Trump Endorses Permanent Daylight Savings Time (thehill.com) 376
President Trump on Monday threw his support behind efforts to keep the United States permanently on daylight saving time, which took effect Sunday morning. "Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!" Trump tweeted. The Hill reports: California and several other states are considering measures that would end the biannual clock changes between standard and daylight saving time. Three GOP lawmakers from Florida introduced legislation in Congress this month that would end the November clock change from daylight saving time back to standard time. The measures, introduced by Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and Rep. Vern Buchanan, would keep the country in daylight saving time, the clock change made in early March that is observed by most states for eight months of the year. Rubio introduced a similar measure in 2018. That bill did not advance in the Senate.
Just pick a damned time (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just pick a damned time (Score:5, Insightful)
I never really understood why we "fell back" to standard time during winter, the one time of the year where the extra hour of daylight in the evening was the most useful.
Daylight until 8:30 PM during Summer never seemed all that helpful, but daylight when you're trying to drive home from work around 5:30? Now THAT is useful!
Yeah, sure... It would be better yet if management left everyone leave at 4 PM during Winter to improve their commutes, but we all know that's not going to happen in most organizations.
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Re:Just pick a damned time (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would farmers care what time the clock showed?
Re:Just pick a damned time (Score:5, Informative)
They never did. They get up when the animals do or when the fields need taking care of. They couldn't care less what the clock says.
Re:Just pick a damned time (Score:5, Interesting)
A more "colorful" history of DST: [qz.com]
And another article, from Smithsonian magazine. [smithsonianmag.com]
Re:Just pick a damned time (Score:4, Informative)
No, the idea was to save electricity, as in switching on lights later etc.
For farmers it does not matter at all, they don't care what time is displayed on their watch.
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No, the idea was to save electricity, as in switching on lights later etc.
The idea was to save the whales, as in lamp oil, or I mean, at least, to save money on candles and lamp oil.
You were at least right that light was involved, so you're ahead of the curve.
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By the time DST was introduced (during WW1) oil lamps long switched to kerosene (probably even in Dunwall), and electric light was already common enough in the cities.
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DST was originally to benefit farmers whose workday was dictated by daylight hours. Since that's not an issue anymore we don't need DST.
You've confused DST with traditional long summer break school year calendars.
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DST was originally to benefit farmers whose workday was dictated by daylight hours.
Surprisingly, nope [washingtonpost.com]. Farmers were vociferously against DST for a long time. Apparently, their intense opposition got them associated with it.
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Because daylight earlier in the morning helps people wake up. I know it helps me.
Permanent day light savings time would be fine with me though. But congress is the only one that can change it. Individual states can't.
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Why can't the individual States decide? Here, in Canada, it is a Provincial decision. Shit there's currently a private members bill in my Provinces legislature to create a new time zone splitting the Province, and it could pass and officially we'll follow the Western States decision to stay in sync according to the government.
Probably have to give the feds notice though as they're in charge of stuff like ships and railroads.
Just how the law got written (Score:3)
Why can't the individual States decide?
Because that's the way the laws were written a few decades back when they implemented the current system. Not saying it is good or bad, just that that's what happened. Canada evidently wrote their laws differently which is neither better nor worse - just a different solution to the same problem. For whatever reason the federal law in the US allows states to opt out of DST permanently but does not permit opting in permanently. Not sure why but that's what happened. Since this is a federal law it require
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They can opt out, but they can't go for permanent DST without Congressional approval.
Shopping (Score:2)
You'd be amazed how many things in your life you take for granted are that way because a company wanted it that way.
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You'd be amazed how many things in your life you take for granted are that way because...
Because somebody told you that the things were that way, and instead of taking that as encouragement to look the subject up since it interested you, instead you just believed whatever the person told you. And so you've got this giant load of bullshit inside your head that you carry around and sometimes share.
It involved shopping in a way, but not directly; it was the BBQ Lobby that encouraged the last extension.
