In May, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 48-1 in favor of the Sunshine Protection Act. The U.S. Senate voted unanimously in March 2022 to make daylight saving time permanent but the House never took up the measure in the face of opposition. The proposal the House will consider next week would allow states to opt out.
This would be about the only good thing Republicans have done ever if they pass this. Hope they don’t let states opt out. When I lived up north by Canada, the logic was “you don’t want kids having to walk to/from school when it’s dark!!” Okay, so… wow, did you know they could change school hours.
Also school: let’s start activities at 6 AM in winter. And not finish until 10PM. No the bus only runs for school hours why do you ask?
I don’t know, we tried it in the 70s and people hated it enough to switch back pretty quickly. Under permanent DST, sunrise in January would not be until after 8 AM, while under permanent standard time sunrise in June would be shortly after 4 AM.
i remember that. it was my first year in school and i still remember going to school “at night”. i was not a fan. yes, school was only across the street, but i did not like the dark–at all. mom had to walk me to school instead of just watching from the back steps like she usually did back then.
i am firmly on team standard time; and i’d rather keep changing (and preferably with the old time change dates and shorter dst) than be an hour ahead all year long.
I work from 7am to 5 pm. During the summer I need that extra hour of light to go fishing otherwise it’s not worth the drive. If I can fish for 3 hours after work it’s well worth it
I hope the Dems read all the small print, like, “Daylight Savings is now permanent…and brown people have no rights…”
change the school hours for the shifting daylight hours, you’d also have to change parents’ work schedules… or provide some child care benefits, maybe. and we know how that would go over with this congress and administration.
We’ve been ready to get rid of the switch for ages in Ontario and Quebec but because of international business we’re stuck waiting for New York to also get rid of it
*modern day republicans
The OGs were cool back when the Republican Party was the progressive party that wanted to abolish slavery, give women the right to vote, etc.
Then they did pulled the uno reverse card about 90 years ago, and the GOP started becoming America’s Conservative Party.
Sure, but that is such a long time ago. The relevant thing is liberals vs. conservatives. In the 1850s Republicans were the liberal party. It’s funny how now they try to claim credit for Lincoln and it’s uh okay, so who is it that displays confederate flags now? Democrats?
SHUT THE FUCK UP! OKAY? They vote on this every fucking year and it dies in the Senate. Big Clock is going to lobby this shit until I die. Just shut up. Stop talking about it. Daylight Savings will be in the USA for at least another hundred years.
^^^^ Legitimately one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.
Is it though?
I didn’t even say anything!
Dude, what did he say?! Shut up!
It passed in the Senate. It died in the house.
I imagine it’ll be the same when they federally legalize weed. Each chamber will take turns killing it for decades.
It’s actually been gaining steam over the past 5-ish years. If it dies in the end, it’s because people can’t agree which time should be permanent.
People in America can’t even agree on voting for a pedo or not. What makes you think they could agree on a timezone?
MAGAs have been pushing it because it’s one of the few innocuous issues they’ve got that isn’t a human rights atrocity.
It was really pushed by Rubio before he boarded the Trump train though
Why not standard time?
It’s, like, THE STANDARD
Yeah, no clue why everyone’s going DST instead. I think having politicians make science decisions is a really dumb idea.
It’s “standard”, yet only applies 4 months out of 12 a year.
Science?
DST has always been a political decision.
People get cranky when the time is moved forward in the spring. So they write to the politicians around that time. The politicians start talking about doing away with it then. There’s no thought towards “ok we’ll move the clacks back in the fall (nobody’s cranky about that one) and then not change it again.” It’s just “do away with changing the clocks immediately!”
Where in your time zone do you live? I bet you’re way out on the eastern end of whatever zone you’re in, because your complaints don’t seem to match mine at all. The November time change is the one that sucks, because it suddenly and unceremoniously steals the only hour of daylight I have for myself, and holds it hostage for four months.
Because I want it to be light out later in the day
You like not being able to be outside?
