Spring forth, but don't fall back
September 17, 2018 3:46 PM Subscribe
The European Commission rules to abolish Daylight Saving Time in 2019, in response to a survey that showed 80% opposition to the twice-annual changing of clocks. Assuming that the move passes the European Parliament and local parliaments, EU member states will decide in April 2019 whether to permanently remain on summer or winter time.
The move was announced by the EU's Transport Commissioner, Violeta Bulc, who admitted that there was a prospect of neighbouring countries, formerly in the same timezone, ending up an hour apart, though hoped that consensus would prevail.
The move was announced by the EU's Transport Commissioner, Violeta Bulc, who admitted that there was a prospect of neighbouring countries, formerly in the same timezone, ending up an hour apart, though hoped that consensus would prevail.
Great, let's do it here now.
Pick one, stay there. I'd rather just stay on Standard Time, but it really doesn't matter, I'm just tired of being tired for a week each way.
posted by deezil at 3:49 PM on September 17, 2018 [23 favorites]
Pick one, stay there. I'd rather just stay on Standard Time, but it really doesn't matter, I'm just tired of being tired for a week each way.
posted by deezil at 3:49 PM on September 17, 2018 [23 favorites]
Please do the one where it gets dark earlier. Nothin worse than getting home after work and there are still a few hours before it cools off and gets dark. I also think hot-climate areas should consider switching to a primarily night based existence. If not, I'll just have to wait 5 billion years for the accursed sun to go away for good.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:52 PM on September 17, 2018 [23 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:52 PM on September 17, 2018 [23 favorites]
One possibility that may emerge from this: Spain setting its clock back from CEST to UTC, as has been mooted. Spain being on the same time zone as Sweden, Poland and Austria (rather than Portugal, on the same landmass) makes no geographical sense, originating from the Franco dictatorship's alliance with Nazi Germany, and has somehow not yet been rectified, despite contributing to longer working days.
posted by acb at 3:52 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by acb at 3:52 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
how does time even work
posted by nikaspark at 3:54 PM on September 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
posted by nikaspark at 3:54 PM on September 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 3:56 PM on September 17, 2018 [34 favorites]
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 3:56 PM on September 17, 2018 [34 favorites]
The UK, meanwhile, will (probably) not be an EU member when this comes into force, and it is not clear if it will follow suit. Though a while ago, the idea of sticking with summer time year-round was mooted and was popular in England, though not in Scotland. If this leads to the UK abolishing daylight saving time, and the choice of time zones is devolved in Scotland, then GMT could end up standing for Glasgow Mean Time.
posted by acb at 3:56 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by acb at 3:56 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Do it in the US too! It is annoying and serves no real purpose. I don't care which way they leave it, just don't change the time.
posted by mermayd at 4:01 PM on September 17, 2018 [18 favorites]
posted by mermayd at 4:01 PM on September 17, 2018 [18 favorites]
The decision to tackle the issue was prompted after the Commission launched an online survey. Some 4.6 million Europeans answered the survey — three million of those respondents were from Germany — with 80 percent of them voting to scrap the practice.
Wow, this looks a lot like Germany calling the shots in the EU. Again. Anyway, what a good idea! I hope the UK gets in on this too, Brexit notwithstanding.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 4:04 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Wow, this looks a lot like Germany calling the shots in the EU. Again. Anyway, what a good idea! I hope the UK gets in on this too, Brexit notwithstanding.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 4:04 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Do the summer one, I hate when it gets dark and I still have an hour to go before I'm even done working.
Not that this affects me either way.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:13 PM on September 17, 2018 [25 favorites]
Not that this affects me either way.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:13 PM on September 17, 2018 [25 favorites]
One of the only civic benefits to living in Arizona was avoiding DST. It's impressive how smoother yearly life is without it, and how much of an effect DST actually has on modern culture.
Time is and always will be difficult to manage across space. You think things are complex on one planet, wait till we try it on two or three. Beyond just trying to agree on any kind of time frame at all and dealing with the time delays of speed of light radio transmission delays, the solar system itself is big (and heavy) enough for relativistic effects that will cause all clocks to drift over time, distance and velocity. They already have to regularly correct and tune the GPS timecode clocks as part of the daily functioning of the GPS system, and this even includes the irregular mass of the Earth itself, not just relative velocities between GPS satellites and moving ground receivers.
Time really is an illusion. It's plastic and highly relative to the observer.
Also, this is something that's been a favorite thought experiment lately - how to deal with time at relativistic speeds and distances. It's something I'm finding missing even from a lot of really good SF, at least any sort of really nuanced take on it or inclusion as part of the world building and fabric.
To travel interstellar distances you would have to intentionally be - or would effectively and functionally be - a time traveler. You would have to be able to predict the future with high accuracy to even begin to plot a course for anything over a few dozen light years away, much less thousands of light years.
posted by loquacious at 4:14 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
Time is and always will be difficult to manage across space. You think things are complex on one planet, wait till we try it on two or three. Beyond just trying to agree on any kind of time frame at all and dealing with the time delays of speed of light radio transmission delays, the solar system itself is big (and heavy) enough for relativistic effects that will cause all clocks to drift over time, distance and velocity. They already have to regularly correct and tune the GPS timecode clocks as part of the daily functioning of the GPS system, and this even includes the irregular mass of the Earth itself, not just relative velocities between GPS satellites and moving ground receivers.
Time really is an illusion. It's plastic and highly relative to the observer.
Also, this is something that's been a favorite thought experiment lately - how to deal with time at relativistic speeds and distances. It's something I'm finding missing even from a lot of really good SF, at least any sort of really nuanced take on it or inclusion as part of the world building and fabric.
To travel interstellar distances you would have to intentionally be - or would effectively and functionally be - a time traveler. You would have to be able to predict the future with high accuracy to even begin to plot a course for anything over a few dozen light years away, much less thousands of light years.
posted by loquacious at 4:14 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
Oh good, this will make time and date computing simpler and more complex at the same time.
My first thought is that it'd stay much as it is, just not change every six months. Though if the example of England and Scotland is illustrative, and areas further from the equator prefer winter time while areas closer to it prefer summer time, we may end up with another dividing line: Italy, Greece and Iberia staying on summer time, the Nordic countries staying on winter time, and everybody else splitting the difference. Perhaps the dividing line will run through Germany itself, perhaps following one of the dividing lines between Northern and Southern German cultures*.
* I recall (though forget the details) that the wording one uses for expressing a time of day that's not on the hour, i.e., 3:15 or similar, in German differs between northern and southern areas.
posted by acb at 4:17 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
My first thought is that it'd stay much as it is, just not change every six months. Though if the example of England and Scotland is illustrative, and areas further from the equator prefer winter time while areas closer to it prefer summer time, we may end up with another dividing line: Italy, Greece and Iberia staying on summer time, the Nordic countries staying on winter time, and everybody else splitting the difference. Perhaps the dividing line will run through Germany itself, perhaps following one of the dividing lines between Northern and Southern German cultures*.
* I recall (though forget the details) that the wording one uses for expressing a time of day that's not on the hour, i.e., 3:15 or similar, in German differs between northern and southern areas.
posted by acb at 4:17 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
I sure hope they have a good education campaign to make sure everyone knows that we don't magically get more daylight during the winter if they switch to having DST all-year round, because there are absolutely people who don't know how it works.
I like DST. It's nice having daylight until well after 9 in the summer, and switching to regular time means that you don't have to wait until almost 9AM (in WNY) for the sunrise.
posted by jonathanhughes at 4:17 PM on September 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
I like DST. It's nice having daylight until well after 9 in the summer, and switching to regular time means that you don't have to wait until almost 9AM (in WNY) for the sunrise.
posted by jonathanhughes at 4:17 PM on September 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
Somewhere in DC, Jonah Ryan is fistpumping so hard right now
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 4:19 PM on September 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 4:19 PM on September 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
I am very excited about this possibility. I hope Sweden votes to keep the time the same all year around. I don’t care if daylight savings becomes the new standard or we stick with standard I would just be thrilled to bits to avoid everything unhealthy related to the time change. Which I would link to were I not on my phone.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:19 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Bella Donna at 4:19 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
🎶time is an illusion that helps things make sense🎶
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:21 PM on September 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:21 PM on September 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
In other related recent timezone news, last year(?) the Russian railways ended their practice of all train timetables being on Moscow time, shifting them instead to local time. Which, I'm guessing, makes a big difference if you're living in Vladivostok.
I imagine that both the Russian railways abolishing central time and the movement to abolish DST are enabled by increasing computerisation making the calculation of times easier. (Which does make one wonder whether eventually we'll move to truly local solar time: i.e., at each point on Earth, it being local noon when the sun is directly above. Computers will be able to tell us what the time is anywhere else, and things that tied to the diurnal cycle at one specific location can be referred to in UTC.
posted by acb at 4:30 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
I imagine that both the Russian railways abolishing central time and the movement to abolish DST are enabled by increasing computerisation making the calculation of times easier. (Which does make one wonder whether eventually we'll move to truly local solar time: i.e., at each point on Earth, it being local noon when the sun is directly above. Computers will be able to tell us what the time is anywhere else, and things that tied to the diurnal cycle at one specific location can be referred to in UTC.
posted by acb at 4:30 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
I always want DST. GPS based time devices should correct with relative accuracy regardless of whether the boundary you’re crossing is longitudinal or latitudinal, in the event you border a backward country or state that wants standard time.
posted by a halcyon day at 4:32 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by a halcyon day at 4:32 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Arizonan here. I have never understood the "no daylight savings time means things cool down in Phoenix after work." Phoenix does not cool down between May and September.