The biggest shopping day of the year is in November. The biggest shopping season is late fall/ear
Re:Just pick a damned time (Score:4, Insightful)
Not nearly as useful as having exposure to at least *some* sunlight in the morning before a person start's their work day. While it's true that many people begin their commute while it is still dark in the winter, a *vast* majority of them still get to experience at least some sunlight before heading indoors at the end of their commute. Exposure to even just 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning boosts seratonin levels, which in turn boosts melatonin production in the evening and is vital for having healthy and restful sleep... delaying exposure to sunlight until later in the day does not boost seratonin levels as high as it will in the morning and further delays melatonin production, leading to health problems related to the lack of restful sleep. You're talking about a "nice to have", but comparing it to something that we are biologically adapted to, which is to function primarily during the day.... well, as I've said before on this subject, evolution is not a democracy.
And while you wouldn't get the sudden chaos that changing the clocks twice per year brings, instead slowly ramping up and then slowly ramping down throughout the winter, but keeping the clocks pushed ahead through the winter months would be certainly disasterous for a period of about 3 to 4 weeks in the middle of winter for people who live north of about 45 degrees, which while not a majority of Americans, is still not a small a number.
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They spring forward to ‘save’ daylight because otherwise sunrise would be 4:30AM. I dont get why everyone is such a pussy about the whole thing. Try going on a WestPac deployment. We changed times more than 24times in 6mos. Go across the internatiomal date line and see how far off that throws you. Being the navy, they never gave you that extra hour during sleep. It was always lose an hour at night and gain an hour during ships working hours (0600 - 1600). With our current timechanges, If I
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You got a source for that claim? This talks about the 1974 experiment. Says it ended before Halloween, and mentions not a word about a spike in car-pedestrian accidents.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-saving-time-went-too-far/ (not Ad Blocker friendly)
But this article says that studies have shown that changing the clock twice a year has actual health risks.
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/experts-to-public-daylight-savings-time-is-a-434m-problem-we-could-easily-fix.html
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!11111 (Score:3, Funny)
I swear to GOD. Kids fuck everything up.
Re:To kill fewer children. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't think they even let kids walk to school on the side of the road in the dark anymore in most places.
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Re: Just pick a damned time (Score:3)
Morning traffic is naturally spread across a 3-5 hour window of time. In contrast, when DST ends, EVERYBODY (statistically) goes running for the door between 4:30 and 5:30pm, causing INSTANT gridlock that persists for hours.
It's particularly graphic in South Florida. In the summer, people without kids tend to work later, avoiding the instant 5pm gridlock that happens during the winter.
Think of it as time-domain multiplexing for freeways. If everyone on a cellular network tries to transfer a megabyte at 5pm,
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You can muck with the hands or digits on your clocks all you want. It will make not one iota in the lightness or darkness of mornings or evenings anywhere. That is controlled by the tilt and speed of the Earth's rotation, not the arbitrary numbers on your clock.
Split the diff - go 30 minutes (Score:4, Insightful)
Look I get it - Winter is dark up north. And the sun comes up really early in the summer (I have daylight from 5ish AM to almost 10pm where I live). Fireworks don't start until 9:30.
But I too hate the 1 hour forward/back. It's miserable. Why not get the benefits of both and pick the middle.
Re: Split the diff - go 30 minutes (Score:2)
I agree. Split the difference once & for all... Eastern = UTC-4.5, Central = UTC-5.5, Mountain=UTC-6.5, Pacific=UTC-7.5, etc.
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I grew up in Indiana (when they didn't observe) and it was glorious. The only thing we ever noticed was that all our summer TV shows were 'central time'.
This whole twice a year thing is jarring. We ate dinner at 9 tonight because we're used to looking outside to judge when to start stuff.
Plus all the studies of morbidity in hospitals and traffic accidents.
Daylight-saving time is literally killing us [businessinsider.com]
But each year on the Monday after the springtime switch, hospitals report a 24% spike in heart-attack visits around the US.
