315
US House to vote on bill to make daylight saving time permanent (www.reuters.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/politics@lemmy.world
196 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

In May, the House Energy and Commerce Committee ‌voted 48-1 in favor of the Sunshine Protection Act. The U.S. Senate voted unanimously in March 2022 to make daylight saving time permanent but the House never took up the measure in the face ​of opposition. The proposal the House will consider next week would allow states ​to opt out.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 35 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (18 children)

When I lived up north by Canada, the logic was "you don't want kids having to walk to/from school when it's dark!!" Okay, so... wow, did you know they could change school hours.

The same argument works the other way. Keep noon as the point where the sun is highest. Then change the times of things for appropriate daylight. Daylight savings is just people agreeing to get up an hour earlier. Instead of "9 to 5", everyone agrees to work 8 to 4. Which coincidentally puts solar noon perfectly in the middle of the work day. Isn't that a surprise!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 18 child comments
    •
  • [–] 35 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Well, we're also in the 21st century and this jump an hour twice a year shit makes no sense. We could make timekeeping worldwide way more insane by having it adjust "imperceptibly" over time to auto adjust times worldwide based on true solar noon at each individual clock location using GPS. So all clocks would now have GPS as well to be able to ping their location to get the appropriate time. This... would be insane. We'd have seconds that are longer than a second. LET'S DO IT.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago*

    You wouldn't necessarily have to have GPS in every clock. You could have all the clocks forming an "asynchronous mesh" network. They would all constantly ping each other on a standard frequency and estimate their location using triangulation. That, in combination with scanning for other things like phones, WiFi APs, BLE devices etc, could probably get you surprisingly accurate location data with a big enough network.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [–] 23 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    I get confused, but what I prefer based on living far north is for evenings to be longer. It seems wrong to me when winter approaches and the sun starts going down around 6-7, then bam, the time change happens and the sun starts going down at 5. It's the exact opposite of what I'd prefer. I guess people active in the early morning like it. Ultimately I just think it's dumb to change the clocks. We should just pick one or the other.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago* (5 children)

    Everyone agrees to stop changing. The only contention is how. Stay on DST, or stay on Standard Time. Lots of people say like you, "More daylight in the evening please!" But they don't realise all DST does is trick people into getting up early by lying to them, and breaking noon from the sun. Staying on standard time keeps the time sun connection. Then the "standard work day" can be changed to the more appropriate 8 to 4. You get the same effect as DST without lies, tricks, and changing solar noon. It's cleaner than permanent DST.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    We live in time zones. “Standard” time is just as much a fiction as DST. I’ve never lived somewhere where the sun is directly overhead at noon. I suppose such places must exist; some of them might even be on standard time when it does. In my area, it’s closer to directly overhead during DST.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    It used to be that towns would set their clocks so solar noon was noon. When time zones are invented they picked one place and that was the standard. I remember reading somewhere once that mountain time was defined as solar union at Denver Union Station because the most important function of time zones is railroad scheduling at the time when the first American time zones were defined

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Isn't people shifting their schedule by an hour and then back the entire reason the time change sucks? Who cares about "sun-noon connection" or the clocks "lying" to them?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    People have a weird fixation on the inherent meaning of certain times of day. Like 9:00 a.m. is ontologically when work begins. It's strange.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Landscapers and construction want to start as early in the day as possible, but are restricted by noise ordinances designed to protect the sleep of everyone else. They have to wait until after sunrise, and work in the heat of the day in the summer. Daylight Savings Time pushes the summer heat back an hour, letting them work longer and safer.

    On standard time, summer sunrises can occur as early as 3:30AM on the eastern edge of some time zones. Forcing landscapers and construction to wait four hours after sunrise until a noise ordinance expires is absurd. Standard time is terrible in the summer.

    DST does push the morning back, with morning twilight as late as 9am at high latitudes on the western edge of a time zone. But the solution to that is to redraw the time zone boundaries, not force the entire country to continue doing something as stupid as the time change. These places can adopt DST of the next zone to the west, which is standard time for their current zone.

    DST in winter takes an hour of morning daylight from the boss, and gives it back to us as an hour of daylight after work, where we can put it to use. Kids can enjoy year-round outdoor extracurriculars, instead of being limited from November to March due to entirely arbitrary clock settings.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Also, right now I'm the central time zone "high noon" is about 1pm, so the noon logic is also bullshit. You'd have to add more time zones and make more changes to keep high noon always close to noon for everyone.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Right now your solar noon is at 1pm because we're currently on DST, which specifically shifts solar noon to 1pm. That's how it works. When you "Fall Back" to standard time, your noon will match solar noon again.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent