Daylight Saving Time Ritual Continues. But Are There Alternatives? (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0180926174
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/08/015225/daylight-saving-time-ritual-continues-but-are-there-alternatives
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/daylight-saving-time-states-congress-standard-4cd5b467eed4ad1f112f0834aee3d45b
Though both options have problems, "There's no law we can pass to move the sun to our will," argues the president of the nonprofit " [1]Save Standard Time ". The Associated Press [2]explains why America remains stuck in that annual ritual making clocks "spring forward, fall backward..."
> The U.S. has tinkered with the clock intermittently since railroads standardized the time zones in 1883. So has a lot of the world. About 140 countries have had daylight saving time at some point; about half that many do now. About 1 in 10 U.S. adults favor the current system of changing the clocks, according to an [3]AP-NORC poll conducted last year. About half oppose that system, and some 4 in 10 didn't have an opinion.
>
> If they had to choose, most Americans say they would prefer to make daylight saving time permanent, rather than standard time. ince 2018, 19 states — including much of the South and a block of states in the northwestern U.S. — have adopted laws calling for a move to permanent daylight saving time. There's a catch: Congress would need to pass a law to allow states to go to full-time daylight saving time, something that was in place nationwide during World War II and for an unpopular, brief stint in 1974. The U.S. Senate passed a bill in 2022 to move to permanent daylight saving time. A similar House bill hasn't been brought to a vote.
>
> U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama who introduces such a bill every term, said the airline industry, which doesn't want the scheduling complexity a change would bring, has been a factor in persuading lawmakers not to take it up. U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, is proposing another approach. "Why not just split the baby?" he asked. "Move it 30 minutes so it would be halfway between the two." Steube thinks his bill could get bipartisan support. The change would make the U.S. out of sync with most of the world — though India has taken a similar approach and in Nepal, the time is 15 minutes ahead of India.
[1] https://savestandardtime.com/
[2] https://apnews.com/article/daylight-saving-time-states-congress-standard-4cd5b467eed4ad1f112f0834aee3d45b
[3] https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/how-americans-feel-about-changing-the-clocks-according-to-a-new-ap-norc-poll/
clown show (Score:2)
Personally, I'd rather the politicians focus on producing a balanced budget (you know, like we all have to do at home) rather than waste time rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
Re: (Score:2)
If they can't do something simple and popular like get rid of daylight saving's time they probably can't do anything like balance the budget. Its like saying "I don't care if you're incapable of washing the dishes, I want you to design a nuclear powerplant."
Re: clown show (Score:2)
You will not even find agreement among economists on if balancing the federal budget is useful or even desirable. I think in peacetime and during a period of economic growth that a balanced budget is a decent goal, but in bad times the debt is preferable to austerity.
Re: clown show (Score:2)
Then someone needs to work on being in the good times, and not making more bad ones.
Re: (Score:2)
> You will not even find agreement among economists on if balancing the federal budget is useful or even desirable..
Uh, that probably has a lot more to do with obvious bias.
When asking about budget justifications, maybe not ask the 7500 economists in acedemia (including the 5000 extra ones in “administration”) currently living well off said corrupt “budgets”.
Balancing that budget might start to make too much sense. And that kind of shit is dangerous for people in pointless jobs.
Re: clown show (Score:2)
I now! Stoopid acedemia.
I care less than I used to (Score:2)
I would prefer permanent daylight saving time, myself. But, then again, I'll be retired in a few years so it's not gonna matter much to me after that point anyway.
Either approach has its upsides and downsides. It would be nice to stop changing the clocks, regardless.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want permanent daylight saving, go move somewhere nearer to the poles.
Oh, wait...
Re: Another DST discussion? (Score:1)
Slashdot disproportionately covers this topic. I suppose the mods have an axe to grind.
Re: Another DST discussion? (Score:2)
Check your dates. You likely find it's closer to 4!
Slashdot posting ritual continues (Score:2)
Asking the question we've all answered already twice a year since Slashdot was founded. Are there alternatives?
Re: Slashdot posting ritual continues (Score:2)
The only thing I dislike about DST is the these posts twice a year. The only reason I'd get rid of the clocks changing would be to stop these posts. Likely, though, they would continue with people arguing that we should start switching the clocks twice a year again, so....
All in (Score:2)
Can't we go all in this time? Global time? Make it metric in the process. 0 days is at midnight. 1 is right before the next day starts. Global, as in 0 is midnight at Mar-o-laga.
Decidays, centidays, millidays, ...
Or we could go for an SI-unit. Kilo seconds, megaseconds, ...
If I were in charge, I would fix this in a day.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as there are tears in our eyes oh great leader.
Re: All in (Score:2)
You would fix something that most people already know how to use and are not really struggling with?
I'm fine with whatever time gets local solar noon roughly near the time zones noon most of the day, if it's off by 30 minutes in someplace at some times of the year that is still better than switching back and forth by an hour twice a year.
Re: (Score:2)
> Can't we go all in this time? Global time? Make it metric in the process. 0 days is at midnight. 1 is right before the next day starts. Global, as in 0 is midnight at Mar-o-laga. Decidays, centidays, millidays, ... Or we could go for an SI-unit. Kilo seconds, megaseconds, ... If I were in charge, I would fix this in a day.
Time is already 0 at midnight, epoch time is a pretty good global time. We could standardised time on the amount of degrees in a circle. 0 for midnight, 360 for 6am, 720 midday, 1080 6pm and back.
Re: All in (Score:2)
Considering the amount of Gen Zs that don't know how to read an analogue clock, there's probably no need to stick to a circle. If you're going all in, stick to the 10s and 100s if possible. If you are going with 360 for divisibility, we already have that with 60 and 24 (which is the whole reason we have 60 and 24 to begin with). In all, there's no real reason to change it.
Re: All in (Score:2)
Time is already global. That's what UTC is about. But local time zones make it much easier to say "it's 2am in that place, I'd better not phone them" instead of "it's 17:00 (everywhere) -- is that day or night in that place?" One I know that that place is "8 hours ahead" it's much easier to know when to expect if I can call, if the office is open, etc. Also the second is already an SI unit.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is a nice blog post about the effects of abolishing time zones: [1]https://qntm.org/abolish [qntm.org]
[1] https://qntm.org/abolish
Re: (Score:2)
> Can't we go all in this time? Global time? Make it metric in the process. 0 days is at midnight. 1 is right before the next day starts. Global, as in 0 is midnight at Mar-o-laga. Decidays, centidays, millidays, ... Or we could go for an SI-unit. Kilo seconds, megaseconds, ... If I were in charge, I would fix this in a day.
If I were in charge, I would make the education of Zulu Time mandatory for all citizens.
Then I would politely tell them to collectively shut the fuck up already about a problem solved decades ago.
Re: All in (Score:2)
We're not all in the US military. UTC.
Re: (Score:2)
They tried exactly this during the French revolution. Didn't last long.