It also means that people who work outside have to get up super-extra-early in the morning to get the most work done when the the temperatures are lowest. On my last overnight trip in Grand Canyon in August, we woke up at 2 am for the hike-out. Things do not cool down quickly. At 2 am, it was still 95°F and "cooling down."
Grah, etc
posted by compartment at 4:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
It also means that people who work outside have to get up super-extra-early in the morning to get the most work done when the the temperatures are lowest. On my last overnight trip in Grand Canyon in August, we woke up at 2 am for the hike-out. Things do not cool down quickly. At 2 am, it was still 95°F and "cooling down."
Grah, etc
posted by compartment at 4:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
This excellent map showing the difference between solar time and standard time is pretty instructive. Living on the west coast of the US, I like the idea that noon means "sun's directly overhead" during standard time, but many folks don't have that option in either standard OR summer time.
posted by lantius at 4:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
posted by lantius at 4:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
This is a good idea (says the now-Arizonan). It really is also phenomenally stupid that Spain and Sweden are on the same time zone, having spent time in each. Hopefully that gets fixed too.
It'll also make things even easier for those of us in AZ -- right now I have meetings with people in the rest of the US, as well as in Europe, and they start/end DST on different dates, so it's kind of a pain to figure out what time everyone is on. Just one switch would be a nice reduction.
posted by nat at 4:43 PM on September 17, 2018
It'll also make things even easier for those of us in AZ -- right now I have meetings with people in the rest of the US, as well as in Europe, and they start/end DST on different dates, so it's kind of a pain to figure out what time everyone is on. Just one switch would be a nice reduction.
posted by nat at 4:43 PM on September 17, 2018
Do it in the US too! It is annoying and serves no real purpose. I don't care which way they leave it, just don't change the time.
Not from a far north area then?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:43 PM on September 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
Not from a far north area then?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:43 PM on September 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
Came to make a Jonah Ryan joke; beaten to it. Still funny.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:44 PM on September 17, 2018
posted by kevinbelt at 4:44 PM on September 17, 2018
Somewhere in DC, Jonah Ryan is fistpumping so hard right now
Seriously though, as someone who moved to New Hampshire from an area that was a heck of a lot further west in the time zone, I'm game on staying on DST all year. It's bad enough that, at latest in the summer, it's dark by 9 instead of 10 ish or so, but then DST ends, it's winter, it's dark at 4pm, and it's awful.
Alternatively, we could just switch to Atlantic Time, with no DST, but all of New England is currently stuck in a "No, you go first" holding pattern; see here.
In conclusion, Veep having Jonah pushing for this actually isn't crazy.
posted by damayanti at 4:47 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Seriously though, as someone who moved to New Hampshire from an area that was a heck of a lot further west in the time zone, I'm game on staying on DST all year. It's bad enough that, at latest in the summer, it's dark by 9 instead of 10 ish or so, but then DST ends, it's winter, it's dark at 4pm, and it's awful.
Alternatively, we could just switch to Atlantic Time, with no DST, but all of New England is currently stuck in a "No, you go first" holding pattern; see here.
In conclusion, Veep having Jonah pushing for this actually isn't crazy.
posted by damayanti at 4:47 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Do it in the US too!
I can easily see that becoming a yuge states-rights football. Indiana, of course, will go back to being trisected.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:48 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I can easily see that becoming a yuge states-rights football. Indiana, of course, will go back to being trisected.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:48 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Maybe we could fix global warming by passing a law to say it’s always twilight.
I for one would like to see the banishment of the Hated Day Star.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:49 PM on September 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
I for one would like to see the banishment of the Hated Day Star.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:49 PM on September 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
I would much rather have the light at a certain time of day shift slowly over the course of the year than the random jumps and weeks of my body being confused. Even if it means there's more extremes of early or late nightfall and sunrise.
Then again, I'm not usually awoken by the sun or inconvenienced by the night, maybe that's more of a problem for others.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 4:52 PM on September 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
Then again, I'm not usually awoken by the sun or inconvenienced by the night, maybe that's more of a problem for others.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 4:52 PM on September 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
Iceland (not in the EU) also doesn't have DST and I wish they did. Mostly because it is pretty awful to wake up for school or work in total darkness for months at a time; changing the clocks would switch that to like six weeks. And come spring it would make no material difference to the sunlight levels anyway. And NOW the EU pulls THIS crap so everyone here is gonna be all smug like "see, told you so, we're just ahead of our time... so to speak."
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:55 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:55 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
I love Daylight savings. The relief of switching back in winter for brighter mornings and those glorious long summer evenings- it's magical. (should probably add that I am in Australia)
posted by freethefeet at 5:05 PM on September 17, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by freethefeet at 5:05 PM on September 17, 2018 [9 favorites]
For my current job in Portland OR, I ideally need to be asleep nine pm, if not earlier, to get maybe if I'm lucky a decent amount of sleep when factoring in my chronic problems with both falling and staying asleep. On the solstice, the fucking sun doesn't even set until 9:0fucking3, and civil twilight doesn't end (which means it's not actually fucking dark until thenish) until 9:40. It's a nightmare. I. Hate. It. So. Much. Abolish it! Kill it forever!
If it were the 1700s I'd challenge every one of you mothers who wants to trap us forever in Daylight Time to a duel.
posted by Caduceus at 5:05 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
If it were the 1700s I'd challenge every one of you mothers who wants to trap us forever in Daylight Time to a duel.
posted by Caduceus at 5:05 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
Which does make one wonder whether eventually we'll move to truly local solar time: i.e., at each point on Earth, it being local noon when the sun is directly above.
In the solar industry, we do use solar time. Or at any rate, we use it when calculating the output of an array that's being designed. The calculations are based on solar time for the GPS coordinates of the array site. It matters, after all.
Generally, though, it's more useful to be synchronized with those in your immediate vicinity, even if that means the sun isn't quite at its zenith when noon rolls around.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:08 PM on September 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
In the solar industry, we do use solar time. Or at any rate, we use it when calculating the output of an array that's being designed. The calculations are based on solar time for the GPS coordinates of the array site. It matters, after all.
Generally, though, it's more useful to be synchronized with those in your immediate vicinity, even if that means the sun isn't quite at its zenith when noon rolls around.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:08 PM on September 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
Here I am, an American in Japan, fervently hoping they institute summer time like they're saying they will for the 2020 Olympics, because you know what desperately sucks? 4:30 a.m. sunrises in summer. I could use a lot less of that.
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:15 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:15 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
"Give it the ability to update its timezone database? Why would we do that? Time zones never change."
- Likely some project managers on awful Internet of Things... things.
I'm just glad I'm no longer in the timing business, and someone else gets to re-implement and test this mess.
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 5:17 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
- Likely some project managers on awful Internet of Things... things.
I'm just glad I'm no longer in the timing business, and someone else gets to re-implement and test this mess.
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 5:17 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
Aren't they just going to end up changing the time that businesses open and close, instead?
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 5:19 PM on September 17, 2018
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 5:19 PM on September 17, 2018
Whenever a debate divvies up into "do x because it makes work better" vs "do y because it make non-work life better," I tend to side with the latter. Many of the arguments I hear in favor of year-round standard time in the US are about how it makes the morning work commute better, while many of the arguments I hear about year-round "savings" time are because it allows one to take a walk, play with the kids, walk the dog, participate in league sports, and various other outdoor activities after work. Given that division and the likely permanent nature of any change, I'd rather side with non-work and try to fix the myriad horrors of the morning commute in other ways.
posted by chortly at 5:20 PM on September 17, 2018 [25 favorites]
posted by chortly at 5:20 PM on September 17, 2018 [25 favorites]
We all use electronic timepieces anyway; there's no reason not to move to Real Solar Time™, where the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM all year round. Bonus: people above the Arctic Circle get to take a holiday during the Months of Misery when hard water allegedly falls from the sky and accumulates upon the ground.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:30 PM on September 17, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:30 PM on September 17, 2018 [11 favorites]
We all use electronic timepieces anyway; there's no reason not to move to Real Solar Time™, where the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM all year round
As long as we're satisfied with minutes/hours having a constant duration only when exactly on the equator.
posted by acb at 5:34 PM on September 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
As long as we're satisfied with minutes/hours having a constant duration only when exactly on the equator.
posted by acb at 5:34 PM on September 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
Real Solar Time™, where the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM all year round
Ooh, I've fantasised about this for years. Yes my fantasies are sad.
