"Standard" time can get bent
24Seriously who actually wants the sun to go down EARLIER?!? I don’t care if it’s dark at work I want to at least have some light at the end of the day for as long as possible. Don’t need it when stuck inside…
Never mind it’s 2020 and changing clocks is pointless regaurdless of which you prefer.
I don’t see the thread for this year and it’s a better distraction than other things lol
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I see your point, but I work in a west-facing store with a window front, and I like the winter sunsets a lot. I understand that’s a very specific, niche experience that does nothing for you or anyone else who is not a co-worker. But it’s nice, is all I’m saying. Yesterday’s sunset was gorgeous, behind the power lines and the used car dealership.
@mossygreen I’m pretty sure youd and still get that all winter we’d just be able to be outside for it a little longer? Lol. Just saying. Goes down now at 530 before work is over so no time to do anything.
@unksol I guess…
@mossygreen I liked to go check the roof of the mall a decade ago. At least got you over the power lines/parking lot a little. I won’t disagree sunrise/sunset is enjoyable if you have to be at work anyway and can catch it…
I could use November to still get some things done after work. Or better, take kids to the park/playground if I had any. Had a friend stay here a few times with her kids and you squeeze that in this time of year before it’s just too dark to go out after work.
Plus just in the yard you can teach them to pick up sticks to make a fire
so you don’t have to pick them up lol
@mossygreen @unksol
Or pay them by the bag to pick up monkey balls (or other crap that doesn’t rake well) as they are almost impossible to rake. If the kids are young enough they probably throw as many as they pick up but are usually thrilled they are being paid to do something “easy”. Doing that in the dark is much harder too.
On a related topic:
Try this stunt if your yard is full of pine trees. I used to live somewhere that this was the case. We’d end up with about 45-50 bags (55 gallon bags) full of 7" pine needles. OMG what a PITA to rake. Then I got smart. Took the kid about 8-10 min to fill a bag. As long as you pick out sticks and pine cones and do it before leaves can get mixed in you can sell them to gardeners. I’d put on craigslist this was a kid enterprise to earn money. $3/bag (all I had to pay for was the bags and that is way cheaper than paying a kid to rake and/or less painful than forcing a kid to rake even if I was working along side). This was about 1/2 the price as what it would be to buy them commercially. We’d sell out in 2-3 days. I had to point out she was making $18/hour and suddenly she was on board with no complaints.
One year a (family owned) commercial gardening service came by and bought everything we had (after checking one bag for “quality”. He put in an order for as many more as we could rake. My kid went door to door, raked yards for free (some people didn’t believe this was real LOL) and made a bit over $350 that fall. Another year she was taking orders and did the same thing only raking to order once we ran out of them in our yard.
@Kidsandliz Brilliant!
I wish there was a market for dead maple leaves around here.
@macromeh Yeah that would be nice. Maybe if you mulch them first? Of course that requires space and more work than tricking your kid into raking pine needles for free. LOL
@mossygreen sunsets are phenomenal over the airfield where I work. #AirportLyfe
@mossygreen
Sounds very scenic.
Almost like the “scenic byway” (really Interstate) they built here some years ago, after much contention about protecting the scenic beauty of the area.
I do see their point. It would be a shame to disrupt the natural beauty of the city dump, two automobile scrapyards, and the sewage treatment plant.
@jbartus Oh man, airfield sunsets sound incredible.
@Kidsandliz got plenty of black walnut trees and technically they could be picked up and sold. Places buy them but not really worth it. Maybe with some kids. The walnuts are low enough in the yard after they drop the mower doesn’t hit them so meh. Then I think the squirrels take them eventually. Might be worth picking up some day for recipes.
@jbartus @mossygreen What is really incredible are sunsets from “tall ships” at sea, from mountain tops, when at the grand canyon standing at the rim and other places with a lot of open sky… As a kid we arrived at the grand canyon near sunset and so of course we walked to the edge at a look out point. We saw a spectacular sunset in the west, a thunderstorm with lightening in the east and a double rainbow. And of course add to that the colors in the grand canyon and the entire thing was oil painting beautiful. I think that is the single most amazing sunset I have ever seen. Ever.
