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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • School attendance works all around the world.

    For most kids in most places, I agree. But there are some places around the world where formal government-run school does not work. I live nearby some very rural places with chronically underfunded schools and unique social problems. The teachers I know who work there try their hardest, yet are aware they can’t do a good enough job for their kids. In those communities, formal schooling just isn’t enough.

    Provide good options and people will make good decisions. Abolish bad options and people will still make bad decisions.



  • work doesn’t let you come in earlier and leave earlier in the winter (clock-wise)

    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.


  • why you’re snarkily editing my words

    That’s fair. That’s on me.

    earth time is arbitrarily assigned

    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.


  • Perhaps you think I work 9-5.

    Apologies. I was using “9 to 5” to mean “a standard work schedule that doesn’t actually exist for most people except as a cliche.”

    I have no desire to go to work an hour earlier

    But that’s exactly what permanent DST is! Just because the clock still says “7 xDT” instead of “7 xST” doesn’t make it the same time. The sun still rises and sets on it’s own time no matter what our clocks say. Circadian rhythms ultimately depend on sunrise, zenith, and sunset, not some number on a clock. Switching between ST and DST effectively forces the whole world to adopt a “winter” schedule and a “summer” schedule, but in an incredibly disruptive and politically-charged way.

    I agree that changing clocks twice a year is a bad idea. My point is, if we’re going to pick one, it should be the one that is based on the motion of the planet. The whole world has to coordinate schedules anyways. So let’s use a standard that more closely matches our biology, not some “you’ll save daylight” marketing.

    Or maybe we should all agree to live in the future and just use UTC…


  • We’re kind of having the same argument in two different threads … I’m not sure which thread is better.

    Morning our schedules is no better than moving out clocks.

    It’s objectively better! “Moving clocks” is effectively the same as moving schedules for individuals, but to practically coordinate with others, everybody must change their clock and therefore their schedule. Individuals and organizations already construct their schedules as needed.

    Part of the issue is that we all work too damn much, anyways. The 40 hour, 5 day work week (and thus the 9-to-5) is an arbitrary concept that research has indicated may be just as effective as a shorter work week.


  • I’m not arguing for changing clocks twice a year. I’m arguing that permanent DST is no better than permanent Standard Time when it comes to scheduling. The difference is that people are falsely convinced permanent DST will give them “more daylight” when it will not. Schedules have always shifted between seasons. We can’t do anything about the motion of planets, but we can decide to go to work an hour earlier to maximize how much continuous time we have after work to do yardwork or whatever.

    Today, we have this arbitrary “9 to 5” work schedule. Give it 20 years of permanent DST, and we’ll start wishing we “had more daylight” because we have a “10 to 6” work schedule. They’re just numbers. Why not choose the simpler standard?



  • The daytime is basically our employer’s time anyway, I’d rather not waste any more precious daylight on that part of the day.

    I feel like this strikes at the heart of the whole DST vs. ST argument. As I mentioned in a sibling thread, it boils down to how much control we have over our own schedules. Instead of a mutualistic relationship, we’ve sold our souls to our employers. Shifting to permanent DST may be a temporary solution, but if we can’t figure out a way to form healthy relationships and boundaries with work/school/etc, even those gains will eventually get optimized away from us.