Then again, I'm sort of a diehard UTC person. College caught me that who cares what time you wake up on the c
Re:Just pick a damned time (Score:5, Informative)
Then again, I'm sort of a diehard UTC person. College caught me that who cares what time you wake up on the clock. Especially with the global economy I know business meetings across 4 timezones and all their nuances would go a lot smoother if we just set UTC meeting times.
China has all one time zone - it's rather strange to fly west 4 hours and not change your watch. And the sun comes up at 3 am. Although their mentality about it is that Beijing is the center of their universe so everyone is on that city's time.
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While I agree changing the clock is stupid and lame, the "killing people" part is a bit iffy.
The statistic presented sets off my BS detector, because who cares about a 1 day spike? What people actually care about is if more heart attacks happened than would have happened otherwise. So when they give you the statistic about same-day admissions and things, it seems to imply that they didn't have the better stat; an actual increase in total heart attacks.
So lets say that some people with heart disease are real
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Darker later = get up earlier. It that what you want?
So much for drive-in movies. (Score:5, Interesting)
darker later is the way to go.
IMHO Daylight Savings Time was much of what killed the drive in theatres. Come summer, with DST, there wasn't enough time after sunset to attend a double feature and still get home and to bed in time to get up before sunrise and make it to work.
In the summer what we're short of isn't light. It's darkness. If the government must screw around with the clocks twice a year, they should move them BACK in the spring and return them to standard in the fall.
I call it "Night Life Savings Time".
Re:So much for drive-in movies. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government must screw around with the clocks twice a year, they should move them BACK in the spring and return them to standard in the fall.
I call it "Night Life Savings Time".
Hmmm... a real dilemma: No drive-in theaters vs. the sun streaming in at 3:30am in the summer.
I'll side with 99.9% of the population and ditch the drive-ins.
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In Finland, we had poll about whether to stay on DST or winter time. Result was 52% in winter time and 48% in DST. Of course because this was a public poll results are only giving a direction, but it is nowhere near 99% vs 1%.
I myself really do not care. If we all go to DST, then slowly and gradually our wake-up hours will shift little bit later and later, until we see that when previously we were living in (for example) 7-22 wake-up hours, then after years of permanent DST wake-up hours shift for 8-23.
It
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That's all well and good, but the OP proposed *anti* DST, moving sunrise and sunset one hour *earlier* in the summer (and still changing clocks twice per year). I really don't think that would poll well at all.
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Can I come visit you in binary world sometime, where people live either on the southern or northern border and the season is either the heart of summer or the deep of winter.
Re: Just pick a damned time (Score:4, Funny)
if you want to have a been
What the fuck?
The length of a daylight in a day does not change, regardless if the sun rises at 4am, 9pm or whatever
No, but whether it's light when you go to work/school or light when you get home from work/school does change and does matter to people.
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So? Go to the school board meeting or talk to your manager to get the start/stop time changed. Why do we need to fuck up every clock in the nation twice a year to accomodate local variances?
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They're not going to change opening hours for one person, or even for a few people. Too much of the world works on expectations of business opening times of 9:00, not a shifting time throughout the year based on sunrise. It has these expectations because they work, otherwise you're back to cities 100 miles apart working on slightly different schedules based on their local sunrise and sunset. We got rid of that for a reason.
About damned time (Score:5, Funny)
Trump says something that isn't completely idiotic!
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And he even got the Daylight vs Standard Time distinction correct, and expressed a policy choice succinctly.
Which means somebody else wrote the tweet.
Re:About damned time (Score:4, Interesting)
And he said 'Saving' instead of 'Savings'. I'm suspicious.
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He's a rich asshole; he may have poor grammar, but he's still going to accidentally repeat some big words that people around him say.
Or, maybe it was just a typo.
Re:About damned time (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the joke; it is suspicious because it is a common mistake, but he didn't make it. And he makes a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes.
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You know what they say about a broken daylight savings clock being right twice a year.
