Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here’s a Simple Plan to Fix It

Interesting take on DST. While I agree that DST is a bad, bad idea, I think the solution offered here is equally dumb, if not more so.

I believe local time should be coordinated as closely as possible to solar time. That’s how our bodies’ circadian clocks work. Trying to squeeze everyone into two time zones simply for convenience’s sake (and ignoring solar time) is stupid.

Daylight saving time ends Nov. 3, setting off an annual ritual where Americans who don’t live in Arizona or Hawaii and residents of 78 other countries including Canada but not Saskatchewan, most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand turn their clocks back one hour. It’s a controversial practice that became popular in the 1970s with the intent of conserving energy. The fall time change feels particularly hard because we lose another hour of evening daylight, just as the days grow shorter. It also creates confusion because countries that observe daylight saving change their clocks on different days.

It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. There’s evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions. But I propose we not only end Daylight Saving, but also take it one step further.

via Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here’s a Simple Plan to Fix It – Allison Schrager – The Atlantic.

Nextdoor getting mixed results

Earlier this week I saw someone forward a notice to a neighborhood listserve which had first gone out over Nextdoor. The forward was prefaced with this comment:

This was on nextdoor. I hate nextdoor, I need another social network like I need a hole in my head.

I responded to the poster, asking her to elaborate. She was happy to do so:

I don’t really want my neighborhood communications shunted off into a stand-alone platform, I thought email worked well for [Belvidere Park – Woodcrest.] When I do get email notifications from nextdoor, I have to click through to see the whole thread, which I don’t want to do on my smartphone. If Nextdoor were integrated into FB, which I’m already resigned to, that would be one thing. I have zero interest in ramping up conversations in a new platform. I felt like I had to join it to stay looped into Oakwood/Mordecai events, where my office is located, because they opted into Nextdoor entirely.

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