This would mean the length of the daylight hours would stretch in summer and shrink in winter, yes?
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:34 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Ooh, I've fantasised about this for years. Yes my fantasies are sad.
This would mean the length of the daylight hours would stretch in summer and shrink in winter, yes?
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:34 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Californians will get to vote on this in a couple months:
California voters in November will get to weigh in on whether the state should continue its practice of changing the clocks twice a year after Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a bill to put the question on the statewide ballot.
The ballot measure would only give the Legislature the power to alter the practice with a two-thirds vote by both houses. Even then, approval from the federal government would be required.
posted by Celsius1414 at 5:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
California voters in November will get to weigh in on whether the state should continue its practice of changing the clocks twice a year after Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a bill to put the question on the statewide ballot.
The ballot measure would only give the Legislature the power to alter the practice with a two-thirds vote by both houses. Even then, approval from the federal government would be required.
posted by Celsius1414 at 5:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
This would mean the length of the daylight hours would stretch in summer and shrink in winter, yes?
Japan used to do this (see Temporal Hours). "As such, Japanese timekeepers varied with the seasons; the daylight hours were longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the opposite at night."
posted by thefoxgod at 5:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
Japan used to do this (see Temporal Hours). "As such, Japanese timekeepers varied with the seasons; the daylight hours were longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the opposite at night."
posted by thefoxgod at 5:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
Now there's a rabbit hole I never knew existed. Given a pre-industrial culture that learned clockmaking from 17th-century Europeans but then isolated itself from the rest of the world for 200 years and developed independently, how would you account for a time system in which the lengths of the hours vary over the course of the year? Super cool. Also, am I right in reading that the variable-hours calendar only existed for 29 years? What happened there? Ooh, another link…
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:47 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:47 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
The righteous reform is to ban time zones, UTC everywhere.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 5:51 PM on September 17, 2018 [17 favorites]
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 5:51 PM on September 17, 2018 [17 favorites]
Yeah, I saw some of those clocks in a museum in Nagasaki (at Dejima) and was super intrigued. It was pretty neat seeing what they had to do to come up with a clock that actually worked with the variable hour concept. It would be much easier today with computers.
(I don't think it's really a good _idea_, but the calculation would certainly be easier...)
posted by thefoxgod at 5:53 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
(I don't think it's really a good _idea_, but the calculation would certainly be easier...)
posted by thefoxgod at 5:53 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
We all use electronic timepieces anyway; there's no reason not to move to Real Solar Time™, where the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM all year round.
As a computer programmer, the idea that because computers can do it, we should make the length of a second time and location dependent is genuinely horrifying.
posted by Merus at 5:54 PM on September 17, 2018 [33 favorites]
As a computer programmer, the idea that because computers can do it, we should make the length of a second time and location dependent is genuinely horrifying.
posted by Merus at 5:54 PM on September 17, 2018 [33 favorites]
Temporal time/variable hours tended to be pretty common in ancient times. For instance, the Romans used a 24-Hour clock with day and night always being 12-hours long.
posted by jmauro at 5:57 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by jmauro at 5:57 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
If the U.S. stays on one time all year, all my stuff that changes automatically will have to be replaced
posted by DanSachs at 5:57 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by DanSachs at 5:57 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
save alive nothing that breatheth: “The righteous reform is to ban time zones, UTC everywhere.”ISO-8601 or Death!
posted by ob1quixote at 6:09 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
It's the 1-hour change that's disruptive. If you spread it out, it's only 20 seconds a day. You won't even notice it.
posted by kurumi at 6:13 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by kurumi at 6:13 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
So I work on proposals that have to be turned in by a certain time and can't be even one minute late. Solar time would make that impossible. Otherwise I'm all for it though. Daylight savings fucks me up every year.
posted by emjaybee at 6:16 PM on September 17, 2018
posted by emjaybee at 6:16 PM on September 17, 2018
I decided to buy into Daylight Savings. But then I got to November, and found out that account was empty. Turns out there was no law requiring them to pay into it, and even the co-pay was gone. Whelp
posted by Twang at 6:19 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by Twang at 6:19 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
emjaybee, that would seem to presuppose that not only is it vital that the proposals not be late, but also that they are being submitted at literally the last minute. Terrifying.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:21 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:21 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Time to go figure out if the devs used a standard, patchable library, or rolled their own date math.
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:25 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:25 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
When it comes to the U.S., if we ever have to choose for permanent one or the other, I want the one when it's light at 6am, even if that means it get dark at 3:30pm in the winter. Having to wake up and get going when it is still dark outside is the very worst thing about major depressive disorder, other than every single other worst thing about major depressive disorder. When I wake up there better be some goddamned fucking sunlight.
posted by tzikeh at 6:49 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by tzikeh at 6:49 PM on September 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
> One of the only civic benefits to living in Arizona was avoiding DST.
A vacation Arizona only strengthened my love of DST. "Why are the kids getting up at 5am? Oh, because the sun is shining brightly." We then travelled to a more civilized state (Texas) and things improved.
> The righteous reform is to ban time zones, UTC everywhere.
It's a terrible idea. Imagine I'm in Melbourne, Australia, where it's 5pm, and I want to call my aunt in Austin, Texas. "What time is it in Texas?" I do some timezone math and realize, oh crap, it's 2am there, better not call.
Now if there's a single timezone, the math is trivial. It's 7am UTC in Melbourne and it's 7am UTC in Austin. Great! But... what does 7am UTC *mean* in Austin? Is is safe to call? I have no idea. Turns out it's pretty useful knowing that 6am is early morning, midday is around lunch, 6pm is around dinner time, and midnight is the middle of the night.
With both DST and timezones, it's easy to see the problems caused by the current way of doing things, and easy to overlook the problems caused by the alternative way of doing things.
posted by nnethercote at 6:55 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
A vacation Arizona only strengthened my love of DST. "Why are the kids getting up at 5am? Oh, because the sun is shining brightly." We then travelled to a more civilized state (Texas) and things improved.
> The righteous reform is to ban time zones, UTC everywhere.
It's a terrible idea. Imagine I'm in Melbourne, Australia, where it's 5pm, and I want to call my aunt in Austin, Texas. "What time is it in Texas?" I do some timezone math and realize, oh crap, it's 2am there, better not call.
Now if there's a single timezone, the math is trivial. It's 7am UTC in Melbourne and it's 7am UTC in Austin. Great! But... what does 7am UTC *mean* in Austin? Is is safe to call? I have no idea. Turns out it's pretty useful knowing that 6am is early morning, midday is around lunch, 6pm is around dinner time, and midnight is the middle of the night.
With both DST and timezones, it's easy to see the problems caused by the current way of doing things, and easy to overlook the problems caused by the alternative way of doing things.
posted by nnethercote at 6:55 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
Abolish seasonal time changes; adopt seasonal business-hours changes, dammit.
If the goal is "get out of work before it's totally dark" (in places that aren't so far north that's laughable), change the workday to 8-4 instead of 9-5. Change the school schedules to adapt to parental work schedules.
Don't change the damn CLOCKS because you want things to start or end an hour earlier.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:06 PM on September 17, 2018 [28 favorites]
If the goal is "get out of work before it's totally dark" (in places that aren't so far north that's laughable), change the workday to 8-4 instead of 9-5. Change the school schedules to adapt to parental work schedules.
Don't change the damn CLOCKS because you want things to start or end an hour earlier.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:06 PM on September 17, 2018 [28 favorites]
ErisLordFreedom, Exactly! Summer hours, winter hours for anything where sunlight or dark is relevant. So much simpler.
posted by tula at 7:18 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by tula at 7:18 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
> change the workday... Change the school schedules... Don't change the damn CLOCKS because you want things to start or end an hour earlier.
Good luck getting 7 zillion different workplaces to do that consistently. And everyone will have to get up an hour earlier/later when the change happens anyway.
posted by nnethercote at 7:25 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
Good luck getting 7 zillion different workplaces to do that consistently. And everyone will have to get up an hour earlier/later when the change happens anyway.
posted by nnethercote at 7:25 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
The only time that really matters is dinner time.
posted by AugustWest at 7:28 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by AugustWest at 7:28 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Fuck it all, let’s just use Swatch Internet Time
posted by snortasprocket at 7:28 PM on September 17, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by snortasprocket at 7:28 PM on September 17, 2018 [11 favorites]
Good luck getting 7 zillion different workplaces to do that consistently.
But there's no need for that. Its not like everyone starts work at the same time now. Some businesses might adjust seasonally, some won't, whatever.
Personally I don't care at all what the time is, just stop changing it. When it is dark and when it is light is pretty much irrelevant to me.
posted by thefoxgod at 7:36 PM on September 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
But there's no need for that. Its not like everyone starts work at the same time now. Some businesses might adjust seasonally, some won't, whatever.
Personally I don't care at all what the time is, just stop changing it. When it is dark and when it is light is pretty much irrelevant to me.
posted by thefoxgod at 7:36 PM on September 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
If the goal is "get out of work before it's totally dark"
Depends on where you live. In the UK, where there is periodic grumbling about this, generally people in the south want to keep summertime all year round (or keep what’s currently summertime as the new default and go forward another hour in summer) because it means lighter winter evenings, but people further north don’t want it because it means darker winter mornings.
