They always used to claim daylight savings was for farmers, even though farmers are probably the people in society who least have to follow the same daily schedule as anyone else.
I watched a documentary on it, it was actually a war thing. Back then many factories didn’t have lights so they could adjust to the sun easier using DST.
It was only implemented during WWI and WWII until sometime in the sixties when it became permanent.
I always thought it was for office workers and was essentially a green energy program. I’ve never heard an argument that it had anything to do with farmers, especially since farmers set their schedule by dawn and dusk.
The rationale I heard in the northern U.S. was that kids would have to wait for or walk home from the school bus in the dark. It doesn’t really make sense, but that’s not an issue apparently.
In a same world they would just get to school earlier and leave earlier - that’s all DST effectively does while adding a heaping helping of absolute insanity.
It also makes dealing with dates even more complicated in programming, especially when you have to check whether an event/person is in somewhere like Arizona that doesn’t do DST (besides the Navajo Nation…)
In summer, we have about 15 hours of daylight and 9 hours of night. In winter, we have about 9 hours of daylight, and 15 hours of night. In summer, on standard time, we get about 3 more hours of daylight in the morning, and 3 more hours of daylight in the evening than we do in winter.
Suppose you use a constant schedule year round, and set your alarm clock to wake you 30 minutes before sunrise in the middle of winter. If you kept that same alarm into summer, you would be sleeping through the first 2.5 hours of daylight.
DST “saves” one of those morning hours, by shifting the clock forward. Relative to standard (winter) time, you add 2 hours of daylight in the morning, and 4 in the evening, instead of 3 and 3. Switching to DST (theoretically) minimizes disruption to our morning schedule.
I think we should focus on the evening instead of the morning. The evenings are where the overwhelming majority of us are free of work, school, and other obligations. Our mornings belong to bosses and teachers; The evenings are our time for home and family, rest and recreation.
If we are going to change times, we should reverse the time change. Instead of “falling back”, we should skip forward in November, minimizing disruption to our evenings instead of their mornings. Imagine winter sunsets at 6:30 PM instead of 4:30PM. Imagine the kids being able to play outdoors for two more hours after school than they currently get.
Alternatively, (and preferably) we should just stay on “Summer” time year round.
I introduced the concept of consistent morning schedules, and I briefly argued that we should make our evening schedules consistent, rather than our morning schedules. This would require not eliminating the time change, but reversing it.
I challenge you to find any other proposal for reversing DST: Fall Forward, Spring Back.
They always used to claim daylight savings was for farmers, even though farmers are probably the people in society who least have to follow the same daily schedule as anyone else.
You can blame this fuck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hudson_(entomologist) He wanted more time to look at bugs after work.
I watched a documentary on it, it was actually a war thing. Back then many factories didn’t have lights so they could adjust to the sun easier using DST.
It was only implemented during WWI and WWII until sometime in the sixties when it became permanent.
I always thought it was for office workers and was essentially a green energy program. I’ve never heard an argument that it had anything to do with farmers, especially since farmers set their schedule by dawn and dusk.
The rationale I heard in the northern U.S. was that kids would have to wait for or walk home from the school bus in the dark. It doesn’t really make sense, but that’s not an issue apparently.
So they set it up so that the sun goes down even earlier the season with less sunlight?
It seems to me like the sun going down an hour earlier is the last thing we need when winter comes.
It is of you only care about the time you spend being a productive citizen for your boss, not your leisure time.
In a same world they would just get to school earlier and leave earlier - that’s all DST effectively does while adding a heaping helping of absolute insanity.
It also makes dealing with dates even more complicated in programming, especially when you have to check whether an event/person is in somewhere like Arizona that doesn’t do DST (besides the Navajo Nation…)
In summer, we have about 15 hours of daylight and 9 hours of night. In winter, we have about 9 hours of daylight, and 15 hours of night. In summer, on standard time, we get about 3 more hours of daylight in the morning, and 3 more hours of daylight in the evening than we do in winter.
Suppose you use a constant schedule year round, and set your alarm clock to wake you 30 minutes before sunrise in the middle of winter. If you kept that same alarm into summer, you would be sleeping through the first 2.5 hours of daylight.
DST “saves” one of those morning hours, by shifting the clock forward. Relative to standard (winter) time, you add 2 hours of daylight in the morning, and 4 in the evening, instead of 3 and 3. Switching to DST (theoretically) minimizes disruption to our morning schedule.
I think we should focus on the evening instead of the morning. The evenings are where the overwhelming majority of us are free of work, school, and other obligations. Our mornings belong to bosses and teachers; The evenings are our time for home and family, rest and recreation.
If we are going to change times, we should reverse the time change. Instead of “falling back”, we should skip forward in November, minimizing disruption to our evenings instead of their mornings. Imagine winter sunsets at 6:30 PM instead of 4:30PM. Imagine the kids being able to play outdoors for two more hours after school than they currently get.
Alternatively, (and preferably) we should just stay on “Summer” time year round.
“Suppose you use a constant schedule year round”
It took a full paragraph to get to saying you didn’t read them comment and then four more to elaborate on that?
I introduced the concept of consistent morning schedules, and I briefly argued that we should make our evening schedules consistent, rather than our morning schedules. This would require not eliminating the time change, but reversing it.
I challenge you to find any other proposal for reversing DST: Fall Forward, Spring Back.
they have to get up and go to school in the dark now down here in the midwest, so idk about that one.
It never made sense to me but also DST confuses me a lot in general.