https://xkcd.com/2846

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I average out the spring and fall changes and just set my clocks 39 minutes ahead year-round.

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[–] 151 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (44 children)

Wait a minute. I'm taking this four steps further for the benefit of all of humanity. Here we go.

One, we need to convert over to 24-hour time. No more of this ridiculous AM/PM confusing crap that makes calculating times confusing. What time is it? It's 9. AM or PM? None of that. It's 9. What time is it 8 hours after 9? It's 9+8= 17. It's 17. Not 5p. What the hell. Why did anyone even ever agree to this AM/PM garbage?

Two, we need to end time zones. They are ridiculous. What's the point?? We could all work on GMT. Imagine, the entire world on one date. A whole worldwide party to celebrate the new year at the same time. International flight scheduling would be soooo intuitive. Your flight time is the arrival time minus the departure time without having to pull out a timezone map and consider daylights-savings to calculate it. What time is it on the International Space Station? The exact same time it is for the rest of humanity. Oh, but then half the world will be awake at night. Nope! They would just adjust their working/wake hours. Instead of the Eastern USA being open from 0900-1700, they would be open from 0400-1300. BTW, calculating that time difference was easy since it was on 24-hour time.

Three, we need to change over to the Julian calendar. What the hell are months even?? They don't serve any purpose other than to sell calendars, maintain the legacy of ancient emperors that dissolved democracies, and gaslight us by telling us that Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec mean 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. Get out of here with that crap. We're not buying it. Also, you know who else doesn't use 12-hour time and months?? The US military. They use GMT and Julian calendars for operational matters. Why? Because it makes sense for a global system to use the same thing everywhere!!

Fourth and lastly, we need to switch the year count to the Human Era. Stop with this whole year based on Jesus' supposed birth or death**. Do we even know if it's based on his birth or death? It doesn't matter. Oh, but historians use Before Common Era and Common Era. Okay...and who's life happens to line up perfectly with the split? That's like saying that the American Civil Rights movement ended racism in the country, yet there's still racial segregation and oppression. This is ridiculous. Civilization is letting the life of one person decide when it started?! What about everyone that lived before Jesus? Abroham? Cleopatra? Mark Antony (the full Roman, not the Romantic Puerto Rican)? the Buddha Llama? Sohcrateez? Confusion? Ea-nāṣir?! The correct year is when human civilization started. We are currently in the year 12,023 of the Human Era.

That's it! We've had enough of this oppression propagated by Big Time, including Rolex, Casio, Fossil, and grandfather. This movement starts right here👇, right now👇! One☝🏿humanity. One☝🏾period in the day inconsiderate of the meridian. One☝🏽variable for the date in a year. One☝🏼love. One☝🏻time.

Edit: Right now at the time of this edit, it is 5:00 pm on October 25, 2023 EST (daylights savings time), or better yet, 12023-298-2100 (year-date-time). 31 characters (excluding that it's daylights savings time!) vs. 14. Look at how simple 😮

We are all one system of humanity functioning on the same time, regardless of what anyone says. Right now is right now, no matter what we call it. It's time we all progress to a better future at/on the same time.

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    They would just adjust their working/wake hours. Instead of the Eastern USA being open from 0900-1700, they would be open from 0400-1300.

    Isn't that just time zones again?

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    No because if you're talking to someone on the other side of the planet (thanks internet), you can schedule some sort of event with them without having to look up the time difference before hand

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah but you need to know when they'd be sleeping, for example, so you still need to figure something out related to time differences.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    You both just have present your working or availability hours beforehand. Honestly this works better for me than someone assuming I'm available for an 8am meeting. I live on the US east coast, but my sleeping schedule is more west coast.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Ok, but businesses run about 8 to 17 local no matter where you are in the world, that's much easier to figure out with time zones than having to check the business's schedule every time you need to contact one.

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I never understand the anti timezone argument... Right now I know that across the world they'll be working somewhere between 8h and 17h local like anywhere else in the world, so I do some quick math and I know when that is in relation to me. Without time zones I need to be actively informed at what time someone across the world is working in order to know when I can contact them...

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    That information won't be lost, though. It just would be expressed differently. They are no longer in a +8 hour time zone, which given your own location in a +1 hour zone would lead to a most likely open time of 8 - 8 + 1 = 1 til 17 - 8 + 1 = 10 your time, but in an area where opening hours are most likely between 0100 and 1000.

    There is still a lookup, but no longer a lookup of time difference of the area, but a lookup of usual business hours in the area.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Kind of, but not exactly. Those are the hours their businesses are open. However, this takes one variable out of the formula, which is calculating the time difference. Rather than having to know the time difference and business hours, you'd only have to know the business hours. Also, it would be even easier if you just shared your availability, which is what matters anyway, but you don't have to calculate the time difference. There's only one variable to communicate, which is the universal time they would be available. It's super simple.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Julian calendar? No that's silly. New calendar, 13 months, each is 28 days. You get one intercalary day for New Year's, and a bonus one following our existing leap year schedule

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    The symmetry calendars are better. They don't break the 7 day week cycle, they instead have a 52 week common year, a 53 week leap year, and a complex leap year formula

    I would expect the leap week to be part of the end of year holiday

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    I'm SO glad that in my country the 24H format is the de facto standard! There are very few things I like in this shithole, but the ISO-8601 dates and the 24H time format is definitely one of them.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Where did you get the idea that the Julian calendar doesn't have months? The Gregorian calendar we use now made a tiny tweak to it to reduce drift, but is nearly the same.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    I kind of half-heartedly agree with most of this, but the human era one is kind of stupid. I don't really care about jesus's birth or death or whatever, I just have no reason to add an extra 1 to the date for the next 10,000 years until I switch it to a 2. Mostly because I'll be dead, but also because such a point would be so far in the future that I don't know that any of this argument will be relevant at all.

