I feel like tossing in a radical idea here: instead of carving up time zones, just ditch all the step functions and smooth it all the way out. Make local time really local: solar time, as a sundial would show [1]. Noon goes back to its intuitive meaning: the moment the sun is highest in the sky [2].

Our current system comes from a world of mechanical clocks. It made sense to ditch the sundial for a pendulum-driven display that worked rain or shine, and a spring-wound gadget you could carry around. But now our phones and even watches have caught up in their ability to accurately model the natural world -- they have the location information they could use to calculate the sundial time. There are already apps that do this [3].

Since this local time is just that -- local -- it should be understood that it's only useful for local things. When to wake up and go to bed, when to meet others in person, etc. For any coordination across different places on Earth local time is clearly not suitable, and we already have a solution for that: just use UTC.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time
  [2] https://pbfcomics.com/comics/high-noon/
  [3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/solar-time/id1100646247

Instead of time zones just use an almanac. This is like using a different thermometer scale in the arctic because it's colder! It's completely ridiculous!

These arguments are missing the point completely.

Once we abolish the changing of the clocks we’ve gotten rid of a societal menace.

Then, any state can switch to whatever time zone they want. If the Pacific states want to move an hour, go for it! Just so long as none of us need to move our clocks twice a year.

It literally doesn’t matter if we decide on Standard or Daylight time. Daylight seems to be the preference of the East Coast. If some states on the western edge of their time zones don’t like it they can move 1 over on their own. We need to abolish the nationwide clock changes because they’re nonsense.

Aren't the boundaries of time zones federally defined? Does this bill change that? My understanding previously was that the only choice states had was between summer DST and year-round standard time. Otherwise California could have switched to year-round Mountain Standard Time instead of lobbying Congress for year-round Pacific Saving Time.

I think states haven’t switched to year round times (except Arizona) because it’s weirdly better to be in sync with the changes.

New England has a compact to move ahead one time zone and abolish the clock changes, moving from Eastern to Atlantic zone, if all the states agree. That’s basically identical to year round DST. But if the rest of the Northeast stayed on Eastern with clock changes, New England would have a different time zone for 4 months out of the year, which is kind of weird and awkward. It’d be easier if Boston and New York were either in the same time zone, or 1 hour apart, but being different sometimes sounds like a mess.

Maybe California wanted to avoid that.

Standard time in summer means that every June 19th, Chicago, New York City, and Seattle would all have full daylight by 4:25am.

DST in Seattle means that it doesn't get dark until around 10pm, which also sucks.

I would say, without a doubt, that more people in Seattle fall asleep at or after 10pm than wake up before 5am during summer.

Plus it’s all a moot point because you need blackout curtains for good sleep in the area anyway.

Washington can easily vote to move their time zone back an hour if they’re not happy with DST.

You can always block the sun with blackouts but you can’t create sun in the morning in the winters

Electric lights are a way of doing exactly that.

I know, you meant creating sun outside. But blackouts also only create darkness indoors.

You need to wake up earlier anyways.

It’ll come down to parents wanting ST for light in the morning for their children vs. the childless wanting DST so they can enjoy sunlight after work, not science.

Am parent and love DST. More time in the evening to spend with my family rather than in the morning when everyone’s grumpy.

Same here. Getting my son out of bed and to school sucks whether it's dark or light out. We both enjoy doing stuff outdoors after I'm done with work, and love having more time for outdoor fun in the summer.

Let's make everybody happy and use Standard Time, but make up for it by mandating that the work day is one hour shorter.

Sound good?

What if we defined 6 AM as sunrise, 12 PM as solar noon, and 6 PM as sunset, year round, and then had work hours be 8 to 5 or whatever so that we always got the same proportion of sunlight for free time and for work?

This would require unique time dilation regimes depending on your latitude - i.e. clocks on this regime would no longer track with an atomic clock

To make it simpler, we could make 12 PM solar noon year-round, use 24 fixed-size hours per day, and just vary our schedules throughout the year so that work and school times make sense.

In other words—leave the clocks alone! It's not the clock that's the issue here, but rather the learned inflexibility about arbitrary work and school hours.

Well, it's complicated in the sense that you couldn't work out the conversion without a computer, but on the other hand it's simple in the sense that the only parameters would be position on the Earth's surface and date/time.

Also, I've read that counting 12 hours from sunrise to sunset was in fact how several ancient peoples did it. They didn't even necessarily count hours at night, only watches.

Parents also want DST so that they can take their children to the park or other coaching programs in the evening.

So just lobby your local school to shift its operating hours. Not hard.

What that’s describing is the desired time zone in winter.

If a state decides parents matter more, they can move to the time zone such that parents are happy in winter year round. No need to change the clocks!

At this point, just pick one and run with it. Sick of the change every year.

Yup. I'd prefer standard over DST, but I mainly want them to just stop changing it.

Absolutely. And if it winds up being a shitty time zone for your area, switch time zones!

As someone who can't sleep when there is sunlight, I welcome year round DST. Darkness in the morning == I don't have to wake up at 6am.

I had one kid who woke up at the first crack of light at dawn. I recommend blackout curtains.

I repeat (on this topic, different thread)... While it is (daylight saving) truly one of the most antiquated, and somewhat cuter of humankind's activities, why not just shift everybody (those countries that do this hour change thing) by 30 mins, split the difference, and leave it there?

No chance. I know two people who want to be 30 minutes offset from UTC and they could give zero shits about UTC. As a pilot, I'm attached to UTC and really don't want to deal with any non-zero minutes offset. Everything in aviation is UTC based - you make a position or pilot report, you use UTC. Weather, NOTAMs, flight plans, clearances, all UTC. I'd be irritated as hell to have a 30 minute offset from local. I think most of the (aero)nautical industry would be against it.

There are already some places with 30 or even 45 minute offsets from UTC; they seem to manage alright. Though I generally agree that it isn't necessary to divide the time zones that finely. Local noon should always be within about 45 minutes of solar noon, but you can do that just fine while rounding to the nearest hour. (Thirty minutes would be enough if we ignored political boundaries, but a 15-minute margin allows you to avoid splitting cities into multiple zones.)

45 minutes is Nepal right? India wanted to be unique with their 30 minute offset, but Nepal has to one-up them with the 45 minute offset.

Nepal is one at UTC+05:45, but there are also Eucla in West Australia at UTC+08:45 and the Chatham Islands at UTC+12:45.

What all these people raging about the potential for permanent DST seem to miss is that DST would only be disruptive in the ways they posit because of other arbitrary social time norms. What if we did permanent DST but also made 10-6 the new norm for office work? and we desperately need to stop forcing our kids to go to school so damned early regardless of whether we're in DST or not.

I think I would prefer DST, I'm always awake at 8pm but almost never awake yet at 7am.

so would Dracula but I'd still rather have the light after work

Hopefully Europe as the rest of the world will follow. Anyone know the current expectations of when it may happen?

The European parliament already decided to abolish DST, but that states should pick which time themselves. But Corona came.

What if we just shift clocks 30 minutes next time and leave them there? Best of both worlds!

IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER JUST PICK ONE AND LET PEOPLE ADJUST.