I would love someone to propose a bill that requires the elimination of hyperbolic virtue signaling from all future bills, perhaps as an additional step in whatever pipeline is used to produce bills.
Just need a hyperbolic virtue signaling name for it!
Aren't there some legislatures that have guidelines on promoting neutral naming of legislation, in order to reduce the marketing or manipulation value of act titles?
It does seem like the "AWESOME Goodness Act" or "CUTE Puppies Act" phenomenon is especially strong here in the U.S.
When did virtue signaling become a bad thing? If the goal of the act is to protect people's access to sunshine, why not say as much -- at least the act has a human readable name.
Virtue signalling usually is juxtaposed with being virtuous for its own sake: Those who have to tell everyone how good/enlightened/progressive they are usually aren't.
I'll offer no commentary on whether "Sunshine Protection Act" is virtue signaling, but I think virtue signaling is less "talking about having done virtuous things" and more "talking about doing virtuous things with the intent to gain social capital". It's the facade, the ulterior motive that most people balk at. In that sense it has always been a "bad" thing.
Therefore, using virtue signaling as an epithet is a bad faith claim to be able to peek into people's minds and determine bad intent in order to discourage people from publicly supporting a cause.
It's a bad thing when they are passing laws that violate your privacy but call the act "the protect the children act" - I think this is the habit OP was referring to
Virtue signaling is a problem when it injects a moral aspect into areas that are disputed or subjective.
In this case, it frames the issue as the enlightened who want to"protect people's access to sunshine" against the evil forces of darkness.
In reality, there is no moral highground, good guys, or bad guys.
Some people simply like sunshine at different times. It would be nice if we could act like adults and start from this premise. We can try to come up with a solution for how to set our clocks without claiming the preference of the other side is illegitimate or morally bankrupt.
When you end up with bills called things like the "Patriot" that whitewash the dangerous capabilities of the laws and at the same time create a name thats immune to criticism.
Obviously ending DST isn't like that, but you have SOPA, EARN IT, etc, etc.
I believe this kind of branding should have no place in legislature.
Virtue signaling the act or virtue signaling the term?
Hollow signaling has always been crap as far as I'm concerned. The term became a dirty word in left leaning circles and a slight pejorative in right leaning ones in the last ~10yr or so which IMO is a shame because it describes a wide variety of modern behavior and there is no good replacement.
It's extra funny in this case, because the main point of those opposing this bill seems to be "Won't someone think of the children? They'll have to walk to school in the dark!"
Schools here frequently have a delayed start on winter days because of black ice on the roads. Permanent DST will only make that happen more frequently. Perhaps this will cause the school system to look into a schedule adjustment during the winter months that accounts for the reality that black ice is a problem here during those months instead of acting like it's an unexpected situation that couldn't be foreseen each time it happens.
Florida is "The Sunshine State", so the name was a little more clever in that context. I can't emphasize enough that I call it a little clever, not a lot clever.
>Jesus, does everything need to be hyperbolic virtue signaling.
It's a bit ironic given the current anti-Russia everything when Russia is the largest country in the world on permanent DST. If the bill had been subject to debate instead of going through so fast, I suspect someone would have brought up the Russia connection and the whole thing would have died a quick death as "we don't want to be like the Russians".
This is excellent. With the rise of air conditioning, daylight savings has considerably less electricity savings than it used to. It will also make timekeeping more consistent. I have lived in Arizona for the past few years and it is pleasant to know that you will always be at UTC-7:00.
It will change how the morning feels in winter, but I'm OK with settling on savings time. The bill allows states like Arizona or Hawaii to stay on savings time if they'd prefer it.
> It actually sets "standard time" to what is currently daylight saving time, and deletes DST.
As the current maintainer of the timezone database observed:
A *lot* of computer software assumes that timezone abbreviations like
"PST" have their longstanding meanings. This software was obviously
misguided, but it's out there and changing it will be quite a hassle. I
don't envy people who will have the responsibility for cleaning up the
resulting mess where "PST" has one meaning for older timestamps and a
different meaning for newer ones and existing standards like Internet
RFC 5322 continue to say things like "PST is semantically equivalent to
-0800".
Similarly, people thought the world would burn in flames due to Y2K, when dates were going to overflow their bits, kill everyone, and lose banking information. As things happened, the date passed with nary a blip for me or anyone I knew. I suspect this will be similar.
Y2K required hundreds of billions of dollars worth of effort to keep it from being a disaster, and it still actually resulted in some significant issues:
"In Sheffield, United Kingdom, a Y2K bug caused miscalculation of the mothers' age and sent incorrect risk assessments for Down syndrome to 154 pregnant women. As a direct result two abortions were carried out, and four babies with Down syndrome were also born to mothers who had been told they were in the low-risk group."
I find it hard to imagine that systems which store "PST" and rely on a hard-coded assumption that it is -0800 would be robust to normal changes in time zone rules, which already happen regularly. Like surely those systems would have already broken in 2007 when the rules of America/Los_Angeles changed such that the date of the yearly transition between PST and PDT changed.
Arizona only goes by Mountain Standard time (UTC -7:00). If Daylight savings time becomes permanent will Arizona always be an hour off from the rest of Mountain time zone?
We were on vacation, driving on 89 from Page to Kanab, which crosses AZ/UT state line. Several times our phones switched to different TZs. It was annoying
I spent a week camping near the California/Arizona border and my phone was absolutely flummoxed by the time zones. It was constantly jumping back and forth an hour.
The weirdest part is that I wasn't even _that_ close to the border, it was 30-40 miles away. I know there is some room for error with phone location tracking but I've never had a maps app consistenly confuse my location with a spot 40 miles away.
I wonder if it has to do with which towers it is connecting to rather than where it thinks you are. I know time sync is important so perhaps your phone just shows you the timezone of the nearest tower and that almost always works well enough?
Arizona is rough because even though the state is officially MST, some (not all) of the Native American tribes do DST. In some areas it's kind of mess if you let your phone choose its timezone based off of the strongest cell tower.
Arizona the state is in MST, there's Navajo reservations in MDT, and there's even a Hopi reservation that's totally encircled by a Navajo reservation that doesn't do DST.
You are mostly correct but slightly imprecise. There is only one Navajo reservation, the Navajo Nation. It is indeed on Mountain time, not Arizona time, meaning it (unlike anywhere else in Arizona) switches to MDT in the summer.
It makes some sense because the Navajo Nation, though mostly located in Arizona, also has a large portion in New Mexico and a smaller one in Utah, both of which observe Mountain time. I don’t know the exact history, but I assume that when Arizona stopped observing DST, the Navajo Nation chose to keep Mountain time to avoid having two different time zones within their border.
The Hopi Reservation, while indeed an enclave within the Navajo Nation, is a completely separate political entity and so under no compulsion to follow any Navajo decisions. Also, they’re entirely within Arizona, so sticking to Arizona time is logical.
Another thing — I can’t recall having ever heard an Arizonan refer to our time zone as MST. That would be technically accurate, but would be confusing because it would naturally imply that we sometimes switch to MDT. We just call it Arizona time, and think of the Mountain and Pacific zones as a separate thing that we’re aligned with for part of the year.
My impression (not backed by data, but I did grow up in Arizona) is that it has much closer economic, social, and cultural ties to California than it does to the Mountain states, so it would make sense to stay at -7.
The House undoubtedly will opt to keep standard time permanent.
The committee negotiating a unified bill will settle for a compromise of keeping standard time for 8 months of the year and daylight savings time for 4 months of the year on odd years and reversing the proportion during even years.
There will be intense discussion about whether to do anything special for leap years. After several months of back and forth, someone will point out that there are also leap seconds and leap microseconds, leading to further debate.
Nothing. The guy who runs tzdata will be busy. Various things that hardcoded DST will break in six months. Hundreds of millions of people won't have a sleep disruption in the fall. Other countries may follow suit. Etc.
Daylight Savings has real effect on the northern states than southern states.
One of the arguments for Day light savings change is that -- it would still be dark during the time kids go to school in winter, early spring and late fall, many places in US will not have Sun rise at 8:00am. No matter how much we may be removed from the nature -- our wakeful hours are directly impacted by Sun rise and Sun set. On the other side, there are discomforts in moving the clock twice a year across the board.
The hooray the Senate is saving our daylight I'm glad somebody is. Take care so much what would we ever do if they didn't save this daylight for us. Maybe they can take some and put it in a lock box for when we need it most.
This adds an hour more darkness in the morning. Schools start earlier than most jobs, so the kids are bearing the brunt of this. If I was a kid, I'd certainly be grumpier about waking up and less alert.
Which production-ready datetime library doesn't use zoneinfo? There should be no need to patch otherwise there would be quite a lot of patching happening each year. The current version is 2021e, meaning it's the 5th iteration for 2021.
Notably Fiji decided to not use DST in 2021/2022 but apparently plans to resume using it afterwards.
Any software using an IANA zone (e.g., America/New_York) shouldn't have any trouble. But any software that uses zone labels like EST might do the wrong thing, since EDT is being renamed to EST but will still have EDT's offset.
Honestly.... California already approved a measure to do this (there are a bunch more steps to make it actually happen). So, this is WAY better than if WA/OR were an hour apart from CA for half the year. Also, Seattle/Portland (etc) would suddenly not be America/Los_Angeles timezone anymore.
I was wrong about California, looks like the voters approved allowing the legislature to vote on going to daylight savings time permanently, but the CA legislature has not done so:
I love this. I'd even go as far as to support permanent double daylight saving time. Let's get those daylight hours in the evening where they can do some good!
Dusk is the most dangerous time to drive, and driving is the most dangerous thing most of us ever do. Standard time guarantees most rush hours, meaning most of our driving, will occur during part of dusk. Permanent daylight saving reduces the amount of rush hours that occur during dusk.
I've been remote since pre-pandemic. I had to drive home to the west from an appointment a few weeks ago. I forgot just how bad one of the local highways could be when the sun is low on the horizon at certain times of the year. And one of the worst spots is at a major merge. Just blinding.
Can you explain to me why this is good. It seems like a pain, but I assume there must be a good reason for it. Does it truly save energy? Is this documented somewhere?
it's good that it's going away because switching DST to ST or vice-versa is correlated with a huge economic deficit and an influx of health issues.
The severe disruption in schedules is correlated with triggering depressive episodes (great when we're going into winter!) and increase in obesity.
What's more: the fact that we all do it syncronously and it negatively affects our mood means that there's a "DST meanness" wave that washes over cities during autumn and spring.
I really do not care enough to argue for and against either one. Neither should you, because this discussion will be used as a justification to retain the status quo and I do not accept that either solution is worse than the status quo.
I have difficulty articulating exactly how much I dislike any time shifting from beneath me.
I find as I grow older that I’m more OK with it, but I need only remember how I felt as a kid to realise how absolutely insane and arbitrary it is.
Then I remember that after we “spring forward” I always feel like ass for a week, and so does everyone else.
It’s like some kind of weird game theory, nobody is willing to remove it because: “we’ve always done it this way” is a dangerous amount of ignorance to apply to a global population.
The purpose of DST was to give people extra daylight time during the summer when people wanted to do things outside and needed the sun to do it. Like working their fields, etc. It’s not as necessary now that we have electric lighting and farm tractors.
“In Sweden, researchers found an average 6.7 percent greater risk of heart attack in the three days after the spring change. Inspired by that finding, a group of U.S. researchers conducted their own study and determined that heart attack risk jumped 24 percent the Monday after switching over to daylight saving time. That risk then tapered off over the remainder of the week.
By contrast, risk for heart attack dropped 21 percent on the Tuesday after the fall time change.”
“A study of 732,000 accidents over two decades has found that the annual switch to daylight saving time is associated with a 6% increase in fatal car crashes that week.”
So are we permanently going to be on "{Eastern,Central,Mountain,Pacific} Daylight Time"? Or are we redefining the time zones "{Eastern,Central,Mountain,Pacific} Standard Time"?
How would this work? Parts of Canada, parts of Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, parts of Brazil, and a bunch of islands are all on Eastern Time. Even if the US changed their own definition of EST it wouldn't change other countries' observations of EST.
Which probably is the best argument for the status quo of changing clocks; but personally I’ll take permanent daylight savings over permanent standard time every day of the week.
Well, that isn’t actually fair. You and I may not live on a farm, but there is still plenty of “farming culture” even in America and I don’t think it is fair to dismiss their concerns out of hand. I just know that if we’re going to pick a bad optimization, which one I prefer as a city dweller that enjoys the local beaches.
And the way I personally always dealt with it is by having clocks that set themselves and barely noticing when they changed, or in some years, not even noticing at all unless someone else brought it up.
Yeah, to be clear I'm not dismissing their concerns. I'm just saying that now that farmers are just like 3% of the population, optimizing for their use case probably doesn't make as much sense as it used to.
You can't just "turn on the lights" for outdoor activities except in very specific cases. Those activities can't really be done in the morning because people have to get ready for school/work during that time. I really don't want to waste perfectly good sunlight getting ready for work. Let me use it when it can actually be used.
why is "turn on the lights" good enough for early risers but not for late-to-beds or night owls?
I would suggest it's because the sun is a far better light, and most people don't have the ability to light up the entire area to make it seem like daytime.
Note: I'm a late-to-bed person myself, so I'm happy about this, but I want to be honest about the fact that my support for it over a permanent no DST is my personal preference being imposed on others. In the US south there's a saying, "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining" and I try to honor that here.
> why is "turn on the lights" good enough for early risers but not for late-to-beds or night owls?
I literally say my reasoning in my comment. It's much harder to light up the outdoors for outdoor activities after work/school. I can't use sunlight in the morning for anything other than a wake-up aid.
You edited and added that after I posted my comment, because that was not there when I wrote my reply.
But regardless, I still disagree. You seem to be assuming that early risers don't want to do outside activities, but that is not true. There are plenty of people that go for a run or jog, or morning hike, etc before work. At a previous company we had a rock climbing club called, "Get High in the Morning" :-D
Daylight in the morning does wonders for resetting your circadian rhythm to the actual day, rather than its internal 25-something hour day.
What would naturally happen by making daylight savings time permanent is that people's circadian rhythms would shift forward until daylight savings time basically becomes the same thing as standard time.
It would be really interesting to study this - in Europe the same time-zone covers between approximately 30m behind true time (e.g. in eastern Poland) and 1h 30m ahead (in Galicia) - do Galicians typically get up later than Poles?
China has it even more so - a single time-zone covering what should be five - are people in Fuyuan waking up at 03:00 when the sun rises in summer, whilst people in Zanda sleep in till 07:30?
I prefer daylight in the morning. It's easier for me to wake up and be alert after sunrise, and I feel like a zombie before sunrise. Don't really care if the sun sets at 5:30 or 6:30 p.m.
Most people like to get up when the Sun is coming up or close to it. People don't want to wake when it's dark for another 1-2 hours. Without DLST then the Sun would come up at around 8:30 in December and January in northern states. People are up at 6:30, 7AM - waiting around 2 hours would be awful. And a waste of energy in the morning.
WFH affects a very small part of the population. Most working people have to start early for various reasons and have to go to a workplace. Having the Sun is useful for them. Most people start work at 8AM.
The wasting energy argument seems to be the opposite to me. People will get home and not have to immediately turn on lights, saving some energy. Not everyone is awake at 6:30am, so their lights remain off.
Can you expand on why you don't think this will go into effect soon? This is the first I've heard of this bill but given the unanimous passage in the Senste it seems odd that it would fail in the House.
Also, IIRC, bills must originate in the House, which makes me think something like this has already passed there at some point.
This bill "originated" in the Senate. Bills only have to originate in the House if they raise taxes [0]. All other bills can originate in either the House or the Senate. While there is a virtually identical piece of legislation in the House that pre-dates this one, it has not passed the House yet.
How does that work? I'm not an American, but I've heard the stories about some state that has three timezone because of an Indian reservation and some other stuff. I was under the impression that daylight savings was a state matter. Don't some states currently not observe DST while their neighbours do?
What is the federal government's role in this? Can a state ignore this (almost) law and do DST anyway?
Such a terrible idea compared to permanent standard time.
There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.
It's not wasted then, it's quite useful. Having kids walk to school or to the bus in the dark is ridiculous. In northern areas the Sun won't come up until 8:30AM.
Parents have to get their kids off to school before work. Most people wake up by 7:30AM (you may not but the rest of the functioning world does) and need the Sun in the morning.
> Having kids walk to school or to the bus in the dark is ridiculous.
I agree. The solution to that is not to have kids go to school stupid early. Studies show that kids prefer to learn later in the day.