@unksol I had 3 walnut trees in a yard once. Got the stain on the bottom of my shoes and stained the white rug (in what universe should a landlord put a white rug in a rental?!!). I used scissors to trim the permanent stain out of the rug.
Why not add another hour and enjoy even more time before the sun goes down. How do your kids like standing in the dark waiting for the bus to come by and bring them to school?
Because it us all about you, right?
My point is time is simply a number and everyone’s perception of it is unique. It is simply a common frame of reference to interact with one another. If you don’t need to interact with anyone else, the number on the clock doesn’t matter.
@mike808 because my imaginary kids love standing in the dark which they would do most of the year regardless? Lol. But yes I would personally prefer that since id take them and the bus stops at the house anyway when I can’t so they’d be inside. it just takes FOREVER to get there for the middle schoolers. I’m well aware thats not true for everyone and people would have many other considerations. And I don’t really care for the way the school does their hours anyway
You’ll notice I specifically said regaurdless of preference changing them is pointless/arbitrary.
@mike808 My kids would prefer the daylight in the afternoon.
@unksol Maybe we should use metric clocks that have 10 hours of a daytime “am” and 10 hours of nighttime “pm” , with 100 minutes in each hour, and 100 seconds in a minute?
Or just move the clocks ahead 2 hours for even more afternoon/evening time during daylight.
We’re in vehement agreement that it is arbitrary and pointless (with respect to there being a “proper” notion of time).
@mike808 What do you think kids in Alaska, Canada, and the Nordic countries do? When all the light you get is dusk from 10 to 3, kids go to and from school in the dark, and I don’t hear about dozens of children killed on their way to school every winter. Besides, your comment made it all about YOU; those of us without kids don’t care if it’s dark in the morning.
@lisagd @mike808 I lived in NW Ontario one winter. That daylight from10-3 (which is what it was where I was) made me crave bright light. Of course when I worked there that summer darkness from about 11:30pm to 4ish am wasn’t bad (was working in outdoor adventure and it is far easier for kids to cook, put up tents, etc. in the light) so there are trade offs. What came with that trade off though was leaves came out on the trees the third week of June and it would snow/freeze in mid August. The black flies, mosquitoes and no-see-ums would come out in force then too in a density not really seen further south in the USA.
@mike808
Gotta love how, even though it would be much better for kids to get up later for school, they have to get up so early. It’s a matter of convenience for the parents’ employment situation. Which is somehow more important than their child’s education.
Don’t care
Just don’t change it
we’ll adapt quickly and like peeps in Arizona, we will love it.
Florida voted against the change. Several years ago. I’m still waiting for it to happen.
@RiotDemon I’m pretty sure Florida voted for year-round DST. The only problem is, Florida can’t actually do that without the approval of national congress–and they’d much rather bicker among themselves than get anything done.
@Weboh yeah I think it was DST. It seemed like it made more sense to have more light in the evenings.
@RiotDemon yes, what florida voted to do is keep DST year round… the net effect would just shift them into the Atlantic Time Zone…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Time_Zone
@earlyre @RiotDemon Yea, I guess it could be worse. We share the Mountain time zone with Colorado, and SLC gets more evening light than Denver does.
@RiotDemon @Weboh Looks like this one died in committee last year.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1601/text?q={"search"%3A["daylight+saving+time"]}&r=3&s=1
Maybe if there was some graft or corruption tied to it… ?
I also wish we would just do daylight savings time year round. In addition to the fact that its just depressing for it to already be dark when your work day is over. I would like some daylight to do things that require it (yardwork, playing outside with the kids when they were that age, etc.)
I understand that its a preference and others are going to have differing opinions, but claiming the number doesn’t matter is total hogwash. If you are required to work until 5:00 PM or X o’clock on a daily basis, the number is no longer just an arbitrary label. (Yes, you could get a different job, but that just further reinforces the fact that the number does matter)
Me! Me! We go walking in the morning. There are no sidewalks. Streets are wide and people think 25mph is the minimum speed.
We don’t walk when it’s dark.
But like anything, my preference is based on my experiences.
@lisaviolet you could always go full reflective vest. Maybe get some flashing lights.
@unksol Oh, please. Then they’d have something to aim for.
@lisaviolet I don’t go out walking but I should… or try and run again… The roads I use to town have no shoulder. I.e. car coming get in the grass… Maybe it’s just me but I always slow down a little and get in the opposite lane if possible for people/bikes/amish… I never liked being buzzed
Although bikes not in the lane with traffic. And people not walking/running against traffic do annoy me.
Time is just a construct (yeah, I know, with a shit ton of implications). I don’t give much of a fuck how we label certain benchmarks. But I love the dark. Truly.
@joelmw While you may love the nighttime, (as do I), you may not have ever experienced absolute total darkness. Personally, I found it quite unsettling…
When I was in a 3 week long geological field mapping course back in the 70s, we had to locate & map out specific layers of a rock formation, which included exploring several abandoned limestone mines, sometimes following old tunnels & shafts for thousands of feet, where the only light was from your helmet mounted carbide lamp. These old lamps ran on acetylene gas that was produced by water slowly dripping on calcium carbide inside the a brass chamber. They typically ran for around 3 hours per filling of water & carbide. (They worked well back in the days before LED Flashlights & headlamps.)
One time, my headlamp suddenly went out and I was plunged into a darkness so absolute, it was downright terrifying. I couldn’t see my hand an inch away from my face.
It took me only a couple of panicked minutes groping around in my knapsack to locate my back-up flashlight, but I think that those might have been the most terrifying two or three minutes of my life.
But it was a good lesson to keep my back-up flashlight a lot more accessible!!!
I was in middle school during the energy crisis when they had daylight savings time year round. It was dark at the bus stop. It sucked.
@sammydog01 Worse than getting off the school bus to a sunset?
@Limewater I don’t know where you live that sunset is at 3 pm. But yes, getting off the bus at sunset would be better than standing at the bus stop in pitch black morning coldness. Middle schoolers don’t drink coffee.
@Limewater @sammydog01 I get that but did you ever do the math on how many days that saved you cause I’d bet most of it would still be in the dark.
Granted I never took the bus to school. And when I had a middle schooler here the bus stopped at the end of the drive but it was something like an hour or 90 minue thing to pick everyone up. Vs a 20 minute thing to drop him off… 10 minutes for him instead of an hour+
Bus can bring him home just fine. I have to work and kids can socialize.
I fully understand this does not apply to the way getting to school works in town. Never mind cities.
@Limewater @unksol I’m just saying been there, done that, it was awful. No teenager wants to see the sun rise during first period.
@sammydog01 I also remember that year long DST well. That was Nixon’s “Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act”, which ran from January - November 1974.
But at least you had a bus to wait for. I had to walk 3/4 mile in the dark to middle school.
@ELJAY @sammydog01 but was it at least uphill both ways?
DST year round pls.
@f00l Why not Reg time year round
Fun fact! Changing clocks kills people. Literally. Every spring hospitals see a 24% increase in heart attacks the Monday after the switch. There is a corresponding decrease (21%) in the fall. Springtime also sees an increase in fatal car crashes & workplace accidents. Let’s just pick one (I vote DST) & stick with it.
@greenroomjah Yep, and 73.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot. DST is a community health crisis.
@greenroomjah @Willijs3 I thought it was 79%.
@blaineg @greenroomjah @Willijs3 The other 2/3 come from talk radio show hosts.
@blaineg @greenroomjah @mike808 But only 24% of those hosts actually read the newspaper.
@greenroomjah @mike808 @Willijs3 My question is: If the talk radio hosts are so smart, why haven’t they solved even ONE problem?
@blaineg @greenroomjah @mike808 @Willijs3
I so agree!
@greenroomjah I vote that we just skip DST totally
It sounds like multiple states have passed bills to get off of switching the clocks twice a year, but it’s all stuck in congress at least until there is a democratic majority, which doesn’t seem to be happening this time around.
You don’t get more sunlight. You get the same amount of sunlight. Whether your clock says five or six when the sun goes down, the amount of hours of daylight doesn’t change.
I would prefer if we eliminated time zones and ran off UTC. I’d work from one PM to ten PM. But I’d still work the same hours with the same amount of daylight depending on the time of year. I’d go to bed at seven AM. There wouldn’t be trouble scheduling shit with people in different time zones.
