Senators Once Again Introduce Bill To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent (cnn.com) 294
A group of bipartisan senators is reintroducing a bill that would make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent. New submitter McTohmas shares a report: In the United States, most states observe DST -- which starts on the second Sunday in March at 2 a.m. and ends on the first Sunday in November at 2 a.m. -- for eight months out of the year, and four months of standard time. But the Sunshine Protection Act, proposed by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, calls for not "falling back" in November and instead enjoying DST year-round. It would not change the country's current time zones or the number of hours of sunlight. The bill was already passed in Rubio's home state of Florida in 2018 -- but in order to go into effect, it requires a change at the federal level. Fifteen other states -- including California, which voted to make daylight saving time permanent in 2018, and Washington, which did the same in 2019 -- have passed similar legislation.
Waiting... (Score:5, Informative)
Ontario is currently waiting on New York to make it permanent so we can get rid of the time change
Re:Waiting... (Score:5, Informative)
BC is waiting for Washington State and Oregon. Hoping this next time change is the last one.
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BC is waiting for Washington State and Oregon. Hoping this next time change is the last one.
Oregon passed that bill already.
Re:Waiting... (Score:5, Informative)
Oregon is waiting for approval from Congress, along with 14 other states. 15 USC 260a [cornell.edu] requires that all states adopt Standard Time as the basis for clocks, moving to DST at the assigned dates, except that states can, if they exist entirely within a time zone, exempt themselves from DST, or if they are in multiple time zones may exempt the entire state, or such parts independently as are within each time zone, but they cannot split the state further from what is defined in 15 USC 265 [cornell.edu].
Here we go again (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate hate hate the semiannual Slashdot DST threads. Much more annoying than DST.
Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Here we go again (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, actually I would like that! Thank you for asking!
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At least the pranks change every year... the DST conversation is simply repeated verbatim.
Re:Here we go again (Score:4, Funny)
At least this time there's a clear statement that the legislation wouldn't change the daily hours of sunlight.
Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate hate hate the semiannual Slashdot DST threads. Much more annoying than DST.
Really? One can ignore the Slashdot DST threads. The time change, no so much.
Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Interesting)
People don't even understand the issue, much less Senators. The issue really isn't about "daylight savings time" forever, but about "no biannual time change". Because Daylight Savings Time is the abnormal time, as opposed to Standard Time. And which of those two people prefer depends upon many factors - where do they live within the time zone - far to the west or far to the east or in the middle, and sometimes north versus south. So some people bitch that it's too dark when they wake up, and some bitch that it's too dark when the go home, and some up in the northern countries or states will laugh because they only get sun for 4 hours a day anyway in mid winter.
Consider US Central time zone. Some areas are a full hour west of the natural time with others are a half hour east. And Alaska, a single state, is more than two hours wide.
The senator trying to make this move is being ignorant. And yes, I know that I am being redundant in that sentence.
The most logical solution for me, as a nerdy person used to logic circuits and such, is dump time zones. Use UTC for everything, or some other name. They're more hassle than they're worth. Just have one single time zone world wide. Forget social nonsense that "8am" must be in the morming. Let each school or district decide when school starts in the morning. The drawback is that it's difficult to do socially and emotionally. It's something people have learned since they were in kindergarten, and people don't like learning new stuff. Except that people did manage before we had clocks, some cultures today even don't bother much with rigid time keeping, etc. But if we can't get to the metric system, and many countries still aren't 100% metric but keep around a few archaic feel good measurements, then getting to something even more emotionally disruptive would be even more difficult.
However, China is 4 hours wide in a single time zone: do they start school three hours before dawn in the west, or do they manage to figure out how to start school at different times in different parts of the country?
Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
Just have one single time zone world wide.
I've heard this proposal before, and it doesn't really help anything. Now, you just need to know what time zone X location is in, and then you will know what "time" it is there. Example: I am in California, and if I travel/communicate with New York, I know to add three hours to their time zone (It's 9:00a here, so it's only 6:00a there, so I better not call my friend because they might not be awake yet). With your UTC proposal... I have no idea what "time" it is there. I can make an educated guess, but if it is 9:00a UTC here in California... is everybody awake/open at that time in New York?
You've traded an exact translation system done automatically by your phone/computer (time zones) for an inexact translation system (UTC, and guessing at what 'time' certain things happen around the world). It's more confusing, not less.
