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Title text:
All discussions of daylight saving time policy are doomed by a mix of contradictory, inconsistent, and impossible preferences, which is why I think the only thing we can really hope to do is to make it worse.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3272/
maybe we could restructure our society so everyone gets enough sleep according to their own circadian rhythm. that would be cool.
I don't know... that sort of thing might not make billionaires even wealthier.
crazy fact, well rested people are more productive than tired people, and more productive people make more money. but we all know it isnt really about the money for them dont we?
Honestly, the wealthy just want us to be miserable.
Dumb. Much better idea is to split the daylight into 12 equal chunks and the night into 12 equal chunks so we have 24 hours a day 12 of which are light and 12 of which are dark.
It's so simple. We just got to change the definition of an hour everyday.
They used to do this. Hours were divisions of the day, like slices of a pie, rather than a specific length of time.
Using equal hours, and dividing them into minutes, was something only astronomers did to help with their calculations.
It kind of makes sense in a way. It feels more natural
An 8 h work day during the winter flies by, but the lunch hour is only long enough for one bite sandwich. On the other hand, 12 h of night is plenty enough for all my hobbies.
In the summer, work devours your entire life and there’s hardly any time to sleep.
Just normalize 4h work days :D
This is exactly what I was thinking. Smaller working hours. Or at least smaller around the peak of summer and winter.
Sounds good to me. In this case, 4 flexible hours of work in the summer means about 6 fixed length hours. In the winter those 4 flexible hours translate to about 2 fixed length hours, so I think I'll have plenty of time for my hobbies.
One can dream of such a beautiful future
*twice every day
Twice a day or once a day for the day hours length vs night length hours. Also for every latitude as well. What a simple system
Notable context for the rest of the world: the US Congress is currently debating ending the changing of the clocks every spring and fall.
That can be read both as intended, and as if congress has the debate every spring and fall. Both of which are true.
I love it when the occasional person comes through arguing that we should just get rid of time zones so it’s the same time everywhere. Always a fun discussion.
What about splitting each time zone into 60 parts, so they are in increments on 1 minute instead of one hour?
Fantastic idea!
it exists already. but besides that. what numbers are assigned to what sun location is completely arbitrary and a man made convention.
if my 7:00 turns into 14:00 my job will expect me at the new 14:00
Better idea: hack the Earth’s code and do away with this annoying axial tilt thing. It’s super inconvenient.
#disable_the_wobble
#hack_the_planet
#tilt_it_back
If you modify the hypnogogic prompt you might get away with it..... Or enable a nuclear war.
We can make up for it by skipping a leap year every 24 years
I hate to complicate things but we already skip leap years…
The Gregorian calendar, the world's most widely used civil calendar, makes a further adjustment for the small error in the Julian algorithm; this extra leap day occurs in each year that is a multiple of 4, except for years evenly divisible by 100 but not by 400. Thus 1600, 2000 and 2400 are leap years, but 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, and 2300 are not.
That's leap days. We also skip leap minutes occasionally. I think we've only removed whole years in retrospect.
Leap year is the term for the year a leap day occurs in. I also don't believe there have ever been full leap minutes, just leap seconds.
You do realize changing the idea of changing the clocks to be either one hour forward or one hour backwards doesn't change the fact that the sun changes position throughout the year.
The summer will feel long and the winter will feel short no matter what. At least in the US.
You can hate it all you want but it's to account for the fact the days do actually get shorter and longer.
Take it from someone who doesn't have to change their clocks, it's way easier to deal with that way. The whole process is so gradual you barely even notice it.
Well I guess in New England it works out better cause it does get dark out earlier in the winter. It's like some Baltic regions being am/pm vs 24hr.
Well the past three years I've adopted using 24hr time format (I loathe military time as a term because military time to me, refer to somewhere that's occupied by the military and thus, is politically incorrect in my head) vs AM/PM from April 7th to October 9th. It's been wonderful and it works out well because during that time of year it's light out longer so 24hr time makes sense to work with. When it's October 9th to April 7th, it's dark out longer so it makes more sense to have the distinction between am/pm.
If they got rid of DST they'd have to make sense of when it gets darker earlier, otherwise it makes no sense.
Like I read in Baltic areas that are further up north they use am/pm because it stays lighter out longer, so they need a distinction of day and night with their time format. What would that mean for an area that got darker earlier?
Basically, 5pm isn't going to be magically light out or give you more hours of the day, when the periods of the year that are known to get darker earlier, still get darker earlier. 5pm will be dark as shit where I am in the winter and it will be light out during this time of year. It's not going to magically change the rotation of the planet to give the sacred hours of it being light out longer during the periods of the year when it's not.
I just want the sun to go down by 7 every day
By 8*
How about using same time for entire globe?
Sure as long as the globe adopts the one I live in.