xkcd #2846: Daylight Saving Choice
xkcd #2846: Daylight Saving Choice
Alt text:
I average out the spring and fall changes and just set my clocks 39 minutes ahead year-round.
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Wait a minute. I'm taking this four steps further for the benefit of all of humanity. Here we go.
One, we need to convert over to 24-hour time. No more of this ridiculous AM/PM confusing crap that makes calculating times confusing. What time is it? It's 9. AM or PM? None of that. It's 9. What time is it 8 hours after 9? It's 9+8= 17. It's 17. Not 5p. What the hell. Why did anyone even ever agree to this AM/PM garbage?
Two, we need to end time zones. They are ridiculous. What's the point?? We could all work on GMT. Imagine, the entire world on one date. A whole worldwide party to celebrate the new year at the same time. International flight scheduling would be soooo intuitive. Your flight time is the arrival time minus the departure time without having to pull out a timezone map and consider daylights-savings to calculate it. What time is it on the International Space Station? The exact same time it is for the rest of humanity. Oh, but then half the world will be awake at night. Nope! They would just adjust their working/wake hours. Instead of the Eastern USA being open from 0900-1700, they would be open from 0400-1300. BTW, calculating that time difference was easy since it was on 24-hour time.
Three, we need to change over to the Julian calendar. What the hell are months even?? They don't serve any purpose other than to sell calendars, maintain the legacy of ancient emperors that dissolved democracies, and gaslight us by telling us that Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec mean 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. Get out of here with that crap. We're not buying it. Also, you know who else doesn't use 12-hour time and months?? The US military. They use GMT and Julian calendars for operational matters. Why? Because it makes sense for a global system to use the same thing everywhere!!
Fourth and lastly, we need to switch the year count to the Human Era. Stop with this whole year based on Jesus' supposed birth or death**. Do we even know if it's based on his birth or death? It doesn't matter. Oh, but historians use Before Common Era and Common Era. Okay...and who's life happens to line up perfectly with the split? That's like saying that the American Civil Rights movement ended racism in the country, yet there's still racial segregation and oppression. This is ridiculous. Civilization is letting the life of one person decide when it started?! What about everyone that lived before Jesus? Abroham? Cleopatra? Mark Antony (the full Roman, not the Romantic Puerto Rican)? the Buddha Llama? Sohcrateez? Confusion? Ea-nāṣir?! The correct year is when human civilization started. We are currently in the year 12,023 of the Human Era.
That's it! We've had enough of this oppression propagated by Big Time, including Rolex, Casio, Fossil, and grandfather. This movement starts right here👇, right now👇! One☝🏿humanity. One☝🏾period in the day inconsiderate of the meridian. One☝🏽variable for the date in a year. One☝🏼love. One☝🏻time.
Edit: Right now at the time of this edit, it is 5:00 pm on October 25, 2023 EST (daylights savings time), or better yet, 12023-298-2100 (year-date-time). 31 characters (excluding that it's daylights savings time!) vs. 14. Look at how simple 😮
We are all one system of humanity functioning on the same time, regardless of what anyone says. Right now is right now, no matter what we call it. It's time we all progress to a better future at/on the same time.
They would just adjust their working/wake hours. Instead of the Eastern USA being open from 0900-1700, they would be open from 0400-1300.
Isn't that just time zones again?
No because if you're talking to someone on the other side of the planet (thanks internet), you can schedule some sort of event with them without having to look up the time difference before hand
Yeah but you need to know when they'd be sleeping, for example, so you still need to figure something out related to time differences.
You both just have present your working or availability hours beforehand. Honestly this works better for me than someone assuming I'm available for an 8am meeting. I live on the US east coast, but my sleeping schedule is more west coast.
Ok, but businesses run about 8 to 17 local no matter where you are in the world, that's much easier to figure out with time zones than having to check the business's schedule every time you need to contact one.
Yeah I’m in the us east but work in a factory so I have to explain it anyways
What if you don't want to ask for some specific reason? Time zones!
Checkmate!
Nope, that was a check! The reason of not wanting to ask for availability periods still exists with time zones.
I never understand the anti timezone argument... Right now I know that across the world they'll be working somewhere between 8h and 17h local like anywhere else in the world, so I do some quick math and I know when that is in relation to me. Without time zones I need to be actively informed at what time someone across the world is working in order to know when I can contact them...