Or in other words, Scotland wants one thing and England wants another, and time is a reserved power so Scotland’s parliament can’t make its own call and would have to abide with what Westminster decided, which would not go over well.
Northern Ireland on the other hand does get to make its own call, which means that if the UK and Ireland are on different times then NI has to decide whether it wants to be in line with Britain or with Ireland. This would not go over well x10 whatever the decision. (And may now happen anyway! although now NI doesn’t have a legislative body because [long story] so the debate could go on forever, causing increasing upset.)
You start off with “wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit more light in the evenings”, you end up with major constitutional issues and the prospect of civil war. Probably easier to just abolish clocks.
posted by Catseye at 7:44 PM on September 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
Depends on where you live. In the UK, where there is periodic grumbling about this, generally people in the south want to keep summertime all year round (or keep what’s currently summertime as the new default and go forward another hour in summer) because it means lighter winter evenings, but people further north don’t want it because it means darker winter mornings.
Or in other words, Scotland wants one thing and England wants another, and time is a reserved power so Scotland’s parliament can’t make its own call and would have to abide with what Westminster decided, which would not go over well.
Northern Ireland on the other hand does get to make its own call, which means that if the UK and Ireland are on different times then NI has to decide whether it wants to be in line with Britain or with Ireland. This would not go over well x10 whatever the decision. (And may now happen anyway! although now NI doesn’t have a legislative body because [long story] so the debate could go on forever, causing increasing upset.)
You start off with “wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit more light in the evenings”, you end up with major constitutional issues and the prospect of civil war. Probably easier to just abolish clocks.
posted by Catseye at 7:44 PM on September 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
I have a modest proposal: CT, or Continuous Timezonery. With modern technology, it would be relatively trivial to calculate one's personal timezone; simply take a GPS reading of your location, and calculate the distance (in degrees) of your longitude from that of Greenwich. The percentage of 180 degrees that distance represents is the percentage of 12 hours (plus or minus) your location, at that moment, is from the time given by the central clock at Greenwich. Take a step to the west (in our hemisphere), travel slightly into the past; take a step to the east, and meet the future face-forward.
Leave the crude and politicized discrete chunking of timezones behind! Surely two people facing each other across the line of a timezone demarcation have more in common, chronologically, than either does with somebody way on the other side of their "own" timezone. Let our devices allow us to live that reality! BE YOUR OWN TIMEZONE!
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 7:45 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
Leave the crude and politicized discrete chunking of timezones behind! Surely two people facing each other across the line of a timezone demarcation have more in common, chronologically, than either does with somebody way on the other side of their "own" timezone. Let our devices allow us to live that reality! BE YOUR OWN TIMEZONE!
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 7:45 PM on September 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
MetaFilter: You start off with "wouldn't it be nice to have a bit more light in the evenings", you end up with major constitutional issues and the prospect of civil war.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 7:47 PM on September 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 7:47 PM on September 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
Holy cow, Swatch Internet Time, that's incredible. There needs to be a chapter on that in a revised edition of Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps, I think the giants from the Swatch boardroom deserve to stand toe-to-toe with Poincare and Einstein.
Whatever disadvantages DST has, nothing quite like that Saturday around late October, watching an extra-inning playoff baseball game fearlessly due to the extra hour of sleep coming.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 7:48 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Whatever disadvantages DST has, nothing quite like that Saturday around late October, watching an extra-inning playoff baseball game fearlessly due to the extra hour of sleep coming.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 7:48 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Swatch .beat time previously
posted by namewithoutwords at 7:51 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by namewithoutwords at 7:51 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
$ sunclock.pl 子 丑 寅 卯 辰 巳 午 未 申 酉 ▄▄ 戌 亥 子 0048 0245 0441 0638 0841 1044 1247 1451 1654 1857 1951 2054 2251 00483 periods from midnight to dawn, 3 from dawn to noon, 3 from noon to dusk, 3 from dusk to midnight. Screw the 60*60*24 stuff.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:56 PM on September 17, 2018
Btw, <pre><tt> ... </tt></pre> makes that look all messed up in Firefox 62.0, looks fine in terminal....
posted by zengargoyle at 7:59 PM on September 17, 2018
posted by zengargoyle at 7:59 PM on September 17, 2018
I live in Minnesota, and in the winter I’m either getting up while it’s still dark, or getting home while it’s still dark, and for about three weeks or so on either side of the winter solstice I’m doing both. I don’t mind it very much, but I will say that around the summer solstice, it will mean the sun rising before 5am and still setting around 9pm. That’s a long fucking day, let me tell ya.
There’s also the consideration that as climate change becomes more severe and people begin to migrate north, it will affect more people. Which is not to say we can’t change our minds again at that point, but still, it’s something to think about.
As it stands, though, I personally find it doable and I am able to mitigate some of the mood effects with artificial lighting and sunrise/sunset effects. There are a lot of people, a LOT, who are negatively affected sufficiently enough to require medication and/or some form of light therapy, though, and I don’t think we should underestimate the potential health costs in addition to the economic ones.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:13 PM on September 17, 2018
There’s also the consideration that as climate change becomes more severe and people begin to migrate north, it will affect more people. Which is not to say we can’t change our minds again at that point, but still, it’s something to think about.
As it stands, though, I personally find it doable and I am able to mitigate some of the mood effects with artificial lighting and sunrise/sunset effects. There are a lot of people, a LOT, who are negatively affected sufficiently enough to require medication and/or some form of light therapy, though, and I don’t think we should underestimate the potential health costs in addition to the economic ones.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:13 PM on September 17, 2018
I want more sun after work because it's not like I'm going to do anything fun at all whatsoever with that 5:45 a.m. sunlight on a work day except get even less sleep because of the fucking sunlight waking me up an hour and change before I need to be up. (Also, night person.) Also it's the coldest all day long at dawn so I really don't want to be out then anyway. Dark at 4 means I don't wanna leave my house.
This California amendment will be uh, interesting.
If the goal is "get out of work before it's totally dark" (in places that aren't so far north that's laughable), change the workday to 8-4 instead of 9-5.
Everyone here works 8-5 (or 7-4), boy is that not an option.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:29 PM on September 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
This California amendment will be uh, interesting.
If the goal is "get out of work before it's totally dark" (in places that aren't so far north that's laughable), change the workday to 8-4 instead of 9-5.
Everyone here works 8-5 (or 7-4), boy is that not an option.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:29 PM on September 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
The move was announced by the EU's Transport Commissioner, Violeta Bulc, who... cut the top off her press release and sewed it back onto the bottom, so that the media could have a longer press release.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:30 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by LeLiLo at 8:30 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
it will mean the sun rising before 5am and still setting around 9pm. That’s a long fucking day, let me tell ya.
You won't get a shorter day without daylight saving, we don't have those powers.
It's interesting to be a spectator to this, in south eastern Australia 6 months of daylight saving is almost universally popular, I can't remember the last time I heard someone gripe.
posted by deadwax at 8:37 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
You won't get a shorter day without daylight saving, we don't have those powers.
It's interesting to be a spectator to this, in south eastern Australia 6 months of daylight saving is almost universally popular, I can't remember the last time I heard someone gripe.
posted by deadwax at 8:37 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
DST in the US is over 7.5 months long; a mere 127 days per year are not DST, and noone cared when it was extended by a full month in 2005. Perhaps we'll approach full DST asymptotiically until there's a week when everyone has to change their clocks twice.
posted by joeyh at 8:44 PM on September 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
posted by joeyh at 8:44 PM on September 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
I think it also bears pointing out that there will be more light pollution, potentially more traffic accidents, and potentially more of an impact, literally, on local wildlife from people doing more of their daily business in the dark. In Minnesota, for example, when you have rush hour in the dark, in the winter, you have a much greater incidence of black ice because the sun isn’t up to melt it. So that means more salt and sand on the roads, which means more wear on the roads, and more crud seeping into the meltwater. It means higher energy costs because you’re adding an extra hour of needing more lights and heat in the winter, and more cooling in the summer. It would have an impact on solar energy, because you’d be using stored energy at a greater rate.
As far as the impact on commerce, well, with the advent of electronic banking and the fact that, during my adult life, we’ve moved toward and then away from a model where major chains were open 24 hours, I think that will be one of the easier things for people to get used to. People already shop and pay bills at all hours, but the “core hours” at which our society functions may well have to change.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:45 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
As far as the impact on commerce, well, with the advent of electronic banking and the fact that, during my adult life, we’ve moved toward and then away from a model where major chains were open 24 hours, I think that will be one of the easier things for people to get used to. People already shop and pay bills at all hours, but the “core hours” at which our society functions may well have to change.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:45 PM on September 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
You won't get a shorter day without daylight saving, we don't have those powers.
