Sherwood Toney

Every time I walk up Rialto Street I grow stronger.

On a biological level yes it clearly is

People hate the clock change itself, which is understandable. (Is it really that bad, though? Honestly?) Unless we're willing to radically change work and school schedules throughout the year, the seasonal clock shift is one of the few tools we have to keep daily life roughly aligned with daylight.

Most of us are already living on a clock that has very little to do with the sun. Given that reality, the real question becomes: how do we make a rigid clock system coexist with a planet that has seasons? DST is basically the least bad answer anyone has come up with.

A lot of the current debate frames this purely in terms of circadian biology ("morning light is good for your brain").

That may be true in theory, but for a huge number of people the morning is irrelevant. You wake up to an alarm, commute in the dark, and sit under fluorescent lights anyway.

If we locked into permanent daylight saving time, on the other hand, winter mornings would become absurdly dark. In December the sun wouldn’t rise until after 8:30 AM. Millions of people would start work or school in complete darkness for months. That's also not obviously better.

If we locked into permanent standard time, summer mornings would come absurdly early. In my region sunrise would be around 4:45 AM in June. Most people would sleep through two hours of daylight every day while the evening would get dark earlier. This is truly "wasted" daylight, and an inconvenience.

DST is basically a bureaucratic workaround for that loss of flexibility. Instead of shifting millions of work and school schedules twice a year, we shift the clock once. This is deeply practical.

Historically, of course, people didn't do this.

Agricultural and preindustrial societies shifted their daily schedules with the seasons. You woke earlier in summer and later in winter because the sun itself was the timekeeper.

Modern life pretends that this doesn't matter.

Work still starts at roughly the same time. School still starts at roughly the same time. The bus still comes at the same time. The office still expects you there at the same time. Which is absurd.

In a place like Pittsburgh the difference between winter and summer daylight is enormous. In December we get about 9 hours of daylight. In June we get about 15 hours.

Unfashionable opinion: I think that switching between standard time and DST is actually the most sensible compromise we have.

The problem isn’t really DST. The problem is that society insists on keeping the same clock schedule year-round even though daylight changes dramatically with the seasons.

If those schedules aren't going to move, adjusting the clock twice a year is at least a way to keep the active part of the day roughly aligned with daylight. Otherwise we're pretending the seasons don't exist

Honestly I think the seasonal clock change is the most sensible compromise. Society already insists we show up to work and school at the same clock time year-round even though daylight swings by six hours between winter and summer.

If we did permanent "normal time" the sun would come up in June at 4:45 AM.

Let's never go back

Solar noon occurs at 12:00 PM by the clock almost never, except by coincidence in a few places on a few days of the year

Something close to my reason for being

3:49 PM and the day is still so young! And I am young too

I love the summer. Every part of it. I don't care for the winter very much. Bring on the 98°. Bring on the humidity. But I live in Pittsburgh, PA

So at least in the summer there can be some acknowledgment that the works of man ought to bow to the movement of the heavens

I don't really understand this line of argumentation. Times are arbitrary anyway. What's actually absurd is that I would be expected to be at work at 8:30 all year round, regardless of where in the track of the sun that time falls

I'm definitely of the mind that if we keep a single time, it should be the time where we have more light in the evenings

The radiance of my friends' opinions is like the light of a thousand suns

Haha yeah I hate reading your opinions and interacting with you too (????)

I like it because it's strange and idiosyncratic. We should have even more strange, even more idiosyncratic timekeeping practices

No tricks here ma'am. I consent

I would give anything to have my evenings back

Come to Pittsburgh, we have like 800 of them

I think this is correct. Much better reasoning than some "scientific" study. I trust this character