Thanks, it's just that the self-described "nitpick" is one which I've seen here and there several times, and I was finally motivated to say something about it.

Thanks, it's just that the self-described "nitpick" is one which I've seen here and there several times, and I was finally motivated to say something about it. Describing an observed event seen at observer's time X and then recording it as happening at observer's time X minus several factors (the dominant one being light-travel-time) is at best complicated and likely loses accuracy as well. Making something needlessly less simple and less accurate is kinda the opposite of clever, but for various reasons relatively clever people keep doing exactly that. (You can get very far down the rathole of how to do precise timings of events generally, and astronomers do just that with e.g. barycentric julian dates. One might ask a computer-engineering question like: suppose one is watching timestamped logs. What does one want to see exactly? The time the logger commits the log message? The time the event generating the log entry occurred (which may require adjusting for network conditions etc)? Reversing that, does one want a clock display program to adjust for conditions between the program and the retina or even primary visual cortex of the user? And what if there are multiple users looking at such a clock?) Time is hard. Let the UTC/TAI/TT/IERS people sort it out, and use their results.)