Oh, it’s a long fucking day when the sun rises before 6am and doesn’t get dark until just before 10pm, too, which is how it works right now. But there’s a difference between being awakened by the sun at 5:30 and being awakened at 4:30 when your day starts at 8. If I kept my own hours and just started work two hours after I woke up and knocked off 8 hours later, I wouldn’t notice. But that isn’t an option.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:51 PM on September 17, 2018
Oh, it’s a long fucking day when the sun rises before 6am and doesn’t get dark until just before 10pm, too, which is how it works right now. But there’s a difference between being awakened by the sun at 5:30 and being awakened at 4:30 when your day starts at 8. If I kept my own hours and just started work two hours after I woke up and knocked off 8 hours later, I wouldn’t notice. But that isn’t an option.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:51 PM on September 17, 2018
I want the one when it's light at 6am, even if that means it get dark at 3:30pm in the winter. Having to wake up and get going when it is still dark outside is the very worst thing about major depressive disorder, other than every single other worst thing about major depressive disorder. When I wake up there better be some goddamned fucking sunlight.
Whereas for me, nothing triggers my depression more than only seeing the sun in the brief window of time between waking and arriving at the office. Leaving the office and having it be already dark outside just crushes me.
Because of [sleep disorders] I have so much difficulty making the transition to waking an hour earlier that for a few years I just stayed on Summer time at home year round to avoid the physical stress of it. For half the year all of the clocks in my house would lie. Drove my friends nuts when they came to visit because they wouldn't pay attention to the time until they were starting to think they should be heading home and then they'd be all "Ohmigosh how is it 10:30pm already?!" when it was really 9:30pm in the Real World.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 9:15 PM on September 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
Whereas for me, nothing triggers my depression more than only seeing the sun in the brief window of time between waking and arriving at the office. Leaving the office and having it be already dark outside just crushes me.
Because of [sleep disorders] I have so much difficulty making the transition to waking an hour earlier that for a few years I just stayed on Summer time at home year round to avoid the physical stress of it. For half the year all of the clocks in my house would lie. Drove my friends nuts when they came to visit because they wouldn't pay attention to the time until they were starting to think they should be heading home and then they'd be all "Ohmigosh how is it 10:30pm already?!" when it was really 9:30pm in the Real World.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 9:15 PM on September 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
"...increasing computerisation making the calculation of times easier."
Hah. Hahahaha. *cries*
Citation needed.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:36 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Hah. Hahahaha. *cries*
Citation needed.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:36 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
So Poland is already in the wrong time zone and keeping winter time will mean 3AM sunrises ~.~ 4AM ones are bad enough. Everyone sleeps longer after midnight than before it, there's no point in actually keeping midnight in he middle of the night...
posted by I claim sanctuary at 10:36 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by I claim sanctuary at 10:36 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
This would mean the length of the daylight hours would stretch in summer and shrink in winter, yes?
I love this as an idea, and I know it's a fantasy proposal, but...TRAINS. And all other forms of mass transport dependent on exact times, but especially trains. Can you imagine what would happen to the timetables? (Japan actually got its standardized modern time system after it started getting trains running between cities, because otherwise you have no way of telling what train is going to be where when, and you don't want your trains making close personal acquaintance with one another (especially not when one is carrying the Emperor on a grand tour). (h/t Takeshi Hara). )
Digression aside, I think this is one of those issues where you definitely can't please all of the people all of the time, just given SAD vs RSAD (that would be me...).
posted by huimangm at 10:42 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
I love this as an idea, and I know it's a fantasy proposal, but...TRAINS. And all other forms of mass transport dependent on exact times, but especially trains. Can you imagine what would happen to the timetables? (Japan actually got its standardized modern time system after it started getting trains running between cities, because otherwise you have no way of telling what train is going to be where when, and you don't want your trains making close personal acquaintance with one another (especially not when one is carrying the Emperor on a grand tour). (h/t Takeshi Hara). )
Digression aside, I think this is one of those issues where you definitely can't please all of the people all of the time, just given SAD vs RSAD (that would be me...).
posted by huimangm at 10:42 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
A vacation Arizona only strengthened my love of DST. "Why are the kids getting up at 5am? Oh, because the sun is shining brightly." We then travelled to a more civilized state (Texas) and things improved.
I have a twelve-month-old son, and did you know that astronomical twilight begins at almost 3:00 am in late June in Arizona? And did you know that baby eyelids are perfectly calibrated to allow exactly one photon of light to pass through to the retina at the first sign of astronomical dawn? And that one photon is the exact number of photons needed to wake a sleeping baby?
posted by compartment at 10:45 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I have a twelve-month-old son, and did you know that astronomical twilight begins at almost 3:00 am in late June in Arizona? And did you know that baby eyelids are perfectly calibrated to allow exactly one photon of light to pass through to the retina at the first sign of astronomical dawn? And that one photon is the exact number of photons needed to wake a sleeping baby?
posted by compartment at 10:45 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
OMG what will Spainish radio and TV do with all the additional time saved from "son las once en Madrid, las diez en Canarias' for some weird reason that drove me BATTY!!
posted by Wilder at 11:14 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Wilder at 11:14 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
how does time even work
Badly.
We all use electronic timepieces anyway; there's no reason not to move to Real Solar Time™, where the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM all year round.
That would make seconds, minutes and hours a wildly inconsistent length throughout the day, and having them stay roughly the same is pretty useful. But I agree with you that we should just CADT the entire global timekeeping system.
When I am appointed King of Timekeeping, I shall make simple-minded watches and clocks illegal, and abolish all time zones.
I'll have the SI second officially renamed as the "sec", a move akin to spelling the metric ton as "tonne", in order to free the traditional second from the straitjacket of being required to describe an accurately consistent time interval.
GPS time will replace UTC for scientific purposes, and it will be illegal on pain of imprisonment to store any timestamp in a format other than a single signed number (not necessarily an integer) representing secs since GPS epoch.
For personal, commercial, legal and traditional purposes, GPS-linked standard clocks will convert GPS time to a local second, minute, hour, day, month and year. No time or date specified in these traditional units will have any meaning without an assumed or accompanying set of GPS coordinates.
Making appointments with people more than a few hundred kilometres away will therefore require the proposed time to be qualified as "your time" or "my time", as is necessary already across time zone boundaries. Given the way human populations concentrate I wouldn't imagine most people will be inconvenienced much by this, while substantial numbers living near present-day time zone boundaries will actually be better off. People living near the International Date Line will remain as confused as ever.
By default, standard clocks will use their own GPS-provided locations to do the conversion. The only adjustment provided by any standard clock will be an arbitrary choice of assumed location. Public use of clocks requiring other kinds of timing adjustment will invite the kind of opprobrium presently reserved for bestiality and paedophilia.
The GPS time to local time conversion will be done in such a way as to minimize variation in the duration of seconds while keeping every 86400-second interval as close as possible to 86400 secs, given the constraint that sunrise must always happen at 06:00:00 everywhere. The result: automatic continuous DST with no jetlag-inducing time steps, no time zone politics apart from occasional arguments over the IDL, and no leap seconds.
The philosophical notion of a "point in time" will be abolished. A timestamp expressed to any given degree of precision will henceforth be taken as referring to the entire interval starting from and including the expressed time, and finishing before but not including the next greater time expressible using the same degree of precision. For example, 11:23am will specify the entire 60-second interval ending before 11:24am. This interpretation will also apply to times expressed in secs since epoch.
Following from that, "midnight" and "noon" will be taken as strictly synonymous with 00:00:00 and 12:00:00 in 24-hour format, or 12:00:00am and 12:00:00pm in 12-hour format; the former point-in-time definitions for midnight and noon will correspond to the beginning of the one-second intervals for the new interpretations.
Displaying or storing something purported to be a time in 24-hour format that has an hour component greater than 23 will result in the person responsible spending the interval from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 (local market square time) locked in the stocks being pelted with rotten cabbages.
Bug reports invited.
posted by flabdablet at 11:22 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
Badly.
We all use electronic timepieces anyway; there's no reason not to move to Real Solar Time™, where the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM all year round.
That would make seconds, minutes and hours a wildly inconsistent length throughout the day, and having them stay roughly the same is pretty useful. But I agree with you that we should just CADT the entire global timekeeping system.
When I am appointed King of Timekeeping, I shall make simple-minded watches and clocks illegal, and abolish all time zones.
I'll have the SI second officially renamed as the "sec", a move akin to spelling the metric ton as "tonne", in order to free the traditional second from the straitjacket of being required to describe an accurately consistent time interval.
GPS time will replace UTC for scientific purposes, and it will be illegal on pain of imprisonment to store any timestamp in a format other than a single signed number (not necessarily an integer) representing secs since GPS epoch.
For personal, commercial, legal and traditional purposes, GPS-linked standard clocks will convert GPS time to a local second, minute, hour, day, month and year. No time or date specified in these traditional units will have any meaning without an assumed or accompanying set of GPS coordinates.
Making appointments with people more than a few hundred kilometres away will therefore require the proposed time to be qualified as "your time" or "my time", as is necessary already across time zone boundaries. Given the way human populations concentrate I wouldn't imagine most people will be inconvenienced much by this, while substantial numbers living near present-day time zone boundaries will actually be better off. People living near the International Date Line will remain as confused as ever.
