- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
In the past six years, 19 states have made efforts to move to year-round daylight saving time. So what’s in the way?
In the past six years, 19 states have made efforts to move to year-round daylight saving time. So what’s in the way?
States can only move to permanent Standard time without congressional approval, and when you consider that congress couldn’t agree who their own leader was for 22 days, there’s no hope getting them to agree on something like DST.
The real question, if states are serious about getting rid of the change to DST, why didn’t they just pick standard time? No approval is needed to switch to full standard time.
Because people prefer the extra daylight in the evening which is why everyone wants DST hours.
Is that actually what you meant?
I really wish people would stop spinning DST as if it gives us any more daylight than Standard time. It’s literally just rotating a circular instrument by 30 degrees and whitewashing it with a nice-sounding name.
In not sure why you’re snarkily editing my words to write literally the exact same concept I wrote originally. Nobody said DST gives more sunlight throughout the day. I said people prefer more sunlight in the evening.
All earth time is arbitrarily assigned so noon could be labeled as 2am but it wouldn’t change the fact that people want it to be light out later in the evenings.
That’s fair. That’s on me.
Excuse me if I’m misunderstanding what you mean … but, no, it really isn’t. UTC is defined quite precisely and accurately to track the mean solar time. Time zones are usually designed to balance the zenith of the sun (that’s “noon”) and regional boundaries (although some countries make some… creative decisions in that regard). “Morning” and “evening” are defined in terms of the position of the sun, not some number on a clock.
It’s amazing how you clearly understand the arbitrary nature of timekeeping, yet are still fixated on the numbers defining what is evening rather than the sun.
True, but driving home from work in the dark is much more dispiriting than going to work in the dark. So if your work doesn’t let you come in earlier and leave earlier in the winter (clock-wise) the change to standard time makes things worse.
And that’s where the real problem lies. Instead of negotiating with our employers to help build equitable schedules, we’d rather ask the government to enforce it for us. Permanent anything, either DST or ST, will force us to face this fact. In light of that, I’d rather go with permanent Standard Time, as it matches mean solar time and thus circadian rhythms. Everything else is a social contact.
It doesn’t create more daylight. It creates more useful daylight. Daylight while we are sleeping is less useful to us than daylight while we are awake
Red herring to appear like they are doing something for the people. As was pointed out below, we tried year round DST in the 70s and people hated it so much we went back to switching our clocks. It seems that year round standard time would make the best compromise, but that would be doing something, rather than just appearing to do things.