Does Antarctica really need different time zones? Can't the 12 people who live there just all agree that it's time to fucking leave?
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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If they get close enough to the pole, they can walk across timezones within minutes.
Still, people say time travel is unproven
get rid of timezones. i don't mind if what used to be 0800 is then 2100. i'll get used to it.
As much as timezones are a pain (I'm a programmer who recently finished working on an international calendar for an app), I don't think getting rid of timezones is a great idea. https://qntm.org/abolish
I think a much better goal would be getting rid of daylight savings. THAT causes so much headache for little reason nowadays
The first argument is silly. You could simply search "Sunrise time Melbourne".
The second argument is also silly. Some people do work jobs overnight, and they don't say they work 19:00-24:00 + 0:00-2:00
They simply say "I'm working Friday from 19 till 2"
Third argument is the same as the first. Look up "sunrise time Melbourne".
Besides, a single format timezone works best when the people who use it are prepared to let technology dictate floating values.
Sunrise time is always changing, and our bodies have evolved to wake with the sun, not with some arbitrary number.
That's why I use Suntimes to wake up.
I set my alarm to "sunrise minus one" and I always wake up one hour before sunrise.
I work from home, so work always starts for me "sunrise plus one".
I set my alarm to tell me to sleep at "sunrise minus 10" and I get 8.5 hours sleep which is fine for me.
I definitely agree some of the issues they cite are more complicated than they need to be
It would be awesome to base schedules around sunrise (especially sleep, your routine sounds very nice), but the wild variance the further you go from the equator might make that unruly.
Depending on the time of year my schedule would "shift" around multiple hours due to latitude, people in (southern) Norway would have to shift around 6ish hours, all the way to the extreme arctic circle where the sun doesn't rise/set depending on season
I think I could adapt where I live, but I feel like "time of day" would lose all meaning without also knowing time of sunrise, whereas right now I can be reasonably certain how "active" the world is in any given timezone at 9:00 or 23:00
It is definitely interesting to think how different it would be to base everything around sunrise (you'd never really say let's meet at x time, it would always be relative to sunrise), I just struggle in thinking people would be able to break the routine of relying on nice round numbers for time
As I mentioned, we need to rely on technology to manage these things to be efficient, as even something like altitude changes the "sunrise time" - so booking appointments and meetings would be too hard.
It's a fantasy for the most past, we would never see its implementation in our lifetime.
Still very cool to think about
And thank you for the app link, if I ever get flexible enough hours I wonder if that sleep schedule would help my somewhat unhealthy relationship with sleep
Definitely recommended. I've been using it for two years now, and I noticed the seasonal changes don't seem as bad because my alarms don't change depending on daylight savings time (the real enemy here which needs to be abolished).
you go to bed at 7pm in June?
Dude, I live in Australia. My winter is your summer. So yes, sometimes.
Except for right now it's 9pm and I've been drinking.
Don't judge me.
The only argument that convinced me against that, would be that in some places, there are people who would have to change the date in the middle of their day, like, imagine working at an office and in the morning you're signing the date as the 14th and in the evening as the 15th. Having two different dates during the same "human day" kinda makes dates a bit weird, and I get that
Here is what it is currently
Happy Pride Month
China won't play along. All time is the same time in China.
Honestly, we should just do it like the original model of zones worked: 1 time zone per zone of latitude, i.e. each time zone aligned with each 15-degree-apart meridian.
None of this "Oh we used to be part of [Input Empire Name Here] so let's keep our time zones the same as them." Damned colonial bullshit...
Edit: Longitude, not latitude. Lol. Was thinking it but wrote the opposite. Haha.
Longitude, not Latitude.
Sorry, that's what I meant. I was thinking of lines of longitude but said the opposite. Lol. My brain does that sometimes.
Yeah, being a former science teacher, correcting it was a knee-jerk reaction. :-)
It's all good. Thanks for correcting me! It needed to be said!
Hey, you don't even need to be a part of [Input Empire Here], you can just be a Hitler megafan and change your time zone to impress Senpai (ahem, Spain)
True.
It's not all like that. Some just change to be able to do more business with their neighbours.
I particularly like China's model where they just say fuck timezones and put the whole country on one single zone. Everyone is just aware that the sun rises at different times in different parts of the country.
See, I get why they did that, and I'm sure I could get used to that, but... I don't know. It just seems weird to me, and I'm second shift. Lol.
Hell, it's probably just because I'm not used to it, frankly. Familiarity Bias is fun, you know? Hehe.
why not have a single global timezone and people change their local numbers.
e.g. if you life in hawaii you stand up at 11pm and if people in russia work until 8am.
It already exists and is called UTC. I worked in an office that provided “follow the Sun” technical support, we had offices in France, Germany, Washington, New York, Australia, and everything ran on UTC time. Much easier to coordinate meetings and shift handovers. Took a while to learn to think in UTC time as well as local time, though.
Would be cool to just dismiss local time, as well
I’m for it!
BC already has two time zones: pst and Fort St. John follows mst.
Have you ever wondered how life might be different if we kept 2 times, a local solar time for the things that do not matter and an official or coordinated time?
I'm disabled, and have little reason to keep coordinated time, so I'm biased. I've thought about trying true solar time as solar noon is not well coordinated with my time zone.
I find the periodicity of noon has a psychological impact on my circadian rhythm that I do not care to bend myself to fit like a slave to a train schedule, but I might appreciate a compromise of bending time to fit my rhythm against the natural Solar cycle.
a local solar time for the things that do not matter and an official or coordinated time?
We basically have this already in the form of UTC+0 (GMT). For most cases where organizations need to coordinate operations across time zones, they just have everyone use GMT.
Florida panhandle should just succumb to eastern time for logistics sake imo
Similar for Japan.
I had this great idea last night on the piss.
Less to do with time zones and more aimed at daylight savings since I live near the equator and we don't have it but I want to move to the cold but waking up and going to work dark and finishing work in the dark shits me.
My solution, rather then move the time we speed up the time so we start work at sunrise and end the day with 2 hours of light left.
Sure it will suck when the sun sets at 9pm but it means short work days when it sets early
Where I live, that would mean tomorrow I'd work over 14 hours.
Even if we adjust it so it's 1 hour of sunlight before work* and 3 hours after (for an 8-hour day on average), I'd work 12 hours tomorrow, but only 4 hours in December. No thanks!
*For health, sunlight is most important for waking up, so 1 hour of sunlight before work gives just 1 hour to wake up and get to work. Anything less is sacrificing health for evening sunlight.)
Edit: It would probably be good for SAD in the winter, though, encouraging people to be outside during the daylight hours instead of at work. I could get on board with reduced work hours in winter. ;)