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With you on this. Also (in probably increasing order of controversy): 1)daylight savings should be completely abolished. It just causes confusion. 2)timezon

With you on this. Also (in probably increasing order of controversy): 1)daylight savings should be completely abolished. It just causes confusion. 2)timezones should be completely abolished. They also cause confusion. If you live in California, instead of getting up at say 8am you get up at say 3pm. There is never any confusion with anyone globally about scheduling anything. 3)Months should be the same length. Instead of 12 months of 30, 31, 28 or sometimes 29 days, with a varying number of weeks in each month depending on the year, you have exactly 13 months of 4 weeks each (28 days). 13*28=364 which gives you an extra day "New years day" or "Christmas day" or whatever but that isn't a day of the week. If it's a leap year the day after that Christmas day is "Leap day" and it also isn't a day of the week. Then a particular date is always the same day of the week, months are all 4 weeks, quarters are exactly 3 months and 1 week each and have the same end dates every year etc. Tons of benefits. Literally the only downside people come up with when I mention it is "yeah but imagine if your birthday is now a Monday, that would SUCK!"

darrenf 2y ago
> 2)timezones should be completely abolished. They also cause confusion. If you live in California, instead of getting up at say 8am you get up at say 3pm. There is never any confusion with anyone globally about scheduling anything. But, err, "am" and "pm" refer to where the sun is in the sky. That's their literal meaning. It's useful information. Timezones are (obviously) a physical thing. Abolishing them to aide the comparatively tiny number of people worldwide who need to schedule a phone call with someone in another country is pretty bonkers IMO. Furthermore, I don't want to be booking a flight home from Australia to the UK, pick a 9am departure from SYD only to discover it's in the evening.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  That meaning is a human construction. It already doesn't mean where the sun is in the sky in the current location, it means in a single specific location per timezone. We could just agree that it means "where the sun is in the sky in Greenwich, UK"[1] [1] Notionally. Obviously the sun is not often in the sky in London.
eviks 2y ago
2 will continue causing confusion: "is it ok to schedule this for 1pm or is that too early in California?"
- seanhunter 2y ago
  That already exists. It is my daily life in fact. eg "Is 8am PST too early for folks in IST?" literally is all day every day. For example I literally have 3 emails in my inbox at the moment that arrived overnight from people in California saying some variation on "I saw a slot in your calendar for xpm PST, is that too late for you in London?".
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    The set of people who care about anything that using one time zone for everyone would fix (mainly programmers who have to deal with time zone conversions) is much smaller than the set of people who care about the things it would break: anyone who wants to understand the shared global culture around local times (for example: anyone who travels to other time zones regularly, or even anyone who watches foreign movies or TV and wants to understand what the characters are talking about when they mention time of day). That's why I support getting rid of leap seconds, but not getting rid of time zones: the number of people who leap seconds helps is very small (possibly zero) since their effect on everyday life is microscopic.
    - seanhunter 2y ago
      Yeah I know. I'm not actually seriously entertaining the hope that 2 or 3 happen. Eliminating DST would be I think also be a genuine benefit to almost everyone with very little downside.
  - calfuris 2y ago
    People are going to keep living their lives approximately according to local solar time, which means that the meaning of X time in practical terms ("is this a good time to call?") is going to be different from place to place, so people would need some way of looking up the normal schedule of a particular location. And now we've re-invented time zones but probably with slightly different details, meaning that we can't just re-use the old time zone tracking infrastructure as is.
growse 2y ago
> 2)timezones should be completely abolished. They also cause confusion. If you live in California, instead of getting up at say 8am you get up at say 3pm. There is never any confusion with anyone globally about scheduling anything. Good luck selling a large swaithe of humanity that Tuesday will turn into Wednesday at some point during their working day.

darrenf 2y ago

> 2)timezones should be completely abolished. They also cause confusion. If you live in California, instead of getting up at say 8am you get up at say 3pm. There is never any confusion with anyone globally about scheduling anything. But, err, "am" and "pm" refer to where the sun is in the sky. That's their literal meaning. It's useful information. Timezones are (obviously) a physical thing. Abolishing them to aide the comparatively tiny number of people worldwide who need to schedule a phone call with someone in another country is pretty bonkers IMO. Furthermore, I don't want to be booking a flight home from Australia to the UK, pick a 9am departure from SYD only to discover it's in the evening.

seanhunter 2y ago
That meaning is a human construction. It already doesn't mean where the sun is in the sky in the current location, it means in a single specific location per timezone. We could just agree that it means "where the sun is in the sky in Greenwich, UK"[1] [1] Notionally. Obviously the sun is not often in the sky in London.

eviks 2y ago

2 will continue causing confusion: "is it ok to schedule this for 1pm or is that too early in California?"

seanhunter 2y ago
That already exists. It is my daily life in fact. eg "Is 8am PST too early for folks in IST?" literally is all day every day. For example I literally have 3 emails in my inbox at the moment that arrived overnight from people in California saying some variation on "I saw a slot in your calendar for xpm PST, is that too late for you in London?".
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  The set of people who care about anything that using one time zone for everyone would fix (mainly programmers who have to deal with time zone conversions) is much smaller than the set of people who care about the things it would break: anyone who wants to understand the shared global culture around local times (for example: anyone who travels to other time zones regularly, or even anyone who watches foreign movies or TV and wants to understand what the characters are talking about when they mention time of day). That's why I support getting rid of leap seconds, but not getting rid of time zones: the number of people who leap seconds helps is very small (possibly zero) since their effect on everyday life is microscopic.
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    Yeah I know. I'm not actually seriously entertaining the hope that 2 or 3 happen. Eliminating DST would be I think also be a genuine benefit to almost everyone with very little downside.
- calfuris 2y ago
  People are going to keep living their lives approximately according to local solar time, which means that the meaning of X time in practical terms ("is this a good time to call?") is going to be different from place to place, so people would need some way of looking up the normal schedule of a particular location. And now we've re-invented time zones but probably with slightly different details, meaning that we can't just re-use the old time zone tracking infrastructure as is.

growse 2y ago

> 2)timezones should be completely abolished. They also cause confusion. If you live in California, instead of getting up at say 8am you get up at say 3pm. There is never any confusion with anyone globally about scheduling anything. Good luck selling a large swaithe of humanity that Tuesday will turn into Wednesday at some point during their working day.