Daylight Saving Time: anyone else hate it?

[gameoverDude]

Can't say I'm a fan of Daylight Saving Time/DST.

DST makes the time of day one hour later. In March & April there's another hour of darkness & cold temps in the morning. Frost on the car's windows... ugh, I'm over it! Then in the summer, if it gets too hot (say 95F or higher), the relief that the sunset brings is delayed for an hour. Daylight hours get long enough in Summer without it- a 9 PM sunset is much too late IMO. That makes it hard to start winding down around 10-11 PM.
A 7-8 PM sunset is best, making for more comfortable evenings & good weather for sleeping with the window open a bit.

Much of the Caribbean doesn't use DST except for a few places. Sure shows DST isn't really needed. Russia had full-year DST once but said "do svidaniya" to it totally after a few years. Well, that's one thing Russia gets right. Many people hated that extra hour of dark in the morning.

What do you think?

[FinalBaton]

I like it. In winter time I'd rather have some light in the morning when driving to work and no light when driving from work to home at 5 (daylight saving time system), than having no light in the morning and no light when driving back home from work (no daylight saving time system).

[BryanM]

It's the single worst thing in all of existence.

Jerking people around for a scant, temporary increase in fuel consumption? Petty.

What triggers me the most is they keep expanding its length all the damn time. Standard Time is no longer standard - it's only 4 freaking months long. And I'm sure some decade they'll take even more of it away.

Mr.Burns is a real power freak bastard.

[Specineff]

Considering that we're no longer living in the times it was conceived, and that there are alternatives to power-hungry incandescent lights, plus everyone doing everything on mobile devices nowadays (which are less gluttonous than a desktop with a monitor), I say it's pointless.

That, and I like it to be dark at 8 PM.

[Sumez]

Where I live it gets so dark in the winter, that only a week or two after changing the clocks it goes right back to being dark both when I leave for work and when I go back home again in the afternoon, so the change is completely useless.

[Stevens]

One thing I like about Arizona - No DST.

I'd be fine if they got rid of it. As far as blue light at night? I have glasses for that.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Right now I sure do hate it.

[BryanM]

The sickos who control the world have been expanding this longer and longer to the point that "standard" time is the minority time. It's only a matter of time until they take away all our sunshine and kill us all, in the icy cold darkness silent darkness of the morning.

Apparently it passed in the senate here in the US. The house didn't pass it, but it's only a matter of time.

Then they'll start right away working to take away another hour. Then another. Then another. Going to work 1 AM standard time (9 AM, new daylight savings time) is gonna rock. I keep squawking about how there's always more and worse in this stupid apocalypse.

At least they seem satisfied with how much microwaves beep. Half the fucking neighborhood has to be woken up because you wanted to nuke a burrito at 3, that's somehow sufficient for the capitalist ghouls. For now.

[BulletMagnet]

I'm personally far less bothered by evening arriving earlier than by morning arriving later, because forcing yourself to wake up when every sensory organ on your body is telling you to go back to bed is not fun. So yeah, driving in to work while the moon is still out is not my favorite thing, and neither is DST.

[Sumez]

Me neither. Too bad daylight savings time does nothing to prevent that

[Ed Oscuro]

I thought permanent DST was a good idea - certainly it's a good idea to just stay on a particular time zone - until it was pointed out that it's not actually what we evolved for. So even if you get rid of the biannual rash of crashes and heart attacks, always being a little bit behind the sun doesn't make a lot of sense. Basically, DST is great for office workers, and really bad for people who have to open stores and do other things at the crack of dawn. It's regressive along income lines.

The real fix is to stop asking kids to go to school when it's dark out, and stop asking other people to go home after sunset.

I give good odds to this experiment ending in failure the same way the 70s attempt did, because it's easier for the government to say "we changed daylight saving" than it is for everybody to agree to shift schedules.

[Specineff]

We should get rid of it just like we did away with male-only voting and prohibiting inter-racial marriage. It's an antiquated idea meant for an age gone by.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I bloody love it. I struggle with depression in winter, when the day hits a certain length towards the beginning of November it's like a switch flicked on. Then again when the day starts to lengthen towards the end of February it's flicked off again. I can just about get through winter by sleeping in to the point where I'm not waking up in darkness. Without daylight savings, it'd either be worse in winter (forced to start the day in darkness) or same as it is now but sacrificing a bit of joy in summer with earlier sunsets.

In the UK, if we ditched daylight savings we'd have either:
Permanent winter time extremes - sunrise 0800, sunset 1600 in winter; sunrise 0345, sunset 2015 in summer
Permanent summer time extremes - sunrise 0900, sunset 1700 in winter; sunrise 0445, sunset 2115 in summer

So we either sacrifice a bit of summer for a slightly less shit winter, or we make winter worse just to keep summer as it is. Or we have daylight savings, which is the best of both worlds.

Permanent summer just wouldn't work, because you're basically sending kids to school in pitch black - particularly further North and into Scotland - and an extra hour of evening daylight that's still within working hours for most, fucking pointless. So instead of doing that madness you'd lose outdoor time after working hours, which is shit socially, and have an absolutely batshit situation where you've got full daylight at 4am.