I’d rather have them move the clock an hour backwards in summer. Summer days are so hot nowadays that you can’t be outdoors until after the sun goes down. Summer nights are nice, summer evenings aren’t. With DST you have to go to bed by the time you can be outdoors so you effectively can’t be out during weekdays.
I don’t agree at all. I have a ton of outdoor activities after work that get cut off when winter time doesn’t give me any daylight to do them. The heat isn’t the problem; the lack of evening daylight is the problem.
I don’t see how an additional hour in winter would help if you have a normal 9-5 job. Does it matter if it gets dark at 4 or 5 in the afternoon when either way it’s dark before you get off work?
I think the idea of 9-5 being “normal” is a stereotype that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If it was ever actually “normal”, it was in a bygone era. I don’t actually have anyone in my social circles who starts a scheduled morning shift after 8:00AM. Most people seem to start morning work shifts between 6:00 and 7:30. My last (manufacturing) employer had regular shifts 07:00-15:30, 15:00-23:30, and 23:00-07:30.
The only people in my social circles who might work 9-5 are people on flexible schedules, who are already free to ignore the biannual time change.
That being said, the earliest standard-time sunset in my area is around 4:30PM. Evening twilight lasts until 5:00. No daylight, no twilight for this 9-5 standard time worker.
With permanent DST, this supposedly “normal” 9-5 shift worker gets sunset at 5:30, and half an hour of twilight after that. They get at least 60 minutes of evening daylight in the darkest of winter in December/January. They get much more than that hour in November, February, and March.
Because light in the evening is better than light at night.
The numbers on the clock have no effect on the amount of daylight.
No, but they have an effect on the amount of daylight you have on your free time, in the evening. Evening being defined by the numbers on the clock.
Great, so there’s no objection to permanent daylight savings.
People like daylight time in the summers, because that gives them the opportunity to do things after work in sunlight. For places where they’re getting 16 hours of sunlight, they’d generally prefer sunrise at 5am and sunset at 9pm, rather than 4am to 8pm.
But daylight time is terrible in the winters. Sunlight from 8am to 4pm is probably better than 9am to 5pm.
That’s basically why we had daylight savings switching clocks to begin with. But the fundamental tradeoff in the higher latitudes was always summer versus winter.
Nope what is the difference at least I see sunlight. Go to work in the dark under both ways. One I at least get some sun at the end of the day.
North/West vs South/East in each time zone
There are 4 time zones in the US
The more North/West you live in a time zone the more you hate DST. The more South/East you live the more you like DST.
If you live in blue you probably hate DST, yellow probably like DST
All stems from states like Michigan should be in CST not EST. If Michigan was in CST then permanent DST would make it EST and they would be in “standard” time still.
Couldn’t this be fixed by just moving the blue sections to the adjacent time zone.
Yes it could be. But having half a city in one time zone and the other half in another causes logistical problems. Does the same thing with states. That’s why they are like that.
Best solution would be creating all new states designed around the time zones.
This would be the best way to split up the time zones with current states and counties
Thirty minute time zones are not at all feasible.
The best solution is to permanently adopt the more widely used system (DST) immediately, then reconsider the boundaries of four (or perhaps five) zones.
We should just reset our time zones to be straight lines while we’re at it
So half your house is in one time zone and the other half is in another?
Speaking as someone who used to live in a city that’s on that line: yes
Or you can break it down by city or county instead, some states already do it by county. If you know that Columbus is an hour later than Zanesville or that it’s an hour earlier than Springfield, will it be disruptive? Sure, but it’s the sort of thing people who live on time zone lines get used to. People in Indianapolis go to Chicagoland fairly often despite being in different time zones.
Really what drives me nuts is that it’s arbitrarily shifted. Kentucky and Indiana are split when they could just all be central without issue. But hey, at least we aren’t doing time zones as badly as Spain
Because most of the year is already daylight savings time. We’re only in standard time for 4 months from November to March. It doesn’t sound like a big difference from being 50/50, but we’re in DST twice as long as we’re in standard time.
