Lord, yes. Twice a year, you’d think the world was ending.
We used to change them closer to six months apart than we do now. The mantra from every fire chief was, “Change your clocks, change your (smoke detector) batteries.” Newer ones have 10 year batteries but there are a lot out there that don’t yet.
I know I also used that to as a reminder to check some other things around the house.
I wish. I have an old alarm clock that has two buttons to adjust the time: one moves forward slowly and one moves forward quickly. You can’t go backwards. If you want to move the time back one hour, you have to hold the button down to move it forward 23 hours, which takes about a minute even with the quick button. And if, god forbid, you overshoot, you have to wait for it to run through the whole 24 hours again.
My modest proposal:
If we depopulated the northern half of the USA, this would be a non-issue. The days in the remaining useful part of the country are long enough even in February to get up in twilight if not daylight, travel to and from work/school in daylight, and have some daylight / twilight left over with which to recreate or whatever. Set the clocks so the working part of the day isn’t too close to twilight at either end and be done with it.
Our problem is NOT when the clocks are set versus local solar noon, nor whether or not they’re changed by an hour now and again. The inherent problem everyone is anxious to solve is that the amount of daylight is insufficient up north most of the year versus the amount of crap folks (or their bosses / owners) want to accomplish in a calendar day.
I much prefer ight i the morning and would happily stick to “normal” time year 'round.
I could not care less about the gain/loss of an hour in my daily routine.
I’ll 'ave some!
I’m voting for keeping one schedule (no strong feelings on which should be standardized) on behalf of an unrepresented minority, pets.
My cats dislike the change in their feeding habits. This of course isn’t directly caused by DST changes, but by the fact that their human servants have to feed them early (or late) because they have to be at a work location at some time that has suddenly changed. Yes, we try to adjust it a bit at a time early (if we remember) but this morning Cat Secundus (Kai) lost it’s kitty mind because from his POV, mommy got up and left him alone in heartbreaking loneliness an entire hour early forcing him to shriek and wake up backup human (me) for attention and cuddles.
The cats (and other pets I suppose) demand an end to this twice-annual disruption of their system!
Can’t quite get behind your specific plan of action, but every time we have this national conversation the northerners are left out. Nearly everybody wants to stop switching and people talk a lot about grilling or whatever, but in the PNW if we had DST in winter, sunrise would be close to 9 in the morning. The flip side of course is it doesn’t get fully dark in summer till around 10. I’m all in favor of more fun time outdoors after work but it’s ridiculous when you can’t watch Johnny Carson without direct sunlight on your TV screen; it’s far too much of a good thing.
I find all that very hard to believe. If changing the time by an hour is that horribly dangerous, shouldn’t the AASM be advocating that nobody should ever travel across time zones?
And consider, these alleged risks need to be weighed against the clear and obvious increase in traffic deaths resulting from having peak commute times in the dark.
Look, if you have mastered time travel DST should be trivial to handle…
There is a major difference between traveling between time zones where the clock changes to keep reasonably current to solar time. Are y’all seriously saying that someone going from Los Angeles to New York and adjusting their watch would be the same as that same person moving their clock 3 hours while staying home with regards to sunlight, circadian rhythms, etc?
In other words, in LA the sun rises at 7am and you go to New York and move your watch ahead 3 hours and the Sun rises at 7am local time is not the same as moving your watch ahead 3 hours in LA and now the Sun rises at 10am.
I think that the problem now is that we generally agree that it needs to go, but
*1/3rd wants DST all year
*1/3rd wants standard time all year, and
*1/3rd doesn’t care which, just pick one,
And a very small percentage come up with their own plan that they think is the bees knees, and no one else understands.
I’m mostly in the third group, although I was one of the kids walking to school in the dark
Would love to know where you live and if you have/had children or pets? Where I live, this makes a huge difference. When you have 16 hours of daylight in the summer and 16 hours of night in the winter, it can make a big difference. BUT, I hate the change and we need to come up with a way to do away with the time changes which are very disruptive. Ask anyone with children. Where you live within a time zone matters greatly as well.
No, it doesn’t. Maybe if you live nearer the equator you could be so glib about it, but not all of us so. I think all that say “time changes are good” should list where they live.
I live in Chicago, where year-round DST would deprive the average resident of 45 minutes of waking daylight during the summertime. Trust me, we want every useful minute of summer we can get!
I wake at the same time pretty much every day of the year. During the work week, I almost always wake up a couple minutes before my alarm. During the time changes, this gets thrown out of whack. On the weekends, I wake up, without alarm and still before it would’ve gone off and decide if I’m getting up. I guess I’m a baffling person. Guess what? My pets do the same thing. They are also baffling.
I live in the Chicago area and it’s fine. People whine way too much about it twice a year.
Have a 14 year old, he’s fine. Have cats, they’re fine.
Western Oregon, pets who don’t care, no kids but I taught 8 am classes pretty regularly.
So do those that dismiss the majority that DO have issues with time changes think their biological reasons should be dismissed? “It isn’t a problem for me so I don’t see why it should be for others?” Personally, I don’t have any issues with obesity or being overweight. Should I also dismiss those that might have obesity issues due to their biological make-up? Stop whining about your obesity. I’m fine.
As soon as obesity is a brief event that involves moving your scale dial twice a year, sure. Great comparison.
There are the same number of minutes of daylight whether DST or not. 45 minutes would not be taken away (or given). You want 45 more ‘useful’ minutes of daylight in the summer? Get up earlier and go outside or go to work an hour earlier and clock out an hour earlier.
Sometimes, even the SDMB can be anti-science. Also, the solution is not a one-size fits all across the US, but a regional approach.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/09/nx-s1-5320160/time-change-daylight-saving-spring-health