Except that people did manage before we had clocks
and before (relatively) instantaneous travel/communication, so irrelevant to our modern world.
Why not just turn it off instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not make normal time our standard?
Re:Why not just turn it off instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Normal time sucks. It gets dark too early in the evening. I don't want clocks that maximize the amount of daylight I'm inside at work for, I want clocks that maximize the amount of time I have after work to do things.
Re:Why not just turn it off instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, why not have different summer/winter hours for work? Either flexi-work or if it is like a store/service/etc it is actually quite common in many countries to have different summer/winter schedules for such places, despite there being a DST.
I really don't care about permanent DST vs permanent non-DST, just stop the madness of changing the time when all people meant to do was change their schedules in the first place!
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I'd love to see the whole world do this, and simply adopt universal time.
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I say this twice a year when the clocks change and we have our regular bitch-fest.
UT for everyone. Just communicate in UT, post your hours in UT, we can make a map of normal working UT hours by country or region, whatever.
Just stop with the timezones and changing of clocks or not randomly across the world. I don't want to need to know if Southern France does DST or not, and when they do it. They tell me when they're available in UT, and I compare to when I'm available in UT, and we're done. I don't need to
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Good news! You can have this system *right now* without waiting for any legislation, or agreement from anyone else! Just don't change your clocks and change your schedule by one hour instead!
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Because it requires all employers to buy into it. That's trying to get vastly more people to agree than just the elected officials.
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Having consistent hours is convenient! Time zones are good. They let me know that people will likely be eating lunch between 12 and 1, that if I call at 2am it should either be a party animal or an emergency, etc. I don't have to check to know that I can go to almost any store at 9am. Look up one of the many papers on a world without timezones.
Besides, if you had summer/winter hours you would need some form of societal trigger twice a year to to
Re:Why not just turn it off instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up and go to work an hour earlier.
If you can get enough employees and customers to agree with such a change than 9-5 will be 8-4.
It is just a number on a clock, not a fixed rule.
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Since I am now working remotely, I changed my hours to 7:30 - 4:30.
I take an extended lunch, during which I get in a 20 minute nap.
I still get my work done, and my afternoons are even a bit more productive.
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Re:Why not just turn it off instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up and go to work an hour earlier.
If you can get enough employees and customers to agree with such a change than 9-5 will be 8-4.
It is just a number on a clock, not a fixed rule.
It's a lot easier to use DST year round than convince everyone (employer, schools, stores, daycares, transit) to change their work/opening hours.
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Re:Why not just turn it off instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah it's a lot easier to abuse time standardization rather than actually come to consensus on the thing that is the issue, standard business hours.
Yes, it is. Like it or not.
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Having the sun rise an hour later was an evil trick to get people to wake up an hour earlier? That doesn't pass the smell test as something anyone would believe.
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It is just a number on a clock, not a fixed rule.
And I'm just anal-retentive enough to want high noon to be when the sun is directly overhead. Never mind that it's actually quite a bit south of me and might be off by a few degrees.
Plus, on standard time, you can use a mechanical watch as a compass. Fun trick I learned at a lad. Doesn't work so well with digital watches or smart phones.
Maybe we should all just convert to Stardates and be done with it.
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We used to use that system. People got tired of the time being different in every town.
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I thought they'd already made it 8-6. Compromise!
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Or, hear me out, instead of insisting that the entire world slowly switch over to 8-4 in a painful, jerky motion where companies switch one after another and people have great difficulty, we could just keep the hours 9-5 as a standard and keep the clock setting that gets us more daylight after work. Since, it's just a number on a clock, why not choose the numbers
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Like most people (I think), I do outdoor stuff after work, because I don't like to smell like I've been doing outdoor stuff while at work. :-)
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When I was in high school in the early 1970s, the energy crisis prompted a country-wide change to DST year round. In December and January I remember walking to school in the morning in darkness. That was fine for high school students like me, but would anyone want elementary school kids walking to school in the dark? I wouldn't...
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The correct question, then, is this: If adults don't want to start working before 9:00, why in the world would we want kids to start school an hour (or more) earlier? Studies show kids learn better later. Why are we still clinging to this antiquated notion of school starting at 8:00?