    Edit: also, you forgot the biggest one, which kind of goes along with months but not really: seasons. Lots of places don't have four distinct seasons, they just have a wet season and a dry season, or a dry kind of summer and then a wet winter and then a dry winter, or whatever, which influences local ecology a lot. Moulding these around to roughly fit whatever any individual location's season is, is kind of stupid. It's better just to say what the actual season is, it's less confusing, Everyone knows what everyone else means, it's more specific. People have been tricked into thinking that the four seasons are a universal thing, they're not, that's false.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    You forgot decimal time!

    We should stop this nonsense of having 24 hours a day, 60 minutes per hours, 60 seconds per minutes, 1000 ms per seconds.

    Instead we switch to switch to decimal time: 10 hours a day, 100 minutes per hours and 100 second per minutes.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago*

    I like how your suggestions successively became more radical.

    But, Julian calendar? Still a rookie I see.

    The calendar year has 13 months with 28 days each, divided into exactly 4 weeks (13 × 28 = 364). An extra day added as a holiday at the end of the year (after December 28, i.e. equal December 31 Gregorian), sometimes called "Year Day", does not belong to any week and brings the total to 365 days.

    I suspect about 1% of the world cares enough to even have this discussion though.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    we need to change over to the Julian calendar

    That's where the names of the months of the Gregorian calendar (which is what we're using) come from, the Julian calender got them from the old Roman calendar (which was inaccurate as fuck). The main relevant change in the Gregorian reform is the spacing of leap years, making it drift less than the Julian one. It's still drifting a bit and a fix was proposed back in the 19th century but never adopted. We'll probably revisit the topic in the decade before the year 4000 where it's actually going to matter.

    If you want a sane calendar try the Discordian one. Though arguably St. Tib's day shouldn't be right in the middle of a season. I'd suggest considering it the 0th day of Chaos, giving an additional hangover day for New Year's every once in a while, also, set the St. Tib's day years to the same stuff as the aforementioned reformed Gregorian, whith an asterisks saying "change as needed once the earth starts falling into the sun for real". The starting year (1 YOLD is 1166 BC) is fine because it's completely random.

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    [–] 49 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    The vast majority of people want it to change, but we can't get organized enough to politically make it happen.

    You can change the word "it" above to apply to a LOT of things.

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  • [–] 37 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This is unreasonable. Just change the earth's tilt on its axis. The other solution will only lead to confusion.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I want to set my clock back every time. Let's just do that.

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    [–] 31 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Not that I'll ever be in a position to have employees, but if somehow I ever find myself in that situation, the start of the work day will be set at 2 hours after sunrise.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    It depends on the industry but if the work is not time sensitive, I'd tell employees to start whenever, and finish 8 hours (or the appropriate shift length for the type of work) after that. I'd plot the average start and end times in a chart and I'd schedule any required team meetings to catch the largest overlap of employees (within reason, aiming to keep that overlap between 8am-6pm, unless we're all somehow on night shift)

    I have a circadian rhythm disorder and shift start and end times not lining up with my natural sleep pattern is honestly the worst part of working. There's got to be a better way to do it. Humans aren't designed to start and stop work based on a clock, but some of us also don't work with the sun.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago

    I’d much rather change my clock to daylight savings time and then never change it again.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    We had a vote but it was essentially deliberately ruined from the get go. Instead of yes or no, it was permanent summer time, permanent winter time, or keep daylight savings so the people wanting permanent time split their vote and lost.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Who are the chucklefucks that want it to get dark at 4:30PM for half the year?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Plenty of people would prefer the extra daylight in the mornings rather than the evenings. I'm personally in favour of summer time all the time

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago*

    Chronobiologists. The people who actually study how time impacts our well being and health.

    The American public. Permanent DST was tried once already and winter with DST is way worse than summer with standard time.

    Everyone who hates how early they have to get up for work. Standard time lets you sleep longer. (It's hard to think about, but it's true!)

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    "Abortions for some, tiny american flags for others!"

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Most of my clocks go through the change themselves. My wristwatch is a bit trickier sometimes (radio waves).

    Would be less of a hassle to have one time 👍

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    I have seen a proposal where everyone just uses Greenwich time and then just accepts that their day begins at 2:00 p.m. or whatever. That way 2:00 p.m. is the same time everywhere on the planet, for some people that's night, for some people thats day, for some people that's the middle of the day.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    We did this in Guatemala one year, the government tried to start using DST and half of the population just ignored them. That was a fun year.

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