31 Comments

You hit on a lot of what I found too! I did an in depth on this a year ago because it's not even been consistently applied and has been on again/off again as well.

https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/a-waste-of-time

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I'm emphatically Team Cancel DST Everywhere. Forever. Now.

And it's not just because I'm biased as a parent of two school-age kids.

Last Week Tonight made this case almost a decade ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw

Funnily enough, the European Parliament voted to abolish DST in the EU all the way back in 2019.

We rejoiced and danced and sang.

But thanks to something something bureaucracy something something European Commission vs. European Parliament something something "Shall we keep the summer OR winter time when we abolish DST?" - 5 years later we're still moving our clocks back and forth like crazy people.

Maybe one day.

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Whoa whoa whoa, are you suggesting governance in the EU moves.... slowly?

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I'm not NOT unsuggesting that they aren't slower than fast.

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I live in Arizona. We don't do DST.

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You're very special, Michael!

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Well yes, but that had nothing to do with Arizona... 🤣

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Indeed!

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The Canadian version of DST was devised by Sir Sanford Fleming as a means of coordinating railroad arrivals and departures (since Canada spans multiple time zones).

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During WWI and WW2 DST served another important purpose; with mandatory blackouts after dark in coastal areas it allowed people to have lives and reduced infringements of the blackouts.

Or so I've heard

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I think this is right. I remember reading about this.

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I regarded it as part of a plot to derail my pre-calculator spherical trig whilst learning observational astronomy and navigation some time ago (standard mean solar time)!

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We do DST here in Southeast Ohio. I don’t really like it, it messes me up for about a week. We live in a late 1700’s log cabin so the saving electricity bit doesn’t really affect us. We run generators less and have longer solar charging times though solar doesn’t really work so good in Ohio!

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Wow! I wonder if any of my readers live in an older house than you.

My last home was about 100 years old. It certainly had a very different character than modern homes! But 18th century? That's another era entirely.

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Might be fun topic to explore. Our barn is a log barn. There’s a picture of a small bit of it in my Cool Kids on the Road post. The logs were hand hewn and assembled with mortar and wooden pegs on both buildings. The house I sold last year was built in 1880. I like old houses.

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I can’t believe parents and authority figures would “misrepresent” anything to children just to get them to stop asking questions. 🤣

And in an attempt to be THAT GUY, I was going to point out there are several states where only part of the state observes DST, including Indiana where I spent much of my youth. BUT THEY STOPPED THAT SHIT AT SOME POINT. Apparently having half the state switch clocks and the other not doing that got confusing or something so the whole state is just Central time all year round and observes DST. I’m not really sure how to feel about this, but I’ll still whine about it.

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Arizona went the other way and we don't do DST here.

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I see Indiana is trying to follow your lead after going Central time didn't solve alll the problems

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Can't imagine who the geniuses were that came up with the "part of the state' idea. That must've been quite the debacle.

"The delivery truck will be here around noon."

"Our time or their time?"

"He didn't say."

"Okay, listen up. Lunch breaks are cancelled until further notice."

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It actually is like that. As a kid growing up in Indiana living not far away from a part of the state that was DST (I wasn’t in a section that followed) and just trying to find out if record store or restaurant was open was so confusing. Plus calling my dad who lived in CA was always a gamble cuz I wasn’t on DST so how the hell would I know if he was home from work yet or if I needed to wait another hour.

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In fairness to the lying liar parents, I really think this myth was widely believed.

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It didn't make much of a difference. On the farm, we still woke when the sun came up and worked until it went down.

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Was this rolled out when you were a kid?

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Texas didn't start participating in DST until 1966. I was born in 69, and lived on a farm. As I grew up, the time change didn't affect us much, as Farmers went to work when the sun came up and worked until the sun went down. The change just gave us three more hours to work.

I still think it's useless. I work night now and have for 20 something years. I work until the sun comes up and sleep all day.

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There’s a third major reason for Daylight Saving Time (DST). It wasn't just about saving on lights. Back in the day, trains faced delays due to countless local times across the USA. Places like Pittsburgh, a major railroad hub, were especially affected. Standardizing time zones with DST became crucial for smooth train schedules across the country.

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In part, that was time zones but DST didn't come into being until WWI, then it was rescinded, then put back, then rescinded. then put back.... Then not consistently followed across states/counties/etc. so that doesn't quite resonate for trains. Time zone were for trains

A bit more complementing details here:

https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/a-waste-of-time

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Isn’t there a health issue argument as well? Studies suggest potential drawbacks to DST, like sleep disruption and increased traffic accidents due to drowsy driving in the mornings after time switches.

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Oh there are a plethora of drawbacks. I think I mention in my essay the economic impact of billions of dollars each switch.

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I think this has more to do with the creation of time zones, right? The railroad timing issue was a major problem during the late 19th century, but DST wasn't rolled out until the early 20th century at a wide scale.

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Nope. DST was about creating a standardized daylight schedule across the country. This allowed trains to have consistent travel times regardless of location.

So, while time zones were a key element, DST addressed the specific challenge of maintaining consistent daylight hours for train travel across different time zones.

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The railroad timing issue was a major problem during the late 19th century, but DST wasn't rolled out until the early 20th century at a wide scale. True. There might be a few reasons for the delay:

Resistance to Change: Standardizing time across a vast country like the US likely faced resistance from people accustomed to local timekeeping.

Focus on Other Issues: The late 19th century was a period of rapid development and social change. Standardizing time might not have been a top priority until the urgency grew with the expanding railroad network. So, while the railroad timing issue predates DST, the idea of a standardized daylight schedule offered a solution that gained momentum during World War I.

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