John Oliver: Daylight Saving Time - How Is This Still A Thing?

[Rhiannon12866]

Daylight saving time doesn’t actually benefit anyone. Strangely, it’s still a thing!

[Dennis Donovan]

1. Hahaha!!!

Okay, not only did I lose and hr, but the JO video on Sunday MORNING made me think I lost a day too!

[Rhiannon12866]

2. This was suggested by another DUer and was just too funny not to share...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016203026#post3

[Dennis Donovan]

9. Here's the Wikipedia page on DST (incl history of it):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States

Did you know Arizona and Hawaii don't observe DST?

[Lucky Luciano]

3. I love daylight savings time.

Before work, I get up at 5:00 to lift weights and run 6 miles. Nice to run with a little daylight! It is also nice for the sun to go down later after work in the spring and summer!

[Rhiannon12866]

5. I've been really looking forward to it myself!

It's depressing when it gets dark so early and I'm sick of driving home - or anywhere - in the dark. But I couldn't resist posting this since John Oliver is always funny!

[Lucky Luciano]

10. True that! The clip is still funny! nt

[thesquanderer]

20. Daylight Savings Time makes it DARKER for your morning run.

DST steals an hour of light from the morning and adds it to the evening. (Obviously, no change to the clock can actually create more daylight, all we can do is "move" it.)

The reason you have more morning light in the summer than winter is because of how the earth is moving/tilting relative to the sun, not because of daylight savings time. We naturally have more total daylight per day during part of the year, giving us that flexibility in how we "assign" it. That is, we then have enough hours of light that we can "afford" to move some of the daylight from the early morning to the evening.

[Lucky Luciano]

22. I was not precise. Of course I understand the trivial science involved.

In the winter, I want more light in the morning hours since the sun going down at 430 or 530 I am indifferent to - so standard time is better in winter. Sunlight at 430am in the summer is a waste - I would rather have that sunlight at 830pm instead of 730pm along with sunrise closer to 530am. The morning run in the summer would always be filled with light in both standard and DST.

I can’t say one or the other is better permanently, hence DST is useful to me.

[joshdawg]

4. There is no such thing as saving daylight.

Period!

Someone gonna stop the earth from rotating? That would be the only way to save daylight.

Setting the clocks ahead or backward is sheer lunacy. It benefits no one.

[IronLionZion]

6. Summer would have earlier sunrise and sunset without DST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/03/09/daylight-saving-time-starts-saturday-night-heres-how-things-would-change-if-we-got-rid-of-it/?utm_term=.2e20a40536d1

It's to give us more daylight in the evening instead of the morning

[CousinIT]

7. I hate this dumbass time change crap. SET IT and LEAVE IT ALONE.

Stupid humans cannot change time and all the fiddling is ridiculous and purposeless.

[thesquanderer]

19. re: "Stupid humans cannot change time"

If we're talking about the concepts of determining "what time it is," what units to break the day into and so forth, in these respects, humans invented time. So sure, we can change it. We didn't even invent time zones until 1883. So sure, while it may have been earlier in Los Angeles than it was in Chicago, people had no reference for exactly what time it was where. Time may exist in nature, but the concept of "what time is it" is a human invention.

[CousinIT]

21. Those all references to time, not time itself.

For instance, can you or I step forward or back 6 hours in Time? We can't. No one can. What has passed has passed. Humans can't control it. They can only fiddle with their own references to it. And when it comes to DST/CST - they need to stop. There's no valid reason for it -- for disrupting the majority of a population for something that only serves a small group of them (Chamber of Commerce for instance evidently still insists we keep this crap going).

Humans didn't create time. Humans can't control time. Humans can only refer to it and live by their own references to it (in some ways which are idiotic).

[thesquanderer]

23. Right, it's two different things.

Which is why it makes no sense to conflate the two, and suggest that the fact that humans can't control time itself has any relevance at all as to what we humans decide to do in our attempts to reference and schedule things around it.

[FakeNoose]

8. It's just human nature to prefer doing things in daylight hours

I've been to western Europe (Germany) several times where they don't have daylight saving time, and they seem fine without it. But it gets light awfully early every morning in the summertime, while their sundown seems to come strangely early.

The American way is what I'm comfortable with, and I think most of us are. Daylight saving time was opposed by farmers, but they've been outvoted by the city-folks. If we were to ever go back to No Daylight Saving Time - I think a lot of people would be upset.

[Rhiannon12866]

12. Well, according to John Oliver's video, he blames it on the Germans

Specifically Kaiser Wilhelm originally.

The real instigator of the dreaded “spring forward” was Kaiser Wilhelm, who wanted to preserve daylight on the battlefields of World War I. Yes, you lost an hour of sleep thanks to Germany.

http://time.com/3736864/john-oliver-daylight-saving-time/

[Jeroen]

13. We do have DST in Europe

It starts on March 23

[Rhiannon12866]

14. Thanks! It does look like most Western countries observe it, just not at the exact same time

[Jeroen]

15. It's all very confusing

[Rhiannon12866]

16. I know it is, LOL. Even if you know about it, you have to remember to change your clocks!

Some (like my computer) change automatically - and others (the clock I woke up to) do not!

[Dennis Donovan]

11. Why they still sell clocks that don't self adjust for this...

...is beyond me. After all, they've made clocks that melt:



Hello, Dali!

[betsuni]

17. I wish Japan had it.

Summer: you wake up and it's broad daylight and getting hot, the birds are screaming and loud cicadas starting up, you think you've overslept and look at the clock -- 4:30 a.m. Do not like.

[Rhiannon12866]

18. Well, I live in NE New York and we have the opposite problem.

Not only have we had two major snowstorms in less than two weeks, but it gets dark so early this time of year that it seems like we're constantly in the dark. The winters are long - we had a blizzard in May one year - and summers seem way too short. When I was in school I had a summer job driving a (purple!) train at an amusement park. I loved that job and I'd sometimes just sit back and feel the warm breeze hoping to remember what it was like in the long cold winter.