But you are making assumptions which are not really true anywhere. Working hours I Spain and Germany are already white different. Main reason is of course that they share the same time zone by law, but are not geographically in the same time zone. But there are some additional differences in culture which extend this effect.
Sure, but it's still true that businesses operate during hours similar to any other places in the world. Even in Spain, ~9 to ~14 then ~17 to ~20, the day time hours are still in the "rest of the world bracket".
Sure, but that still means you are not reaching someone by phone at work during 4 hours of you previously mentioned 8-17 Windows.
As someone currently working from Ireland with my usual office in Germany (laptop still configured this way) with a Team from India and DST ending next week, I would prefer to drop the calculations and just remember when each colleague approximately comes online. That is not the same for each colleague and day anyways.
But if my plane lands at 9am local time, I know it's the morning at least and I can plan my day appropriately (stores will be open or opening soon instead of just closing for example)
That information won't be lost, though. It just would be expressed differently. They are no longer in a +8 hour time zone, which given your own location in a +1 hour zone would lead to a most likely open time of 8 - 8 + 1 = 1 til 17 - 8 + 1 = 10 your time, but in an area where opening hours are most likely between 0100 and 1000.
There is still a lookup, but no longer a lookup of time difference of the area, but a lookup of usual business hours in the area.
But right now business hours (which is what time zones are used for the most) are the same everywhere, that's much easier than figuring out if this part is India has its business hours from 3 to 11 or from 4 to 12.
I would say not much different from looking up whether they are in the +0530 or +0630 part of India. I guess the perception of convenience also depends on what you are used to seeing.
But no matter which one they're in, you know that by calling at 11 local (no matter if you're using the right time zone) you'll be calling during business hours, no need to check "What are normal business hours in India?"
There's always one check in that situation. Whether it's business hours or timezone difference. And you still need to check business hours even in our current system, so might as well just simplify it (which of course isn't happening any time soon).
Better yet let business hours be based on daylight, no need to wonder if things are open or not based on the sun's position in the sky.
That's always kind of been an illusion. For lots of places, especially around the equator, it gets hot enough that expecting everyone will work the same 9-5 schedule, and businesses will all be open at the same time, is kind of stupid. Places like arizona, it would make sense if instead everyone used a siesta schedule, or if the schedule was shifted way forward in the day, from the later night to early morning, in the much cooler parts. And that's not even something that's really dependent on time zones, that's just dependent on variable climate. I see elimination of time zones, as more of an admittal that how we track that sort of thing is arbitrary anyways, so it's probably better in my mind to eliminate any pretense of it being an objective system.
I pointed out in another comment that even with a split schedule, the morning/day part matches pretty well with what we expect when thinking business hours (9 to 14 in Spain) and your suggestion to work late in the day to early morning is just stupid, that's how you get widespread health issues, depression and reduced productivity from people trying to with outside their body schedule. I know something about it, I worked evening/night shifts for 12 years.
I meant less evening/night shifts and more like. get up at 5:00 and stay up until 3:00 pm or so, with work obviously not being in the latter portion of the day, which is when it really starts to heat up ime. Seasonal depression and other related health issues we can cure with vitamin D, as they've been doing in the scandi countries since like the 70's, so I don't really understand how you'd be getting more health issues. If anything I would think that would be reduced as people working physical labor jobs would be less prone to heat stroke and exhaustion. You know, in places where you're working outdoors in 110 degree weather, hottest part of the day, after having already worked for like 5 hours. At the very least I think a siesta schedule would make more sense, which there's maybe a little bit more historical precedent for.
Look into cancer risks for people working nights, there's more to it than vitamin D and there's long term sleep issues that come with working nights for years, even after going back to a day schedule.
I thought what you meant was people switching to work from something like 2am to 10am, 5 or 6 am to 1 or 2pm is perfectly feasible and not that unusual (especially 6am to 2pm).
Kind of, but not exactly. Those are the hours their businesses are open. However, this takes one variable out of the formula, which is calculating the time difference. Rather than having to know the time difference and business hours, you'd only have to know the business hours. Also, it would be even easier if you just shared your availability, which is what matters anyway, but you don't have to calculate the time difference. There's only one variable to communicate, which is the universal time they would be available. It's super simple.