Besides, after school activities continue into the dark in the winter. Better to let the kids be able to be outside/playing/doing band/whatever in the evening instead of stuck inside because it's dark with their free time.
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of this shift? If we are trying to give workers more daylight in the evening, then we shift the work and school day later, the impact would be nil.
Fundamentally, for this change to satisfy its mandate, the kids have to to to school in the dark during the winter.
Fwiw, I think it's a fine thing. I always found it very romantic to go to school when it is still dark when I was young.
No, we should get rid of any shift of the clock, and then set schedules for work and school based on the sun. The start and end times of school and work should change during certain parts of the year if there is concern about daylight.
I understand you feel that way, but that's more or less the purpose and effect of the daylight savings time shift. That's the status quo. It's exactly what many of us want to see eliminated.
No, changing school and work times only changes school and work systems. Changing the entire clock time adds endless complexity to computer systems and society as a whole. It's like global vs local vars, the scope is too much.
Okay, but most folks who want to change to permanent DST don't care about the effect on computer systems. They want more light in the evening.
Your proposal would not satisfy the primary goal of the proponents of this policy. It would also still require one or more coordinated, discrete shifts in the schedules of schools and workplaces, which would likely be more complicated for computers and other systems than the status quo.
We shouldn't satisfy their goal. It's not their business to impose this on all of society. We should stick to a standard time and let individuals or groups do whatever they need at the local level. Most other countries do this and they are fine. YAGNI. No need for additional complexity.
The status quo is more complex than what the senate has voted for (it requires transitions, the shifting of schedules twice a year, etc.). The new approach is less complex.
The assertion that the time is "not someone's business" is incorrect. The time is everyone's business. We are going to stick to a standard time after this policy -- it's going to be daylight savings time all the time, although we will probably stop calling it that after we all get used to the policy. Individuals or groups will be equally free to adopt their own schedules both before and after this policy change -- this policy is not a change on that front.
> The assertion that the time is "not someone's business" is incorrect. The time is everyone's business.
You misunderstood my meaning. I understand that everyone is concerned and affected by time. What I meant is it's not in their purview to push such things on the public.
Once again, the rest of the world works perfectly fine without the added complexity, so it should be proven with strong evidence rather than vague arguments that the added complexity is worth it. The rest of the world works perfectly well without DST.
> it's not in their purview to push such things on the public
It is, in fact, in the purview of the public to change the status quo as it pertains to time. We did it in when daylight savings was established, and we are going to do it again now that we are moving to permanent DST. The status quo affects people who don't like it, and they have every right to try to see it changed. There is no reasonable theory of politics that privileges the status quo to the point you seem to be contemplating.
> The rest of the world works perfectly well without DST.
Maybe we are talking past each other. You say the rest of the world does fine without DST. That's not actually true, most countries do have daylight savings. But you're certainly right that many countries do fine without it. For example it is not observed in South Korea. And after this law passes, so will the United States (i.e. the effect of this law is to abolish daylight savings time, by moving the clock permanently to the DST configuration).
We’ve tried this before 70 years ago and within a year we changed it back. It’s a bad idea and we haven’t had a national discussion about it. Once everyone on the east coast and Midwest sees it’s dark until 8:30AM it will be reversed if it even passes.
It’s a silly idea that once thought out becomes clear.
Okay, then see you in three years when this policy is actually enacted to see if that's how it plays out, and until then there's no need for all of the kvetching.
Each school and business choosing a different time to change (and half of them choosing not to at all) is far more complex than changing which timezone a specific lat/long translates to twice a year.
Now, I favor never changing the time of each place and keeping on daylight time, but that's just me.
I know a kid in middle school that wasn't allowed to literally walk across the street to school (wasn't even a busy road). The bus would pick up the kid, move about 10 feet, and turn into the parking lot.
Supervision and legalities related to it can be boarderline oppressive in some places.
Because schools don't pick up kids at 8:30. If you look up that stupid article whining about kids waiting for the bus in the dark (which is a non-issue), they were waiting at 7 am
Virtually no parents have to get the kids dropped off at all. The vast majority, afaik, can rely on a school bus to pick them up.
And IMHO, beyond elementary school (and perhaps earlier) there's no reason most kids can't be unsupervised briefly before letting themselves out to get to the bus, or after being dropped off by the bus.
See the whole thing about free range kids, helicopter parents, and so forth.
What's wrong with starting at 8? Starting much later than that doesn't leave a lot of time nor night for other activities. And really just pushes back the rest of their schedule and bed time.
Care to add something to that? That link doesn't have any of the data or methods used. It also completely ignores the realities of childcare, normal work schedules, etc as it only evaluated one angle (systems thinking analysis would be preferable) and did not look into the feasibility of it or n-order effects.
Again, anything that looks at this from a systems thinking standpoint? It's just focused on sleep and they don't take a n-order impacts into consideration like burden on parents, loss of job/income, etc. Not to mention some of the links are done by an industry group - the Nation Sleep Foundation (potential for bias). Some of the articles are pure anecdotes and opinions too.
It says as late as 11pm. Another one says some of the later time can be explained by other things like light exposure. This seems to indicate that a 10pm bed time could be attainabke with a wake up time of 6 or 6:30 providing adequate sleep. Some of the studies show that even on weekends without the waking constraint teens are getting 7-8 hours or less. It's also indicative of weak influence when we see the remote learning being called a disaster yet these articles are touting the benefits of the extra sleep associated with them - where is the mitigating impact then?
Also from the articles, “As I often phrase it, multilevel interventions are needed,”. Why not start with the less intrusive interventions? Not all kids require a later start time, and could even be hurt by it. A later start time would have hurt me, for example. We need to make sure we aren't hurting some people in an effort to help others.
Perhaps the strongest evidence is that adults are not affected by the hormone related shift and yet they too do not get the recommended sleep. This points to the idea that environment and habit could be factors.
So far I see no absolute evidence of societal net benefit, largely because the studies ignore n-order impacts and fail to fully explore alternative explanations and remedies.
Don't forget, a lot of this is psychology and is just towing the line. They don't even know why bi-phasic sleep disappeared. I would love to see the data for adolescent sleep times and duration for the past 150 years, but it appears the studies completely ignore this. For knowing so little, they certainly are pushing hard for a specific change (a change that some of the studies don't believe will fix the issues, such as achievement gap, hormone altering light exposures, etc).
Where I am, it's light out from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. during the shortest days of the winter. The thing is a lot of people aren't even awake at 7 a.m. and if they are (I am), they're doing indoor things like making breakfast/showering/etc. So for a lot of people, that hour or two of morning light is really just wasted. In the afternoon though, everyone can take advantage of the daylight.
I wonder what the actual percentages are. It's probably a thing where each group can't believe that there's a significant number of people in the other.
"that hour or two of morning light is really just wasted."
Only for people who wake up late. There could also be benefits to aligning one's circadian rhythm to morning light.
Go out and watch the highways at 7:30AM. They're packed. Most people start work at 8AM. Which means they're probably on the road by 7:30 and probably awake by 6:30.
Thanks! A lot of people here I assume can make their own hours more or less, don't have kids, and sleep until 8AM or so. But the vast majority of people have to be to a workplace by 8AM and wake up at 6AM so they can get themselves and their kids ready. They don't want 2.5 hours of darkness in the morning. Some light before and after work is ideal.
Neither option is great. Permanent standard time might be better, although I assume blackout curtains will be popular with twilight starting around 4am in the summer. There's really not going to be light both before and after work in the winter for many places. Current twilight is about 630am now, so it would be more like 1.5 hours, not 2.5.
This is a problem of schools and other organizations being stuck to a particular time/number, rather than using the sun to determine when they should start. It's a perfect example of confusing the map with the territory.
It's functional and deliberate. Many people have to work and commuting, getting the kids ready, getting yourself ready means you need to be up early so you can get to work by 9AM. Sunlight in the morning is far more useful for the functioning world.
Ok, but any situation where you start your day with light in the mornings in winter in the North will necessarily mean that you end your day with darkness in the evenings. Whether we call the time the day starts "7AM" or "8AM" doesn't change this.
The fundamental trade-off is: sunlight when you wake up and you're going to school/work, or sunlight when you're coming back from school/work? Unless you reduce the school/work day, this is unavoidable.
I don't disagree with you at all, I think you missed my point. We should decide when we want people to be in light and dark, and not shift numbers on a clock to match that.
Sure, but it's functionally impossible to make this choice without changing the clocks. Too many events are coordinated - shop opening times have to account for other business start times that have to account for school start times.
Changing the clock is, realistically, the only way to coordinate all the necessary actors.
Otherwise, if schools decided to start at 9AM, they would put a huge burden on parents starting work at 9AM, who no longer have time to drop their kids off and still make it to their workplace.
How is changing the clock the only way to coordinate? Plenty of businesses have different hours at different times of the year. Also other countries do completely fine without DST.
I went to school in the dark during winter my entire childhood. We played out after dark after getting home too, because otherwise there'd be no opportunity to play outside during winter. It worked just fine.
Most people don't have this problem though. Most functional people have to wake early to get everything ready for the day. So although there isn't a perfect system, for the vast majority of people having daylight in the morning would be ideal.
Most people begin work at 8AM. I know that probably isn't the norm on this Website of younger skewing skewing people that can make their won hours (that includes me!) but it's true for most the country. Also people with kids - you need to get them ready and off before you go to work. Sunlight is really useful for this.
Computer people probably skew heavily towards night owls and young people. They also probably go outside a lot less than average so I don't really care what their preference is. This is basically an argument of everybody wanting their preferred schedule to line up with maximum sun.
Cool, then show a study which shows what everyone's preference is, or stop antagonizing people-- whose opinions you yourself said you don't care about-- for having an opinion which differs from yours.
Preferably both, but the study which shows you are in the majority would be a great start.
Most people arrive at work between 7:45AM and 8:00AM. Which means they are up at 6-6:30 probably. Having some Sun during this time is nice for most people.
> Having some Sun during this time is nice for most people.
Is there a study that actually proves this? That people prefer daylight in the mornings when they're an early riser? I don't think they're as correlated as you and the other person are making it seem to be.
I think it’s the difference between high energy and low every people. Hugh energy people want to start the day actively and early. Low every and low-t people are looking for comfort and relaxation later in the day.
There's your study. Having sunlight when people wake up is good. And if people pass stupid laws that make my life harder for it, I will bitch about it and antagonize them until they change them. Just like pretty much everybody else on this comment page.
I asked for a study which shows people would prefer more daylight in the mornings rather than evenings. Not everyone who gets to work early prefers daylight in the mornings. Some would like later evenings but also happen to get to work early, my mom being an example of it.
Once again, your opinion is just that, your opinion. It doesn't mean everyone else shares it.
I don't really "get everything ready for the day". I need to take a shower, brush teeth and make coffee. It's your problem if you push everything to the morning.
Move south? Even in winter, there's some time with light left after 5. I guess this is washington catering to yankees again. I shouldn't lose light to accomodate some northerner.
Then shouldn't twilight be starting around 5:30am-6:15am? It seems this would contradict your claim that waking up at 5-6 requires you to spend a few hours in darkness every morning, right?
I was going to the bus stop in the dark even with DST and I didn't even live in the north. First bell was generally 8 AM and you needed to be at the bus stop well before then obviously, especially if you lived in the earliest parts of the route.
Huh, I lived in a suburb of Cleveland a few years back where everyone still was walking. Thought it would be more common in densely populated areas. Guess not.
Common in my Bay Area suburb. People will even sell their houses when their kids get to elementary school and pay half a million more to move a mile away, so that they don't have to deal with drop-off.
I too am a night owl - but we need light in the morning more than later into the evening. A lot of kids have weird school start times which leads the morning commute being a lot more distributed than the evening one. Walking to the bus alone on dark streets isn't safe for a good chunk of the population.
That'd be the same benefit that forces sugar and caffeine dependencies on adults so they can maintain unnatural working schedules and has contributed heavily to the obesity epidemic, right?
Rising with the sun is much more natural than getting up when it's dark. Most people need time before work, so we need the sun to rise a few hours before work. I learned some discipline and started getting up early without sugar and caffeine, if the young people today would rather complain than do the same that's not my problem.
It didn't come across as sarcastic, but I hoped it was. As it stands, though I can imagine arguments for or against the current school set-up, the idea:
> The benefit of forcing the discipline of getting up early on children is greater than any health impact or inconvenience.
that a particular arbitrary method of instilling a particular arbitrary form of discipline is more important than any health impact or any inconvenience is horrifying to me, and I hope it doesn't find many adherents.
They're fine if they go to bed early. That's the actual discipline part, going to bed early and getting up early is harder than going to bed late and getting up late. But overindulgent parents let kids stay up so they never learned good habits and now they're entering the workforce and whining about it.
Obviously we can't control this, so I see no evidence that "chronotypes" are formed by nature and not by nurture. Lots of other stuff we do is influenced by our social structure and we could probably fix most teenagers and young adults by changing that.
As stated above, I'm a night owl myself and tend to have a pretty off kilter sleeping schedule. A bunch of things have contributed to that - I've got ADD and have been on stimulants for most of my life, I worked as a game dev for a few years which involved months of overtime where we'd often work 12hrs three times a week that played absolute hell with my sleeping schedule and still plagues me to this day - lastly, I'm light sensitive, I can't comfortably see and operate in full daylight.
I can't say for certain where my night-owlish self comes from, but it predates taking stimulants and working at a game dev company - so maybe it's a side effect of light sensitivity or maybe it's a neurological thing... or maybe it's just a natural clock thing.
> Obviously we can't control this, so I see no evidence that "chronotypes" are formed by nature and not by nurture.
Here’s why: The Hadza are hunter-gatherers whose lifestyle is very similar to that of early humans.
The observations were found in people with lifestyles that represent that of early humans. What part of nurture would affect those people? They have no concept of a clock...
No, it is moved from the morning. In return for this "extra hour" you have to pay with waking up in the dark and doing your morning commute in the dark.
I grew up in a permanent DST and I don’t have fond memories of it. Over there public health officials are actually advocating to moving back to standard time because teenagers in particular are sleep deprived. Going to bed earlier is not a realistic option as proven by experience.
> In return for this "extra hour" you have to pay with waking up in the dark and doing your morning commute in the dark
Unless you're a senior citizen who's retired and doesn't like late nights, I don't get why for most people, darkness wouldn't be preferred for those "nothing" activities, so an extra hour of light can then be enjoyed after they get home from work/school/whatever. Otherwise, yeah, you're enjoying the light in the morning... from the inside of a car... on your way to a day of obligations where you're stuck inside usually doing things you have to do rather than things you want to do.
I think most people would rather have that extra hour of light for after they get home from work/school/whatever, so they can actually enjoy the outdoors a bit when they get home.
I always hated the feeling from late fall until early spring of being excited to be done school/work... only to get home and it be dark so basically the only thing I can do is walk inside and stay in there until the next day.
> I think most people would rather have that extra hour of light for after they get home from work/school/whatever, so they can actually enjoy the outdoors a bit when they get home.
People thank that they do, but their brain disagrees. There are numerous other posts on this thread indicating that public health experts agree with peoples brains in that the extra hour in the after noon is not worth the early rise.
> I always hated the feeling from late fall until early spring of being excited to be done school/work... only to get home and it be dark so basically the only thing I can do is walk inside and stay in there until the next day.
So here we have a problem, it can be solved by changing the clock to give you an extra evening hour at the cost of an early rise which leads the sleep deprivation for a large group of people. However it can also be solved in a number of different ways. Labour laws can be passed which mandates shorter working hours and/or winter vacation. Your local government can invest in more public spaces with good lighting and commercial activities close to peoples work places so that you can e.g. jump to a bar with your classmates/colleagues for the last hour of sun during mid-winter. Etc. Moving the clock seems like the radical option here, especially given the detrimental public health effects.
Indeed, however public policy makers must be aware of how this affects majority of people. Having natural noon between 12:00 at the eastern edge of a time zone to 13:00 on the western edge, is much preferable to 13:00 (east) and 14:00 (west). Even though the effects are the same for east on permanent DST and west on standard. They are very much detrimental—as in increases risk of sleep deprivation—for west on DST and public policy makers must take that into account when making decision.
An hour of sunlight from 4-5 is useless. Most people will still be working. The tradeoff is that most people have to wake up and go to school/work in complete darkness during the winter.
It's only in the very dead of winter that the extra hour is from 4-5 (which still means it's lighter at 5 than it would have been). In the shoulder seasons you definitely get more light after work.