Get rid of time zones! 28 hour days!
Soap is a scam! They start using it on you when you are a baby without a choice! Scrub yourself with warm water! Don’t sorry the Ivory overlords!
Don’t eat vegetables! They allow the lizard people to control your mind!
The Earth is hollow!
@j37hr0 Seems like the only reasonable solution is a ringworld, Orbital, or Dyson Sphere.
And here I thought that this might be a story about John Titor.
@G1 So, did old John have anything useful to say about 2020?
@blaineg Get proficient with a shotgun.
(This is all in fun. Google John Titor when you have “rabbit-hole” kind of time. Good distraction from the election, maybe.)
@blaineg @G1 is it going to get me on a watch list? Lol
@blaineg @unksol No.
An original viral story about a time-traveler. He was part of the year 2034 shotgun Brigade from Kansas, or something. Post WW3.
He bent time to come back for an old IBM computer.
A story that was written and distributed by fax machine, put onto Usenet, and eventually this thing called the World Wide Web.
You are already on most of the lists anyway.
@blaineg @G1 nah I keep my chemistry experiments to myself
@blaineg @G1 ah shit!
But in general being good with a shotgun is just fun. If used correctly. Shooting skeet is fun.
@blaineg @G1 @unksol
SAVE THE SKEETS!
- Click & Clack, the Tappet Brothers
It really does not matter where I live. I spend 3 months going to work and coming home from work in the dark. And yes it is a day job.
Utah passed a bill for year round DST earlier this year, but it will never take effect.
First it would require Congress to change Federal law. Apparently you can stay on standard time year round as Arizona does, but there’s no provision for doing it with DST.
Second, it requires 4 of the 5 surrounding states to also adopt year round DST before Utah can do it.
I’m in favor of it, but I’m not holding my breath.
@blaineg Apparently the whole west coast and florida passed bills to change to year round DST, maybe without that 4/5 states provision, might be why I don’t see Utah on the list. If it happened, only Nevada would still be on pacific standard, so they would probably follow.
There was an interesting AMA on Reddit a few months ago with a policy group advocating to end the time shift. But they were strongly for doing away with DST, not normal time. They has a number of studies and data backing up that going to DST fulltime would cause more health and mental problems than normal time. (And, of course, time shifting twice a year causes even more.)
@haydesigner I would guess it’s these guys
https://www.standardtime.com/
At least they come up every time shift somewhere lol. They want to crack it down the middle with just two time zones. Not really a fan of their plan but to each their own
Personally, I love the dark. My friends and family call me a vampire. I work 2nd shift and wake up with just enough time to dress and get to work so I can stay up most of the night. Migraines. That’s my driver. They don’t like the light.
@AuntMean67 I did not dislike working nights. It was calm and very nice most of the year. Didn’t really mind winter either. But I was also on my own.
Problem is I also went to school or worked during the day too lol. Or later also managed the offshore team. A decade of that idk that my sleep schedule will ever be fixed lol. Still being able to get some chores done in the light would be nice. Eh
@AuntMean67 As bad as commuting home in the daytime is for my migranes, it’s infinitely worse at night with oncoming headlights
@jmoor783 yep, sometimes I actually do have to wear sunglasses at night, depending on how bad my headache is and how many vehicles I’m passing. I don’t work in a city any more so now it’s mostly just when I pass through a small town. Not too bad.
Nah we should flip them. We should fall forward and spring back.
I’m so far west on EST it would make sense here.
Well, unless you want morning daylight in winter. But I could handle a 10am sunrise in the dead of winter, if it gave me a 7pm sunset.
@MrMark I might be ok with that lol. But think of the children!
@MrMark @unksol Ha! Children have better night vision than older adults. They’ll survive. Or change the school starting times (with earlier daycare for families that need it - they likely won’t need after care then) moved to when science says it makes more sense for kids - especially teens.
@Kidsandliz @MrMark lol was sarcastic ish. Some discussion further up. And some other things.
Realistically current school start times are probably pretty meh but I highly doubt it’s about them standing by a bus stop in the dark. And there are much larger issues. Pretty sure kids in Finland are doing better so that’s a silly issue to focus on