And no, "so the parents can drop them off before work" isn't a good answer, because they still can't pick the kids up if they're working for 2.5 hours after school lets out.
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Most people here, if they excercise outdoors at all, tend to do it in the early morning - pre-dawn even - because once the sun's been up for more than a couple of hours it's too hot. People mow their lawns at sunset, if they can't do it in the morning. I wait until 11 PM to do my bike ride because (1) it's finally dipped below 90 heat-index, (2) I don't like running into people.
The only people you'll see "willingly" (not really) outside during broad daylight, who aren't moving from one air-conditioned spac
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You have to convince your job, then the mall, then the city and county to allow malls to open earlier.
You're not wrong, but it says quite a bit about the absolute state of things when it's easier to change time itself on a national scale than to change how people treat time locally.
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That's MUCH easier said than done. It might take you 20 years to be able to work 8-4 instead 9-5 if your business place in in a mall, for example, which has opening hours of 9am to 9pm. You have to convince your job, then the mall, then the city and county to allow malls to open earlier. Lots of other situations it's really complicated.
I've never understood why retail is even open during the day. With the exception of retail stores that cater do businesses — Office Depot, Fry's (oops), etc. — nobody is going to be shopping during the day, because everybody who would shop there is at work. Retail should ideally be open from about 7-9 in the morning and from about 4-10 in the evening.
Don't get me started on banks. They might as well just be online and ATM, because it takes an act of you-know-who to get me into one during thei
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Normal time sucks. It gets dark too early in the evening.
Have you considered using different numbers?
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I changed my clocks to base 8, now I don't have to be at work until 10:00
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Normal time sucks. It gets dark too early in the evening. I don't want clocks that maximize the amount of daylight I'm inside at work for, I want clocks that maximize the amount of time I have after work to do things.
I'd prefer to have a global society that doesn't need to carve a planet up into time zones, and views keeping track of time much like the Military does; as one.
The 9-to-5 workday is already dead, and we already have online TV guides that are in a single time zone. I want clocks to serve a purpose, and that purpose should not be centered around a sun rising and setting.
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It gets dark too early for you. But for other it is DST that gets too dark early for them. Try to realize that you are at a single point on the planet, and other people exist who are to the east or west of you for which the relationship of natural time to clock time is different. The solution is for you to discard your clocks and just operate on a time that feels best for you; negotiate with your boss about your working hours.
You can't move the sun to convenience you, and you can't change the government
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Do we *really* need to insult people for preferring different things?
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Normal time sucks. It gets dark too early in the evening. I don't want clocks that maximize the amount of daylight I'm inside at work for, I want clocks that maximize the amount of time I have after work to do things.
You don't seem to understand how time and sunlight work. That, or you are one of these people who sleep until just before they have to run out the door to get to work. Either way, you suck for wanting people to have to sleep while the sun is out because you are a selfish prick.
Do yourself a favor and shut the fuck up before every human living above the 63rd parallel elects to kick your ass. I've lived for years in areas where there is 24-hour daylight in the summer. I don't "suck" for living in those areas, and I'm certainly not the "prick" trying to dictate what Mother Nature, does.
Learn to use a clock for purpose, not to tell you when the sun rises and falls.
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You can fuck off now.
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Traffic accidents. The farther after dark you drive home, the more likely you are to fall asleep behind the wheel. With sunset at 4:28, it's safer than the current time (3:28).
To be fair, this does mean kids going to school before sunrise, but we could just be sensible and move the start of school to 9:00 instead of 8:00 (and provide before-school child care at the schools for any parents who have to drop their kids off early to get to work, if the kids don't take the bus) and solve that problem much mor
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Gah! I meant 5:28 and 4:28. :-D
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There's growing evidence that a 9:00 start time is better for students anyway. My oldest is starting kindergarten next year, and school starts at 7:45. I remember thinking when I was a kid that 8:15 was a bit early for elementary school.
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Yeah, I'm aware. That's one of the many reasons I suggested it. :-)
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There is no answer that pleases everyone. And of course, everyone will be beholden to the answer given.
So, there will always be conflict over the issue.
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What? That monstrosity? If you're going to decouple time from nature then do it properly. Use TAI.
Just piss off (Score:5, Informative)
Turn off DST completely. The war's over.
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Re:Just piss off (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agreed. Why should the rest of us pay for a school district stupid decision to start at 7? Numerous studies have shown kids get less sleep time when school start before 8. 9 is even better, and for older kids the sweet spot could be even later.