Personally, I have wanted more daylight in the evening hundreds of times in my life, at least. It's the obvious result of average workdays ending at 5 or 6 (or later) and our "free time" being restricted to a sliver of daylight much of the year. But how often have I wanted more daylight in the morning? Basically never.
Umm no, I get up early and have free time before work and want light then. It's a great time to be outside because it's the coolest part of the day. Yet again society accomodates the people who can't be bothered to go to bed on time.
Or the people that prefer to have a contiguous time span for their leisure, instead of a couple of hours in the morning and then a few more in the evening.
Corn, oat, wheat, oak, maple, rose, and daisies do not sleep, nor do they have the concept of daylight savings or standard time. They will get literally the same amount of light as before, and farmers generally will work from sunrise regardless if their clocks say 5AM or 6AM.
Thanks to the Ent lobby, an amendment has been proposed to this bill to keep changing the clocks specifically within the bounds of farms, orchards, timberlands, and national parks. We must keep American foliage the greatest on Earth.
Please explain to us, what precisely is "on time" and why do you think that such a time is universal for all people, regardless of background or circumstance? The more detail the better please.
"On time" is obviously whatever time somebody has to go to bed to get enough sleep and get up in time for their schedule.
People don't like going to bed on time because they don't like discipline.
So instead of learning some, like their parents should have taught them, they complain and demand the schedule move because it's "too hard".
When I started working I had to be there at 7 AM every day no matter what so I got disciplined and grew up.
Today's new hires want to come in late all the time and complain that they can't get enough sleep when they should be going to bed earlier instead of going out drinking on a weekday or staying up playing fort nite or whatever.
Spend less time complaining about those whippersnappers being on your lawn and listening to rock and roll. Maybe you too could be fun and enjoy life.
Is it enjoyable for most people to get up and be at work at 7? No. Why tolerate it just because parents generation tolerated it? Old people also tolerated polio. People aren’t more productive at one time versus another, especially if they’re being forced against their will to lose sleep for no good reason.
There is nothing wrong with starting work later- especially if you’re still getting all your work done during the day anyways. Young people who roll into work at a healthy time probably outperform all the curmudgeony old people who are miserable anyways. I start work at 10am and get more done than coworkers who start at 7. It’s just simply false to assume earlier is better. I perform way better now than when I arrived early.
We should be encouraging people to care less about their work and more about having fun. Work is not the purpose for your life. There is nothing wrong with drinking with friends on a weekday or playing Fortnite in the evening.
You could try being less snarky, it's not necessary. Despite what you clearly think, I'm a young person. I think your perception is biased by working in tech (which most people on this site do) with lots of young people. Americans get up before 7: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/10/11639214/how-people-around-the...
So, we should make sunrise closer to that, not further away. My above point stands: young people want to move things later because they like staying out, staying up, etc. They learn to curb this as they get older, but this generation is trying to move time instead of growing up. Peter pan can't stay out all night playing when he has a real job in the morning.
1. I like the snarky tone. I feel like it goes reasonably well against condensation. That whole Peter Pan quip is BS virtue signaling against nothing.
2. It’s a public forum. Lots of people hold beliefs that rising early is somehow “better” or less lazy or something. That belief is more strongly held amongst old people when the 20th century culture pushed it on people. It’s as much for you as for others.
3. Do people get up before 7 because they want to or have to. My point still stands that we shouldn’t force a schedule on people (my argument falls a bit for service workers I admit where time open is actually impactful on revenue).
3. No young people are not trying to move this because they don’t want to learn. There is a natural distribution in times when people naturally rise. I happen to naturally rise around 9, so i like to start work at 10, and thats at the far end, so i've become a strong advocate for this. It’s not natural to put everyone on the same schedule when there is no valid reason. This generation is the first one to truly call BS on applying farmers' schedules to all of society. Why must software engineers start work at 7 and not 9? There is no good reason. It does not improve productivity, it is not required for business.
4. Why is your way the right way? What about if 10am was the natural start of work time? All those 7am’ers are just trying to end work at 3 so they don’t have to work till EOD. SMH they get so sleepy they can’t do the rest of their life past 5pm. They need to learn to drink a coffee and keep working instead of being lazy and going to bed before society is done with the day.
5. This bill is sponsored by Rubio, who i don't think is a fan fav among the young, so idt it should be seen as "this generation" passing the bill. Besides, similar bills have been proposed for generations.
When I was in college I scheduled my classes late so I could sleep in. When I graduated college I moved abroad and taught at a school where I had to show up at 7AM showered in a shirt and tie. It kind of sucked, but I was able to make it work. When I got back stateside, I started a software job where I didn’t need to be in the office until 10 and only had to commute 4 days a week. It was awesome.
Sample size of one sure, but I had no problem developing discipline when I needed it, and was happy to discard it and stay up later when I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re so worked up about here.
OK boomer, thanks for the info. For a moment there I though you might have something novel to say. Enjoy grinding all these axes until your blessed retirement.
Who said I'm a Boomer, anyway? I don't see the problem with pointing out that a reasonable wake up time helps push people to get over their perpetual adolescence.
Boomer is a state of mind, and "reasonable" wake up time is arbitrary and varies case by case. If people have responsibilities that allow for waking up later in the morning then it is hardly adolescent to be able to wake up later, irrespective of when the sun rises.
You're up and down these comments stoking argument apparently intentionally through your own tone and diction (and if not intentional it is a miracle of coincidence). I think it's a little more than disingenuous for you to be saying "but the rules" when your own conduct is what's driving people to the point where the extra effort to converse civilly with you is not warranted.
Oh look another person who goes to bed too early and rises before the sun. Yet again they want society to cater to them even though the rest of society prefers to rise later in the day.
I bet they’ll tell everyone else they’re lazy like my 95yo grandfather did when he woke up at 4am.
/s
Can’t we all just accept that everyone’s body is different and has different preferences. There is a measured Gaussian distribution in rise times for humans like everything else.
Very interesting way of expressing your preference.
Personally, I'm agnostic. I prefer to be an early riser most days and it does suit me better on the whole. But it's also great in the summer to have more time in the evening to socialize with my friends who work a 9-5 and are only available on weekdays after work.
Do you have any friends that you would like to socialize with in the summer on weekdays after work?
Yes sometimes we'll meet for dinner. But more often we meet for breakfast before work. This is actually very common in most of the country outside of the tech job bubble that makes up most of this site.
Then meet them for dinner instead of breakfast, when you're more rushed because there is work after your meal anyway. Or simply meet them for lunch instead, as most people in the country do.
And what if it’s less common than you say and you’d just have to accept that you’re in the minority here? Do you think that (right or wrong) could have anything to do with what’s going on?
Literally #1 on my list of reasons to get a new job by November is I'm not going to that meeting ever again.
There's the objective set of reasons to do something, and then there's the list your emotional brain actually pays attention to, and this is #1 on that list. Most of our weird behaviors and a lot of our difficult conversations are caused by trying to stuff an emotional decision into a business suit.
I don’t think they will. There’s no incentive for them to do so, and there’s absolutely monolithic inertia behind “nine-to-five” in most places on Earth.
Ah, there are plenty of employers and industries that don’t have that luxury though. Also, even my 9-5 was not so 9-5 a decent chunk of the time when I was working big corp due to having to work with folks in other countries. It does remove one variable though.
As a late riser, I have never had a good time getting up before the sun. If you woke me before sunup and asked how much I would pay you to let me sleep until dawn, I would probably try to sell you sell my own mother for the privilege, if it were permanent.
> It's easy enough to replicate the "wake up in the light" experience in your bedroom
No, it absolutely is not. Light you get from some Walmart alarm clock is the wrong temperature, the wrong CRI, and about 1/1000th of the right intensity.
That's because people don't actually want a portable sun (say, 10-20k lum D65) in their room. If you do want one, you can buy one for less than $100, and plug it into a $10 timer.
People are obviously adaptable to many different daylight schemes. But far more of society is up and running in the mid-evenings than the early mornings on any given day. Let's put the daylight where it can be the most use to the most people.
Why is "daylight when people are awake" what we need to strive for? Daylight when you wake up is helpful. Darkness when you wake up is harmful. Daylight before you go to bed is harmful. Darkness before you go to bed is helpful. It's way more important when the light is.
The amount of sunlight stays the same. The question is whether you want more of it in the morning or the evening, and there isn't a "correct" answer there. Going by general public sentiment I'm willing to bet it's more towards the latter though.
You've misread the parent. They are saying that on a given day, the number of hours of sunlight is the same whether it's daylight or standard time. The only thing that changes is when in the day the sun is shining.
I grew up in the land of the midnight sun. I am not sure what point you are trying to make. People really don't complain much about it being light until late. It is much more common to hear people complain about the sun setting sooner as fall approaches.
Considering how wide time zones are that is pretty much impossible to standardize on regardless of which clock you pick. Then it becomes a question of which cities you are going to prioritize, and I doubt any politician wants to start that conversation.
Plus, "solar noon" itself shifts by ~20 mins throughout the year due to the Earth's orbit.
>Considering how wide time zones are that is pretty much impossible to standardize on regardless of which clock you pick
With standard time you will still have the rough center of the time zone match with solar time with about +/- 30 minutes give or take on the sides. With DST it may well happen that no part of the timezone actually matches solar time since everything is essentially shifted 1 hour to the East.
An awful lot of us can't "just adjust around that" though. A significant portion of the population work jobs with relatively fixed hours, working something like 8-5, 9-6, etc. So if you don't get off work until, say, 6, and then have an hour commute home, DST is really nice to allow for some sunlight for outdoor activities after work.
Sure, it's easy to say "just leave work an hour earlier" and some people have that flexibility. But far from most, I'd wager.
I would like to see this change in conjunction to moving to a 32-35 hour work week. As a developer it is still often socially difficult to take time during the day to do errands or go to appointments, and so I am constantly reminded of the times when I simply could not take the time off.
I'd love to live in a world where bankers and dentists and optometrists all kept different hours, so the bankers could get glasses, and the dentists take out loans, without having to drop everything to do it. With smart phones this is somewhat more tenable. I don't need to memorize when the dentist is open, so there is less immediate value in reducing the world to a small set of common numbers.
> For me, personally, I like the concept that noon is when the sun is at it highest point or closest, I can adjust everything else around that
Then you must not like time zones, as that is true only in one particular sliver of a time zone. You want true local time, like before the railroads time.
The real Sun and the imaginary “mean Sun,” from which mean solar time is measured, may be as much as 16 minutes apart because during the course of the year the apparent motion of the real Sun against the background of the stars (the ecliptic) alternately slows down and speeds up.
The east–west component [of the analemma] results from the nonuniform rate of change of the Sun's right ascension, governed by combined effects of Earth's axial tilt and orbital eccentricity.
The entire idea of DST is that it provides a nice balance between the two: still reasonably light in the morning in winter, and move some of the very early morning sunlight to the evening in summer.
I think it is wrong to ask the general public what they prefer. Most people honestly don’t know, and if they do, they might prefer the option which is more harmful for their health without realizing it.
Much better is to ask public health experts. Which will look at sleeping patters, at risk groups, etc. I’m particularly worried about teenagers which will be forced to wake up before sunrise and are unlikely to go to sleep earlier under social pressure (including from their own family).
It also varies by where you're located in a time zone and what latitude you are at. Somewhere like Boston, you basically have dark at both ends of the day in the winter no matter how you move things around. And it's also pretty light in the morning and light until quite far into the evening in winter. Boston should really be in Atlantic time based on longitude but it doesn't make sense to be in a different time zone than the rest of the East Coast.
> The question is whether you want more of it in the morning or the evening, and there isn't a "correct" answer there.
The folks at various chronobiology and sleep study societies say otherwise:
> The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic problems of DST. We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens.
That doesn't mean it optimizes for what is actually healthy though. Most American's clearly want to eat unhealthy, based on our obesity rate. Doesn't mean it's what is healthiest though.
This isn't going to effect the summer months. Only winter when we would revert to standard time. If am getting up at 7am its going to be dark I don't care if it dark for another hour . I would prefer more day light after work
No shortage of sunlight up here in Alaska during the summer, so this will make little difference then. I will actually appreciate having an extra hour in the afternoon during the winter. More opportunities for some cross-country skiing after work :)
People against the twice per year time changes seem to indicate they want no man made interference. So it would make sense if that's the consensus to go with the natural rhythm of nature which is standard time.
noon (n.)
mid-12c., non "midday," in exact use, "12 o'clock p.m.," also "midday meal," from Old English non "3 o'clock p.m., the ninth hour from sunrise," also "the canonical hour of nones," from Latin nona hora "ninth hour" of daylight, by Roman and ecclesiastical reckoning about 3 p.m., from nona, fem. singular of nonus "ninth," contracted from *novenos, from novem "nine" (see nine).
The sense shift from "3 p.m." to "12 p.m." began during 12c., and various reasons are given for it, such as unreliability of medieval time-keeping devices and the seasonal elasticity of the hours of daylight in northern regions. In monasteries and on holy days, fasting ended at nones, which perhaps offered another incentive to nudge it up the clock. Or perhaps the sense shift was based on an advance in the customary time of the (secular) midday meal. Whatever the cause, the meaning change from "ninth hour" to "sixth hour" seems to have been complete by 14c. (the same evolution is in Dutch noen).
From 17c. to 19c., noon sometimes also meant "midnight" (the noon of the night).
---------------------
Of course the meaning of the word centuries ago doesn't really matter much for what people think about the word today, but it's interesting none the less.
Just change your waking/sleeping hours then. It's just a number. Set your sleeping hours based on actual daylight times instead of the number on the clock.
Personally I'm happy they just pick one and stick with it.
Most people have a fixed work schedule. If you work for Walmart and the store opens at 8 AM, you can't arbitrarily decide to wake up at 8AM because that's when the sun rises.
Most people start work at 8-9am and sunrise is well before that with plenty of time for commute with or without daylight savings.
There is another much smaller cluster of people who start work at 4-6am because they're in transit or service industry and they are before sunrise either way.
To get to work at 8AM, you can't wake up at 8AM. Sunrise often occurs around 7:30-50AM in northern latitudes even in ST during December and January. With DST, this would mean sunrise occurs at 8:30-50AM.
Not for me. I prefer timekeeping libraries to not have to be changed. Ever. If they have to, should be simplified. If simifying, it should be in a way that doesn't cause grammatical issues.
Which this does, because now DST is now the standard time.
Nothing about timekeeping is simple, with or without this change. Not only do some regions already not observe DST (even within the same state/region); some switch to/from DST at different times of year (and this date changes from year to year).
For a timekeeping library (which likely uses a system-level source of data / the IANA tz database) this shouldn't have any effect.
As a computer person, I really could care less when the sunshine is. I prefer my days to be exactly 24 hours. Not 24 hours +/- 1 hour.
Also, where I live there's a max of 16 hours of sunlight, and a min of 8 and a half. In the summer, it doesn't matter what the clock says, it's going to be bright when you wake up and bright when you go to sleep; so much sun. In the winter, it's most likely dark when you get up and dark when you go to bed, not enough sun that fiddling with the clocks is going to be really helpful anyway. Maybe there's a little more twilight in the morning the week after Halloween, and then it's back to morning commute in the dark. And it's pretty chilly, so while sure, I don't want to bike in the dark, I also don't want to bike in the cold, either, even if there is sun.
Why? I would say a large number of computer people owls, meaning they get up late and go to bed late. Permanent DST means you have to get up one hour earlier forever. Seems absolutely terrible to me.
It's also stupid from an astronomical point of view.
I've thought about this, being a night owl myself. I vastly prefer daylight saving time, but doesn't that mean I'm just getting up an hour earlier? Which I should hate, because I hate getting up early.
It's made me realize that my being a night owl is less about the actual time and more about how I'm spending it in relation to the rest of society. There's just something about being awake when others aren't that's preferable.
Absolutely. Fuck mornings. I'd rather not be awake before noon in the first place.
Also, some states would have a real problem with permanent standard time. Maine, in particular really belongs in the Atlantic time zone, as standard time puts sunset way too early most of the year. Having the sun down by 4:00 sucks.
People who live on the eastern extreme of a timezone likely feel quite different than those who live on the western extreme.
Boston, MA and Marquette, MI are in the same time zone. Boston's sunset today is 6:51 PM. Marquette's sunset today is 7:55 PM. It's no surprise that residents of each of those cities would have a different view as to "what should we do about DST?"
I agree. I live in Boston and winters are oppressive in large part because sunset is at 4:30 (or earlier). For Boston at least, I strongly feel we should just move to Atlantic time and just bite the bullet on the difficulties this causes with teams elsewhere. This proposal effectively does that for Boston, but I understand why the people of Marquette would be opposed.