Julian calendar? No that's silly. New calendar, 13 months, each is 28 days. You get one intercalary day for New Year's, and a bonus one following our existing leap year schedule
The symmetry calendars are better. They don't break the 7 day week cycle, they instead have a 52 week common year, a 53 week leap year, and a complex leap year formula
I would expect the leap week to be part of the end of year holiday
I'm SO glad that in my country the 24H format is the de facto standard! There are very few things I like in this shithole, but the ISO-8601 dates and the 24H time format is definitely one of them.
Where did you get the idea that the Julian calendar doesn't have months? The Gregorian calendar we use now made a tiny tweak to it to reduce drift, but is nearly the same.
I don't remember specifically where I got the idea, but when I was in the military, we used it for operations and never used the month. We would solely state the day of the year. If that has another name, then that's what I'm talking about. A yearly calendar where the date is the day of the year in sequential order without months.
The Julian calendar is the one that has no special rule for leap years. It is currently October the 12th in the Julian calendar.
The calendar that is used all around the world is the Gregorian calendar.
What you mean is called the ordinal date (at least by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar, see the disambiguation note at the top)
I think you’re talking about this, which the article says used to called Julian date
Yeah that part didn't make sense... If they proposed a 13 months, 28 days/month calendar or one without months then ok, but the Julian calendar is just the Gregorian calendar shifted 13 days...
Fine. What's the term for a calendar that labels every day of the year in sequential order without using any other divisions like months?
Day of the year calendar, but you could look into the seasonal calendar, the international fixed calendar and ISO week date.
I'd like to give some context here: the julian calendar is the older one that doesn't take into account that leap years are more complicated that just every fourth year. It was still a good idea to standardize the calendar. Before that, the months were shorter and the Senate decided were to put arbitrary days to make it fit
He means Julian day number. It's unrelated to the historic calendar
GMT is a time zone! UTC.
You're always calling me out on my bullshit. I'm sick of this crap! 😋
I like how your suggestions successively became more radical.
But, Julian calendar? Still a rookie I see.
The calendar year has 13 months with 28 days each, divided into exactly 4 weeks (13 × 28 = 364). An extra day added as a holiday at the end of the year (after December 28, i.e. equal December 31 Gregorian), sometimes called "Year Day", does not belong to any week and brings the total to 365 days.
I suspect about 1% of the world cares enough to even have this discussion though.
I kind of half-heartedly agree with most of this, but the human era one is kind of stupid. I don't really care about jesus's birth or death or whatever, I just have no reason to add an extra 1 to the date for the next 10,000 years until I switch it to a 2. Mostly because I'll be dead, but also because such a point would be so far in the future that I don't know that any of this argument will be relevant at all.
Edit: also, you forgot the biggest one, which kind of goes along with months but not really: seasons. Lots of places don't have four distinct seasons, they just have a wet season and a dry season, or a dry kind of summer and then a wet winter and then a dry winter, or whatever, which influences local ecology a lot. Moulding these around to roughly fit whatever any individual location's season is, is kind of stupid. It's better just to say what the actual season is, it's less confusing, Everyone knows what everyone else means, it's more specific. People have been tricked into thinking that the four seasons are a universal thing, they're not, that's false.
The same can be said about the thousands in the current year. We'll basically wait 1000 years just to change the 2 into a 3.
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You forgot decimal time!
We should stop this nonsense of having 24 hours a day, 60 minutes per hours, 60 seconds per minutes, 1000 ms per seconds.
Instead we switch to switch to decimal time: 10 hours a day, 100 minutes per hours and 100 second per minutes.
12 divides nicer and evener than 10. If only evolution had given us two extra fingers we'd use base twelve numbers and everything would be better.
Some cultures do/did count to 12 on their fingers using their thumb as a pointer and counting the spaces between their knuckles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Origin
Or just switch to using base 12
Why not a base 16 then ?
12 is a superior highly composite number, which means it's easier to divide without running into fractions or decimals.
Interesting, I did not knew the concept
Yes! All this plus International Fixed Calendar and then all date issues will be solved forever!
