Scientists explain our dislike of Daylight Savings Time

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/13/scientists-explain-our-dislike-of-daylight-savings-time.html

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They needed a poll to determine that??

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Or going to work while it’s still dark for a quarter of the year…?

Unless you change when you start working, but when you do that, what’s the point to begin with?

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It’s only really a problem if one still uses a henge for keeping time.

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I, like most people, hate switching twice a year. Honestly, I don’t have a strong preference for either time. Just pick one. Flip a coin. Or split the difference. I don’t care. Just stop switching it back and forth. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to give everyone jet lag twice a year, even when they haven’t been on a plane? I’ve never understood the point. I never will understand the point.

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Strong preference for Standard Time all year.

DST in the wintertime makes no sense whatsoever to me.

But opinions most likely correspond to one’s latitude (and work schedule). I suspect that folks closer to the equator are more likely to want to standardize on DST.

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Commuting in the dark doesnt annoy me nearly as much as having no free time with sunlight after work to go outside for an activity, or take the kids to the park.

Having extra opportunities to enjoy my evening is absolutely my preference vs a brighter morning commute.

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But I don’t dislike it?

Seems perfectly reasonable to me to have a bit more daylight in the winter and longer evenings in the summer.

I suspect that most people who dislike it don’t actually live at latitudes where it makes a difference.

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Strong DST fan here. It’s possibly the only thing Marco Rubio and I agree on. I like having more light later in the day, and not having the sun poke me in the eye when I’m trying to sleep in.

You’re right that I’m closer to the equator, but having visited a FIL who lived in Maine, I don’t know why folks farther north would rather have the sun go down at 4 in the afternoon.

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You realize that we get the same amount of daylight regardless of what the clocks say, right?

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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Titus Burgess GIF by NETFLIX

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Something something Canadian farmers umm, err, energy saving Germans…

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Obviously, but not subjectively. The difference between the earliest sunset in winter and the latest sunset in summer is 13 hours and 15 minutes where I live. Having an hour extra when you’re out and about makes a huge difference to quality of life.

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It’s funny that there is no popular argument out there for what is essentially a compromise. You get a little bit of whatever each side argues for. It’s great. Sure, the UTC offset change might be an adjustment for international communications and affairs, but it’ll be the last adjustment they’ll need to make.

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Time zones are divided by longitude, but the length of the day is largely determined by latitude. It doesn’t make sense for everyone in a time zone to change their clocks so a minority of people in a certain latitudinal range can have sunshine while they drive to work.

If it makes a big difference where you live then nobody is stopping businesses in your area from establishing seasonal hours of operation.

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Not having to get up in the pitch dark is a real plus for me! :slight_smile:

So maybe we need to add to the list of factors that contributes to one’s preference for DST or ST “morning person”/“evening person”.

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I’d have no problem restricting daylight savings time to a zone above a certain latitude. But that was kinda my point above: for some people it does matter, and I suspect that what the internet calls most people is just people living in the south. (For the record, in this mental model all of the US (minus Alaska) and most of the densely populated part of Canada is in the south)

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Why should we change our lives just so trains run on time?

Who cares? Deal with it CSX, Amtrack or whomever…

And congress, just effing pick one or the other and call it a day JFC.

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Personally, I hate getting up for the day while it’s still dark. I always find it hard to spring forward for this reason. I’m just getting used to it getting light around my regular wakeup time and BAM, plunged back into morning darkness for a few weeks.

On the flip side, gaining an hour in the autumn makes me feel like a superhero for a day. Either I’m getting up “earlier” with the same amount of sleep (and so have an extra hour in my day) or I get up at the same time, but with an extra hour of sleep to fuel me.

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I used to care a lot about this when my kids were young. It seemed like for a couple weeks a year around time changes we’d have trouble getting them to bed on time or getting them up on time, and it was a hassle for all of us.

Now that they’re older, I’m back to not caring at all.

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