Yes but you're still only 3 timezones away from California if the whole country switches--while potentially being further away from Europe in winter. (I think :-))
for that, time zone boundaries should be straight lines rather than following arbitrary political whims. then you’d only have a half hour variance at most.
the problem isn't going around a city here or there (a few degree minutes), but the crazy meanderings for tens/hundreds of miles in either direction (a few to many degrees). some zone lines are so far off that they're two ideal zones away from where they should be.
And then you'd need to know your exact longitude to know what time it is - doesn't sound workable to me. Although it would make life easier for GPS makers.
We're already on DST 2/3 of the year; it's considerably less disruptive to keep it year-round than to switch to all standard time. Not to mention many of us find DST strictly superior given the common work/life schedule. In the summer, standard time would mean it gets light even more ridiculously early than it already does, so you just lose useful light, rather than having it to enjoy summer evenings outdoors. In the winter it's certainly more of a preference thing, but there are plenty of us who would sacrifice light in the morning for more light after work.
Why not just ditch time zones altogether and have everyone on the same clock?
DST was good enough to implement while in an agrarian society, so why not the universal clock in a global connected society? Just imagine the precision.
I legitimately want a time gradient. Time changes by a few minutes everyday at midnight or whenever so that the sun always rises at 8. Obviously the hardest solution, but everyone who is trying to coordinate with people has a phone so they'll be fine and it's not like this is a technological impossibility. Seems like having a consistent morning routine would be helpful enough to balance the downsides.
Natural time wasn't good enough while in agrarian society. Natural time was good enough in an unconnected society. When it took days to traverse the country, solar time worked. You couldn't really keep pace with the sun. People were academically aware of the difference, but it didn't mean much. The fact that it was daytime for the king of England while it was nighttime for the emperor of Japan didn't matter. That trip would take months regardless. So coordinating events was expressed in terms where even half-day variances didn't matter.
Planes, trains, and automobiles changed all of that. That and modern communication. Today, it matters. Now if I need to talk to someone in Japan, I have to coordinate things so that we're both awake. It matters if it's nighttime to them. Which is why we do have a universal clock. It's just expressed differently based on your distance from the prime meridian.
But, it's not the expression that matters.
Daylight Savings Time (DST) is a very stupid way to deal with a lot of stupid people. Everyone here arguing about making people adjust schedules, etc. That's exactly what DST is. But instead of your local grocery saying "Yeah, we're opening at 5am for these months" we just tell the entire country to change their clocks. Which is the same net effect. It's a fiction we engage in to pretend we're not inconveniencing ourselves. And in some ways, it probably is easier this way. It's controlled, determined, and doesn't require a ton of signage to be changed. We already have to set clocks, so it all works out.
I think a lot of the arguments about the "extra hour of sunlight" are kind of stupid. Because, it's not an hour. It's not going to be pitch black regardless. And most of what people do after work involves walking from the inside of one building to the inside of another. But then again, I wake up between 5 and 6 and go to bed between 10 and midnight.
I'd prefer for it to be on Standard time year round because if you are X zones from the prime meridian, you should be +/-X based on that. But, once again, time zones are really stupid because they don't conform to distance from the prime meridian. Morocco is +1 UTC despite being completely to the west of prime meridian. Most of Greenland is -3 despite spanning 5 zones, with one small section actually observing UTC despite being in the zone that should be -1 and the section that is -1 actually should be observing -2.
Central Time is the most dominant zone going from the westernmost point of Texas to most of the Florida panhandle. Most of Texas should be -7, not -6. And so on and so forth. I bet if you "fixed" this kind of bullshit, more people would be in favor of Standard time year round. Or at least less opposed to it.
I agree on permanent standard time, but just because I think it's silly to make the words "noon" and "midnight" permanently lies. Unless someone is at the edges of an extremely wide time zone solar noon and legal noon are generally to be within 30 minutes of each other. Likewise for midnight. With time zones generally set on hour intervals that's as good as it gets.
In a "daylight savings only" world solar noon will instead center around 13:00 and solar midnight around 01:00. To me that's just absurd.
If "people want more daylight hours after work" and it's worth making sweeping disruptive changes to make it happen...
Then just make the workday from 8 to 4 instead of 9 to 5.
No no, instead of making a sane clock and using whatever times we want on it, it obviously makes more sense to make a messed up clock.
What other measuring implements and scales should we move around so the numbers please us better?
Everything is expensive, let's change the way any monetary value is written to be -1 based. Henceforth all prices shall be written on a scale that starts at -1 instead of 0. If a thing cost $4 yesterday, it now costs the same 4 dollars, but the price is written as $3. This will give e eryone more money! I call it permanent wallet saving prices!
The weirdest thing about DST is that from what I recall of history, it came about at a time when unions were pretty strong. I don't know why the unions didn't just insist on getting off an hour early at a certain time of year.
Though it's possible they were the ones paying lobbyists to get it through Congress in the first place. Sometimes paying someone else to do your dirties is the most efficient way.
The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.
Yes but so-called Standard Time was only optimizing that for a small group - the intention was rural children walking to school could do so in daylight. And otherwise it pessimized the use of scarce sunlight by moving forward the time workers left to when it was dark.
Always Standard Time might be better than awful switch but permanent Daylight Savings would offer most people who work 9-5 more sunlight over the year, the actual optimal solution.
That's not really true... with permanent DST, instead of it getting dark on the 21st of December at 4:30pm it will now not get dark until 5:30 in the afternoon. (I am not really that far north, but that's sunset on the solstice for me)
It's also nice for me personally since my circadian rhythm seems to be on 'Summer' time, all the time.
CA, OR, WA and BC were all on the same page wrt to doing this so this just removes one of the blocks from making it happen.
Oh my, such a hard disagreement! In my time zone (Eastern), DST means sunset is at its earliest around 5:30PM, compared to 4:30PM in the hell that is Standard Time. I would so rather have a sliver of daylight at the end of my day!
Sunrise at its latest would still be reasonable, around 8:00am, with plenty of predawn lights for kids and early risers.
If you're a person with a normal day job or who goes to school (i.e. practically everyone), an extra hour of sunlight in the morning is wasted on the job or school; an extra hour of sunlight in the evening is more likely to be on your time.
My seasonal affect disorder kicks in hard when we leave DST every winter. This is the first bit of great news I've heard all year.
Standard time in June means the sun comes up at 4AM. I prefer DST, but either way let's just stop fiddling with the clocks. Maybe we could split the difference and just fall back 1/2 an hour this Fall? (and then just hold it there)
Let's hope the EU manages to follow; it seems to be in the cards, but politically tricky. This is something that has gained a lot of traction the last decade though; lots of popular support too (parents of young children will rejoice).
I can understand the concern of other posters about going to DST as opposed to standard time... but at this point, I just want the switching to end. It is such an unnecessary disruption and fixing it seems so trivial.
It's total necessary and a great design. Without this then it would be dark until 8:30 in the morning during winter and the other way the Sun would rise at 4:30AM. These are both bad outcomes so we adjust the clocks so optimize these.
Because having the Sun rise at 8:30 is really late. We waste energy and secondly people are spending 2 hours of their morning in the dark.
Having the Sun rise at 4:30 is bad because it's just too early to get up and makes for poor sleep. Having the Sun set later in the day is better in this case.
For a lot of people it's the difference between having a job and being fired. Try telling your boss that you're coming in at 9:30 because it's just a number.
Is it really such a disruption? People fly across timezones all the time. Daylight savings and return to normal happen twice per year at entirely predictable times, and are modest changes – is it really so hard?
Because our politics are in many ways a clown show. It probably polls well when you ask regular people who haven't considered why we do this. That they feel sad because the Sun goes down at 5:00AM when it's cold but don't consider that without this then the Sun won't come up until 8:30AM.
"In a Roper poll conducted in February and March, just 30 percent remained in favor of year-round daylight saving time, while a majority favored switching times again. Louis Harris polling in March showed just 19 percent of people said it had been a good idea, while about twice as many — 43 percent — said it was a bad one."
A poll conducted during the first winter of the first year where the status quo was different, and where institutions hadn't yet made changes to their procedures and schedules to prepare for it is not a true poll of the issue.
Nah, it's an emotional thing for a lot of people who haven't considered it - they just hate that it gets dark early and it makes them sad. I've had this conversation with a lot of people and almost all of them agree it's a good system when they understand why we do it. Especially for people in the Northern parts of the country.
Hmm, I live in the northern part of the country and that isn't my experience at all. But I'm sure you have surveyed a statistically significant amount of the population, not just your little bubble.
I've considered it. I live in the northern parts of the country (WI). I have children that walk to school. Anything other than permanent DST is absolutely asinine to me. Most people do things in the evening. Very few people do things in the morning other than get ready for and go to work/school. Why would anybody choose to have light during that time and not later in the day?
Around the world perhaps, but time zones in the US have been quite static for a long time right? I wonder how many US based systems aren’t well tested/prepared for a possible change.
It's unsafe. A child is more likely to be hit by a car when it is dark. With the current system they can leave for school and come home when there is light.
Shouldn't they just go to school later when it's darker? They could come up with a policy to start school later and get out later in the winter or something. Why does the entire country have to modify their clocks for a few minority use cases?
Is it society's time-keeping system that is at fault, or the school system's start time? Cuz I kinda think organized school systems with rigid start times are a later development.
I have a feeling quite a few people commenting don't live in northern states and thinks there's plenty of light to go around if it were just aligned right.
Basically because of the Gulf Stream influence on climate, I suspect a lot of Americans would be surprised how far north Europe is compared to the US. (And therefore that you deal with darkness in the morning and the evening for a decent chunk of the year.)
I would also note that in the northern states, children go to school in the dark (and often also come home in the dark) regardless of DST/ST, because we hold school over winter, and we get about 8-9 hours of sunlight a day in the winter.
Better to come home in the sunlight. Even if you have indoor sports after school now you have some time to potentially absorb vitamin D. Not much absorbing you are doing in the morning shuffling to get ready for school.
It absolutely is. And the Sun won't come up until 8:30AM. No one wants their first couple hours of the day to be darkness. Secondly, it's more dangerous for kids walking to school. And lastly we use more energy since a larger part of our day is lived in the darkness for most people.
> No one wants their first couple hours of the day to be darkness.
Why? What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work? Complete waste to do that in the daylight.
> Secondly, it's more dangerous for kids walking to school.
We should be pushing back school starting times anyway. If they're old enough to walk to school, then they don't need their parents to wait for them to leave before going to work, so that typical argument goes out the window.
> And lastly we use more energy since a larger part of our day is lived in the darkness for most people.
A weak argument IMO. Studies are not conclusive on the actual savings, and most of the ones that are out there say they save minimal energy. Besides, I think the mental health benefits of having more useful hours in the evening are worth the extra 0.5-1% energy usage.
You have to understand that most people start work at 8 and many start earlier. For this majority that means they are on the road by 7:30 - which is rush hour. This means they are probably awake by 6:30 or earlier in some cases. So they already begin in the dark. Now imagine that going for even more time, until 8:30?
At least this way you get some Sunlight before you're at work and some when you're done.
The jobs I've worked outside we started the day in the dark often times (construction, landscaping). What jobs have you worked that required perfect natural lighting the entire time? I'm assuming it's a decent minority of jobs.
So you’re saying you’re fine with them leaving work in the evening in the dark, because that’s the trade-off. Not to mention your post-work leisure time will be in darkness.
You're going to work or at work, so it's irrelevant whether it's sunny outside or not. That hour of sun sitting in morning traffic is completely wasted.
Much better to have the hour of sun after work to do things outside.
I'd rather have all my sunlight at the tail end of the day where the time is all mine, vs having to waste some of it when I'm hustling to get breakfast together and get out of the house. Better for vitamin D deficiencies since I can now do something like an after work walk in the last hour of sunlight of the day vs coming home and it being dark already.
> What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work?
Here's 1 day from last week, before DST:
5:00 AM: wake up
5:15 - 6:30: lift
6:30: breakfast, coffee, and paper on the porch, watch the sun rise.
7:15: go shower, dress, pack lunch, get ready for work
7:30: leave for work
7:50: arrive at work
2 things I enjoy, a few hours of "free time", before work. And by the way, showing up at work around 8 is more common than arriving at 9 for most corporate jobs. The tech bubble is real on this site. Guess why? Because we like having some light left in the evening/ending our day earlier, among other reasons.
> We should be pushing back school starting times anyway.
No, learning to get up early forces kids to learn to go to bed on time, that's a valuable skill that teaches discipline. If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
> A weak argument
Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.
From what I can tell most people do not do anything other than get ready for work in the morning. Yes, there are outliers like yourself who actually utilize that daylight, but that's the minority. Most people want a later sunset.
You wake up 2 hours earlier than the average American (which apparently is about 7:09am). Things aren't and shouldn't be optimized for your abnormal sleep pattern.
> If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
... I don't think you've met kids before. The vast majority absolutely won't learn.
> Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.
Standard time moves sunlight to the morning, when people are sleeping. Permanent DST should give people the same or more sunlight during their waking hours. You'd have the same amount, waking up at 5am and assuming you don't sleep until at least 8:30pm.
We should try to move sunrise closer to when people wake up. This does the opposite for most people, not just me.
Also, we should teach more people to get up early and go lift/exercise. We have too many fatties in this country. Making it a national habit would be a great thing.
I don't see the raw numbers, but the chart seems to indicate Americans waking up slightly before 7, maybe 6:50am? Not too far off from the source I found of 7:09am, and is still approximately 2 hours after you wake up.
And congrats at being disciplined. The vast vast vast majority of Americans aren't. And changing the habits of hundreds of millions of people is a pipe dream and really irrelevant to this conversation.
> No, learning to get up early forces kids to learn to go to bed on time, that's a valuable skill that teaches discipline. If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
You are arguing against many well-documented studies about what school hours work best for kids to learn. "on time" is entirely based on what time you need to get up. The whole point of moving school later is for "on time" to be compatible with the hours that kids are more functional. This is not a matter of discipline; deciding you're going to be up and functional earlier does not change your body or the sun's position in the sky to be compatible with that. (If you want to argue otherwise, argue in published studies refuting the ones that exist, not in replies to this comment.)
Move school hours to start several hours later than they currently do, and then by all means encourage the discipline of getting up in time for school.
When daylight savings time is implemented, SCHOOLS, EMPLOYERS AND ALL OTHER COMMERCE times are changed. Thus, When it is removed, all places will change time accordingly.
Do you finish work before 5:45pm? The sun would set earlier than that until mid January in NY, and until mid February in SF. And end-of-work would be the time you start outdoor activity, not finish it, so in practice it would be practical to do outdoor activity in the afternoon for 1 month or less.
In Boston (Northernmost major metro on East Coast) the new latest sunrise would be at 8:13am, with a substantial period of twilight before then. Night will officially end at 6:32am, then astronomical twilight ends at 7:06, then officially sunrise at 8:13am. Point is you’re waking up during the dawn even if you’re waking up at 6:30 to get the kids to school.
Lots of people wake up well before then to go lift/exercise. And looking at obesity rates in America, we could stand to change time to better suit that habit. Some of us also like sitting on our porch with a newspaper and a cup of coffee and some eggs to watch the sun come up.
$10 is a lot for a light bulb. If working on computers has taught me anything, it's to not trust fancy new gadgets. I don't want some stupid box to glitch so my light doesn't work. Given what moving away from a natural "rise with the sun" schedule has done, maybe we should go back to that instead of trying to substitute.
While he was snarky, expressing disdain for technology solutions to every day life problems on a website called... hacker news... is sort of counter-culture here. I get that you have some strong traditionalist views based on this and your other recent commenting, but it's also important to know your audience and that some of those views aren't going to be well received here.
Wifi light bulbs aren't fancy new gadgets. The Phillips Hue, for example, first hit the market nearly a decade ago. I'm sure there has been much development of the concept since and $10 is, for most people, very affordable. Especially the HN crowd.
I can't speak to their efficacy personally, can you? Do you know for a fact that they are error prone? All makes and models? Or did you shallowly dismiss the other person's suggestion?
I mean I had to wake up in the dark anyway during childhood even with this time. The sun would be rising as I got into school and would be set when I got through with my extracurriculars which pretty much took place indoors during the winter. This shift would actually have granted me some sunlight during the week in the winter as a child.
Are we really doing this because it'll be light at 7:35pm?
Sorry, but that's not even close to a compelling reason to do this.