Or until we start going to space for real
That would require redefining the second or no longer linking the day with the rotation of the Earth.
we need to change over to the Julian calendar
That's where the names of the months of the Gregorian calendar (which is what we're using) come from, the Julian calender got them from the old Roman calendar (which was inaccurate as fuck). The main relevant change in the Gregorian reform is the spacing of leap years, making it drift less than the Julian one. It's still drifting a bit and a fix was proposed back in the 19th century but never adopted. We'll probably revisit the topic in the decade before the year 4000 where it's actually going to matter.
If you want a sane calendar try the Discordian one. Though arguably St. Tib's day shouldn't be right in the middle of a season. I'd suggest considering it the 0th day of Chaos, giving an additional hangover day for New Year's every once in a while, also, set the St. Tib's day years to the same stuff as the aforementioned reformed Gregorian, whith an asterisks saying "change as needed once the earth starts falling into the sun for real". The starting year (1 YOLD is 1166 BC) is fine because it's completely random.
Me texting my friends...
Me: What are you doing for Conflufux?
Friend: What is that?
Me: Bro, Confusion 50
Friend: I don't know what you're talking about.
Me: Typical
I propose everything be based on factors of 10 - 10 hours per day, 100 or 1000 days per year, etc. None of this 'basing time and calendar off of easily and widely recognizable natural phenomenon!'
I'm a fan of 13x28 days, 1 day in between.
I hope you've gotten your Kurzgesagt calendar like I have!
Killing DST and establishing metric in the USA is the one selfish thing I'd like to see Biden do before leaving office permanently.
The human era calendar is still based on the supposed birth of Jesus though, it just adds 10k to the number.
According to the video I linked, it's not though. It's based on an estimate of the Agricultural Revolution. I think keeping it attached to the year 2023 is a just nice compromise that allows us to keep some fluidity between our previous year-system and Christians that would be upset. Everyone wins and we could move forward from this outdated system.
That's still based on Jesus's birth year, it's not the same as saying something like "We're trying to standardize, we know the agricultural revolution happened about 12k years ago, let's go back 12k years from the biggest standardization event in human history, i.e. the metre convention, that means current year is 12148."
No shift in the day of the year (or the date/month in other words)
I support a move to 24 hour time. I'm sick of waking up from a nap checking the clock to see if I overslept, and it's like "It's 5." 5 what? Did I sleep 1 hour or 13?
Can't check the sun. I live in the north. The sun lies.
Why don't you just set your clock to 24h? I've never had a digital clock without that option
Some of my clocks have the option, some don't. I find it inconvenient to have different clocks set to different things making my brain have to mentally convert between eachother. Not to mention having to mentally convert the time every time I need to give a time to somebody else. It'd just be easier if the whole world was on 24 hour by default.
In most of the world, 24h is the default. Though being able to convert is still necessary, since analog clocks still exist. It really isn't too difficult to get used to.
Agree but I sheepishly like getting lost in the Gregorian calendar for the simple fact that the Julian makes it all too evident how quickly life is passing me by and it makes me anxious as hell.
Right now at the time of this edit, it is 5:00 pm on October 25, 2023 EST (daylights savings time), or better yet, 12023-298-2100
I support going over to stardates. Anyway we'll need to do this once we leave Earth so we might as well get used to it now.
Implying we'd ever get off this planet before wiping ourselves out. :/
Why would we still be counting Earth years when we leave Earth?
I support your support
I like it! Meanwhile, the US still hasn't managed to convert to the metric system. Imagine the confusion if the rest of the world decided to adopt this time system and we didn't. Oh god
The US converted the only part of its economy and culture that matters to metric, and that's it's military!
I am 1010% on board with this and will be using no other system going forward
I'm onboard with first moving to this, and then decimal time, aka metric time.
in all seriousness, I'm a big fan of metric time. change it so there are 100,000 seconds in a day (currently the figure is 86400) - the duration of a second would only be 864/1000 of present. a minute can be 100 seconds, which would be equivalent to 86.4 seconds now, and there could be 50 minutes in an hour (4320 current seconds, compared to 3600, or 72 minutes) and 20 hours in a day.
it would be a bit of a shift, but I don't think it would need impossible, and just think of the advantages.
no, really, please think of some advantages. I'm drawing a blank.
I apologise as I too am drawing a blank, but apparently it'll be more conducive to time zone removal according to ChatGPT.
