A bill has passed both the US House of Representatives AND the US Senate to end the clock-changing, with overwhelming bipartisan support (I don’t believe either one of them even held a vote) and zero pork or poison pills…
…but the two of them passed different bills that directly contradict one another. One formally ends DST and the other permanently adopts DST as the new standard time. Fucking incredible.
I’m very much of the “IDGAF please just pick one and we will all cope” persuasion. So I’m unbothered which one passes. But it’s comical how, for once in a goddamn generation, we have something completely uncomplicated by party line politics, only to have it completely bungle up in congressional body power struggle politics instead.
We just can’t have shit, can we?
I’m in favor of abolishing it. This graphic doesn’t make it super clear but Daylight Saving Time gives millions of people more commutes in the dark per year than if we always used Standard Time. It’s a pretty significant difference.
I really want them to just pick one and stop changing the clocks twice a year. it’s a huge headache and bad for people’s health.
Also as someone else said, just using UTC and knowing that “here in NY, we typically work from 14:00 to 22:00” would also be fine with me.
The issue with just using UTC is that the date changes in the middle of the day. Like in Seattle it would change from one day to the next at what is currently 4 PM.
You try to plan an event for the 16th, and which physical day it’s in depends on whether it’s before or after an (ultimately arbitrary) cutoff time. You say “oh this happened yesterday” well was it a few hours ago before the date change or do you mean the previous physical day.
Also weekdays would be messed up. You work “Monday to Friday” between the current 9 AM and 5 PM, but then how does that work when Monday starts at (what’s currently) 4 PM? Do you work between 4 and 5 since it’s during work hours on a Monday? And on Fridays do you stop working at 4 because after that it becomes Saturday? You say you’re busy all day Wednesday, but does that mean you’re suddenly available after 4 PM when the date changes?
This, we aren’t in the 1800’s anymore. We can have 21st century solutions.
reasonable sunrise time
7:00AM or earlier
Earlier than 7AM seems unreasonable
In winter, you burn all the daylight working and also commute in the dark. I get to enjoy the sunlight from an office skylight 30 ft away, then drive home in the dark for ~4 months under standard time.
Why let work have all the daylight? It’s so depressing…
I prefer daylight savings all the time but actually I would go for utc and regions just get used to times being when they are and schedule around daylight.
The issue with just using UTC is that the date changes in the middle of the day. Like in Seattle it would change from one day to the next at what is currently 4 PM.
You try to plan an event for the 16th, and which physical day it’s in depends on whether it’s before or after an (ultimately arbitrary) cutoff time. You say “oh this happened yesterday” well was it a few hours ago before the date change or do you mean the previous physical day.
Also weekdays would be messed up. You work “Monday to Friday” between the current 9 AM and 5 PM, but then how does that work when Monday starts at (what’s currently) 4 PM? Do you work between 4 and 5 since it’s during work hours on a Monday? And on Fridays do you stop working at 4 because after that it becomes Saturday? You say you’re busy all day Wednesday, but does that mean you’re suddenly available after 4 PM when the date changes?
UTC and 24 hour time.
I’d also love metric and Celsius here.
Yes! UTC! UTC! UTC!
I like it when noon is at 12:00.
That’s cool on paper but not in practice. If noon is at 12 then the solar day has to be symmetrical around that. But we don’t really spend our day symmetrically around noon. Like 6 pm is early enough that this can still do some major activities. But 6am is so early no one thinks “oh I’ll just get that major activity done before 6am”
Another example is 10 hours after noon is getting late and a good time to end the day. 10 hours before noon is 2am. If you’re awake at 2am it’s not because you’re walking up.
That’s cool on paper but not in practice.
You understand that these are all conventions and the associations between what constitutes “late” and “early” are entirely arbitrary, right? Literally any system of naming time could work in practice. If we wanted, we could set the entire world at UTC0 and just get used to the fact that it’s noon at 6:00 in some places.
The disadvantage of daylight savings time is not actually that the sun doesn’t line up to our expectation of the day, it’s that it causes confusion.
I think daylight savings time comes from a human need to have our day match the natural cycles of the sun (because we don’t want to fight our cicardian rhythm) and to have consistent schedules and routines through the year.
I hate it though, I agree it’s pretty arbitrary and we can do better.
Don’t care, just pick one and don’t change it every six months.
This is the correct answer.
3 upvotes from my cats.
My cat has never cared, I have a shit sleep schedule anyways 🤷♀️
At 9 o’clock, or whenever they think it’s 9 o’clock, they start staring at me. Weirdly unsettling.
Split the difference, then do the maps again.
Forced year-round pretending we’re an hour ahead means more kids will have to walk to school in the dark, sharing streets with sleep-deprived drivers who are also up before their bodies say they should be. That’s gonna kill people.
Then maybe school shouldn’t start at 7:25 am
Didn’t you hear? It’s now a crime to have your kids walk by themselves. Just ask the bastions of freedom that are Georgia and Texas.
(That those events happened is obviously dumb.)
There is also a study that found a correlation between changing the clock to heart attacks incidents rising, suggesting that it might be caused by the clock change which triggers stress and sleep deprivation which triggers a heart attack
Yep, which leads us to the natural conclusion that noon on the clock should roughly equate to solar noon, year round.