See how easy it is? I can dismiss others' preferences just as easy. Waking up when it's dark out isn't good for people. We should rise with the sun, more or less, and "time" should change to accommodate that.
It worked fine 46 years ago. People bitched then "about the children" while insisting that schools couldn't start later. That's just crazy. What is different this time? It wasn't bad before, that's what.
Schools can't really start later. Parents need to drop kids off before they start work. I guess we could have everyone start work an hour later too, but I don't see that happening.
This is far from universal, and is a problem we should address wherever it is the case. It's bad for plenty of reasons, with one of the largest being that it prevents us from having schools operate during times that work well for children and teens.
I'm not sure how you plan to solve this. Even if a school bus came to every kids front door the parent would still need to be there to ensure the kid gets on. If both parents need to be somewhere for work the bus needs to show up early enough to give them time to commute.
Uh - no. You don’t have to be there to ensure the kid gets on. You teach your kid how to be responsible and a good person so that they get on without you having to helicopter over them for everything.
That's how my parents did it... it's changed in the past 20 years. Stupid suburban wine moms raised this past generation to be coddled at every opportunity. I hear about parents getting in trouble for letting their children walk a mile or 2 to a park and back... or bike a few miles to a friend... ridiculous. Lots of parts of America (outside big cities) we still don't care.
Uh - no. You don’t have to be there to ensure the kid gets on. You teach your kid how to be responsible and a good person so that they get on without you having to helicopter over them for everything.
Maybe I'm just a terrible parent, but I wouldn't trust my 5 year old to walk to her stop and get on the bus at a specific time every morning without a parent around to push her to do it.
That doesn't say its "normal" by 6-7. It just says that some kids are able to do it as young as that age. And the specific child in the article didn't start until 9.
Plus, I would argue that there is a difference between sending a kid off to school at a given time and leaving them home alone with a specific schedule of "At 8:45 you need to walk to the bus stop and wait for the bus". Which again, I'm not sure I would trust to my 5 year old to do on her own every morning. Not because she can't walk alone, but because I don't think punctuality is something she's mastered yet.
And even the article admits that young kids can do that more because of "social trust than self-reliance". And I don't know how many parents are willing to rely on other adults to help out their kid if something goes wrong.
I would wake up after my dad was gone for work, grab a pop-tart or cereal, take a ~1/4 mile walk outside to the bus stop, no longer able to see my house from the suburban sprawl, and hang out with the rest of the kids at my stop for 5-15 minutes before the bus showed up. Then I eventually got a car.
Don't get me wrong, if I was offered a ride (my parents, friends parents, friends with cars) I'd often take it. But ensuring I got on the bus? When the alternative was that my parents would get a phone call about me being missing? Trust that the lessons I'd get at school were far preferable to the lectures I'd get at home if I skipped class.
> Parents need to drop kids off before they start work.
I see a comment like this in all of these discussions and I'm always confused: did something change in the past ~15 years since I graduated from high school and school buses stopped being a thing? Where I grew up (Texas, which is generally not the most politically enthusiastic place when it comes to school funding) it was required that a school bus be available within a few minutes' walk of every student's home in the school zone. I thought this was a pretty universal part of American life based on every movie/TV show ever.
That's one of the things we get right because so many people around the state live in rural areas where school is a very long way from where they live. Many of them live on farms or ranches where their parents need those early hours to work and can't take their kids to school that far away easily.
Many parents don't trust their 5 year to get on the bus everyday. High school can surely be moved back for areas with 100% bus availability (my district has not had buses since covid), but elementary school would be a much tougher sell.
That's a fair point for kindergarteners, but by 1st or 2nd grade kids in my district walked to the bus stop on the corner all by themselves just fine. Also, my district had elementary school start the earliest (and middle/high school would start later) which for some reason is uncommon but makes a lot of sense for a whole bunch of reasons and would seem to mostly solve this problem for parents who need to walk their kindergartener to the bus stop before work.
I suspect HN skews Californian, and as a Californian with 4 kids, none of them have ever ridden a school bus.
In theory the secondary school kids can take the city bus, however to use my junior high kid as an example, that changes a sub 10-minute drive into a 20 minute walk that crosses a state highway plus a 20 minute bus ride, so what actually happens is the school parking lots all back up onto the local streets every morning as each parent drops their kid off at school.
Huh, interesting -- why doesn't California have school buses? I could imagine it might be hard/unsafe in dense urban areas like SF, but otherwise, why?
I don't know the full reasons, but after some reading: The really short answer is that it's not required by law, but it costs money.
Note that in California the overwhelming majority of schools have a budget that is essentially dictated by the state (the state makes up any shortfall in local taxes up to a certain amount adjusted per-student-day, and most schools are in districts that have such a shortfall). This means that there are only two ways to provide buses: charge students who ride buses (done in some districts) or take money out of the classrooms (not popular with parents nor teachers' unions).
Where I grew up there was a time when they needed to upgrade the bus fleet, so they passed a bond specifically for that purpose. If I understand the law correctly, this wouldn't be feasible in California outside of basic-aid districts (basic-aid districts are those that do not have a shortfall in their general funds, so they only get the "basic aid" for that is earmarked for special-ed &c.).
> Where I grew up there was a time when they needed to upgrade the bus fleet, so they passed a bond specifically for that purpose. If I understand the law correctly, this wouldn't be feasible in California outside of basic-aid districts
You misunderstand the law, all school districts in California can submit bonds to the voters of the district, and this is a routine method of addressing capital needs.
Could also be more of an urban/rural divide? I grew up in part of California without a "city bus" for hundreds of miles, and school bus usage was pretty widespread. Parents who dropped their kids off usually just did so because it happened to line up with their schedule.
Also your post was a weird reminder of how laisse-faire my own upbringing was, because I was biking to school across and along a state highway in fifth grade.
Every other state has figured out how to have school buses. maybe California should figure out how to rise to the standard of everywhere else instead of insisting that the whole country manipulate their clocks so you can take the extreme inefficiency of driving your kids to school.
You’d have to be over 60 years old to have any memory of that, and even then you would have been a kid at the time. Plus your memory gets worse as you age. So why would anyone here have a memory of that experience? The only memories we have are of DST messing up our sleep schedules twice a year for no apparent benefit to us.
But more to the point, the article doesn’t really talk about why it went badly. In fact, the only thing it mentions (kids getting up too early for school) is a very solvable problem and one which should be solved regardless of DST.
I know this is hardly a radical take, but I don't care what time it is. I can adjust my schedule appropriately. What I hate is changing the time. It makes us all sicker, causes accidents, and workers in certain professions have to work weird hours to keep up with the changes. It's such a drag on the economy and only seems to serve a small fragment of society.
Which fragment of society are you thinking time changing benefits? The common one I hear is farmers. Which is complete BS. Farmers work by the sun because the plants and animals they care for don't use clocks.
Farmers used to care, when they made broad use of their spawn to assist with harvests and chores. If the spawn gets out of school an hour earlier, that's an hour more labor they can do before the sun sets.
It's also kind of bullshit. Children can do some farm work, but the majority of farm work is going to be done by adults and teenagers.
Farmers have been mostly against DST since the beginning. It was golfers, bug catchers, and 7-11 that wanted it.
And permanent DST has failed when it was tried here in the 70s, in the UK a few years before that, and in Russia as recent as the 2010s. Why do we want to do it again?
the idea that DST happens for the farmers has always been pretty funny to me, because the one province in canada that doesn't observe DST is the province that has nothing but farmland.
It also makes the timezone differences vary as different zones switch on different dates. Hopefully the whole world will come to their senses and we get rid of the changes globally so that timezone differences will be fixed.
Since the USA designs most of the software in the world, support for changing time zones will gradually disappear.
There will no longer be a constant force making people correctly convert UTC to localtime. People will go storing dates as strings. People will just have "+8 hours" hardcoded for their application.
That will lead to people in the rest of the world having constant bugs and trouble every time daylight savings time happens.
That may be part of the push for other countries to drop it too, when lawmakers see that every spring and autumn their computer deletes an hours worth of emails or their fancy web 4.0 microwave cooks their breakfast for 1 hour and 30 seconds.
Does this mean that I will no longer be able to smugly remind people that there is only one 's' in "daylight saving time"? It was really the only reason I could see for keeping the biannual time change around.
Isn't that just changing the time zone and abolishing daylight savings?
"Senate votes"
What does this mean? Does it take effect forever starting from today? Does Senate have authority to actually enact the change or is that some other dude that actually flips the lever?
Executive orders are only the use of powers given the the President previously by Congress or, through the Constitution, the people. The President has no other powers.
It's redefining the offsets from UTC for the zones, for standard time. And also repeals all of 15 USC 260a http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:15%20section:2... a.k.a. Section 3 of the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Ergo, the 'D' in all the time zones goes away.
The U.S. has a bicameral legislature and a presidential veto, so the House of Representatives would also have to vote for the same bill, then the president would have to sign it. According to the text of the bill[1], it would take effect immediately, but there would be no practical effect until November 6, when DST is scheduled to end.
True, that's the normal process but if the President vetoes the bill Congress can override the veto by 2/3 majority in both chambers.
IIRC the Senate passed the bill unanimously. If the House passes the bill by a large majority it predicts a veto would be overridden. In such cases even if inclined to veto, the President typically acknowledges defeat and signs the bill into law.
Stop dreaming - we didn't allow that level of pedantry even when DST was a thing. "Daylight savings time" might be an eggcorn - but it's more accepted in conversation than "daylight saving time" at this point.
I have an armchair-theory that different pronunciations require different amounts of work, and that the less-effort versions win over time. Particularly certain transitions from one syllable to the next.
Maybe not a great example, but "savings-time" seems to require slightly less work than "saving-time". At least for me.
As uh bahn an bread Bahstunian I'd ahgue dat reginal dieuhlecks ken cause ovahuhl drifs in prahnunciashen ohvah time. Baht thas jus me. Diffrin fraysus will folluh da culltrull kahntexts dey ehmehged frahm.
It depends on whether you have a prescriptive or descriptive view of the language. Usually, smug people who enjoy correcting other’s speech lean prescriptive.
I get it, sort of. In that case I just tell myself "it's hyperbole for lazy people" and move on. "Could care less", though, that one I cannot reconcile.
This is going to be my headcanon for why people do this (though it's more likely laziness/carelessness). This usage seems to be becoming more and more common, so this will help me pretend it makes sense and move on.
I'll take the bait here and be the one to point out that the usage of literally to mean "figuratively" is recorded in dictionaries at least 100 years old, and there are probably even older examples of that usage.
Literally doesn't mean "figuratively". It either means "literally", or it is used for emphasis, like "really" or "deeply" etc. But it is never used with the express purpose of meaning "figuratively", i.e. "not literally".
That is, no one is saying "I am literally dying to know" to try to communicate the fact that they are not, in fact, dying to know. Instead, the difference between "I am dying to know" and "I am literally dying to know" is one of emphasis. The second is almost perfectly equivalent to "I am really dying to know" or "I am very much dying to know".
By contrast, "I am figuratively dying to know" would imply that you are specifically not dying to know, which everyone understands perfectly well.
There's no such thing as communication without ambiguity while using natural language. In your particular example, any interpretation depends crucially on what "that" might be referring to. It could refer to an animal, in which case you may mean that it seems to be suffering from a mental illness (maybe it has rabies) OR that it is unable to think clearly (it is insane with hunger, or excitement). It could be referring to an action, which may mean that it is either the action of someone suffering from a mental illness, or the action of someone being temporarily unable to think clearly, or it is an absurd action.
These are all literal meanings of insane. Of course, if we add figurative meanings we can increase the ambiguity further.
However, your criticism applies similarly to words like "truly" - if I say "that is truly insane", do I mean that it is insane in one of the literal senses of the word? Or the figurative uses? Am I just emphasizing either of these meanings, or do I feel a need to confirm that I am not lying?
Either way we take it, though, "literally" can never be replaced with "figuratively" without altering the meaning of a phrase. In it's use as an intensifier, it does NOT mean "figuratively", it means "very".
Also, looking on Merriam-Webster, they clearly discuss this and reach the same conclusion. They also mention that this meaning for emphasis appears as early as the 18th century, in the works of Charlotte Brontë, James Joyce, Mark Twain.
If the context is that it's been a handful of minutes, we don't say my usage is wrong; we definitely don't say that "sometimes days means minutes" and fret about how anyone will communicated time. We say that sometimes people exaggerate.
You can still object, if you wish, on stylistic grounds. You can object that you'd prefer we keep "literally" apart from some standard uses of words lest we allow inappropriate ambiguity. But none of that means anyone is using "literally" to mean "figuratively".
That is a silly position. "Literally" has become an intensifier, like so many other words in the English language. It is no different from "truly" or "verily" or "really", and the path it took from its literal meaning to its intensifier status is identical.
Even though the prescriptive view is wrong people still have it? ;)
I'd love for one of them to show the original centuries old definition of English that they are prescribing from.
Or put another way, if the prescriptive view is nothing but a descriptive view of language from a few decades back then essentially you have a descriptive view that tries to ignore that time isn't constant.
I'm not a fan of a prescriptive view of language. But at the same time I'm also not a fan of letting morons decide the course of things. Just because people use phrases wrong, or can't be bothered to learn how to spell doesn't mean the "correct" spelling should just change to accommodate them. Why doesn't everyone else get a vote? Otherwise what's the point of spell checkers, or dictionaries, or English class at all?
Having a standard to hold our selves to is not having a prescriptive approach to language. Prescriptive language is what the French do. They have a government office that decides the official rules of French and official documents have to follow them. For example, even though everyone calls a Computer a Computer pretty much everywhere in the world with variation on spelling, the French government has to call it an ordinateur.
The point of language is to facilitate communication. To do so there needs to be a standard. You don't have to legally enforce it, it should be voluntary. Freedom of speech and all that. But I reject the copout that "language evolves, deal with it".
> Even though the prescriptive view is wrong people still have it? ;)
Yup. Some of us do so quite consciously and intentionally, and knowing it is doomed to fail -- so, if you will, quixotically[1].
"Why on Earth would you want to do that?", I hear you ask. I'm glad you did -- let me explain: It's a delaying defence, intended to slow down the enem^W speed of change. We see that slowing down as a good thing, because it increases intelligibility over time. You, as a speaker of English, can with some effort read and understand Shakespeare and (hiss rough contemporary) the King James translation of the Bible... But not much further back; Chaucer is a struggle, and Beowulf just gibberish to you. Icelanders, OTOH, have no more problems with the Viking sagas, written down about the time of Chaucer, than you do with Shakespeare; and had they any litterature written down in the time of Beowulf, I'd imagine it would be no worse for them than Chaucer is for you. To Swedes, on the other other hand, the writings of Gustav II Adolf (not to mention the chronicles of his grandfather Gustaf I Vasa's historian) are Chaucer-level difficult even though they're from about the time of Shakespeare (or less than a century before); actual Chaucer-era writings like the medieval laws of king Magnus are Beowulf-level gibberish; nineteenth-century poetry -- heck, even the 1917 Bible or the prose of Strindberg, who IIRC died just a few years before that translation! -- seem to be as hard to grasp as Shakespeare is to you.
And this shit seems to just be accelerating; kids nowadays have a hard time not just with Strindberg, but with novels I enjoyed in my youth -- written in the 1940s, -60s, or even later! So, in the hope that my grandkids (if ever I have any) will understand what the heck I'm saying to them and I what they're telling me, I fight this hopeless rearguard action, willingly sacrificing myself to the slings and arrows of mindlessly laissez-faire anti-prescriptivists for the greater good of mankind.
So slowing Swedish down to the rate of decay--eh, development -- of English is my primary goal. But, hey, while I'm at it anyway, why not try to improve the cross-time communication power of English, too?
There, hope that answers your questions?
___
[1]: Except I guess the Knight of La Mancha didn't know that last bit. Unless, I guess, if you want to argue that deep down he really had to know that all along.
There are objectively prescriptive (codified) languages.
In Slovakia we have laws giving a certain public institution the responsibility to define what are the proper rules to use the language, including maintaining the dictionary of all the allowed words and their meanings.
Anything beyond that (with the exception of e.g. scientific terms) is objectively incorrect slovak.
Languages aren't logical pre-determined constructions (unless they're intentionally designed, such as Esperanto).
Humans create languages. And they constantly change and evolve, including new words, letters, grammar, etc. Consider Old English versus Modern English [0]. Or even software companies that have become nouns or verbs in common parlance (e.g. "to google").
Maybe the legislators will make things even more confusing by defining daylight time as "standard time"! (Because it will be the, well, standard time.)
