Trump Endorses Permanent Daylight Savings Time (thehill.com)

President Trump on Monday threw his support behind efforts to keep the United States permanently on daylight saving time, which took effect Sunday morning. "Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!" Trump tweeted. The Hill reports: California and several other states are considering measures that would end the biannual clock changes between standard and daylight saving time. Three GOP lawmakers from Florida introduced legislation in Congress this month that would end the November clock change from daylight saving time back to standard time. The measures, introduced by Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and Rep. Vern Buchanan, would keep the country in daylight saving time, the clock change made in early March that is observed by most states for eight months of the year. Rubio introduced a similar measure in 2018. That bill did not advance in the Senate.

Comments

Just pick a damned time

[Snotnose]

I don't care if it's DST or standard, just quit changing the damn thing twice a year. Myself, I prefer it getting darker later, whichever one that is. But I don't care enough to change my damned sleep cycle twice a year.

Re:Just pick a damned time

[supremebob]

I never really understood why we "fell back" to standard time during winter, the one time of the year where the extra hour of daylight in the evening was the most useful.

Daylight until 8:30 PM during Summer never seemed all that helpful, but daylight when you're trying to drive home from work around 5:30? Now THAT is useful!

Yeah, sure... It would be better yet if management left everyone leave at 4 PM during Winter to improve their commutes, but we all know that's not going to happen in most organizations.

Re:Just pick a damned time

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would farmers care what time the clock showed?

Re:Just pick a damned time

[Beeftopia]

A more "colorful" history of DST:

At some point in elementary school, many American children learn that Daylight Saving Time was originally intended to give farmers an extra hour of light to work the fields.

That is, in fact, a lie.

Farmers actually hated the practice, because it cut an hour of daylight in the morning, leaving them with an hour less to get goods to market, according to Michael Downing, author of the book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time. In reality, the extra hour of evening daylight was good for one thing: selling products. ...

Specifically we have the candy lobby, the barbecue lobby, and the golf ball lobby to thank for modern American Daylight Saving Time. But we’ll get to that in a second.

And another article, from Smithsonian magazine.

Re:Just pick a damned time

[angel'o'sphere]

No, the idea was to save electricity, as in switching on lights later etc.
For farmers it does not matter at all, they don't care what time is displayed on their watch.

Re:Just pick a damned time

[magarity]

Then again, I'm sort of a diehard UTC person. College caught me that who cares what time you wake up on the clock. Especially with the global economy I know business meetings across 4 timezones and all their nuances would go a lot smoother if we just set UTC meeting times.

China has all one time zone - it's rather strange to fly west 4 hours and not change your watch. And the sun comes up at 3 am. Although their mentality about it is that Beijing is the center of their universe so everyone is on that city's time.

Re:Just pick a damned time

[mark-t]

Daylight until 8:30 PM during Summer never seemed all that helpful, but daylight when you're trying to drive home from work around 5:30? Now THAT is useful!

Not nearly as useful as having exposure to at least *some* sunlight in the morning before a person start's their work day. While it's true that many people begin their commute while it is still dark in the winter, a *vast* majority of them still get to experience at least some sunlight before heading indoors at the end of their commute. Exposure to even just 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning boosts seratonin levels, which in turn boosts melatonin production in the evening and is vital for having healthy and restful sleep... delaying exposure to sunlight until later in the day does not boost seratonin levels as high as it will in the morning and further delays melatonin production, leading to health problems related to the lack of restful sleep. You're talking about a "nice to have", but comparing it to something that we are biologically adapted to, which is to function primarily during the day.... well, as I've said before on this subject, evolution is not a democracy.

And while you wouldn't get the sudden chaos that changing the clocks twice per year brings, instead slowly ramping up and then slowly ramping down throughout the winter, but keeping the clocks pushed ahead through the winter months would be certainly disasterous for a period of about 3 to 4 weeks in the middle of winter for people who live north of about 45 degrees, which while not a majority of Americans, is still not a small a number.

Re:Just pick a damned time

[yorgasor]

They never did. They get up when the animals do or when the fields need taking care of. They couldn't care less what the clock says.

Re: Just pick a damned time

[Cederic]

if you want to have a been

What the fuck?

The length of a daylight in a day does not change, regardless if the sun rises at 4am, 9pm or whatever

No, but whether it's light when you go to work/school or light when you get home from work/school does change and does matter to people.

About damned time

[Y2K is bogus]

Trump says something that isn't completely idiotic!

Re:About damned time

[rnturn]

Yeah but there's always the chance that he said that because he thinks it's actually saving daylight.

Re:About damned time

[spitzak]

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day!

Re:About damned time

[Krishnoid]

And he said 'Saving' instead of 'Savings'. I'm suspicious.

Re:About damned time

[Aighearach]

That's the joke; it is suspicious because it is a common mistake, but he didn't make it. And he makes a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes.

knowing that guy...

[Tablizer]

I bet he asked it be named, "Trump Standard Time". And maybe "Time Force" the second option.

Standard all year

[Anonymous Coward]

Thoose advocating year round DST don't remember the disaster in the mid-70s. The country switched to year round DST for two years. It was quickly killed for many reasons. Scvhool children going to class in the dark was one, another was that people in cold country discovered that an extra hour of sun in the evening was of no benefit, but darkness until 8:320 or 9 was a pain.
I hope rational heads will prevail on this, at a minimum keep the current system, or better yet, kill DST altogether.

Split the diff - go 30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

Look I get it - Winter is dark up north. And the sun comes up really early in the summer (I have daylight from 5ish AM to almost 10pm where I live). Fireworks don't start until 9:30.

But I too hate the 1 hour forward/back. It's miserable. Why not get the benefits of both and pick the middle.

So much for drive-in movies.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

darker later is the way to go.

IMHO Daylight Savings Time was much of what killed the drive in theatres. Come summer, with DST, there wasn't enough time after sunset to attend a double feature and still get home and to bed in time to get up before sunrise and make it to work.

In the summer what we're short of isn't light. It's darkness. If the government must screw around with the clocks twice a year, they should move them BACK in the spring and return them to standard in the fall.

I call it "Night Life Savings Time".

Re:So much for drive-in movies.

[Waffle Iron]

If the government must screw around with the clocks twice a year, they should move them BACK in the spring and return them to standard in the fall.

I call it "Night Life Savings Time".

Hmmm... a real dilemma: No drive-in theaters vs. the sun streaming in at 3:30am in the summer.

I'll side with 99.9% of the population and ditch the drive-ins.

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!11111

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear to GOD. Kids fuck everything up.

Re:To kill fewer children.

[mark-t]

Except it doesn't actually save energy. The last study which suggested it does was conducted in the 1970's and was the impetus behind the most recent change to the DST schedule in 1996 which lengthened it by several weeks throughout the year, and while the study predicted a measurable energy savings even for those few weeks, those savings completely failed to materialize, showing very clearly that the energy demands which the study had examined and predicted a savings on were an artifact of how energy was used at the time, and not reflective of how we use energy today. The reason the clocks were not changed back was because of the expense of invoking yet another change to DST. Abolishing it entirely, by comparison, would not produce anywhere nearly as much expense because there are many places that already do not observe DST.

Beyond stupid...

[Pyramid]

You can't make a rope longer by cutting a foot off one end and attaching it to the other. "Permanent DST" is identical to getting up 1 hour earlier. Just leave how we indicate time alone so the sun is (roughly) at its greatest height on the ecliptic at noon in any given time zone instead of playing a stupid shell game that doesn't do anything but mess up astronomical time.