It's funny to reason why we must go to bed when the clock has a certain number, since modern technology could easily be programmed to adjust as needed. No technical reasons the Martians can't go to bed at 9:00am today and 9:40am tomorrow. This mirrors my thoughts on why farmers caring about daylight savings time is farcical, farmers I know use the timekeeping of "crack of dawn" and "sunset".

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dmoy 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

iirc DST was never about farmers, and always about energy usage (lighting, etc) in the evening

Agree I've never met a farmer who cares about DST. Though also, for non-ag farmers, sometimes "crack of dawn" isn't early enough lol. Cow: "Dairy barn has electric lights, why aren't you awake at 4am tending to my needs, Human? Vacation? Lol no, stay here. Every morning. 4am."

	▲	slyall 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		DST is not about energy use. If it actually saves energy is debated and depends a lot on the local climate and air conditioning usage etc. What it is about is moving an extra hour of daylight from say 5:30am-6:30am (when it is only of use to farmers and a few other early risers) to say 7pm-8pm when 95% of the population is still awake.

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Arainach 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People want to understand when things are open/reasonable without having to do a lookup every time. A conversion has to happen somewhere - either I can say "X is in timezone foo. It's 1300 there so they're awake and I can call them" or "It's 1900 UTC, X is awake from....err....2200 to 1400, so I can call now".

The first is significantly easier as it requires remembering only a single offset and then going with societal conventions.

	▲	msla 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> "It's 1900 UTC, X is awake from....err....2200 to 1400, so I can call now" Assuming it's that simple of course. Like, you can do mental math about what UTC "officially means" for someone many miles away, but people coordinate with others even if it means their local schedule is not aligned with that ideal case. Time zones account for this by being wider or narrower than their Platonic 15° of longitude ideal in some places.

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devilbunny 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Farmers who have to buy things (and that's almost all of them) care about the hours the shops are open, which is affected by DST.

	▲	bluGill 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		And farmers are annoyed that one day the shop is open just after dawn, and the next not for another hour. Farmers are building their life around sunrise/sunset (or sometimes the dew cycles which is tied to the sun), and then fit the rest of the world in between.

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1718627440 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a problem, because farmers have contracts with others and need them to do things at 3am one day and 4am on another.

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johnnyanmac 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We're mostly still a diurnal species. We go to bed at 9PM instead of 9Am for evolutionary reasons. We can fight against it, but the reasons are as arbitrary as biology is.

Likewise Daylight savings is a concept that had its uses, but makes less sense as technology progresses. I don't think even farmers care much about 7AM approximating to sunrise and 6PM as sunset.

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jameshart 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Time zones are less about having uniform names for the times for waking up or going to work or mealtimes, and more about when your calendar changes from one date to the next.