Re:About damned time (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah but there's always the chance that he said that because he thinks it's actually saving daylight.
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#maga #just-kidding
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Could have been just dumb luck, it's a simple binary choice.
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>"it's a simple binary choice."
Not really. It is a simple trinary choice-
1) Do nothing and continue this insane time changing twice a year that the vast majority of people dislike or even hate.
2) Stay on standard time year-round.
3) And the BEST choice of all- stay on summer time (daylight saving time) year-round.
But somehow even this will be made partisan, like everything else now, and then go nowhere. So we will be stuck with the worst choice (#1). Count on it.
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Numbers 2 and 3 really depend on where in your timezone you are. There's an hour or so difference between the east and west.
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You really think there are only three choices? Tisk.
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The flaw in your third proposal is, staying on summer time year-round does not make it summer year-round.
Re:About damned time (Score:5, Insightful)
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day!
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Not when the clocks go forward and we lose an hour. That day it's never 01:30!
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On the day clocks go back a stopped clock can be right 3 times, however. So it makes up for it.
Even the blind acron (Score:2)
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States can't change their timezone or the definition of their timezone. That's a power reserved at the federal level. They do have the choice to honor daylight savings time, 2 states don't participate (AZ is one).
But to change timezones or their offset from UMT you have to have an act of congress and up to this point it's never happened because of vested interests.
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Trump says many things that are not idiotic.
Citation needed.
I have listened to him speak, and read many of his tweets. This is sufficient for me to know without a shred of doubt, that he is a moron.
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How is it that a moron beat out so many other people for the presidency?
He's a moron with a message other morons can relate to. And most of the time he's a really affable guy. He's eminently electable. Totally incompetent. But perfectly electable.
knowing that guy... (Score:5, Funny)
I bet he asked it be named, "Trump Standard Time". And maybe "Time Force" the second option.
It is the seventh sign.. (Score:2)
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Popular Mechanics, apparently:
https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
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Barbecue makers.
For how long? (Score:3)
If you know this president then it's that he flip-flops when the pressure is on. As soon as a Republican objects he will change his position. Count on it.
Wait until he finds out Obama's position... (Score:3)
FOX mistakenly probably gave him the idea with the yearly bitching that losing an hour causes; they'll set him straight on if he gets serious... unless they poll it gains him a few points... They've still got to win over the smarter portion of the below average IQ voters.
Stupid or Evil. Ignorance of him is no longer an excuse.
Standard all year (Score:4, Informative)
Thoose advocating year round DST don't remember the disaster in the mid-70s. The country switched to year round DST for two years. It was quickly killed for many reasons. Scvhool children going to class in the dark was one, another was that people in cold country discovered that an extra hour of sun in the evening was of no benefit, but darkness until 8:320 or 9 was a pain.
I hope rational heads will prevail on this, at a minimum keep the current system, or better yet, kill DST altogether.
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This argument baffles me. Here's a concept. Get up earlier or go to bed later. The amount of time in the day is unchanged.
What? It's dark for kids? You know schools can choose what hours they open and close?
What? Construction workers have to work in the dark? They too can change what hours they work. Just like they do when it rains.
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You know schools can choose what hours they open and close?
But many parents can't choose what time they have to be at work, and often they are affected by what time little Johnny goes to or returns from school. There's no simple solution that's not going to cause grief for some large portion of the population.
I personally like DST, but then having worked rotating shifts for several years, a one hour change seems hardly noticeable to me.
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In 1969, 48% of K-8 students walked or biked to school. By 2016 that percentage dropped to less than 10%. In my part of the country, the norm of shoveling sidewalks is no longer enforced meaning that walking often requires detours into the street.
Since this makes winter walking to school impractical, it's a moot issue. Personally, I think kids should walk to school, and the sidewalks should be cleared at least four feet wide. Schools could simply move their start later in the day.
