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Time zones are themselves a footgun. There is no actual reason for morning to start at approximately the same time everywhere. 9am can be 9am everywhere. In som

Time zones are themselves a footgun. There is no actual reason for morning to start at approximately the same time everywhere. 9am can be 9am everywhere. In some places 9am can be sunrise, in some it can be sunset, and in some it can be the middle of the night. No conversions, no confusion, no resetting of watches... We don't change the months in the southern hemisphere. Australia is cold in July, Europe is cold in January, this doesn't seem to bother us.

MajimasEyepatch 3y ago
It's a lot easier to remember "north and south are opposite" than it is to remember, "Oh right, 9 am is morning in England, early morning in New York, and the middle of the night in Los Angeles." And so on for every possible time of day. Whereas it's (relatively) easy to guess, "Los Angeles is in California, that's three hours behind me in New York, so it would be 6 am there at 9 am here, so it's too early to call them yet." Not perfect, but not too bad for simple cases, and easy to do in your head most of the time. Timezones are about standardizing _human_ time, not actual time.
chefandy 3y ago
> There is no actual reason There may be no technical reason for it, but having a common reference point for times of the day in terms of human experience and behavior is an actual reason. Saying you were walking down the street at 2am or 3am is immediately distinct from saying you were walking down the street at 10pm or 11pm in ways many people understand. Having to qualify it with the date and geographic location and/or sunrise or sunset patterns would be a much bigger PITA than your average person will ever experience because of time zone inconsistencies. It's just not that important for most people to be able to pinpoint a timestamp to one exact time throughout the world. We've got GMT. Nothing is stopping anybody from using that to schedule their lives. There's a reason people don't.

MajimasEyepatch 3y ago

It's a lot easier to remember "north and south are opposite" than it is to remember, "Oh right, 9 am is morning in England, early morning in New York, and the middle of the night in Los Angeles." And so on for every possible time of day. Whereas it's (relatively) easy to guess, "Los Angeles is in California, that's three hours behind me in New York, so it would be 6 am there at 9 am here, so it's too early to call them yet." Not perfect, but not too bad for simple cases, and easy to do in your head most of the time. Timezones are about standardizing _human_ time, not actual time.

chefandy 3y ago

> There is no actual reason There may be no technical reason for it, but having a common reference point for times of the day in terms of human experience and behavior is an actual reason. Saying you were walking down the street at 2am or 3am is immediately distinct from saying you were walking down the street at 10pm or 11pm in ways many people understand. Having to qualify it with the date and geographic location and/or sunrise or sunset patterns would be a much bigger PITA than your average person will ever experience because of time zone inconsistencies. It's just not that important for most people to be able to pinpoint a timestamp to one exact time throughout the world. We've got GMT. Nothing is stopping anybody from using that to schedule their lives. There's a reason people don't.