By default, standard clocks will use their own GPS-provided locations to do the conversion. The only adjustment provided by any standard clock will be an arbitrary choice of assumed location. Public use of clocks requiring other kinds of timing adjustment will invite the kind of opprobrium presently reserved for bestiality and paedophilia.
The GPS time to local time conversion will be done in such a way as to minimize variation in the duration of seconds while keeping every 86400-second interval as close as possible to 86400 secs, given the constraint that sunrise must always happen at 06:00:00 everywhere. The result: automatic continuous DST with no jetlag-inducing time steps, no time zone politics apart from occasional arguments over the IDL, and no leap seconds.
The philosophical notion of a "point in time" will be abolished. A timestamp expressed to any given degree of precision will henceforth be taken as referring to the entire interval starting from and including the expressed time, and finishing before but not including the next greater time expressible using the same degree of precision. For example, 11:23am will specify the entire 60-second interval ending before 11:24am. This interpretation will also apply to times expressed in secs since epoch.
Following from that, "midnight" and "noon" will be taken as strictly synonymous with 00:00:00 and 12:00:00 in 24-hour format, or 12:00:00am and 12:00:00pm in 12-hour format; the former point-in-time definitions for midnight and noon will correspond to the beginning of the one-second intervals for the new interpretations.
Displaying or storing something purported to be a time in 24-hour format that has an hour component greater than 23 will result in the person responsible spending the interval from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 (local market square time) locked in the stocks being pelted with rotten cabbages.
Bug reports invited.
posted by flabdablet at 11:22 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
I, for one, welcome our new... Time Lord?
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 11:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 11:38 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I imagine that both the Russian railways abolishing central time and the movement to abolish DST are enabled by increasing computerisation making the calculation of times easier.
Sysadmins and programmers the world over are crying right now. Embedded internet of shit programmers have started drinking ever since the EU announcement and haven't stopped yet.
So. Much. Room. For. Fuckups.
It's going to be Y2k all over, but only with less than a year of preparation, a lot more uncertainties and a shitload of more work to do.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:55 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sysadmins and programmers the world over are crying right now. Embedded internet of shit programmers have started drinking ever since the EU announcement and haven't stopped yet.
So. Much. Room. For. Fuckups.
It's going to be Y2k all over, but only with less than a year of preparation, a lot more uncertainties and a shitload of more work to do.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:55 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
There are some useful graphs here that explain the benefits of Daylight Savings Time.
If everyone was free to set their own schedule and get up or go to bed at different times in the year, there would be no need for it. But if you have to get up at the same clock time throughout the year, for instance to go to work or school, Daylight Savings gives you extra hours of daylight in the winter, which otherwise you would have to sleep through in the early morning. Objectively, if you're on a fixed schedule you will need to use less electricity with daylight savings, if only because you don't need artificial light so long. If you're on a fixed schedule, you will get fewer hours of daylight in your waking life without daylight savings.
From the graph, of you're awake 6AM to 11PM in Milwaukee, without daylight savings at midsummer you'll sleep through two hours of daylight from 4AM to 6AM, and it will get dark at 8PM. With daylight savings you only sleep through an hour of daylight from 5AM to 6AM, and you get an extra hour of daylight from 8PM to 9PM.
I like daylight, I work office hours, so I'd very much like to keep it. Even as an early riser, I'd rather have that hour of daylight 8PM-9PM than 4AM-5AM.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:55 AM on September 18, 2018 [5 favorites]
If everyone was free to set their own schedule and get up or go to bed at different times in the year, there would be no need for it. But if you have to get up at the same clock time throughout the year, for instance to go to work or school, Daylight Savings gives you extra hours of daylight in the winter, which otherwise you would have to sleep through in the early morning. Objectively, if you're on a fixed schedule you will need to use less electricity with daylight savings, if only because you don't need artificial light so long. If you're on a fixed schedule, you will get fewer hours of daylight in your waking life without daylight savings.
From the graph, of you're awake 6AM to 11PM in Milwaukee, without daylight savings at midsummer you'll sleep through two hours of daylight from 4AM to 6AM, and it will get dark at 8PM. With daylight savings you only sleep through an hour of daylight from 5AM to 6AM, and you get an extra hour of daylight from 8PM to 9PM.
I like daylight, I work office hours, so I'd very much like to keep it. Even as an early riser, I'd rather have that hour of daylight 8PM-9PM than 4AM-5AM.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:55 AM on September 18, 2018 [5 favorites]
Deadwax, agree that it's super popular and I bet because the alternative is it being pitch dark in Sydney by 7:30pm (not sure about Melbourne sorry). I have friends closer to the poles who find it bizarre that we have 9pm fireworks a week after midsummer. Isn't it still light, the ask? Hahaha, we wish.
I don't really care, I just wish they'd mandate a week of leave following each switch as the jet lag kills me, I'm such a wuss.
posted by kitten magic at 1:12 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
I don't really care, I just wish they'd mandate a week of leave following each switch as the jet lag kills me, I'm such a wuss.
posted by kitten magic at 1:12 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also we have to stick with DST or I'll have to change my living room clock for real. Currently I spend winter with it an hour wrong.
posted by kitten magic at 1:13 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by kitten magic at 1:13 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
To be clear, the EU isn't "doing away with" DST. There was a consultation, and, as a result of which the European Commission is recommending to the EU that member states abolish DST, but it's down to member states and the EU parliament to vote on it. It's far from a fait accompli at this point.
posted by parm at 2:08 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by parm at 2:08 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
I had a friend from Saskatchewan where they don’t do daylight savings and her first time with daylight savings as an adult was in Ontario and she thought everyone was fucking with her just to be funny.
I still want that one time I hauled my ass out of bed to be at work for 7am only to find it was 6am back. I want that hour back. You owe me, daylight savings.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:34 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I still want that one time I hauled my ass out of bed to be at work for 7am only to find it was 6am back. I want that hour back. You owe me, daylight savings.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:34 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
To be clear, the EU isn't "doing away with" DST.
Wait, the EU is a democratic and representative body with procedures that centre gaining consensus? Why did no one tell us this before?
posted by ambrosen at 2:44 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
Wait, the EU is a democratic and representative body with procedures that centre gaining consensus? Why did no one tell us this before?
posted by ambrosen at 2:44 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
If this goes through, this night owl hopes Ireland goes +1 hr instead of 0. Back in the day Dublin Mean Time was 25 mins after Greenwich, so there's precedent. It's bad enough going home in the dark for half the year, I don't want to start going to work in the dark too. Official sunrise time for Dublin this year on 21 Dec is 8:38 am and official sunset time is 4:08 pm btw. Sunrise on 21 Jun was 4:57 am and sunset was 9:57 pm. We are deceptively far north.
posted by kersplunk at 3:10 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by kersplunk at 3:10 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
I love this as an idea, and I know it's a fantasy proposal, but...TRAINS. And all other forms of mass transport dependent on exact times, but especially trains. Can you imagine what would happen to the timetables?
Under Flabdablet Radically Local Time, timetables would still work just fine. In fact they'd continue to work just fine under any timezone-free smoothly adjusted local time convention, even one that did horrible violence to the consistency of the duration of the second such as Joe's Real Solar Time™, because transport arrivals and departures all happen at specific places as well as specific times. There is nothing wrong with posting an Osaka timetable quoted entirely in Osaka local times on a station wall in Tokyo, because by the time anybody needs those times, they will be at the place where those times make sense.
So timetables would not be the problem. Regulations around driver hours absolutely would, though, which is why I like my proposed system - which has only a single synchronization point per calendar day tying commercial/social time to atomic scientific time - better than Joe's, which has two.
As a computer programmer, the idea that because computers can do it, we should make the length of a second time and location dependent is genuinely horrifying.
As long as we retain an atomic-clock-based standard duration that isn't time and location dependent such as my proposed "sec", and as long as a second and a sec remain within a few parts per thousand of each other like a ton and a tonne, then for most practical purposes we could just ignore the difference without getting into serious trouble. As a computer programmer I'd expect the resulting level of genuinely horrifying to be slightly less than that arising from our present harebrained hodge-podge of patches on warts on bags on kludges.
I'm talking about a second vs sec discrepancy that's of about the same order as that envisioned near leap second insertions and deletions by UTC-SLS, but without that proposed standard's potential for confusion between smeared seconds and "real" seconds.
The simple fact is that we already need location-dependent information - a time zone - to convert between UTC and local time. Substituting a robust physical GPS location for the existing politically fragile time zone offset, and a leap-second-free base standard like GPS time for the compromised mess that is UTC, looks like a reliability improvement to me. And sure, the conversion formula becomes more complicated than simple addition of an offset, but that's what standard libraries are for.