What's the point in having school to finish at 2 or 3 pm anyways? No working parent is back from work anyways. Might as well finish at 4 or 5 pm.
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In my local district, the young kids start later but high school starts at 7:00. Complete madness and the opposite of what would make sense.
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Do these studies check kids sleep time by asking their parents? Or by checking with the kids? Seems to me that when I was a kid, I got pretty much the same amount of sleep winter or summer. Of course, it's been a helluva long time since I was a kid, so I could be fooling myself....
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I was not talking about seasonal changes. Kids just don't go to bed 1 hour earlier just because you move up their school start by 1h. So the consequence is that kids starting school at 9.30 are better off than those starting at 7.
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You could have both if school didn't start so early. Admit what the real problem is and that it's local to you.
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The solution is to just start school later. When I was a kid, school started at 9. Now it starts (here) at 8. In your area, it apparently starts at 7. The time is arbitrary, just have them start school an hour later.
Besides, full daylight starts after 7AM (here) from October through February already with the current DST switch. That might explain why our school starts at 8 instead of 7, but there's no reason your area couldn't shift it to 8.
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"The solution is to just start school later. "
No, the solution is to start work earlier if you want more daylight hours after work. The problem with this is most adults don't want to drag their lazy asses out of bed that early.
Hell, if people want daylight after work, why don't we just shift standard time ahead by six hours permanently and then people will have plenty of daylight after work?
I have a better idea: if all you selfish assholes want more daylight during non-working hours, then get a job on the
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The current iteration has nothing to do with World War II. The history of DST is actually pretty complex and it took most of the 20th century to get to its current form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So glad we're not legislating Earth's axial tilt (Score:5, Funny)
.
Whew! Had me worried there.
Re:So glad we're not legislating Earth's axial til (Score:5, Funny)
It would not change the country's current time zones or the number of hours of sunlight.
.
Whew! Had me worried there.
Yes, I came here to point out they obviously still need stronger legislation. Why settle for half measures?
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You know, they could just legislate that pi was 3, then the planet would spin slower and we'd get more sunlight automatically.
who's blocking this? (Score:2)
I hope this passes. Canada will have to follow.
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Whoever votes against this need their nuts ripped off.
not even news. (Score:3)
They haven't even passed it in one branch of congress let alone passing it in both. There is no word if it even has majority support (meaning it likely does not).
You might as well be reporting on the Texas lawmaker introduces bill to allow death penalty for women who have abortions [thehill.com] because they both have equal status.
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It's annual news. Just about every year someone introduces a bill to abolish Daylight Savings switches in one form or another.
Oh yeah - just checked Wikipedia:
In 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced to Congress the "Sunshine Protection Act", a bill to permit states to observe permanent DST. The bill has achieved referral to committee, but it has yet to receive a hearing
Why not just use standard time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just use Standard Time, you know the part that more or less aligns with the Sun. Then just change government office hours from 9-5 to 8-4. Where many companies will probably adjust their schedule accordingly.
DST is like changing the label in your speedometer to have 60mph where the needle is as 50mph. Figuring that would be easier than lowering the posted speed limit.
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Not only that, but if Florida wants to ditch the switch, they can do so on their own without requiring federal approval simply by going to standard time.
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How many businesses operate based on governmental office hours?
Sometimes changing the label is easier than changing hundreds of thousands of independent entities' schedules.
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Actually most of them.
Because most employees work around the Public School Schedule. So if school starts an hour earlier every day most workers would want to adjust their schedule as such.
Also banks who may need to report information back up the government, if they need to report an hour earlier, they may close shop an hour earlier so they can get their paperwork ready.
You have companies who have the Government as a major customer, where they will adjust their times to work with their big customer, and thes
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I know I already replied once but....
the part that more or less aligns solar noon with the Sun.
FTFY. And really, that's only for one or two days of the year at best. Most days aren't even exactly 24 hours long. The time will not only drift throughout the year but it will also vary from the East to West end of the time zone.
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Changing DST would have a much smaller financial impact on businesses and the government than changing open-close hours. Think of all of the menus, window signs, painted signs, business cards, letterhead, and all sorts of other branded merchandise that have to be updated for each business that changes their hours, not to mention the time it would take to update the websites, social media sites, email signatures, etc for online presences. And add to that the huge price hikes for all the companies that do t
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Not waiting... (Score:2)
Arizona isn't waiting for this or anything to do with Daylight Savings. You all will catch on sooner or later.
