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[TheDarkStar]

how about we keep daylight savings but remove timezones

then everyone's happy, right?

or how about we have regular daylight savings events where the clock changes arbitrarily, but at least everyone's clocks are always set to the same time

[Reelya]

Haha funny.

Of course that wouldn't work because norther and southern hemisphere nations have opposite seasons, thus they have opposite priorities for daylight savings. But it is in fact a really good point about why abolishing time zones would be hideously expensive and break important things to do with time. To implement something like daylight savings in a post-timezone world you'd have to adjust the opening and closing times of all offices, schools and shops rather than just having every digital clock adjust itself and people carry one as normal.

Basically, if we really lived in a "post sunlight" technological world then the costs of daylight savings adjustments would clearly start to outweigh the benefits, and it would be phased out.

[wierd]

Already does in many localities.

[Reelya]

The localities that do mostly have the same things in common however. The closer you are to the equator the less sense season adjustments make, since day lengths don't vary.

And also the east/west location within a time-zone makes a difference in perception. e.g. some western NSW people in Australia complain about "daylight savings" because in the winter they need to get up when it's pitch black. However, winter is the unadjusted time so they have this backwards. Winter daytime-length hits 10 hours at that lattitude, so sunrise is 7am and sunset is 5pm. however, the west of the timezone is 1 hour behind so they get sunrise at 8am and sunset at 6pm. That's nothing to do with "daylight savings" which isn't even operational at that time of year. In fact if you want more sun in the morning you want to do the exact opposite of daylight savings, which increases the daylight in the evening.

https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/daylight-saving-time-map.html

Notice that Russia didn't have daylight savings before, but recently reintroduced it, while countries closer to the equator that once had daylight saving have mostly abolished it. Also, Arizona and part of Mexico don't have it, but they represent the part of their timezone closer to the equator. In Australia, the northern states and Western Australia all abolished daylight savings, however only Western Australia (where the largest city is further south) brought it back again.

So basically there's a tension there where anywhere nearer the equator has pressure to get rid of daylight savings and anywhere far from the equator has pressure to bring it back. So in other words, this splits each timezone into three bands who are all incentivized to have different synchronizations throughout the year. Northern Time, Equatorial Time and Southern Time.

[milo christiansen]

There is serious talk in Michigan (USA) of getting rid of it. Nobody likes it (least of all the farmers), but bills to get rid of it keep narrowly losing votes. They get a bit closer each time though, so I keep hoping...

[Reelya]

Hell, why not make it a sine wave that works all year round? Then, dawn would be defined as 7am at the geographic center of each time zone and clocks would be adjusted electronically or mechanically to match.

In fact, farmers should like that way of doing things more than purely mechanical time:

Many farmers and others in agriculture are still opposed to daylight saving time. What it actually does is disrupt a farmer’s carefully orchestrated schedule. For instance, if dairy cows are used to being milked at 5:00 a.m., moving the clock back an hour in the fall actually moves their milking time back an hour, and livestock cannot understand waiting another hour to be milked. Then, just as the cows get used to it, the milking schedule gets changed again in the spring. The milk truck is likely still coming at the same time per the clock, meaning dairy farmers can’t just change their milking times to keep it consistent for the animals.

Similarly, daylight saving time also affects the amount of time put in by farm workers. If hired hands have to wait an extra hour for daylight to start working in the morning, but they still leave at the same time at night, less work is getting done. All in all, farmers would rather just use the sun and the seasons to determine milking times, planting charts, and the best time to harvest.

[ChairmanPoo]

I dont know why wouldnt an autonomous farmer just keep the same scheulder regardless of  dayligjts savings

[dragdeler]

I'm under the impression that farmers are mostly tempted by simple solutions, like some all in one 10 step program where they get everything they need by the same supplier and do what is written on their papers. That way they can stabilize their revenue, and make some daylight savings in their brain...

[milo christiansen]

Well, it's like this: If you have employees they follow the clock, the milk truck follows the clock, the equipment dealership follows the clock, every non-farmer around follows the clock, so you kinda have to as well.

I'm under the impression that farmers are mostly tempted by simple solutions, like some all in one 10 step program where they get everything they need by the same supplier and do what is written on their papers. That way they can stabilize their revenue, and make some daylight savings in their brain...

No farmer that I know of operates that way. Like everyone else they buy and sell with whoever has the best price at the moment. The only farmers with a turn-key operation are corporate owned.

[smjjames]

Why the frick is it done so late into the fall? What was 6:20 is now 5:20.....

Just a minor rant on the thread about daylight savings time change.

[dragdeler]

Yes that was surely a quite polemic exageration.

But the business is really weird with all the subventions (EU) and I feel like it's often marketing that makes up the farmers minds (after tradition) and research, or just a general feel of "you sow wind you reap storm", oftentimes rank way behind in those considerations. Got a friend who works at a potato supplier in Luxemburg, and from what she tells me all those classification and normification attemps sound kind of arbitrary and rigged in an ugly (or plain inefficient) way, like you're borderline supposed to know what plant stood where but in the end you just get a signature and you're good to go. And it boils down to a collective of, very rural, landowners that get sucked up by the idea of having it all set up and settled as soon as possible, and so they go with the short-term "strategy".

[Paxiecrunchle]

Its absolutely stupid and pointless is what is, why don't we just collectively get rid of it?

[dragdeler]

Its absolutely stupid and pointless is what is, why don't we just collectively get rid of it?

We could abolish it at B12 scale  if the mighty ToadyOne strikes the hammer, I will do my best to oblige to our new time. It's kind of cool because there is nothing to loose from it, I doubt we'll ever fight over timestamps of our old forum posts.

[ChairmanPoo]

Hey, if we're going to outrageously change time measurement worldwide why stick with something as vanila as gmt for everyone?  I'd rather go and bring out decimal time, in that scenario

[birdy51]

I barely noticed the change. Most everything I have updates the time automatically, so I didn't even have to notice. O.o