It's ugly, sure, but it's both less ugly and less fragile than what we already have.
posted by flabdablet at 3:24 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Under Flabdablet Radically Local Time, timetables would still work just fine. In fact they'd continue to work just fine under any timezone-free smoothly adjusted local time convention, even one that did horrible violence to the consistency of the duration of the second such as Joe's Real Solar Time™, because transport arrivals and departures all happen at specific places as well as specific times. There is nothing wrong with posting an Osaka timetable quoted entirely in Osaka local times on a station wall in Tokyo, because by the time anybody needs those times, they will be at the place where those times make sense.
So timetables would not be the problem. Regulations around driver hours absolutely would, though, which is why I like my proposed system - which has only a single synchronization point per calendar day tying commercial/social time to atomic scientific time - better than Joe's, which has two.
As a computer programmer, the idea that because computers can do it, we should make the length of a second time and location dependent is genuinely horrifying.
As long as we retain an atomic-clock-based standard duration that isn't time and location dependent such as my proposed "sec", and as long as a second and a sec remain within a few parts per thousand of each other like a ton and a tonne, then for most practical purposes we could just ignore the difference without getting into serious trouble. As a computer programmer I'd expect the resulting level of genuinely horrifying to be slightly less than that arising from our present harebrained hodge-podge of patches on warts on bags on kludges.
I'm talking about a second vs sec discrepancy that's of about the same order as that envisioned near leap second insertions and deletions by UTC-SLS, but without that proposed standard's potential for confusion between smeared seconds and "real" seconds.
The simple fact is that we already need location-dependent information - a time zone - to convert between UTC and local time. Substituting a robust physical GPS location for the existing politically fragile time zone offset, and a leap-second-free base standard like GPS time for the compromised mess that is UTC, looks like a reliability improvement to me. And sure, the conversion formula becomes more complicated than simple addition of an offset, but that's what standard libraries are for.
It's ugly, sure, but it's both less ugly and less fragile than what we already have.
posted by flabdablet at 3:24 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also, the lengths of various other time units in common use - days, months and years - are already time and location dependent, and it's not those dependencies per se that make for horrifying time libraries; it's the fact that so many of the conversion factors are subject to unpredictable political churn, and the fact that those location and especially time dependencies are so often just forgotten about.
Atomic clocks are stable enough for scientific/technical interval measurements. The rotation of the Earth is stable enough for commercial/legal/social interval measurements. And as long as we have some well-defined and universally accepted way to tie one of those to the other and give up the pretence that the same units are appropriate for both use cases, we can have it all.
We can have all the benefits of daylight saving without the twice-yearly productivity losses due to jetlag and a commercial/legal day that's always divisible into exactly 86400 near-enough-to-identical seconds and no anomalous trading conditions near timezone boundaries and an Internet of Shit that works no worse when deprived of tzdata updates.
posted by flabdablet at 3:39 AM on September 18, 2018
Atomic clocks are stable enough for scientific/technical interval measurements. The rotation of the Earth is stable enough for commercial/legal/social interval measurements. And as long as we have some well-defined and universally accepted way to tie one of those to the other and give up the pretence that the same units are appropriate for both use cases, we can have it all.
We can have all the benefits of daylight saving without the twice-yearly productivity losses due to jetlag and a commercial/legal day that's always divisible into exactly 86400 near-enough-to-identical seconds and no anomalous trading conditions near timezone boundaries and an Internet of Shit that works no worse when deprived of tzdata updates.
posted by flabdablet at 3:39 AM on September 18, 2018
Looks like there's been no mention yet of the fact that Florida voted this year to stay on Daylight Savings Time permanently, but the bill that would actually make that happen is stalled in Congress. The article kind of implies that it's ultimately a Federal decision because it would impact prime-time TV hours, which seems bonkers but nowadays who can say.
posted by penduluum at 4:36 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by penduluum at 4:36 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I love the extra hour we get when we "fall back," but I hate losing an hour to "spring forward." I propose that we simply replace "spring forward" with an additional "fall back," effectively gaining two free hours every year.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:36 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:36 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Also, the lengths of various other time units in common use - days, months and years - are already time and location dependent
I don't understand this -- is this referring to different calendars (Gregorian, Islamic, Jewish, Chinese calendars)? Because otherwise isn't February 28 days long, the year 2020 366 days long, etc., everywhere? I know it's not simultaneously September 18, 2018 everywhere right now, but that doesn't seem any different from the fact that it's not 7:54 am everywhere right now. Unless I'm missing something?
posted by andrewesque at 4:54 AM on September 18, 2018
I don't understand this -- is this referring to different calendars (Gregorian, Islamic, Jewish, Chinese calendars)? Because otherwise isn't February 28 days long, the year 2020 366 days long, etc., everywhere? I know it's not simultaneously September 18, 2018 everywhere right now, but that doesn't seem any different from the fact that it's not 7:54 am everywhere right now. Unless I'm missing something?
posted by andrewesque at 4:54 AM on September 18, 2018
I love daylight savings so much. The couple weeks before the change always feel so weird and wrong, like time is just off and not operating at the right interchange between the clock and the sunlight. Changing the clock is blissful. Sunlight!
Granted, I am in southern Australia and love long, balmy evenings and 5-6am sunrises in summer and also like to see some light before and after work in the winter.
posted by E. Whitehall at 5:13 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Granted, I am in southern Australia and love long, balmy evenings and 5-6am sunrises in summer and also like to see some light before and after work in the winter.
posted by E. Whitehall at 5:13 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
I am an all winter time person because I like waking up to sun and going home to snuggly time. I also do NOT understand people complaining about sunrises waking you up — you know about curtains, right?
posted by dame at 5:23 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by dame at 5:23 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
From the graph, of you're awake 6AM to 11PM in Milwaukee, without daylight savings at midsummer you'll sleep through two hours of daylight from 4AM to 6AM, and it will get dark at 8PM
In Atlanta, we are very near to the western edge of the time zone, as well as much further south. In the spring, I’m just beginning to enjoy having some daylight in the morning on my way to work when the time changes and I’m back to waking up and driving to work in the dark. As mentioned upthread, this fucking sucks for those of us who need sunlight in the morning.
Also it is hot as fuck here until later in October, so I couldn’t care less about evening daylight.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:25 AM on September 18, 2018
In Atlanta, we are very near to the western edge of the time zone, as well as much further south. In the spring, I’m just beginning to enjoy having some daylight in the morning on my way to work when the time changes and I’m back to waking up and driving to work in the dark. As mentioned upthread, this fucking sucks for those of us who need sunlight in the morning.
Also it is hot as fuck here until later in October, so I couldn’t care less about evening daylight.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:25 AM on September 18, 2018
he article kind of implies that it's ultimately a Federal decision because it would impact prime-time TV hours, which seems bonkers but nowadays who can say.
So that's another reform we have to wait for the Great Boomer Dieoff to see?
posted by acb at 5:54 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
So that's another reform we have to wait for the Great Boomer Dieoff to see?
posted by acb at 5:54 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Bloody Eurocrats, coming over here, taking our time.
posted by Damienmce at 6:22 AM on September 18, 2018
posted by Damienmce at 6:22 AM on September 18, 2018
Unless I'm missing something?
You're missing leap seconds and daylight saving time.
Most days are 86400 seconds long. Per UTC, a day containing a leap second insertion is 86401 seconds long, and one containing a leap second deletion is 85399 seconds long. So the length of a day, as defined by UTC, is time dependent.
Daylight saving makes things worse. On "spring forward" day, a whole hour gets removed. So instead of that day being 86400 seconds long, it's only 82800 seconds long. And a "fall back" day is 90000 seconds long. And daylight saving adjustments are not only date dependent but thoroughly location dependent. Worst case, the length of some day on some date might differ between some Southern Hemisphere location and some Northern Hemisphere location by a full two hours.
And since weeks and months and years are defined as multiples of days, they inherit all of this bogosity. So depending on exactly when the ends of any given interval measured in weeks, months and/or years occur, the length of that interval might differ from its nominal length by up to 7201 seconds.
The fact that most days are indeed reckoned to be a standard 86400 UTC seconds long doesn't change the fact that software dealing with time intervals needs to account for all these time-dependent, location-dependent, whim-of-legislature-dependent edge cases. It's a horrid mess and it makes programmers' brains hurt.
posted by flabdablet at 6:52 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
You're missing leap seconds and daylight saving time.
Most days are 86400 seconds long. Per UTC, a day containing a leap second insertion is 86401 seconds long, and one containing a leap second deletion is 85399 seconds long. So the length of a day, as defined by UTC, is time dependent.
Daylight saving makes things worse. On "spring forward" day, a whole hour gets removed. So instead of that day being 86400 seconds long, it's only 82800 seconds long. And a "fall back" day is 90000 seconds long. And daylight saving adjustments are not only date dependent but thoroughly location dependent. Worst case, the length of some day on some date might differ between some Southern Hemisphere location and some Northern Hemisphere location by a full two hours.
And since weeks and months and years are defined as multiples of days, they inherit all of this bogosity. So depending on exactly when the ends of any given interval measured in weeks, months and/or years occur, the length of that interval might differ from its nominal length by up to 7201 seconds.