I've never come across a device that supports permanent summer time. You can typically opt out of daylight saving time and stay in standard time, but you can't stay in summer time.
These devices will either need to pick the standard timezone of the timezone to the east and disable daylight saving time, or we will have to change the offset of every timezone in the US, or devices will need to add an explicit summer timezone.
I don't see how any of this is easier than staying on standard time and disabling daylight saving time, which every device that tells time that I've come across seems to support.
I mentioned something similar in a comment last year, but I think there's going to be a lot of moaning about late sunrises in US in December. Roughly 8:15-8:20 am around the solstice in New York, DC, Chicago, and even Austin. Not til nearly 9am in Seattle. The sun won't rise before 8am in NYC for basically all of December and January.
I'd even be willing to guess that the amount of moaning might be equal to what we get now around the clock change.
Enough from these self centered early risers. They go to bed at 7 PM. They live in homes full of "live, laugh, love" decorations. They tuck in their shirts. Enough.
But I think it will be those night owls who must wake up early who will suffer most. Left to my own devices I would wake at 9 and go to bed around 2, but because of work and family scheduled I get up early Mon-Fri. Another hour before seeing the sun in the winter doesn't thrill me. Somehow I think it will bother me more than the early sunsets, but we'll see.
I don’t agree at all, and I think many people don’t agree. What has always depressed me the most in the winter is the lack of sunlight in the evening, after work/school. In the morning I don’t really get to enjoy the sunlight anyway. What I really hate is getting off work and finding it already dark.
There is no “right” time, and this fight for pedantic correctness is already lost. That ship sailed when we started using time zones instead of true local time. Many localities are far from their true noon already. We should make policy on the basis of what is actually good for people.
This is exactly right for me too (American here). I much prefer having daylight after work instead when I wake up. I don't care how outside looks like when I'm taking a shower and waking up. I really like this change.
I do wonder if some communities on the border of a time zone will end up shifting from one side or the other due to this, especially if they're in an area where it makes more of a difference in the winter than the summer.
There really isn't a way to make things nice in Seattle as far as time zone manipulation goes. Overall, I think permanent DST is the best option since it means avoiding biannual clock changes while avoiding it being light at 4am during the summer (as would be the case for permanent standard time).
However, my opinion on this bill is that states should be able to decide what is best for them. Currently, they can only use DST switching clocks biannually or go to permanent standard time. They should also have the option to go to permanent DST. Honestly, they should just give states full control over their timezone. Let them go to UTC if they really want to. The only stipulation I would make is that having more than one timezone per state should require approval from the federal government (to avoid making things too complicated) and to put limits on how often it can be changed.
This is the first time I've heard someone express the idea that there is a silent majority of people who would prefer earlier sunrises to later sunsets, very interesting! Intuitively I disagree but I have no evidence and I'm sure at least one person will dislike the change.
For me though, the real pain wasn't any particular time zone, it was the abrupt change from getting out of work with some daylight left to walking out in darkness. Gradual changes are almost always easier to deal with.
2,308 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 386 ms ] threadJesus, does everything need to be hyperbolic virtue signaling. Won't someone please think of the children!
Yes. And our tax dollars fund it.
Just need a hyperbolic virtue signaling name for it!
Tag Regulations Understandable To Humans - TRUTH Act
It does seem like the "AWESOME Goodness Act" or "CUTE Puppies Act" phenomenon is especially strong here in the U.S.
-M. Thatcher
Just substitute the word "virtuous" in
I'll offer no commentary on whether "Sunshine Protection Act" is virtue signaling, but I think virtue signaling is less "talking about having done virtuous things" and more "talking about doing virtuous things with the intent to gain social capital". It's the facade, the ulterior motive that most people balk at. In that sense it has always been a "bad" thing.
In this case, it frames the issue as the enlightened who want to"protect people's access to sunshine" against the evil forces of darkness.
In reality, there is no moral highground, good guys, or bad guys.
Some people simply like sunshine at different times. It would be nice if we could act like adults and start from this premise. We can try to come up with a solution for how to set our clocks without claiming the preference of the other side is illegitimate or morally bankrupt.
Obviously ending DST isn't like that, but you have SOPA, EARN IT, etc, etc.
I believe this kind of branding should have no place in legislature.
Hollow signaling has always been crap as far as I'm concerned. The term became a dirty word in left leaning circles and a slight pejorative in right leaning ones in the last ~10yr or so which IMO is a shame because it describes a wide variety of modern behavior and there is no good replacement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling#:~:text=%22v...
Florida is "The Sunshine State", so the name was a little more clever in that context. I can't emphasize enough that I call it a little clever, not a lot clever.
It's a bit ironic given the current anti-Russia everything when Russia is the largest country in the world on permanent DST. If the bill had been subject to debate instead of going through so fast, I suspect someone would have brought up the Russia connection and the whole thing would have died a quick death as "we don't want to be like the Russians".
Actually, Russia tried permanent DST, but then switched to permanent standard time 3 years later after that turned out to be a terrible idea:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29773559
As the current maintainer of the timezone database observed:
* https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2022-March/031239.html"In Sheffield, United Kingdom, a Y2K bug caused miscalculation of the mothers' age and sent incorrect risk assessments for Down syndrome to 154 pregnant women. As a direct result two abortions were carried out, and four babies with Down syndrome were also born to mothers who had been told they were in the low-risk group."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
I live right by the border, on the Utah side, and driving through Arizona and Nevada is always so confusing!
The weirdest part is that I wasn't even _that_ close to the border, it was 30-40 miles away. I know there is some room for error with phone location tracking but I've never had a maps app consistenly confuse my location with a spot 40 miles away.
Arizona the state is in MST, there's Navajo reservations in MDT, and there's even a Hopi reservation that's totally encircled by a Navajo reservation that doesn't do DST.
It makes some sense because the Navajo Nation, though mostly located in Arizona, also has a large portion in New Mexico and a smaller one in Utah, both of which observe Mountain time. I don’t know the exact history, but I assume that when Arizona stopped observing DST, the Navajo Nation chose to keep Mountain time to avoid having two different time zones within their border.
The Hopi Reservation, while indeed an enclave within the Navajo Nation, is a completely separate political entity and so under no compulsion to follow any Navajo decisions. Also, they’re entirely within Arizona, so sticking to Arizona time is logical.
Another thing — I can’t recall having ever heard an Arizonan refer to our time zone as MST. That would be technically accurate, but would be confusing because it would naturally imply that we sometimes switch to MDT. We just call it Arizona time, and think of the Mountain and Pacific zones as a separate thing that we’re aligned with for part of the year.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...
The west coast states’ legislatures already voted to go permanent daylight savings, so presumably this bill would allow them to.
The committee negotiating a unified bill will settle for a compromise of keeping standard time for 8 months of the year and daylight savings time for 4 months of the year on odd years and reversing the proportion during even years.
There will be intense discussion about whether to do anything special for leap years. After several months of back and forth, someone will point out that there are also leap seconds and leap microseconds, leading to further debate.
The bill will lapse.
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz-announce/
https://www.iana.org/time-zones
One of the arguments for Day light savings change is that -- it would still be dark during the time kids go to school in winter, early spring and late fall, many places in US will not have Sun rise at 8:00am. No matter how much we may be removed from the nature -- our wakeful hours are directly impacted by Sun rise and Sun set. On the other side, there are discomforts in moving the clock twice a year across the board.
Please let this pass before "fall-back"
This is probably just a configuration update.
famous last words
Notably Fiji decided to not use DST in 2021/2022 but apparently plans to resume using it afterwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_Proposition_7
WA has enacted it, pending federal government approval:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=1.20.052
Looks like Oregon’s is contingent on California enacting it, but it is a passed law:
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2019R1/Downloads/Meas...
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/11/06/oregon-wants-to-stop-...
We're already going to work in the dark in the morning in winter, why will it matter if its dark later?
The severe disruption in schedules is correlated with triggering depressive episodes (great when we're going into winter!) and increase in obesity.
What's more: the fact that we all do it syncronously and it negatively affects our mood means that there's a "DST meanness" wave that washes over cities during autumn and spring.
It's not "and vice versa" - the change to DST has a slight negative effect, the change to ST has a similar slight positive effect on these indicators.
I have difficulty articulating exactly how much I dislike any time shifting from beneath me.
I find as I grow older that I’m more OK with it, but I need only remember how I felt as a kid to realise how absolutely insane and arbitrary it is.
Then I remember that after we “spring forward” I always feel like ass for a week, and so does everyone else.
It’s like some kind of weird game theory, nobody is willing to remove it because: “we’ve always done it this way” is a dangerous amount of ignorance to apply to a global population.
By contrast, risk for heart attack dropped 21 percent on the Tuesday after the fall time change.”
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/10/26/can-daylight-saving...
“A study of 732,000 accidents over two decades has found that the annual switch to daylight saving time is associated with a 6% increase in fatal car crashes that week.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200130144410.h...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...
I think it comes down to, "what do I prefer"
And the way I personally always dealt with it is by having clocks that set themselves and barely noticing when they changed, or in some years, not even noticing at all unless someone else brought it up.
You can't just "turn on the lights" for outdoor activities except in very specific cases. Those activities can't really be done in the morning because people have to get ready for school/work during that time. I really don't want to waste perfectly good sunlight getting ready for work. Let me use it when it can actually be used.
I would suggest it's because the sun is a far better light, and most people don't have the ability to light up the entire area to make it seem like daytime.
Note: I'm a late-to-bed person myself, so I'm happy about this, but I want to be honest about the fact that my support for it over a permanent no DST is my personal preference being imposed on others. In the US south there's a saying, "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining" and I try to honor that here.
I literally say my reasoning in my comment. It's much harder to light up the outdoors for outdoor activities after work/school. I can't use sunlight in the morning for anything other than a wake-up aid.
But regardless, I still disagree. You seem to be assuming that early risers don't want to do outside activities, but that is not true. There are plenty of people that go for a run or jog, or morning hike, etc before work. At a previous company we had a rock climbing club called, "Get High in the Morning" :-D
One of the benefits of living in Utah, great rock climbing was only a 15 to 20 minute drive from the office.
What would naturally happen by making daylight savings time permanent is that people's circadian rhythms would shift forward until daylight savings time basically becomes the same thing as standard time.
China has it even more so - a single time-zone covering what should be five - are people in Fuyuan waking up at 03:00 when the sun rises in summer, whilst people in Zanda sleep in till 07:30?
Your arguments have very subjective points and you could easily claim that due to WFH more people are waking up later.
How is it not the same waste of energy in the evenings? People don't go to sleep when the sun sets.
Yes
> Will the president veto it?
No
> When can I literally set my clock to this?
2023 at the earliest, but probably much later, if ever. The legislative process is not known to move quickly.
Also, IIRC, bills must originate in the House, which makes me think something like this has already passed there at some point.
> Also, IIRC, bills must originate in the House
Only those related to revenue
Now that the Senate's passed it, I think there'll be enough momentum for the House to take it up relatively soon.
[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...
A lot of states have already passed similar laws and are merely waiting on the Federal law to come into effect. So it's likely to become law soon.
What is the federal government's role in this? Can a state ignore this (almost) law and do DST anyway?
There is plenty of light during the summer, so there's no need to optimize for that. The winter is when daylight is scarce, so that's what should be optimized for.
Not to mention the extra energy use.
Correct, which is why the correct solution is to not have school start so bloody early.
For everyone not between the ages of 6 and 18, an extra hour of daylight in the evening is far more useful.
It also saves energy.
I agree. The solution to that is not to have kids go to school stupid early. Studies show that kids prefer to learn later in the day.
Besides, after school activities continue into the dark in the winter. Better to let the kids be able to be outside/playing/doing band/whatever in the evening instead of stuck inside because it's dark with their free time.
Fundamentally, for this change to satisfy its mandate, the kids have to to to school in the dark during the winter.
Fwiw, I think it's a fine thing. I always found it very romantic to go to school when it is still dark when I was young.
Your proposal would not satisfy the primary goal of the proponents of this policy. It would also still require one or more coordinated, discrete shifts in the schedules of schools and workplaces, which would likely be more complicated for computers and other systems than the status quo.
The assertion that the time is "not someone's business" is incorrect. The time is everyone's business. We are going to stick to a standard time after this policy -- it's going to be daylight savings time all the time, although we will probably stop calling it that after we all get used to the policy. Individuals or groups will be equally free to adopt their own schedules both before and after this policy change -- this policy is not a change on that front.
You misunderstood my meaning. I understand that everyone is concerned and affected by time. What I meant is it's not in their purview to push such things on the public.
Once again, the rest of the world works perfectly fine without the added complexity, so it should be proven with strong evidence rather than vague arguments that the added complexity is worth it. The rest of the world works perfectly well without DST.
It is, in fact, in the purview of the public to change the status quo as it pertains to time. We did it in when daylight savings was established, and we are going to do it again now that we are moving to permanent DST. The status quo affects people who don't like it, and they have every right to try to see it changed. There is no reasonable theory of politics that privileges the status quo to the point you seem to be contemplating.
> The rest of the world works perfectly well without DST.
Maybe we are talking past each other. You say the rest of the world does fine without DST. That's not actually true, most countries do have daylight savings. But you're certainly right that many countries do fine without it. For example it is not observed in South Korea. And after this law passes, so will the United States (i.e. the effect of this law is to abolish daylight savings time, by moving the clock permanently to the DST configuration).
It’s a silly idea that once thought out becomes clear.
Now, I favor never changing the time of each place and keeping on daylight time, but that's just me.
Supervision and legalities related to it can be boarderline oppressive in some places.
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/overflow-data-finds-th...
And it's not my fault an article decided that street lights in the 70s were too dim for school children in new york.
Because even on the shortest day twilight happens before 7am.
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new-york
And IMHO, beyond elementary school (and perhaps earlier) there's no reason most kids can't be unsupervised briefly before letting themselves out to get to the bus, or after being dropped off by the bus.
See the whole thing about free range kids, helicopter parents, and so forth.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/child-sleep-zzzs/202...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30690965
It says as late as 11pm. Another one says some of the later time can be explained by other things like light exposure. This seems to indicate that a 10pm bed time could be attainabke with a wake up time of 6 or 6:30 providing adequate sleep. Some of the studies show that even on weekends without the waking constraint teens are getting 7-8 hours or less. It's also indicative of weak influence when we see the remote learning being called a disaster yet these articles are touting the benefits of the extra sleep associated with them - where is the mitigating impact then?
Also from the articles, “As I often phrase it, multilevel interventions are needed,”. Why not start with the less intrusive interventions? Not all kids require a later start time, and could even be hurt by it. A later start time would have hurt me, for example. We need to make sure we aren't hurting some people in an effort to help others.
Perhaps the strongest evidence is that adults are not affected by the hormone related shift and yet they too do not get the recommended sleep. This points to the idea that environment and habit could be factors.
So far I see no absolute evidence of societal net benefit, largely because the studies ignore n-order impacts and fail to fully explore alternative explanations and remedies.
Don't forget, a lot of this is psychology and is just towing the line. They don't even know why bi-phasic sleep disappeared. I would love to see the data for adolescent sleep times and duration for the past 150 years, but it appears the studies completely ignore this. For knowing so little, they certainly are pushing hard for a specific change (a change that some of the studies don't believe will fix the issues, such as achievement gap, hormone altering light exposures, etc).
I wonder what the actual percentages are. It's probably a thing where each group can't believe that there's a significant number of people in the other.
"that hour or two of morning light is really just wasted."
Only for people who wake up late. There could also be benefits to aligning one's circadian rhythm to morning light.
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/overflow-data-finds-th...
The fundamental trade-off is: sunlight when you wake up and you're going to school/work, or sunlight when you're coming back from school/work? Unless you reduce the school/work day, this is unavoidable.
Changing the clock is, realistically, the only way to coordinate all the necessary actors.
Otherwise, if schools decided to start at 9AM, they would put a huge burden on parents starting work at 9AM, who no longer have time to drop their kids off and still make it to their workplace.
While also anecdotal, the responses here seem to favor evenings as opposed to mornings.
Preferably both, but the study which shows you are in the majority would be a great start.
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/overflow-data-finds-th...
Most people arrive at work between 7:45AM and 8:00AM. Which means they are up at 6-6:30 probably. Having some Sun during this time is nice for most people.
Is there a study that actually proves this? That people prefer daylight in the mornings when they're an early riser? I don't think they're as correlated as you and the other person are making it seem to be.
There's your study. Having sunlight when people wake up is good. And if people pass stupid laws that make my life harder for it, I will bitch about it and antagonize them until they change them. Just like pretty much everybody else on this comment page.
