2 ms·

That doesn’t work either, though. Western Spain and eastern Germany are in the same time zone, but the position of the sun will be offset by 3 hours. In the c

That doesn’t work either, though. Western Spain and eastern Germany are in the same time zone, but the position of the sun will be offset by 3 hours. In the current world, timezones only cause confusion, and do not provide any of the benefits you think they do. Timezones work okay-ish for the US and UK, but that’s because their timezones generally map to local time quite well, and they have a shared culture. Everywhere else, they’re purely rage-inducing madness, and useless. China has abandoned timezones eons ago for that very reason.

grzm 9y ago
> Western Spain and eastern Germany are in the same time zone, but the position of the sun will be offset by 3 hours. To argue that the hour is supposed to track to some arbitrary precision is to argue against a straw man. They're approximations that help us communicate with each other. As is arguing that some current configuration of time zones is a problem so the idea of time zones in general is flawed. If western Spain and eastern Germany sharing the same time zone is problematic (which may be, but just saying "the position of the sun will be offset by 3 hours" doesn't mean it is practically), then we can decide to place them in other time zones. > "In the current world, timezones only cause confusion, and do not provide any of the benefits you think they do. ... Everywhere else, they’re purely rage-inducing madness, and useless." Having lived in time zones across the world while communicating with family and business partners in multiple time zones while doing so, I respectfully disagree. While you may find they don't provide benefits to you, to decree they provide no benefits for anyone in such an absolute sense is frustrating. Yes, there are tradeoffs regardless of the adopted system. To dismiss them out of hand is absurd. I'm sympathetic to reducing rage-inducing madness in general. However, as it is very general, it makes it hard to address directly. Sometimes reductionist is used as a pejorative. In this case I would like to know specific examples so we can determine their root cause and see if it's essential or accidental. I suspect there are other issues that arise in China with such a large area spanning such a longitudinal range. I'm sure there are trade offs.

grzm 9y ago

> Western Spain and eastern Germany are in the same time zone, but the position of the sun will be offset by 3 hours. To argue that the hour is supposed to track to some arbitrary precision is to argue against a straw man. They're approximations that help us communicate with each other. As is arguing that some current configuration of time zones is a problem so the idea of time zones in general is flawed. If western Spain and eastern Germany sharing the same time zone is problematic (which may be, but just saying "the position of the sun will be offset by 3 hours" doesn't mean it is practically), then we can decide to place them in other time zones. > "In the current world, timezones only cause confusion, and do not provide any of the benefits you think they do. ... Everywhere else, they’re purely rage-inducing madness, and useless." Having lived in time zones across the world while communicating with family and business partners in multiple time zones while doing so, I respectfully disagree. While you may find they don't provide benefits to you, to decree they provide no benefits for anyone in such an absolute sense is frustrating. Yes, there are tradeoffs regardless of the adopted system. To dismiss them out of hand is absurd. I'm sympathetic to reducing rage-inducing madness in general. However, as it is very general, it makes it hard to address directly. Sometimes reductionist is used as a pejorative. In this case I would like to know specific examples so we can determine their root cause and see if it's essential or accidental. I suspect there are other issues that arise in China with such a large area spanning such a longitudinal range. I'm sure there are trade offs.