Also metric time gives 10 hours of 100 minutes each in a day, not 20 hours of 50 minutes.
that's another option, but we're used to having 12-16 hours of daylight, having that fall to 5-6 would be a much bigger shock than 10-12.
not to mention having every hour last the equivalent of 144 current minutes would make the hours really drag on.
Yeah, but so will the ordinal date calendar with no months, and the shorter seconds but longer minutes. I don't think the discomfort is an argument that's entirely valid here, the transition of course shouldn't be abrupt but the end goal should be the ideal version, that we should aim for and not the midway steps.
I'm with you on most things.
Two counter points though
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a normal date is already 14 characters: 2023-10-25-2100
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while I dislike the religious connection of the year numbering, I actually don't care about it. And adding ten thousand to it doesn't change anything. It's like putting a spoiler on a slow car and then pretending it's better now. No it isn't you are just expressing your desire for something better in a shitty way that is actually worse. Seriously, adding a 1 to the year is a useless change.
If you desperately want to change year zero, there apparently exists the Julian period and Julian day number:
The Julian day number (JDN) is the integer assigned to a whole solar day in the Julian day count starting from noon Universal Time, with Julian day number 0 assigned to the day starting at noon on Monday, January 1, 4713 BC, proleptic Julian calendar (November 24, 4714 BC, in the proleptic Gregorian calendar), a date at which three multi-year cycles started (which are: Indiction, Solar, and Lunar cycles) and which preceded any dates in recorded history. For example, the Julian day number for the day starting at 12:00 UT (noon) on January 1, 2000, was 2451545.
Your "normal date" is ambiguous - which time zone?
I'm in favor of global UTC as well, so the same as your example date.
The point was more in comparison to the 31 character claim, which is not a fair comparison when you spell out the name of the month.
Op forgot a few characters to ensure proper iso date and time format:
20231025T210000Z
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if you look at the julian calendar what will you see? months. I don't think you know enough about the julian calendar to say that we should switch to it
The most amount of effort for the least return of actually helping human beings.
And that's just your post itself, so far.
Can I ask what you think the Julian calendar is?
International travel would be way more confusing.
If I land somewhere at 9am local time I know that the bank will be open when I land and it will be day time.
If everyone is on the same time and I travel somewhere it will be a complete surprise (or I will have to figure it out before hand) whether or not it will be the middle of the night or the middle of the day.
But who cares? Everything would be open 8am-5pm GMT regardless if it's sunny or dark outside. Go visit the Grand Canyon at midnight, it's the same as at sunrise or at noon!
No it wouldn't, generally it's healthier for humans to sleep at night, so businesses are going to trend towards operating during sunlight hours.
What the hell are months even?? They don’t serve any purpose other than
They used to be used to note the change of the weather from one season to another, in a general range (not a literal single solstice date) sort of way.
However it does seem like the seasons are slipping in comparison to the calendar, Summer starting later and ending later, etc.
I kept trying to disagree but I couldn’t. It’ll suck but it’ll be worth it. We should metricate the English speaking world while we do it. And no the uk has not metricated, they just pretend to have
One☝🏿humanity. One☝🏾period in the day inconsiderate of the meridian. One☝🏽variable for the date in a year. One☝🏼love. One☝🏻time.
Children will be blessed for
Killing Of Educated Adults
Who Ignore 4 Simultaneous
Days Same Earth Rotation.
Practicing Evil ONEness -
Upon Earth Of Quadrants.
Evil Adult Crime VS Youth.
Supports Lie Of Integration.
1 Educated Are Most Dumb.
Not 1 Human Except Dead 1.
Man Is Paired, 2 Half 4 Self.
I have no idea what you're talking about, but I like it.
It’s apparently a reference to this “”theory””
yo, that shit is hilarious!! 😆
You must appreciate China, they're all on one time zone.
I've been using 24 hour UTC for a few days and one big problem I've noticed is days of ðe week. Where I live, days end in ðe afternoon (around 1800 local time) so I get confused about what day of ðe week it is in ðe evening.
It's all well and good, but can you add to the list the US just fucking changing to SI units instead of the stupid ass English system? (Since we're on the topic of the things that will never happen.)
I'd go farther and make sure everyone works 365 days a year, 0800-0500 GMT daily. No exceptions!!!