[Sengoku Strider]

I lived in Japan where they don't have it. It freaking sucked, in the summer the sun would rise at like 4:30am. I've read that there are health implications and it's bad for the body to consistently mess up circadian rhythms, but I dunno. My circadian rhythm is set to shuffle anyway, I can't imagine changing it twice a year by a single hour is all that deadly if I'm still amongst the living.

[Koa Zo]

I never knew this was such a big issue.
It's always worked just fine for me.

[Ed Oscuro]

I can't imagine changing it twice a year by a single hour is all that deadly if I'm still amongst the living.

Eh, the statistics don't lie. You can't really generalize your experience to the entire population.

[BryanM]

I lived in Japan where they don't have it. It freaking sucked, in the summer the sun would rise at like 4:30am.

That sounds like heaven.

I'ma gonna be that "do you guys not have phones" guy re:curtains.

[Randorama]

I always wanted to write up my experiences so far, on the matter of time zones, latitudes and all that jazz. So:

- I was born and grew up in Italy (NE of Rome, up in the Apennines: very cold micro-climate), but also lived in Rome and Venice. So, DST meant (quite) chilly spring mornings, but sunsets at 9pm in summer;

- I spent some time in Konstanz (DE, in the Alps), so at a latitude closer to the North. This meant summer sunsets at 10 pm, but quite chilly sunrises in winter at 7.30 am;

- I went to Utrecht, NL, which is roughly the same latitude at Manchester, UK, and a quite rainy place. Sunrise in winter was 8 am (cloudy, dreary), DST sunset in summer was 11pm (shiny);

- In Sydney, AU, seasons are reversed, so Christmas is full-blown summer (up to the 40's, celsius, on some days). DST meant sunset at 8pm: Sydney's closer to the equator than it seems;

- Budapest, Hungary, is similar to Konstanz wrt to DST and everything else (...a bit less cold, though);

- I spent some time in Stockholm (SVE), and in Gothenburg (also quite SVE). Stockholm is quite close to the North, so winter sunrise is 9.20 am, and the sun lies low until 2.40pm. Welcome to 18 hours of night
and 6 of dawn (when not cloudy...), in winter. To compensate, from May to August the sun goes below the horizon for a few hours (11 pm to 2 am), so there will be a dusk-like light for 3 hours. The rest,
daylight. Gothenburg has darker summers and lighter winters, but the time intervals are more or less the same. I visited Kiruna and Luleå in winter (uh, and Tromsoe, but it's Norway), which have the
midnight sun and the "noon night". Can you say "2 months of night in winter, 2 months of daylight in summer"?

- I spent 3 years in Guangzhou (PRC), which is quite close to the equator (just North of Hong Kong). Tropical weather, no DST, and the difference between winter and summer is roughly one hour: sun rises at
6am in summer, 7 am in winter. I am currently in Wuhan, also not quite DST but more to the North, so differences between winter and summer are more pronounced (40 minutes or so). I spent some time in
South Korea, which mostly lies at the same latitudes of Central China (and Wuhan), and has DST but also colder winters.

I generally set bedrooms in such a way that I can fall asleep within 5 minutes, wake up quickly (no more than 5 minutes including stretching), and enjoy regular sleeping conditions (absolute darkness, not too hot, not too dark, good ventilation.

I was trained by a disciplinarian father to be active even if the sun is still not up or the morning looks dark and damp, and I grew up in a rather cloudy and rainy place, so I do concentrate better if the weather kinda sucks, especially in the mornings. Nevertheless, I remember that:

- Summer sunrises in Venice can be really humid but beautiful, with the sun shining on the lagoon;

- Longer summer nights in Konstanz gave me a bit of insomnia, but the really short Dutch nights made me almost sleepless (perfect for writing up my MA dissertation);

- In Australia, the first two years confused me quite a bit (Christmas on the beach! Boxing day cricket!), but then I became used to it (and to inverted DST);

- "Why you guys have winter in December?" was a constant thought when I was in Budapest. I travelled to the US and Europe during my Australian years, and it felt like entering a parallel world, when switching
seasons cycles;

- First year in Sweden, I would struggle to stay awake when the sun would go down, and then become hyperactive at 8 pm or so. I do remember some people getting drowsy and working more slowly even if
they were locals who grew up there. I still deeply missing the midnight sun, though for a couple of months it means no stars in the sky;

- My Chinese experience so far is "Uh, the sun is down already? OK", and questions about how to cope with the DST from my parents.

I would add some comments about the sun, the moon, and their position/orientation in the sky at different latitudes (e.g., in Guangzhou the moon phases appear almost vertically, and they are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere). I guess that the post is already TL;DR, though, but my two cents of zenny coins is that with a bit of circadian variation can be easily absorbed, with a bit of planning and flexibility.

Or you can whine about DST and the weather until your final days, of course.

[NYN]

Don't stop now.

Surrender voluntarily another unit of mindless but sexy midget porn to gain special recognition. Be the very first on your day job and go earn that slap on the shoulder you always covet. Be the first in your chosen house of worship and make these other hypocrites eat their phony grins. But most of all assure your respective few state officials that it is actually that easy to rule over unruly masses; make them smile for a change. There is no time or its zones as the Internet proves. No day, only sun. No night, just the eternal dark of the cosmos. So, reset your clock again and the rest will follow.

Have a good time all the time.