The fact that most days are indeed reckoned to be a standard 86400 UTC seconds long doesn't change the fact that software dealing with time intervals needs to account for all these time-dependent, location-dependent, whim-of-legislature-dependent edge cases. It's a horrid mess and it makes programmers' brains hurt.
posted by flabdablet at 6:52 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Daylight saving makes things worse. On "spring forward" day, a whole hour gets removed. So instead of that day being 86400 seconds long, it's only 82800 seconds long.
Seems like that complicates when someone can be prosecuted as an adult
posted by thelonius at 6:55 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Seems like that complicates when someone can be prosecuted as an adult
posted by thelonius at 6:55 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Looks like there's been no mention yet of the fact that Florida voted this year to stay on Daylight Savings Time permanently, but the bill that would actually make that happen is stalled in Congress. The article kind of implies that it's ultimately a Federal decision because it would impact prime-time TV hours,
Prime Time TV hours are not really all that consistent in the US due to timezones. There are multiple states and areas that do/don't observe DST so who knows what the hangup is.
But I just typed all that because I want to suggest that the Central Time Zone is the best timezone for tv watching in prime time.
The west coast is the worst. Their prime-time shows are shown from 8-10pm, with the news generally at 11:00. That's 2:00am EST, which totally sucks if you have to work with clients on the east coast. East coast is 2nd best for prime-time tv. Central is fine for east and west.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:28 AM on September 18, 2018
Prime Time TV hours are not really all that consistent in the US due to timezones. There are multiple states and areas that do/don't observe DST so who knows what the hangup is.
But I just typed all that because I want to suggest that the Central Time Zone is the best timezone for tv watching in prime time.
The west coast is the worst. Their prime-time shows are shown from 8-10pm, with the news generally at 11:00. That's 2:00am EST, which totally sucks if you have to work with clients on the east coast. East coast is 2nd best for prime-time tv. Central is fine for east and west.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:28 AM on September 18, 2018
I think changing the time is stupid and unnecessary. And I always hear little hints of studies like this:
Fatal accidents following changes in daylight savings time: the American experience.
5 Weird Effects of Daylight Saving Time
posted by agregoli at 7:47 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Fatal accidents following changes in daylight savings time: the American experience.
5 Weird Effects of Daylight Saving Time
posted by agregoli at 7:47 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Alternatively, we could just switch to Atlantic Time, with no DST, but all of New England is currently stuck in a "No, you go first" holding pattern; see here.
There are certain parts of Maine where everyone is already de facto on Atlantic Time, with 8-4 being everyone's standard business hours.
The righteous reform is to ban time zones, UTC everywhere.
Quite so. But we should probably change it to something that inconveniences everyone almost equally rather than prioritising the UK, Franch, Spain, and Western Africa. I vote for putting everyone on UTC-10:30, which used to be Hawaii Standard Time but is currently used by nobody anywhere.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:24 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
There are certain parts of Maine where everyone is already de facto on Atlantic Time, with 8-4 being everyone's standard business hours.
The righteous reform is to ban time zones, UTC everywhere.
Quite so. But we should probably change it to something that inconveniences everyone almost equally rather than prioritising the UK, Franch, Spain, and Western Africa. I vote for putting everyone on UTC-10:30, which used to be Hawaii Standard Time but is currently used by nobody anywhere.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:24 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
I propose that we simply replace "spring forward" with an additional "fall back," effectively gaining two free hours every year.
I'd be up for doing this every couple of weeks, or at least once a month. Seems reasonable.
posted by asperity at 9:25 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'd be up for doing this every couple of weeks, or at least once a month. Seems reasonable.
posted by asperity at 9:25 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
Seems that the only reason for requiring daylight saving time is that employers require their employees to show up at inflexible hours. If every employee were given one hour of flex time, plus or minus, as they prefer, then everyone would be satisfied without having to change the clocks. Most businesses don't need everyone there at precisely the same time.
If some businesses need employees at a fixed time and there are no volunteers, they could provide surge bonuses to attract them. This might not work for every business but it should work for most.
Inflexible work schedules are the real problem, not the clocks.
posted by JackFlash at 5:03 PM on September 18, 2018 [5 favorites]
If some businesses need employees at a fixed time and there are no volunteers, they could provide surge bonuses to attract them. This might not work for every business but it should work for most.
Inflexible work schedules are the real problem, not the clocks.
posted by JackFlash at 5:03 PM on September 18, 2018 [5 favorites]
because of the fucking sunlight waking me up an hour and change before I need to be up.
I mean... blackout curtains exist. There are decent arguments made on both (all?) sides, but, you know, blackout curtains.
posted by tzikeh at 5:18 PM on September 18, 2018 [5 favorites]
I mean... blackout curtains exist. There are decent arguments made on both (all?) sides, but, you know, blackout curtains.
posted by tzikeh at 5:18 PM on September 18, 2018 [5 favorites]
I have blackout curtains and use a sleepmask. Those are not 100% blacking out the bedroom enough for me to not know when dawn happened. My bedroom faces east and that doesn't help, but nothing is foolproof anyway.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:08 AM on September 19, 2018
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:08 AM on September 19, 2018
Inflexible work schedules are the real problem, not the clocks.
Inflexible work schedules are also the cause of rush hour traffic jams, childcare scheduling panics, disenfranchisement of the poor (who can't take off work hours to deal with registration and voting requirements), and all sorts of other bureaucratic hassles.
Picking a single schedule for the clocks only fixes part of the problem (albeit, the one that costs lives and money); the real solution lies in not treating people like robots and adjusting schedules both to match the seasons and the needs of workers.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 5:05 PM on September 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
Inflexible work schedules are also the cause of rush hour traffic jams, childcare scheduling panics, disenfranchisement of the poor (who can't take off work hours to deal with registration and voting requirements), and all sorts of other bureaucratic hassles.
Picking a single schedule for the clocks only fixes part of the problem (albeit, the one that costs lives and money); the real solution lies in not treating people like robots and adjusting schedules both to match the seasons and the needs of workers.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 5:05 PM on September 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm not really sure how you can have flexible work times in any sort of business that requires large teams acting in concert. Specifically it would seem that variable work times for schools is going to be a hard nut to crack. Or easy I guess if you allow instructors to dictate the work schedule of every parent. How that doesn't result in riots when a person's two kids have instructors whose start and end times are staggered by two hours I don't know.
posted by Mitheral at 7:01 AM on September 21, 2018
posted by Mitheral at 7:01 AM on September 21, 2018
I love living in Maine that but being on the eastern edge of the time zone is no fun. In summer, dawn is absurdly early, and sunset is @ 9 on the solstice, and that's daylight savings time. In winter, the sun sets at noon, at least it feels that way. I love daylight savings time.
posted by theora55 at 9:14 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by theora55 at 9:14 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
Inflexible work schedules are the real problem, not the clocks.
Well, this is kind of the rub. There's all sorts of stuff that has to be coordinated around a common standard in order for things not to descend into utter madness. I mean, I'd love to have Fedward Winter Time (GMT-5:00) and a range of Fedward Modified Times as my own personal clock slid by five or ten minutes a week in spring or fall so I never had to get up before the sun was up and never had a full hour of jet lag (GMT-4:55, GMT-4:50, and so on), eventually settling on Fedward Summer Time (GMT-4:00), when I'd be synchronous with EDT. But then I'd have to publish a time zone file and get it distributed to everybody everywhere, and scheduling stuff with me would be a nightmare. Imagine that was not just me, but every school system, every bus line, every person in your office who lives just far enough away that their suburb has its own vanity time zone.
It's simpler for me to be a bit late in the morning when the clocks have changed and just plead sleep disorder when people give me a hard time about it. At least I'd be telling the truth. The clock is ruthless, but I don't have to be.
posted by fedward at 11:45 AM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
Well, this is kind of the rub. There's all sorts of stuff that has to be coordinated around a common standard in order for things not to descend into utter madness. I mean, I'd love to have Fedward Winter Time (GMT-5:00) and a range of Fedward Modified Times as my own personal clock slid by five or ten minutes a week in spring or fall so I never had to get up before the sun was up and never had a full hour of jet lag (GMT-4:55, GMT-4:50, and so on), eventually settling on Fedward Summer Time (GMT-4:00), when I'd be synchronous with EDT. But then I'd have to publish a time zone file and get it distributed to everybody everywhere, and scheduling stuff with me would be a nightmare. Imagine that was not just me, but every school system, every bus line, every person in your office who lives just far enough away that their suburb has its own vanity time zone.
It's simpler for me to be a bit late in the morning when the clocks have changed and just plead sleep disorder when people give me a hard time about it. At least I'd be telling the truth. The clock is ruthless, but I don't have to be.
posted by fedward at 11:45 AM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'm just really glad that we save all that daylight in the summer, when there's so little of it to go around. Waste not, want not!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:53 PM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:53 PM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also come on people I live on the 52nd parallel and on the summer solstice we only get like an hour and a half of astronomical nighttime.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:54 PM on September 26, 2018
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:54 PM on September 26, 2018
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Also something something Brexit.
posted by poe at 3:48 PM on September 17, 2018 [14 favorites]