

I am extremely surprised at all the people who are against this, saying that "Making DST permanent forces people to wake up earlier." I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun. Everyone I know wakes up whatever time that their work tells them to. I am happy to have more sun after I get out of work. It was a breath of fresh air this week getting out of work and…

> I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun Well now you do I do everything in UTC, don't use daylight savings, and I do set my wake up time based on sunrise

Clearly you must understand you are in the minority and most of the world have jobs requiring a set start time.

And once you partner with another you must now hope you both can be afforded that luxury of a job.

Despite working remotely since 2008 I'm married to someone who works at a hospital and must be there by 7am. Getting woken up and trying to fall back asleep is much worse than just going to bed with her and waking up with her to get uninterrupted sleep.

Add on kids to that equation who must be at the bus stop at a certain time and the number of working households who can wake up with the sun is minuscule.

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

#779
I didn’t know this is for the senate to decide, and find that surprising, given that most of Arizona doesn’t do DST at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona:

“Arizona does not observe daylight saving time (DST), with the exception of the Navajo Nation, which does observe DST. The Hopi Reservation, which is not part of the Navajo Nation but is geographically surrounded by it, also does not observe DST.[2] For this reason, driving the length of Arizona State Route 264 east from Tuba City while DST is in place involves six time zone changes in less than 100 miles (160 km).”

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

#780

I am extremely surprised at all the people who are against this, saying that "Making DST permanent forces people to wake up earlier." I am not sure I know a single person whose morning wake-up time is dictated by the rise of the sun. Everyone I know wakes up whatever time that their work tells them to. I am happy to have more sun after I get out of work. It was a breath of fresh air this week getting out of work and…

For folks with seasonal affective disorder, this makes winter even more hellacious. Timing of light and absence of light is critical - early morning light exposure greatly benefits people with SAD.

>Timing of light and absence of light is critical - early morning light exposure greatly benefits people with SAD.

Of course, you aren't getting that in either system; even in Standard time the sun doesn't actually rise in the early morning. You're still going to need the wake-up light either way.

With permanent DST, you'll actually get more of a chance to witness the sun in general, as there's a greater span of time that it'll be available for use when you're allowed outside at the end of the workday.

Up in the dark, home in the dark just flat out sucks for the 4 months of the year these conditions occur; minimizing the number of people who have to deal with that and minimizing the number of days they have to deal with that should be top priority.

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