That would mean ~360 timezones globally. More if you didn’t simplify to a single degree.
Coordinating is enough of a pain across timezones without having to worry (much) about minutes.
The Romans’ did that as a naturally consequence of using sun dials for timekeeping. Hours were also shorter during winter. I think that would be a nice system to have.
You can get DST on a sundial. Just rotate it 15 degrees so sunrise is at 7
So this chart doesn’t measure sunlight levels through the day, but whatever the maker has decided which color corresponds to “reasonable” based on arbitrary numbers… Who the fuck cares about which numbers are assigned to which parts of the day!!!
The reality is that most people work according to a fixed schedule, and the companies that they work for are not going to change that anytime soon. Opening hours of shops, banks, offices, etc don’t adjust to accommodate daylight savings, no matter how much you think those numbers are arbitrary.
Add to that that many people set their alarm such that they will be in time for work, and they still want to sleep 7-8 hours the next night, so in effect their job dictates their waking hours and the arbitrary numbers that we give to hours dictate the amount of daylight that they get.
So this chart doesn’t measure sunlight levels through the day
What do you mean by “sunlight levels”?
Depending how north or south you are is how much much total light you are going to get. Shifting an hour does not add or subtract total sunlight time.
The whole point of daylight savings time is to get the “arbitrary numbers” to line up to a daily schedule.
This chart shows you how well the three systems would achieve getting you those “arbitrary” times.
If the sun rose at 4 am and set at 1:30 pm. Sure, you could plan your whole day differently around that. Wake up at 4am instead of 7am. Go to bed at 8pm instead of 11pm. Work at 6 am instead of 9am, get off at 2pm instead of 5pm.
Yes they are “arbitrary” but humans are not computers. Having to go to bed at 8pm to wake up at 4am is different in our minds than going to bed at 11pm and getting up at 7am. Still 8 hours of sleep but it is perceived quite differently.
Anyone who cares about daylight savings time?
Okay, but why?
Because it’s easier to change the time than to change business and school hours.
… What? None of that would change if we didn’t fuck up our clocks twice a year
I think there’s a misunderstanding here. The point is that we move our clocks forward one more time in spring for Daylight Savings Time, and then we never change them again.
The difference between “ending” DST and making DST permanent is either keeping 4:30pm sunsets in winter or having the mornings be dark in the winter. Both are ways we stop changing our clocks.
Personally, I prefer the later sunset.
citation needed
Why would they need to change? There’s are three shifts.
Set all clocks to UTC military time and calendars to YYYY.MM.DD. Date change happens on UTC.
“My work hours are from 1400 to 2200 until 2024.12.21 at which time I will be available from 1200 until 2000. I will be on vacation from 2024.12.24 until 2025.01.07”.
EDIT: I do think that the colon helps readability, so 24hr might be a better choice than military (14:00 to 22:00).
You’re describing Japan.
Japan uses JST not UTC. I mean use UTC globally.
Thisssssssssss! I work internationally and we use UTC, people would get used to the switch after a year at most and we would generally be a more functional society
I’d rather have it all the time tbh.
It works better overall.
This is by far the more important aspect
Humans are routine oriented creatures, introducing an arbitrary hour deficit in sleep once a year has measurable and fairly profound effects on physical and mental health. Sure, it can be planned for, but circadian rhythms are hard to mess with for a lot of people and going to bed an hour earlier isn’t always an option
Cool. But stay on dst anyhow. It’s way nicer to never have it be dark at 5pm.
Enjoy your 0830 am sunrises in winter then
Precisely!
Spring forward and leave it there. In the fall it currently gets dark at 5 pm. It’s depressing to get off work and not have any daylight to enjoy and run errands. It’s also dangerous because tired drivers are coming home in a dark rush hour.
How is that depressing? Don’t be so servile.
Word. I couldn’t care less whether the sun rises while I’m on the bus to work or while I’m getting my first coffee at work. Have to wake up in the dark either way. But whether or not i get that one hour of daylight after work makes a world of a difference in my mental health.
When i worked at a ski basin, I called that “working from dark to dark,” and i hate it so fucking much.
I wish work places were more flexible with start/stop times
I work a dead end job with mediocre pay and no benefits but i will never leave because i get in when i get in and leave when i leave. Not having an insane focus on time makes this the best job I’ve ever had.
So, now the tired drivers are driving to work in the dark. I don’t see any solution making a real difference. There’s less day in the winter. Any solution at all will piss off 3/4s of the population.
Seems like the only real solution is shortened work days.
There’s usually 8 hours of sunlight during the day on the shortest day of the year, a bit more or less depending on latitude, but not by a lot. Make those 8 hours 9-5. Congrats, you’ve solved the problem, the average day will have a bit to a lot of light before and after the standard work day.
or maybe just go back to being done with work before sunset regardless of what time that was like our ancestors did for millions of years
Regular time is shown to be healthier so no, don’t spring forward and leave it there.
Split the difference by adding 30 minutes in the spring and then leave it there permanently.
But not, like… every Spring, right?
Correct
