#standard time

Since most people in the United States just changed their clocks again, it seems like a good time to ask: should we keep doing that? Or should we just pick a time and stick with it?

"Solar noon" is the time when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, halfway between sunrise and sunset. During Standard Time, solar noon happens at approximately 12:00 (clock noon). During Daylight Saving Time, solar noon happens at approximately 1:00.

(I say "approximately" because the exact time depends how far east or west you are in your time zone.)

Hawaiʻi and (most of) Arizona have already switched to permanent Standard Time. Should the entire country do the same, or switch to permanent Daylight Saving Time, or continue switching between them two times per year?

End Day Light Savings.

I’m seeing so much talk about ending daylight saving but also many people are confused and want to keep it.

Cliff Notes Version:

Daylight Savings is the “woke” version of time: Artificial. As artificial as a transgender dude. 🫃

Standard time is the correct clock. 💃🏼

How do I know?

Noon is the closest place the sun will be to you on its circle.

For the US and North people: When you hold a compass outside, look for South. South marks the spot for Noon. On standard time that’s exactly where the sun will be.

And 180 degrees behind you will be magnetic north—The center of the earth, which makes that compass work.

During DLS the Noon sun is off into the southwest. 😖 For anyone properly set to the sun cycle, this throws off your natural rhythm.

Now, for anyone “worried” about having less light at night:

Remember that during the summer the sunlight hours are naturally longer. All DLS did was switch mornings to be darker causing your natural sleep cycle to be disrupted. But you will still have plenty of sunlight in the evenings. The sun setting at 9pm is not natural.

Depending on where you live, you will still have 12-16 hours of sunlight during the summer. It’s 14 hours of light for me in California.

Now, when the fall comes and we have to switch back to Standard time, this is where it gets disruptive. Instead of our bodies naturally feeling the less light shift into place in the fall during August, September, October, and slowly adjusting to it, we have to jump backwards at the end of October, into seemingly a lot less light. And it feels horrible. This is why people are confused. They think the fault is in the fall jump.

What would actually happen if you kept DLS, in the winter, it would be dark at 8am. And this is not natural.

Without the forced jump backwards, your body has time to naturally adjust to the winter light shift.

Nature’s way is Standard Time. Noon sun is South on the compass. If you live in the south—Noon sun is North on the compass. 🤔

It’s called the Sunshine Protection Act, after all. Who could oppose protecting sunshine? President Donald Trump, who supports the move, wrote in May that it would give people “a longer, brighter Day.”

“And who can be against that?” he added.

Well, as it turns out, lots of people can be. Because they were when the United States tried this back in the 1970s. Americans were soon reminded that there was a good reason that we started changing the clocks in the first place. And public opinion turned on a dime.

In the midst of an energy crisis, President Richard Nixon proposed making Daylight Saving Time permanent for the next two winters in order to conserve it. And the change was quickly implemented for the winter of 1973-74.

But polls showed support falling off a cliff. Data from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago showed 79% supported the change in December; that fell to 42% by February. Other polls showed support dropping even lower.

The move didn’t actually save much energy, according to a later study from the Department of Transportation. But it did produce a series of other changes that, it turned out, were problematic.

…

The biggest downside of adopting this permanently meant putting children at the bus stop in the cold and dark — which some feared was deadly.

Time magazine reported in February 1974 that eight Florida children had died in early morning traffic accidents a month after the change took place, compared to just two in the same period the year prior. When Congress voted to nix the change later in 1974, The New York Times quoted an anonymous House member saying: “There seemed to be some indication that there were more deaths, and everyone got a little nervous.”

It’s valid to ask whether keeping the clocks on Daylight Saving Time actually led to deaths — or, more specifically, whether it led to more deaths than changing the clocks does. The latter, after all, could lead to accidents by throwing off people’s circadian rhythms and putting them behind the wheel when they might be sleep deprived. An academic study in 2016 estimated that changing the clocks “caused over 30 deaths at a social cost of $275 million annually.”

But that gets at the key point here. This is a choice between suboptimal options created by how our society functions and how sunlight hours shift over the course of the year because of Earth’s rotation. (Read more at link below)

Winter is going to be dark no matter what you do. ST doesn’t “make it darker,” it just shifts the darkness. You feel like it’s darker more, but it’s all about perception. DST all year wouldn’t magically make winter sunlight longer. It’s still the same number of sunlight hours either way!

Personally, I’m on team ST all year because I know that the super late sunsets in summer fuck with my sleep schedule a ton and having super late sunrises in winter on DST would really suck.

U.S. time zones, 100 years ago. The Home and school reference work. v.7. 1923.