“standard” time is only used about 1/3 of the year. We use DST most of the year. Minimizing disruption, we should just drop that exception.
With DST, solar noon is pretty close to 12PM on the eastern end of the time zone. With standard time, solar noon lines up closer to 11AM on the eastern edge. Standard time just doesn’t make sense.
Trump just fired the federal election commission and fucks kids. Epstien files.
I just saw that. What. The. Fuck.
Exactly.
Of course there might be somethibg horrible in this bill that they want to sneak through.
Standard time is better for health, and much less stupid to have the clock synced to the day cycle
I assume you don’t live somewhere where it gets dark at 3pm in winter. The morning will be dark regardless, let me have that little bit of sun coming home from work
I live in SWEDEN, try again
Change your schedule, not the clock
We’re in DST twice as much as we’re in standard time. Keeping DST year round is the option most adherent to “change your schedule, not the clock”. Adjusting winter hours for things is just as viable as adjusting summer hours is, so I’m not understanding why everybody insists on standard time year round and then says that it doesn’t matter what the clock says because you can just change behaviors. Like yeah, we’re saying the same thing, but we barely experience standard time so why would that be the one we pick? There’s less to change if we pick DST.
Who is? It’s not 8/4 here.
No, not when you put the sun and clock out of sync. Just fucking change when you set your alarm if you don’t want the health benefit of morning sun.
Having a deliberately wrong clock because there’s an unjustified offset when you don’t need the offset is stupid.
I’m not really sure I understand your comment.
Who is?
Who is what? Who is experiencing twice as much DST as standard time? The US. And the post is about changing what the US does, so that’s a relevant detail. I don’t really care that Sweden doesn’t do that because nobody is talking about Sweden.
No, not when you put the sun and clock out of sync.
No, not what?
Idk dude, you seem really upset and I can’t really make heads or tails of it.
And regardless of if it’s Sweden or USA, it’s still stupid to have a misaligned clock.
I’m not upset, just annoyed that people choose to be stupid when they know there’s a better choice.
I guess I just don’t see the point of doing it that way. You’re not wrong, but we’re already on DST so much more, so it’s less disruptive to just keep that in place here. What we call the time is arbitrary, even if it wasn’t always that way. I’d rather just go with DST year round than get stuck bickering over whether standard is the better choice and then pass nothing and keep this dumbass system of changing the clocks in November and March every year, fucking up sleep schedules and causing more car crashes and having confusing computer anomalies because our clocks change but theirs don’t.
Agreed. After living most of my life in the PNW, having summer twilight as late as 10 PM was terrible.
Not American but living at the same latitude in Canada, the 10pm sunsets makes up for the endless dark that is winter. When spring comes, I take any sunlight that I can get
That must have been very N; sunset is around 9:20 on the summer solstice in Seattle.
Seattle. Twilight follows sunset for a time.
Whaa? That sounds glorious.
Lucy removes the football in 3…2…
Was going to say. They already passed this, and then the Senate dragged it’s feet
This originally gained steam in the senate maybe 6 years ago? Shocked it is still kicking
Standard Time should be the default. And sadly, we don’t even have that. Even our Standard Time has been mucked with. This website is a good source (not mine by the way). https://savestandardtime.com/ Let businesses change their hours instead of making people change clocks.
Let businesses change their hours instead of making people change clocks.
Most businesses in the USA can change their hours , but the hours that make sense for them depend on schedules they don’t control.
False.
Boo, the permanent time should be standard time, it’s standard for a good reason.
Standard time blows unless your work hours are something absurd like 5am to 1pm.
A 9 to 5 is still a 9 to 5 no matter which way you shift the clock
Of the two options they could have standardized on they picked the worst one. This literally defeats the point of noon
That is admittedly the best argument in favor of standard I’ve heard.
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“Allow states to opt out?” Isn’t this already something under their control? How is this a federally mandated thing? I mean Arizona already doesn’t do it.
