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Keeping DST year round just seems so crazy. If "midday" and "midnight" no longer approximate the middle of the day and night then what is even the point of time

Keeping DST year round just seems so crazy. If "midday" and "midnight" no longer approximate the middle of the day and night then what is even the point of time zones? The reason we don't all use UTC is because it is useful to be able to figure out roughly what time of day it is somewhere else on the planet. If we collectively agree that is no longer necessary then we are giving up a fundamental part of timekeeping. If you want an example of how crazy this is, just look to China, which only has a single time zone. It is so large that in some parts of the country the sun doesn't set until "midnight". Time actually means something, don't mess with it.

i_am_proteus 5y ago
Madrid's solar noon is around 1 PM during standard time and 2 PM during summer time, the rest of Spain is a bit off from this, and I noted when I lived there that the Spanish custom seems to be to keep later hours.
- nerdawson 5y ago
  Spain should be on GMT. It was a political decision by Franco to align timezones with Germany during WWII.
  - kgwgk 5y ago
    Interestingly the UK also changed to GMT+1 during the war. And during the Spanish Civil war Republicans had already moved to GMT+1 in 1938, a change that was undone after the war before switching again to GMT+1 in 1940.
TuringTest 5y ago
If "midday" didn't get changing twice a year and always coincided with noon (i.e. the sun being highest), we could build a schedule based on working when there is light on the sky and still have some left after work. > Time actually means something, don't mess with it. That would be great advice for not changing the clock every six months.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  To be clear, I am fully on board with abolishing daylight saving. We should standardize on the aptly named standard time.
chrismcb 5y ago
There is a huge difference between keeping the same time all year versus keeping the same time over huge swaths of the globe. We only keep "regular" time just over four months a year now.

i_am_proteus 5y ago

Madrid's solar noon is around 1 PM during standard time and 2 PM during summer time, the rest of Spain is a bit off from this, and I noted when I lived there that the Spanish custom seems to be to keep later hours.

nerdawson 5y ago
Spain should be on GMT. It was a political decision by Franco to align timezones with Germany during WWII.
- kgwgk 5y ago
  Interestingly the UK also changed to GMT+1 during the war. And during the Spanish Civil war Republicans had already moved to GMT+1 in 1938, a change that was undone after the war before switching again to GMT+1 in 1940.

TuringTest 5y ago

If "midday" didn't get changing twice a year and always coincided with noon (i.e. the sun being highest), we could build a schedule based on working when there is light on the sky and still have some left after work. > Time actually means something, don't mess with it. That would be great advice for not changing the clock every six months.

LeoPanthera 5y ago
To be clear, I am fully on board with abolishing daylight saving. We should standardize on the aptly named standard time.

chrismcb 5y ago

There is a huge difference between keeping the same time all year versus keeping the same time over huge swaths of the globe. We only keep "regular" time just over four months a year now.