Once again, your opinion is just that, your opinion. It doesn't mean everyone else shares it.
This would also address your morning light concerns.
Will get family services called on you. I don't think this affects more than a handful of people in 2022.
https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-lakewood-ohio-walking-...
Since tone can often travel poorly across the wire—that is sarcasm, right?
> The benefit of forcing the discipline of getting up early on children is greater than any health impact or inconvenience.
that a particular arbitrary method of instilling a particular arbitrary form of discipline is more important than any health impact or any inconvenience is horrifying to me, and I hope it doesn't find many adherents.
Edit: reply is dead so I can't respond, but 'beeboop, do you really have a problem with scouts? It's helped form a lot of good young men in America.
Getting up early: maybe for some people.
But forcing society to get up at a time that suits almost nobody purely because it is hard: no.
You might want to read more about the impact for lack of sleep on people's health.
They're not. This ignores diverging chronotypes. I suggest you read up on the science around sleep before commenting on whether "they're fine".
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/chronotypes-ev...
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/chronotypes
https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...
I can't say for certain where my night-owlish self comes from, but it predates taking stimulants and working at a game dev company - so maybe it's a side effect of light sensitivity or maybe it's a neurological thing... or maybe it's just a natural clock thing.
It’s self-discipline theatre.
We used to need early rising when we milked cows and hunted at dawn.
But now we primarily need sharp minds and being awake at dawn has no special benefit.
I say this as an early riser.
Here’s why: The Hadza are hunter-gatherers whose lifestyle is very similar to that of early humans.
The observations were found in people with lifestyles that represent that of early humans. What part of nurture would affect those people? They have no concept of a clock...
I grew up in a permanent DST and I don’t have fond memories of it. Over there public health officials are actually advocating to moving back to standard time because teenagers in particular are sleep deprived. Going to bed earlier is not a realistic option as proven by experience.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/6/21167826/day...
Unless you're a senior citizen who's retired and doesn't like late nights, I don't get why for most people, darkness wouldn't be preferred for those "nothing" activities, so an extra hour of light can then be enjoyed after they get home from work/school/whatever. Otherwise, yeah, you're enjoying the light in the morning... from the inside of a car... on your way to a day of obligations where you're stuck inside usually doing things you have to do rather than things you want to do.
I think most people would rather have that extra hour of light for after they get home from work/school/whatever, so they can actually enjoy the outdoors a bit when they get home.
I always hated the feeling from late fall until early spring of being excited to be done school/work... only to get home and it be dark so basically the only thing I can do is walk inside and stay in there until the next day.
People thank that they do, but their brain disagrees. There are numerous other posts on this thread indicating that public health experts agree with peoples brains in that the extra hour in the after noon is not worth the early rise.
> I always hated the feeling from late fall until early spring of being excited to be done school/work... only to get home and it be dark so basically the only thing I can do is walk inside and stay in there until the next day.
So here we have a problem, it can be solved by changing the clock to give you an extra evening hour at the cost of an early rise which leads the sleep deprivation for a large group of people. However it can also be solved in a number of different ways. Labour laws can be passed which mandates shorter working hours and/or winter vacation. Your local government can invest in more public spaces with good lighting and commercial activities close to peoples work places so that you can e.g. jump to a bar with your classmates/colleagues for the last hour of sun during mid-winter. Etc. Moving the clock seems like the radical option here, especially given the detrimental public health effects.
This really depends on location within the timezone. And some places, e.g. Michigan, are simply in the wrong time zone.
DST is just what’s needed.
Really, the choice is a tradeoff between earlier sunrises or later sunsets.
None, I suppose, and so with less light available to them, the american farmer will once again lose ground to competitors in other, more sane nations.
People don't like going to bed on time because they don't like discipline.
So instead of learning some, like their parents should have taught them, they complain and demand the schedule move because it's "too hard".
When I started working I had to be there at 7 AM every day no matter what so I got disciplined and grew up.
Today's new hires want to come in late all the time and complain that they can't get enough sleep when they should be going to bed earlier instead of going out drinking on a weekday or staying up playing fort nite or whatever.
Is it enjoyable for most people to get up and be at work at 7? No. Why tolerate it just because parents generation tolerated it? Old people also tolerated polio. People aren’t more productive at one time versus another, especially if they’re being forced against their will to lose sleep for no good reason.
There is nothing wrong with starting work later- especially if you’re still getting all your work done during the day anyways. Young people who roll into work at a healthy time probably outperform all the curmudgeony old people who are miserable anyways. I start work at 10am and get more done than coworkers who start at 7. It’s just simply false to assume earlier is better. I perform way better now than when I arrived early.
We should be encouraging people to care less about their work and more about having fun. Work is not the purpose for your life. There is nothing wrong with drinking with friends on a weekday or playing Fortnite in the evening.
So, we should make sunrise closer to that, not further away. My above point stands: young people want to move things later because they like staying out, staying up, etc. They learn to curb this as they get older, but this generation is trying to move time instead of growing up. Peter pan can't stay out all night playing when he has a real job in the morning.
2. It’s a public forum. Lots of people hold beliefs that rising early is somehow “better” or less lazy or something. That belief is more strongly held amongst old people when the 20th century culture pushed it on people. It’s as much for you as for others.
3. Do people get up before 7 because they want to or have to. My point still stands that we shouldn’t force a schedule on people (my argument falls a bit for service workers I admit where time open is actually impactful on revenue).
3. No young people are not trying to move this because they don’t want to learn. There is a natural distribution in times when people naturally rise. I happen to naturally rise around 9, so i like to start work at 10, and thats at the far end, so i've become a strong advocate for this. It’s not natural to put everyone on the same schedule when there is no valid reason. This generation is the first one to truly call BS on applying farmers' schedules to all of society. Why must software engineers start work at 7 and not 9? There is no good reason. It does not improve productivity, it is not required for business.
4. Why is your way the right way? What about if 10am was the natural start of work time? All those 7am’ers are just trying to end work at 3 so they don’t have to work till EOD. SMH they get so sleepy they can’t do the rest of their life past 5pm. They need to learn to drink a coffee and keep working instead of being lazy and going to bed before society is done with the day.
5. This bill is sponsored by Rubio, who i don't think is a fan fav among the young, so idt it should be seen as "this generation" passing the bill. Besides, similar bills have been proposed for generations.
Sample size of one sure, but I had no problem developing discipline when I needed it, and was happy to discard it and stay up later when I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re so worked up about here.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals.
HN Guidelines, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Who said I'm a Boomer, anyway? I don't see the problem with pointing out that a reasonable wake up time helps push people to get over their perpetual adolescence.
I bet they’ll tell everyone else they’re lazy like my 95yo grandfather did when he woke up at 4am.
/s
Can’t we all just accept that everyone’s body is different and has different preferences. There is a measured Gaussian distribution in rise times for humans like everything else.
The point is, it's better to rise with the sun and still have time to get ready before work. Americans get up before 7 AM: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/10/11639214/how-people-around-the...
We should line up sunrise closer to the center of that distribution. This law does the opposite.
Personally, I'm agnostic. I prefer to be an early riser most days and it does suit me better on the whole. But it's also great in the summer to have more time in the evening to socialize with my friends who work a 9-5 and are only available on weekdays after work.
Do you have any friends that you would like to socialize with in the summer on weekdays after work?
But at least now it's only slightly early instead of when/before I would normally get up.
There's the objective set of reasons to do something, and then there's the list your emotional brain actually pays attention to, and this is #1 on that list. Most of our weird behaviors and a lot of our difficult conversations are caused by trying to stuff an emotional decision into a business suit.
It's not as easy to replicate the sunshine when you want to do an outdoor activity after work...
No, it absolutely is not. Light you get from some Walmart alarm clock is the wrong temperature, the wrong CRI, and about 1/1000th of the right intensity.
You can replicate it for the low-to-mid 5 digits: https://www.coelux.com/
You're buying into their marketing pretty hard...
Lol, no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_sun
I know that's an extreme, but you get the idea.
TheCoelacanth was arguing about summer vs. winter so that's the thread I was following in my mind.
>and there isn't a "correct" answer there
For me, personally, I like the concept that noon is when the sun is at it highest point or closest, I can adjust everything else around that.
Plus, "solar noon" itself shifts by ~20 mins throughout the year due to the Earth's orbit.
With standard time you will still have the rough center of the time zone match with solar time with about +/- 30 minutes give or take on the sides. With DST it may well happen that no part of the timezone actually matches solar time since everything is essentially shifted 1 hour to the East.
Sure, it's easy to say "just leave work an hour earlier" and some people have that flexibility. But far from most, I'd wager.
I'd love to live in a world where bankers and dentists and optometrists all kept different hours, so the bankers could get glasses, and the dentists take out loans, without having to drop everything to do it. With smart phones this is somewhat more tenable. I don't need to memorize when the dentist is open, so there is less immediate value in reducing the world to a small set of common numbers.
That’s where the problem is.
Then you must not like time zones, as that is true only in one particular sliver of a time zone. You want true local time, like before the railroads time.
The real Sun and the imaginary “mean Sun,” from which mean solar time is measured, may be as much as 16 minutes apart because during the course of the year the apparent motion of the real Sun against the background of the stars (the ecliptic) alternately slows down and speeds up.
https://www.britannica.com/science/solar-time
The east–west component [of the analemma] results from the nonuniform rate of change of the Sun's right ascension, governed by combined effects of Earth's axial tilt and orbital eccentricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma
Much better is to ask public health experts. Which will look at sleeping patters, at risk groups, etc. I’m particularly worried about teenagers which will be forced to wake up before sunrise and are unlikely to go to sleep earlier under social pressure (including from their own family).
The folks at various chronobiology and sleep study societies say otherwise:
> The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic problems of DST. We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens.
* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...
Lots of footnotes here in this paper if you want to get into the details:
* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...
The position papers of various societies:
* https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/
* https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/
* http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...
* https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-ci...
* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...
There seems to be a consensus on what's "best", and it doesn't appear to by Year-round DST.
I'd be curious to know what hearings, if any, were held on this topic, and with whom.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/noon
---------------------
noon (n.) mid-12c., non "midday," in exact use, "12 o'clock p.m.," also "midday meal," from Old English non "3 o'clock p.m., the ninth hour from sunrise," also "the canonical hour of nones," from Latin nona hora "ninth hour" of daylight, by Roman and ecclesiastical reckoning about 3 p.m., from nona, fem. singular of nonus "ninth," contracted from *novenos, from novem "nine" (see nine).
The sense shift from "3 p.m." to "12 p.m." began during 12c., and various reasons are given for it, such as unreliability of medieval time-keeping devices and the seasonal elasticity of the hours of daylight in northern regions. In monasteries and on holy days, fasting ended at nones, which perhaps offered another incentive to nudge it up the clock. Or perhaps the sense shift was based on an advance in the customary time of the (secular) midday meal. Whatever the cause, the meaning change from "ninth hour" to "sixth hour" seems to have been complete by 14c. (the same evolution is in Dutch noen).
From 17c. to 19c., noon sometimes also meant "midnight" (the noon of the night).
---------------------
Of course the meaning of the word centuries ago doesn't really matter much for what people think about the word today, but it's interesting none the less.
Personally I'm happy they just pick one and stick with it.
There is another much smaller cluster of people who start work at 4-6am because they're in transit or service industry and they are before sunrise either way.
Which this does, because now DST is now the standard time.
For a timekeeping library (which likely uses a system-level source of data / the IANA tz database) this shouldn't have any effect.
It shouldn't be a big deal. Inevitably though, it always seems to bring the bugs out of the woodwork.
Also, where I live there's a max of 16 hours of sunlight, and a min of 8 and a half. In the summer, it doesn't matter what the clock says, it's going to be bright when you wake up and bright when you go to sleep; so much sun. In the winter, it's most likely dark when you get up and dark when you go to bed, not enough sun that fiddling with the clocks is going to be really helpful anyway. Maybe there's a little more twilight in the morning the week after Halloween, and then it's back to morning commute in the dark. And it's pretty chilly, so while sure, I don't want to bike in the dark, I also don't want to bike in the cold, either, even if there is sun.
It's also stupid from an astronomical point of view.
It's made me realize that my being a night owl is less about the actual time and more about how I'm spending it in relation to the rest of society. There's just something about being awake when others aren't that's preferable.
Also, some states would have a real problem with permanent standard time. Maine, in particular really belongs in the Atlantic time zone, as standard time puts sunset way too early most of the year. Having the sun down by 4:00 sucks.
Boston, MA and Marquette, MI are in the same time zone. Boston's sunset today is 6:51 PM. Marquette's sunset today is 7:55 PM. It's no surprise that residents of each of those cities would have a different view as to "what should we do about DST?"
DST was good enough to implement while in an agrarian society, so why not the universal clock in a global connected society? Just imagine the precision.
</half-joking>
Also destroys the idea of a 9-to-5 job. Make it start at :30 if that's better for the longitude.
Planes, trains, and automobiles changed all of that. That and modern communication. Today, it matters. Now if I need to talk to someone in Japan, I have to coordinate things so that we're both awake. It matters if it's nighttime to them. Which is why we do have a universal clock. It's just expressed differently based on your distance from the prime meridian.
But, it's not the expression that matters.
Daylight Savings Time (DST) is a very stupid way to deal with a lot of stupid people. Everyone here arguing about making people adjust schedules, etc. That's exactly what DST is. But instead of your local grocery saying "Yeah, we're opening at 5am for these months" we just tell the entire country to change their clocks. Which is the same net effect. It's a fiction we engage in to pretend we're not inconveniencing ourselves. And in some ways, it probably is easier this way. It's controlled, determined, and doesn't require a ton of signage to be changed. We already have to set clocks, so it all works out.
I think a lot of the arguments about the "extra hour of sunlight" are kind of stupid. Because, it's not an hour. It's not going to be pitch black regardless. And most of what people do after work involves walking from the inside of one building to the inside of another. But then again, I wake up between 5 and 6 and go to bed between 10 and midnight.
I'd prefer for it to be on Standard time year round because if you are X zones from the prime meridian, you should be +/-X based on that. But, once again, time zones are really stupid because they don't conform to distance from the prime meridian. Morocco is +1 UTC despite being completely to the west of prime meridian. Most of Greenland is -3 despite spanning 5 zones, with one small section actually observing UTC despite being in the zone that should be -1 and the section that is -1 actually should be observing -2.
And look at the US on this map (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/World_Ti...)
Central Time is the most dominant zone going from the westernmost point of Texas to most of the Florida panhandle. Most of Texas should be -7, not -6. And so on and so forth. I bet if you "fixed" this kind of bullshit, more people would be in favor of Standard time year round. Or at least less opposed to it.
In a "daylight savings only" world solar noon will instead center around 13:00 and solar midnight around 01:00. To me that's just absurd.
If "people want more daylight hours after work" and it's worth making sweeping disruptive changes to make it happen...
Then just make the workday from 8 to 4 instead of 9 to 5.
No no, instead of making a sane clock and using whatever times we want on it, it obviously makes more sense to make a messed up clock.
What other measuring implements and scales should we move around so the numbers please us better?
Everything is expensive, let's change the way any monetary value is written to be -1 based. Henceforth all prices shall be written on a scale that starts at -1 instead of 0. If a thing cost $4 yesterday, it now costs the same 4 dollars, but the price is written as $3. This will give e eryone more money! I call it permanent wallet saving prices!
Though it's possible they were the ones paying lobbyists to get it through Congress in the first place. Sometimes paying someone else to do your dirties is the most efficient way.
Yes but so-called Standard Time was only optimizing that for a small group - the intention was rural children walking to school could do so in daylight. And otherwise it pessimized the use of scarce sunlight by moving forward the time workers left to when it was dark.
Always Standard Time might be better than awful switch but permanent Daylight Savings would offer most people who work 9-5 more sunlight over the year, the actual optimal solution.
There were always going to be winners and losers in this situation.
It's also nice for me personally since my circadian rhythm seems to be on 'Summer' time, all the time.
CA, OR, WA and BC were all on the same page wrt to doing this so this just removes one of the blocks from making it happen.
Sunrise at its latest would still be reasonable, around 8:00am, with plenty of predawn lights for kids and early risers.
My seasonal affect disorder kicks in hard when we leave DST every winter. This is the first bit of great news I've heard all year.
That is what this is doing. Make that scarce daylight available after work, when it is useful.
Why?
Having the Sun rise at 4:30 is bad because it's just too early to get up and makes for poor sleep. Having the Sun set later in the day is better in this case.