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Or Hawaii. I was so pissed when Indiana switched to joining DST a little over a decade ago. It was so nice not having to mess with clocks, but having to remember how the other states are next to you. I missed a wedding of a friend because of it as it was a Sunday wedding, and that weekend was time change. I had my 4 hour commute from Indy to St. Louis and thought I was going to lose an hour, so figured 3 "hours" for my 4 hour trip. Nope .. they were now same time as us (spring forward). Oppss.
Here we go again... (Score:2, Insightful)
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No. This is cathartic. Slashdot users need their biannual bitch fest about having to figure out how to set their VCR clocks. Again.
Get it done (Score:2)
It will be a popular move, a no-brainer.
Arbitrary and stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
12:00 should be when the sun is exactly above you. (In terms of the east-west axis.)
Not anything else, unless you use a different system where you define 00:00 as when the sun comes up or abolish time zones completely or the like.
The wrong way around (Score:2)
I'm all for getting rid of the time switches, but it would be better to do it by no using DST at all. That way, the clock would remain closer to the mean solar time (and thus the true solar time).
One clock for the whole world (Score:2)
We should just standardize on milliseconds since Jan 1, 1970. Hm milliseconds since midnight in Greenwich, London, UK. It will take some getting used to, but itâ(TM)ll be fine after a year the intuition will develop.
Been there; done that; buried the dead children (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the '70s there was this thing called the energy crisis. Not much by today's standards, but it freaked everyone out at the time. In response, we went to DST year-round. By the middle of the winter kids were getting hit and killed by cars while waiting for the school bus in the dark. I think it was repealed before the second winter.
Maybe this time we could not enact it in the first place and skip the part with the dead children.
Re:Been there; done that; buried the dead children (Score:4, Insightful)
Endangered species sighted! (Score:5, Funny)
"A group of bipartisan senators"... stop right there. That's newsworthy!
Failed canary test (Score:2)
This concept keeps coming up, and the public sentiment that I always witness is that people seem either in agreement or simply unconcerned by the matter.
This should be slam dunk legislation, so why isn't it done and over with already? The issue may not be very pressing, but the complete lack of any meaningful action is pretty discouraging.
For fucks sake (Score:2)
It has to do with the needless time change we make twice a year.
These time changes causes negative impact to people's sleep cycle, safety and productivity. The impact to the economy is significant.
It's a change that we can do without.
Make it a holiday. (Score:2)
Make the day(s) we change the clocks a holiday (and the day after if it's a Sunday).
If you don't, some people are going to complain that you stole an hour from them (and they have a point).
If it's a holiday every time we change the clocks, then people will be a lot less annoyed about it, and people who have to pay for that holiday will be a lot less likely to want to do it in the first place.
That's not how DST works! (Score:2)
proud to sponsor the Sunshine Protection Act to add an extra hour of sunshine for the full 365 days a year.
The only reason they do that (Score:3)
...is because they don't know how to change the time on their microwave.
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What nonsense job do you work where "more daylight hours mean more work hours"? You start on the dot of 7am and work until sundown? This is just stupid. Total hours of dark remain the same, just you have some after work.
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It is a hybrid mix of measured time, with nature.
Re: DST... (Score:2)
Low wages means working longer hours.
Work 9-5... hmmm, sun doesnâ(TM)t go down until 9... end up working 9-9
Re: Bad for some locales (Score:2)
We got that in Germany in the winter, and I can tell you from personal experience that ther was nothing more desolate and depressing than going to school before the sun came up in winter. It's one of the few things I still have vivd memories about. If you want people depressed before they reach 8 years old, that's how you do it. I don't understand how the northerners do it with their polar nights and such. Doom metal and alcohol?
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nah, the time on the clock is totally arbitrary. People's wake time is tied to job and school if they have a set time at all. One nice thing about pandemic amidst the list of all the deaths and sickness is that many workers can just sleep and wake when they feel like it since no commute.
Any school district that has problem with children in the dark in morning can just change their start time for a few months.
Since daylight savings time wastes energy that is what should have been done all along.
https://ww [nytimes.com]