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In 1969, we didn't have helicopter parents. I walked seven blocks unescorted to and from elementary school in Detroit up until that year. Now, I see parents sitting out at the bus stop in front of my suburban home every day just to pick up their middle school kids on bright sunny mornings and afternoons. This is in a very crime free area of upper middle class homes. Sweet Jesus what is wrong with parents these days? None of these kids has more than a 1/4 mile walk to home. SMH
DST sucks. Regular time works (Score:2)
Why? Because it has for worked well for millenia.
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The first clock was invented in 1656, so 363 years at most, but then you came here for the pedantic replies.
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Clocks and "standard time" have existed for a few hundred years. For millennia, people defined the start of the day as astronomical sunrise. DST is supposed to be a kind of compromise for the way astronomical sunrise time varies throughout the year.
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It doesn't save any daylight though... it steels some from the morning to add some in the evening.
And considering the proven health benefits that exist for having exposure to the sun in the morning, it's better from a health-perspective if the sun rises earlier rather than later anyways, so the entire concept of DST Is just plain fucking stupid, completely ignoring human biology and fundamental truths about how humans have adapted and evolved.
Re: Daylight Saving Time (Score:2)
Well, technically, it *is* "saving" daylight from the perspective of most people. Very few people are awake & take advantage of daylight at 5:30am. Nearly everyone is awake & appreciates extra daylight after work, including most of the people who ARE awake at 5:30am.
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I'd be willing to bet you say "hot water heater", "ATM machine", and "PIN number". Language evolves, and so should we.
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Um, yeah, you are -- how else are you planning to pay it back once November rolls around?
For the love of everything good (Score:2)
Please pass this and eliminate the clock switching madness.
News (Score:2)
The idiot said something.
Why is this even news? Amd why is it on /.?
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Because based upon comments here, it's the first time a majority of /.ers have agreed with him.
Now, if he'd come out in favor of universal UTC (Score:3)
A million Unix sysadmins' heads would explode.
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Sorry, TAI is where we need to go. Screw leap seconds.
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The only people who would like this idea are Unix sysadmins. For the rest of us, it matters that lunch is around noon, that office hours are roughly from 8-5, that people are usually in bed at midnight. We don't care what time it is in Greenwich, UK.
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We don't care what time it is in Greenwich, UK.
Those who work with people in other countries would care a lot, and those who do any long-distance travel. Which not a small bunch. For those, a global standard time would be extremely convenient.
Of course, this would mean a lot of adjustment for your local time. But DST already makes solar noon at 1 PM, which is not its natural time. Your local working hours would still be around solar noon, just not using numbers like 8 AM to 5 PM. Especially when "AM" and "PM" refer to before and after noon -- you rea
Greatings from Ottawa (Score:2)
WTF I hate permanent DST now (Score:2, Insightful)
Liberals will now find reasons to hate on this, too. Basically Trump can control them through reverse psychology. Support Jews, and liberals become literally Hitler. Checkmate.
Idiocracy (Score:2)
What is wrong with permanent standard time? Trump upholds idiocracy.
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What is wrong with permanent standard time? Trump upholds idiocracy.
People want an extra hour of sunshine in the evening when they are free to be outside, not in the morning when they work in offices, attend school, or still sleep.
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There's an easy solution to this. It's called, "getting up an hour earlier".
12:00 is when the sun is in the zenith (Score:2)
so why do we want to change that?
The definition per-se of noon is "sun in zenith".
If people feel it's dark too early, well then change working times par law, instead of changing time per law.
It's so silly
Some law says we should start work at 8, but it's dark. Oh, let's do another law to change the time, so it's sunny at 8.
This is sooo Trump
Beyond stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't make a rope longer by cutting a foot off one end and attaching it to the other. "Permanent DST" is identical to getting up 1 hour earlier. Just leave how we indicate time alone so the sun is (roughly) at its greatest height on the ecliptic at noon in any given time zone instead of playing a stupid shell game that doesn't do anything but mess up astronomical time.
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