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if its a federal decision just make the change apply everywhere. No one wants every state doing this differently. Think of the poor programmers.
On your first question: the current law is that DST is optional, but if a state opts out, they have to be on standard time. The new bill allows them to stay on DST permanently and removes the ability for states to opt-out unless they are already on year-round standard time. So, if this passes, every state in the union will be on either standard time or DST, depending on their status before, with no option to either go back to standard time nor to go back to changing twice a year.
The answer is simple.
The government shouldn’t be telling us what time it is. We should leave that to the private sector. And you should be required to pay for a subscription to know what time it is.
hey
psst!
yeah you, come here
you uh, you wanna buy a watch? I can get you a good deal, no subscription. Just don’t tell nobody, k?
Bojack Horseman called it. Just gotta buy some stock in What Time Is It Right Now.
Dude… time zones can go fuck themselves. I’m a QA and every quarter we deal with some random ass bug that rolls back to time zone issues.
I need a website like isitdns.com except isittimezone.fu
Also, fuck leap year bugs.
Haha that’s fair.
The only two things programmers hate more than time zones are DNS and SSL
Yeah timezones are annoying… but just don’t schedule anything to happen between 1am and 3am on Sundays and forget about it.
DNS is also pretty meh to me actually.
SSL? Holy shit… why the hell are they going to be requiring certs to change every fucking month? WTF is wrong with these people? Bad enough I gotta find a way for business partners to verify their connections still work when we discontinue TLS 1.0 and 1.1 because most of them are probably still using fucking .Net 4.x which requires a line of code to enable newer TLS versions (fucking Microsoft!) but in a couple of years we’re going to have to find a way to automate certificate updates every fucking month because everyone’s passing security responsibilities to me including the goddamn trusted CAs.
Yeah, SSL is a trigger word for me.
States are allowed to opt out of DST. They are allowed to adopt permanent standard time. They are forbidden from adopting permanent DST.
Great point. From a quick websearch it looks like every state is allowed to exempt itself. The few states that opted out did so right near the creation of the daylight saving time law.
I think maybe it comes down to inertia and staying in the herd. No state wants to be the first one to stick their neck out and make a change from the rest of the country all still doing the status quo.
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Who even fucking cares anymore? How about demanding proof of life from the Senate Majority Leader? Stop wasting your breath on this bullshit.
Why not just move school and work start times an hour or two later in the winter in Colorado then? Why hold the entire country hostage because of niche locations that already have the ability to make local decisions like this?
>more people will be driving to work or to the ski resorts in the dark
Trust me, if you aren’t on I-70 before sunrise on the weekend, don’t bother. You’re not getting to the resort till noon
TIL in 1974 the U.S. tried permanent DST during an energy crisis … it saved little energy, fuel use slightly increased, and public support collapsed after one dark winter, so the law was repealed within 10 months.
God forbid we’d learn from past mistakes.
What do you mean dark winter? We already spend 3/4 of the year in DST. It sucks when it goes to standard time as it gets dark real early.
As someone who works too damn early, please let’s be sensible and do permanent standard time.
I’m sorry Canada, you’re usually right, but you’re wrong about this
We are further north. I went daylight time because it leaves more daylight after work.
Even here in the Midwest I feel the same. I’d rather have the sunlight during my time, not while I’m at work.
To be fair, Saskatchewan of all places actually did it right. BC surprised me. Alberta makes perfect sense with Marlena at the helm.
Noon should be noon, not 1.
Do you complain for 3/4 of the year?
Yes, seriously makes my insomnia worse.
Yes. Where I live is on the weird edge of a timezone, so even for the tiny part of the year where time makes more sense solar noon is at around 12:33. When daylight savings happens, that goes to 13:33. Noon happens closer to 15:00 than to “noon” and it’s stupid
I’m too lazy to find my years old comment on this but they didn’t vote on it because they pocketed it to use as a rider base or ticket.
There is literally no opposition, they wanted to use it to pass other bills or measures at the same time because it has complete bipartisan support.
Congress sucks ass.
