Anon OpinDaylight saving times should be abolished. We are no longer living in the 19th century, we can do without. It'll be great for mental health, and people hating early darkness during the evening. BST timezone should be permanent
Scott@anon_opin if anything, GMT should be permanent
Mike Torr@scottearle Definitely! I hate this "permanent BST" idea so much. Why would you permanently set the clocks an hour later than the logical scientific time? It's MADNESS.
But I do agree, DST needs to go. As a software developer, I wouldn't miss it at all.
@macronencer as a software developer myself, I would like to say that things as fundamental as dates and times have no right to be as hard as they are.
And in the UK, the one logical time zone is permanent GMT. They can even keep calling it GMT! Even though we all know it’s UTC.
@scottearle I like to speculate about how clocks would work if we ever colonised other planets (I'm writing sci fi). I decided that there was no obvious solution, but I settled for "every planet uses a 24-hour day, but the hours are whatever length works on that planet, and seconds and minutes are the same as on Earth". It was the best I could do, and it at least made the actual time agree with local sunlight. But you do get times like "16:102" :)
Rexx Deane 🏳️🌈@macronencer @scottearle I agonised over little details like this and tied myself up in knots for ages. In the end, I decided not to bother - not enough people care, and certainly not enough to warrant the effort and anxiety you go through keeping track of all that complicated crap.
@rexxdeane I can't blame you! Although personally I kind of enjoy working out those little details :) Each to their own...
@macronencer something not really addressed in most sci-fi, including The Expanse where they were excellent with their science
ben@macronencer @scottearle the very existence of discrete time zones (rather than continuous local time) implies that in many places the time is always anything up to half an hour different from the “logical scientific time”. The time zone time can inherently only match up with the solar time at one single longitude at the very centre of the time zone.
So the actual clock time is always going to be basically imaginary for most places anyway; so why not settle on one that’s actually good rather than one that’s physically aligned?
Having said that, I don’t have a particular preference for year-round BST. It feels like a toss-up between dark mornings and dark evenings and I’m not sure there’s an objective reason to prefer one over the other. In which case year-round UTC is the obviously simpler choice.
@benjamineskola I hear the discrete time zone argument a lot, and I always feel that it's US-centric (though perhaps not, in your case). The UK happens to have the datum passing through London, so in our case there's a good reason to reset to that. Given that one degree is four minutes' difference, most (all?) UK residents are going to be within 30 minutes of the datum, I think.
Also... to see it as a choice between dark mornings/evenings is to assume that schedules are inflexible...
@macronencer It’s perhaps more relevant in the US or continental Europe where there’s more of a continuous gradation between times, yeah. Being on an island means we never just cross a line on a map and jump an hour behind or ahead, so we’re sort of sheltered from the arbitrariness of it.
But my point isn’t that it would be impractical — I think it’s perfectly practical. I just think you can’t say “this is the true scientific time” when for most of the country it’s not actually going to accurately match the solar time or whatever.
And I’m not seeing it as a choice between dark mornings and evenings, I was specifically saying that it doesn’t make a difference. Whether GMT or BST, there’s going to be the same amount of daylight hours regardless, so I don’t think it’s meaningful to argue for one or the other based on the usual claim of having lighter mornings (at the expense of darker evenings) or vice versa.
Given that neither is objectively better in those terms (which are the ones usually raised when arguing about whether to abolish DST), I do think UTC probably makes more sense, yes; I just don’t think “it’s more scientifically accurate” is a valid argument.
@benjamineskola Just to clarify: the phrase I used was "the logical scientific time" — by which I meant "the most logical choice from a scientific viewpoint".
Daburu Dar@anon_opin perfect until the last sentence. Permanent GMT would be superior.
Ian Chard@anon_opin Absolutely agree. The only argument I ever hear against this is ‘but farmers’, which I don’t understand even a little bit.
Angus D. F. MacKinnon@anon_opin @chris I’m with you 100%!!
Negative12DollarBill@anon_opin It's not only stupid it's lethal. A significant number of road accidents every year happen when the clocks go forward and drivers are sleepy and inattentive.
jesterchen42@anon_opin Also see https://mstdn.social/@NaturalTimeAlliance/115355784362033316
Abolishing summer time will lead to physical health as well!
Natural Time Alliance (@[email protected])
@[email protected] On our site https://naturaltimealliance.org/de you will find statements against 'summer time' (DST) from international scientific organisations.