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Are the Americans Awake?

are-the-americans-awake.yusuf.fyi

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Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#111

Post by chickenpotpie »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #95
chickenpotpie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 hour is easy to remember, makes the math easier, and not so far apart that it creates radically different concepts of time for people on the extreme ends. With one hour time zones: * If someone is 3 time zones ahead, they're 3 hours ahead * There are 24 time zones and 360 degrees neatly divides by 24 * 2 hours between time zones means that within a time zone, the sun rises on one side at 8 am and on the other side…

We have :30 and :45 time zones though, no :15 time zone. So that doesn't quite apply.

Doesn't it?

I was explaining why 1 hour as the standard makes sense instead of 30 minutes or 2 hours. The :45 time zones would still be an issue for 30 minute intervals and :30 and :45 are still an issue for 2 hour intervals

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#112

Post by vacuity »

bayindirh wrote: post #51
tiborsaas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drink 3-4 cups of coffee daily, maybe that smooths things out :)

No, it won't, honestly. I was drinking 2L/day at my peak, while I was sleeping 6 hours a day (Ph.D. corrections). It gives you awakeness, but the not the concentration of a well rested mind. Nothing replaces sleep, since your brain flushes its toxins through your spine to be expelled from your body. Sleep is underrated and deprivation of it kills you slowly. I work way better with half a mug of coffee (a Starbucks ta…

> Nothing replaces sleep, since your brain flushes its toxins through your spine to be expelled from your body.

You mean you don't want those delicious Alzheimer's-related beta-amyloid plaques? For shame!

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#113

Post by RegnisGnaw »

izzydata wrote: post #61
delecti wrote: post #43

I'm perplexed at the implication that we "decided" to have the number of time zones that we do, rather than just acknowledging the reality that the US is a fairly big country. It's cheating a bit with Alaska in the picture, but the US spans about twice the degrees of longitude as Europe, and it would still be solidly "wider" even if you limit to the lower 48 states.

I'm more perplexed that China decided it should only have 1 timezone. It also decided that timezone should be from the perspective of the eastern coast. When does the sun rise and fall for the western most people?

Officially its called China Standard Time in all the international documents. In local media, its called (in Chinese obviously) "Beijing Time". Its all based on the perspective of Beijing.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#114

Post by petesergeant »

zokier wrote: post #92
petesergeant wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mainland China is wider than contiguous US, and yet it runs on single TZ That's because a vast majority of the country (and certainly all the politically empowered citizens) live in a much smaller span for which the single timezone is pretty accurate. It works in China by not caring about people to the West.

Well, another example is Spain that is at +1 purely for convenience, to get western europe under single timezone, rather than the +0 that their geography suggests.

> to get western europe under single timezone

Western Europe is not under a single timezone, though: the UK, Ireland, and Portugal are not on CET/CEST.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#116

Post by laserlight »

leetcrew wrote: post #85
throwaway09223 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? The sun rises and sets at different times according to both latitude and longitude. Timezones only handle longitudinal daylight adjustments. We already deal with plenty of incongruity around daylight. Why not embrace the variability and let go of the idea that we can predict daylight based on the hour alone? Let people localize the time to disco…

timezones don't need to perfectly predict whether the sun is up to be useful. when I set a meeting with a colleague in India, I don't really care whether the sun is up. it will almost surely be down for at least one of us. I am just trying to pick a reasonable time where they don't have to end work too late, and I don't have to start too early. having everyone roughly align their work day to 9am-5pm in their local ti…

I don't get how the problem would be harder with a universal timezone. Currently, I have to look up which timezone India is in and find a good time that works for both of us. In a universal timezone, I would have to look up what time noon is in India and find a time that works for both of us.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#117

Post by sandworm101 »

sjm wrote: post #108
sandworm101 wrote: post #74

>> I consider awake to mean from 8AM to 12AM, you are getting at least 8 hours of sleep, right? Must be nice to be a millionaire who works from home then stays up late every night. Is this Charlie sheen's jingle-writing character from 2 1/2 men? The rest of the working population gets up long before 8am. Work starts at 8am. School starts at 8am. Most people I know, at least those with jobs/kids, set their alarms for…

Not the millionaire part, but yeah it is nice. I work to live, not live to work, and your military job sounds horrible, so I'll pass :)

Anyone who cannot tolerate getting up a little early is definitely not what the modern military is looking for. But some of us can make that sacrifice in exchange for going home early, taking proper lunch breaks, and getting paid for time spent at the gym. We hand a unit "sports" day last week. Half of my guys chose to go fishing. And, because it is summer, we have an unofficial "stand down" every other week. And good luck finding anyone still at work after noon on friday. Total hours at work is probably far less overall than the majority of civilian jobs.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#118

Post by RegnisGnaw »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #111
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have :30 and :45 time zones though, no :15 time zone. So that doesn't quite apply.

Doesn't it? I was explaining why 1 hour as the standard makes sense instead of 30 minutes or 2 hours. The :45 time zones would still be an issue for 30 minute intervals and :30 and :45 are still an issue for 2 hour intervals

But the 1 hour is not a standard, we have many places with :45 and :30 time zones. For example, Newfoundland is -3:30 time zone. Nepal is in a +5:45 time zone.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#119

Post by adolph »

ethbr0 wrote: post #79
throwaway09223 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? The sun rises and sets at different times according to both latitude and longitude. Timezones only handle longitudinal daylight adjustments. We already deal with plenty of incongruity around daylight. Why not embrace the variability and let go of the idea that we can predict daylight based on the hour alone? Let people localize the time to disco…

> Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? Your watch hands read '20230710T142847Z', don't they?

No. For one, I use the ordinal date option in ISO 8601 because the whole month and day thing is stupid. Today is 2023-191. Also my watch only reads 14:28 since the date and TZ are typically implied in watches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

One thing for which I would advocate is removing zero based numbering from hours and minutes. Clocks reading 12:15 for 00:15 is tremendously confusing. Most human oriented counting systems are not zero indexed. One indexed series align cardinal and ordinal numbering which reflects the passage of time rather than each hour being nominally disconnected from a sequence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#120

Post by adolph »

petesergeant wrote: post #114
zokier wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, another example is Spain that is at +1 purely for convenience, to get western europe under single timezone, rather than the +0 that their geography suggests.

> to get western europe under single timezone Western Europe is not under a single timezone, though: the UK, Ireland, and Portugal are not on CET/CEST.

Under some circumstances "to get" describes an intent for a result rather than an obtained result.
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