Work when the sun is up, call that 9AM. Wake up at X AM so you can get to work on time. It's all just a label, so long as humans can agree.
But yeah I hear you, some people can be so unreasonable. Nonetheless we should refuse to design our society around unreasonable people.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-sav...
Why do we have such short memories?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/15/no-more-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_center_of_the_United_Stat...
Also isn’t 9 months a relatively short warning given all the systems that will need updates?
Give me a break. Go to school in the dark, or come home in the dark. Do that one time of year, or another. It all comes out in the wash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_center_of_the_United_Stat...
Provide pedestrian pathways/walkways? Idk maybe make walking a good thing?
Many ways to do this instead of, “children can only be outside when the sun is at high noon!!”
Day 2: child now speaks fluent French!
And so it is with running into the street.
Are we really rejecting this because it'll be dark at 7:35am?
Sorry, but that's not even close to a compelling reason not to do this.
Why? What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work? Complete waste to do that in the daylight.
> Secondly, it's more dangerous for kids walking to school.
We should be pushing back school starting times anyway. If they're old enough to walk to school, then they don't need their parents to wait for them to leave before going to work, so that typical argument goes out the window.
> And lastly we use more energy since a larger part of our day is lived in the darkness for most people.
A weak argument IMO. Studies are not conclusive on the actual savings, and most of the ones that are out there say they save minimal energy. Besides, I think the mental health benefits of having more useful hours in the evening are worth the extra 0.5-1% energy usage.
At least this way you get some Sunlight before you're at work and some when you're done.
Much better to have the hour of sun after work to do things outside.
Here's 1 day from last week, before DST:
5:00 AM: wake up
5:15 - 6:30: lift
6:30: breakfast, coffee, and paper on the porch, watch the sun rise.
7:15: go shower, dress, pack lunch, get ready for work
7:30: leave for work
7:50: arrive at work
2 things I enjoy, a few hours of "free time", before work. And by the way, showing up at work around 8 is more common than arriving at 9 for most corporate jobs. The tech bubble is real on this site. Guess why? Because we like having some light left in the evening/ending our day earlier, among other reasons.
> We should be pushing back school starting times anyway.
No, learning to get up early forces kids to learn to go to bed on time, that's a valuable skill that teaches discipline. If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
> A weak argument
Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.
> If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
... I don't think you've met kids before. The vast majority absolutely won't learn.
> Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.
Standard time moves sunlight to the morning, when people are sleeping. Permanent DST should give people the same or more sunlight during their waking hours. You'd have the same amount, waking up at 5am and assuming you don't sleep until at least 8:30pm.
We should try to move sunrise closer to when people wake up. This does the opposite for most people, not just me.
Also, we should teach more people to get up early and go lift/exercise. We have too many fatties in this country. Making it a national habit would be a great thing.
From my experience, having experienced being a kid does not prepare you very much for the task of raising one.
And congrats at being disciplined. The vast vast vast majority of Americans aren't. And changing the habits of hundreds of millions of people is a pipe dream and really irrelevant to this conversation.
With permanent DST people will have more opportunities to do that in the daylight after work, as the day will be longer.
You are arguing against many well-documented studies about what school hours work best for kids to learn. "on time" is entirely based on what time you need to get up. The whole point of moving school later is for "on time" to be compatible with the hours that kids are more functional. This is not a matter of discipline; deciding you're going to be up and functional earlier does not change your body or the sun's position in the sky to be compatible with that. (If you want to argue otherwise, argue in published studies refuting the ones that exist, not in replies to this comment.)
Move school hours to start several hours later than they currently do, and then by all means encourage the discipline of getting up in time for school.
Of course the real problem is there's just not enough light in the winter. Not much we can do about that. :-)
In Boston (Northernmost major metro on East Coast) the new latest sunrise would be at 8:13am, with a substantial period of twilight before then. Night will officially end at 6:32am, then astronomical twilight ends at 7:06, then officially sunrise at 8:13am. Point is you’re waking up during the dawn even if you’re waking up at 6:30 to get the kids to school.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals.
HN Guidelines, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you disagree, I suggest explaining why. My arguments are reasonable.
I can't speak to their efficacy personally, can you? Do you know for a fact that they are error prone? All makes and models? Or did you shallowly dismiss the other person's suggestion?
Sorry, but that's not even close to a compelling reason to do this.
See how easy it is? I can dismiss others' preferences just as easy. Waking up when it's dark out isn't good for people. We should rise with the sun, more or less, and "time" should change to accommodate that.
> By fall, the dark mornings were apparently wearing on the American people.
This is the reason for "it went badly"? Since that article didn't address it, what exactly happened when we didn't have DST?
This is far from universal, and is a problem we should address wherever it is the case. It's bad for plenty of reasons, with one of the largest being that it prevents us from having schools operate during times that work well for children and teens.
What the F is wrong with Americans. Srsly.
Maybe I'm just a terrible parent, but I wouldn't trust my 5 year old to walk to her stop and get on the bus at a specific time every morning without a parent around to push her to do it.
Plus, I would argue that there is a difference between sending a kid off to school at a given time and leaving them home alone with a specific schedule of "At 8:45 you need to walk to the bus stop and wait for the bus". Which again, I'm not sure I would trust to my 5 year old to do on her own every morning. Not because she can't walk alone, but because I don't think punctuality is something she's mastered yet.
And even the article admits that young kids can do that more because of "social trust than self-reliance". And I don't know how many parents are willing to rely on other adults to help out their kid if something goes wrong.
I would wake up after my dad was gone for work, grab a pop-tart or cereal, take a ~1/4 mile walk outside to the bus stop, no longer able to see my house from the suburban sprawl, and hang out with the rest of the kids at my stop for 5-15 minutes before the bus showed up. Then I eventually got a car.
Don't get me wrong, if I was offered a ride (my parents, friends parents, friends with cars) I'd often take it. But ensuring I got on the bus? When the alternative was that my parents would get a phone call about me being missing? Trust that the lessons I'd get at school were far preferable to the lectures I'd get at home if I skipped class.
I see a comment like this in all of these discussions and I'm always confused: did something change in the past ~15 years since I graduated from high school and school buses stopped being a thing? Where I grew up (Texas, which is generally not the most politically enthusiastic place when it comes to school funding) it was required that a school bus be available within a few minutes' walk of every student's home in the school zone. I thought this was a pretty universal part of American life based on every movie/TV show ever.
In theory the secondary school kids can take the city bus, however to use my junior high kid as an example, that changes a sub 10-minute drive into a 20 minute walk that crosses a state highway plus a 20 minute bus ride, so what actually happens is the school parking lots all back up onto the local streets every morning as each parent drops their kid off at school.
Note that in California the overwhelming majority of schools have a budget that is essentially dictated by the state (the state makes up any shortfall in local taxes up to a certain amount adjusted per-student-day, and most schools are in districts that have such a shortfall). This means that there are only two ways to provide buses: charge students who ride buses (done in some districts) or take money out of the classrooms (not popular with parents nor teachers' unions).
Where I grew up there was a time when they needed to upgrade the bus fleet, so they passed a bond specifically for that purpose. If I understand the law correctly, this wouldn't be feasible in California outside of basic-aid districts (basic-aid districts are those that do not have a shortfall in their general funds, so they only get the "basic aid" for that is earmarked for special-ed &c.).
You misunderstand the law, all school districts in California can submit bonds to the voters of the district, and this is a routine method of addressing capital needs.
Also your post was a weird reminder of how laisse-faire my own upbringing was, because I was biking to school across and along a state highway in fifth grade.
Note the 9% number...
But more to the point, the article doesn’t really talk about why it went badly. In fact, the only thing it mentions (kids getting up too early for school) is a very solvable problem and one which should be solved regardless of DST.
https://agamerica.com/blog/myth-vs-fact-daylight-saving-time...
Farmers have been mostly against DST since the beginning. It was golfers, bug catchers, and 7-11 that wanted it.
And permanent DST has failed when it was tried here in the 70s, in the UK a few years before that, and in Russia as recent as the 2010s. Why do we want to do it again?
Do we know if this is true?
Does the proposal have an estimate of the financial impact?
What are we talking about here, $10M? $100B? I have no sense for it.
There will no longer be a constant force making people correctly convert UTC to localtime. People will go storing dates as strings. People will just have "+8 hours" hardcoded for their application.
That will lead to people in the rest of the world having constant bugs and trouble every time daylight savings time happens.
That may be part of the push for other countries to drop it too, when lawmakers see that every spring and autumn their computer deletes an hours worth of emails or their fancy web 4.0 microwave cooks their breakfast for 1 hour and 30 seconds.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Isn't that just changing the time zone and abolishing daylight savings?
"Senate votes"
What does this mean? Does it take effect forever starting from today? Does Senate have authority to actually enact the change or is that some other dude that actually flips the lever?
Schoolhouse Rock - Bill https://youtu.be/OgVKvqTItto
Yes but the clocks will now say EDT instead of EST (in the Eastern time zone for example). We will forever know that we have saved the daylight.
Original text for the zones: http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:15%20section:2...
Bill amending that law: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/69/t...
It's redefining the offsets from UTC for the zones, for standard time. And also repeals all of 15 USC 260a http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:15%20section:2... a.k.a. Section 3 of the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Ergo, the 'D' in all the time zones goes away.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...
IIRC the Senate passed the bill unanimously. If the House passes the bill by a large majority it predicts a veto would be overridden. In such cases even if inclined to veto, the President typically acknowledges defeat and signs the bill into law.
Maybe not a great example, but "savings-time" seems to require slightly less work than "saving-time". At least for me.
I think you're mostly right though.
I mean, “Daylight savings time” is a commonly used term. At some point it just becomes accepted as a valid alternative.
I get it, sort of. In that case I just tell myself "it's hyperbole for lazy people" and move on. "Could care less", though, that one I cannot reconcile.
That is, no one is saying "I am literally dying to know" to try to communicate the fact that they are not, in fact, dying to know. Instead, the difference between "I am dying to know" and "I am literally dying to know" is one of emphasis. The second is almost perfectly equivalent to "I am really dying to know" or "I am very much dying to know".
By contrast, "I am figuratively dying to know" would imply that you are specifically not dying to know, which everyone understands perfectly well.
What have I just said?
If only we had a word whose express purpose was to avoid ambiguity for those times when it matters to communicate without ambiguity...
These are all literal meanings of insane. Of course, if we add figurative meanings we can increase the ambiguity further.
However, your criticism applies similarly to words like "truly" - if I say "that is truly insane", do I mean that it is insane in one of the literal senses of the word? Or the figurative uses? Am I just emphasizing either of these meanings, or do I feel a need to confirm that I am not lying?
Either way we take it, though, "literally" can never be replaced with "figuratively" without altering the meaning of a phrase. In it's use as an intensifier, it does NOT mean "figuratively", it means "very".
Also, looking on Merriam-Webster, they clearly discuss this and reach the same conclusion. They also mention that this meaning for emphasis appears as early as the 18th century, in the works of Charlotte Brontë, James Joyce, Mark Twain.
What have I just said?
If the context is that it's been a handful of minutes, we don't say my usage is wrong; we definitely don't say that "sometimes days means minutes" and fret about how anyone will communicated time. We say that sometimes people exaggerate.
You can still object, if you wish, on stylistic grounds. You can object that you'd prefer we keep "literally" apart from some standard uses of words lest we allow inappropriate ambiguity. But none of that means anyone is using "literally" to mean "figuratively".
(I’m also wishing the horde off my lawn but they may have already won.)
I'd love for one of them to show the original centuries old definition of English that they are prescribing from.
Or put another way, if the prescriptive view is nothing but a descriptive view of language from a few decades back then essentially you have a descriptive view that tries to ignore that time isn't constant.
Having a standard to hold our selves to is not having a prescriptive approach to language. Prescriptive language is what the French do. They have a government office that decides the official rules of French and official documents have to follow them. For example, even though everyone calls a Computer a Computer pretty much everywhere in the world with variation on spelling, the French government has to call it an ordinateur.
The point of language is to facilitate communication. To do so there needs to be a standard. You don't have to legally enforce it, it should be voluntary. Freedom of speech and all that. But I reject the copout that "language evolves, deal with it".
Yup. Some of us do so quite consciously and intentionally, and knowing it is doomed to fail -- so, if you will, quixotically[1].
"Why on Earth would you want to do that?", I hear you ask. I'm glad you did -- let me explain: It's a delaying defence, intended to slow down the enem^W speed of change. We see that slowing down as a good thing, because it increases intelligibility over time. You, as a speaker of English, can with some effort read and understand Shakespeare and (hiss rough contemporary) the King James translation of the Bible... But not much further back; Chaucer is a struggle, and Beowulf just gibberish to you. Icelanders, OTOH, have no more problems with the Viking sagas, written down about the time of Chaucer, than you do with Shakespeare; and had they any litterature written down in the time of Beowulf, I'd imagine it would be no worse for them than Chaucer is for you. To Swedes, on the other other hand, the writings of Gustav II Adolf (not to mention the chronicles of his grandfather Gustaf I Vasa's historian) are Chaucer-level difficult even though they're from about the time of Shakespeare (or less than a century before); actual Chaucer-era writings like the medieval laws of king Magnus are Beowulf-level gibberish; nineteenth-century poetry -- heck, even the 1917 Bible or the prose of Strindberg, who IIRC died just a few years before that translation! -- seem to be as hard to grasp as Shakespeare is to you.
And this shit seems to just be accelerating; kids nowadays have a hard time not just with Strindberg, but with novels I enjoyed in my youth -- written in the 1940s, -60s, or even later! So, in the hope that my grandkids (if ever I have any) will understand what the heck I'm saying to them and I what they're telling me, I fight this hopeless rearguard action, willingly sacrificing myself to the slings and arrows of mindlessly laissez-faire anti-prescriptivists for the greater good of mankind.
So slowing Swedish down to the rate of decay--eh, development -- of English is my primary goal. But, hey, while I'm at it anyway, why not try to improve the cross-time communication power of English, too?
There, hope that answers your questions?
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[1]: Except I guess the Knight of La Mancha didn't know that last bit. Unless, I guess, if you want to argue that deep down he really had to know that all along.
I asked where, exactly, the words we have came from?
In Slovakia we have laws giving a certain public institution the responsibility to define what are the proper rules to use the language, including maintaining the dictionary of all the allowed words and their meanings.
Anything beyond that (with the exception of e.g. scientific terms) is objectively incorrect slovak.
Humans create languages. And they constantly change and evolve, including new words, letters, grammar, etc. Consider Old English versus Modern English [0]. Or even software companies that have become nouns or verbs in common parlance (e.g. "to google").
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English
Irregardless, "daylight saving time" is the only cromulent term, we must stop embiggening peoples' vocabularies with alot of fake words!
I see what you did there.
The tweet doesn't provide much context if it just passed the senate, republican senate cloakroom, house, or is fully passed up through the President.
These devices will either need to pick the standard timezone of the timezone to the east and disable daylight saving time, or we will have to change the offset of every timezone in the US, or devices will need to add an explicit summer timezone.
I don't see how any of this is easier than staying on standard time and disabling daylight saving time, which every device that tells time that I've come across seems to support.
I'd even be willing to guess that the amount of moaning might be equal to what we get now around the clock change.
"The tyranny of the minority is infinitely more odious and intolerable and more to be feared than that of the majority"
- William McKinley
But I think it will be those night owls who must wake up early who will suffer most. Left to my own devices I would wake at 9 and go to bed around 2, but because of work and family scheduled I get up early Mon-Fri. Another hour before seeing the sun in the winter doesn't thrill me. Somehow I think it will bother me more than the early sunsets, but we'll see.
They voted to keep the clock still, but used the wrong time.
I just wish the movie Idiocracy would stop turning into a f*&cking documentary. Is that so much to ask?!?!?!
There is no “right” time, and this fight for pedantic correctness is already lost. That ship sailed when we started using time zones instead of true local time. Many localities are far from their true noon already. We should make policy on the basis of what is actually good for people.
1. Shorter working hours.
2. More flexible working hours.
However, my opinion on this bill is that states should be able to decide what is best for them. Currently, they can only use DST switching clocks biannually or go to permanent standard time. They should also have the option to go to permanent DST. Honestly, they should just give states full control over their timezone. Let them go to UTC if they really want to. The only stipulation I would make is that having more than one timezone per state should require approval from the federal government (to avoid making things too complicated) and to put limits on how often it can be changed.
For me though, the real pain wasn't any particular time zone, it was the abrupt change from getting out of work with some daylight left to walking out in darkness. Gradual changes are almost always easier to deal with.