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It's time to mentally prepare yourselves for this
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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i still think timezones were a mistake, and that they shouldn't exist period. I have a long thread about this from an earlier post about timezones as well amusingly enough.
As a social construct, I like that I can be anywhere in the world and know that around noon is probably an appropriate time for lunch, etc.
Time is an illusion, lunch time doubly so.
Is that where my sandwich went?
You life was an illusion, and you are the sandwich.
Whoa
there is no appropriate time for lunch. And besides you wanna know a better way to figure it out? Go outside.
Yeah that doesn't work if you live in Seattle.
damn, if only there was like, this thing, that tracked time. And it was like, relative to the solar time that we experience here on earth, but like, not explicitly that solar time, so you could just like, offset it slightly, to get the correct local solar time.
Man, what a difficult and challenging issue to solve.
Did you just describe timezones?
I think they're proposing personal time zones, where every individual's clock shows their precise solar time, and nobody ever manages to be on time to work ever again.
Good god, imagine 360 timezones to describe each longitude.
Each timezone would be 4 minutes, and span roughly 56 miles (tho, that's different as you get nearer the poles).
For the majority of things, it would be fine. Most appointments etc that are "booked" verbally would likely be within 56 miles, where "casual" time would work. Anything beyond that feels like a "significant" thing, which would probably involve written/digital communication - where computers could pick up the slack for translation.
And EVERYONE would be aware of timezones. So, even Microsoft/Excel would have to recognise that timezones are a real thing.
So, probably not that bad
I'm imagining something more fluid, where the time it is depends on exactly where you're standing and the position of the sun in relation to it. You'd need to factor the direction you're traveling as well as the distance whenever you went anywhere. We'd have a lot more intimate relationship with our current celestial situation.
that's basically why timezones were created. before then, every town had its own local time.
close, there's a regional local solar time (you could just steal timezones for this one) and then there is global time, which is what we go by for everything. Local solar time is essentially just an offset to the global time for the relative nature of local time to global time.
i like how whenever i mention this, people seem to think i want to get rid of time instead of timezones
What you're describing is LITERALLY the system we have. UTC is a global, coordinated time that tracks solar time to a precision of less than a second. As far as my computer is concerned, my time is UTC (technically GMT, but they both refer to the same time) minus 6 hours. We all could choose to say, "hey, wanna meet for dinner at 3AM?" and have that be a normal thing to say in my area, and an odd thing to say odd in Europe... but nobody wants that.
the inverse of timezones.
It really seems like you're just describing time zones. Or do you mean that we should be even more granular about it and have personal timezones that adjust depending on where we are on the globe? That just seems like timezones with extra steps
nope, i'm describing timezones, but instead of shifting time, we shift local solar time instead.
You could call them timemaps or time offset mapping, on a more macro scale.
This is the same fucking thing. It is simultaneously 12:25am MDT and 6:25am GMT where I live. If you ask my computer what time it is, it knows it is 06:25:00-06:00.
Two sides of the same coin buddy.
How stoned are you right now
zero
Damn me neither
damn, same.
Can you give me an example with an example time and how 2 people in different countries would organise a meeting?
Are you suggesting something like continuous timezones? Thanks for bringing this nightmare to a whole new level! :)
no?
Time is global, there is no deviation based on where you are in the world, it is merely your local solar time is what deviates.
You mean like a watch that goes by timezones? 🤔
that admittedly, would be pretty funny, but no unfortunately not.
Unless you're in Tibet, Xinjiang, or another place observing UTC+8 with a significant offset from local solar time.
They had their chance. Heck, they still have their chance. They will continue to have their chance.
Imagine you're watching a movie, and the main character turns over to their bedside clock and it shows 4:13 am. With time zones we all understand what part of the day that is and instinctively can relate to the situation.
Without timezones, every locality would have a different shorthand and cultural understanding of what times mean what. Or they'd adopt a second system that helps transcend that but that's just inventing timezones again...
I reluctantly agree with you. Though I think the reluctance is just because there's something in me that's viscerally offended by the concept of time itself (probably the ADHD)
actually, this is pretty funny. This is the ONE instance so far, that i've found where timezones actually do something productive, and it's in a movie.
Too bad movies never use shit like ambient moon lighting, or darkness. It's not like those convey what time of night it is or anything. I mean seriously, if you're bound to showing a clock to display the time, rather than make a point, you're not a very good writer.
Probably because people's beds tend to be inside... Plus darkness can mean morning or evening or middle of the night or something else (imagine the person notices it's dark, looks at the clock and it shows 1pm. We know something's off because we all experience 1pm as early afternoon).
The point isn't that timezones are only good for movies, the point was that they help convey that cultural understanding very effectively across the world. Having a common understanding of what certain numbers on a clock mean and have that be universal can help convey quite a bit of information. 11am means "late morning" in a specific way that you could probably spend a paragraph describing.
Sure, without timezones I'd know what their clock says in London without having to use Google, but I'd still have to Google what time of day it is there and apply an offset to understand exactly what part of the day it is (which is what timezones do already). It's no easier, plus we lose the ability to culturally share the same reference points.
Are you thinking about daylight savings time? I'd agree there, but timezones absolutely make sense, and we've always used some version of it. "See you at noon" has a sort of built in timezone, as does sunrise and sunset. We (all human societies) relate hours to the day in a similar, albeit more regular way. If you did away with timezones, you'd replace a minor inconvenience with a monstrous one. Everyone uses what, GMT? Naah
DST definitely isn't helping, but in my experience, DST only makes this stuff more arbitrary, between the winter and the summer here where i live, the sunset can vary up to about 4 hours based on season. Time is entirely arbitrary in relation to the sun to begin with. It's a lived experience that many of us have.
And while we do use things like morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night, and midnight. Those are all relative to the local solar time, not the actual time. Sure noon being at 12 is kind of nice i guess. But noon is noon, the time on the clock doesn't change that.
Time zones are fine. Daylight Savings Time needs to be taken out behind the wood shed and killed with a spoon.
Username checks out.
I dont get why everyone is so pissed off about the guy whose name is literally "killingtimeitself" suggesting that we should, kill time itself.
I feel like it should be pretty apparent...
I like it when i miss the train because town A's time is way off from toen C's time
sounds like a skill issue to be honest.
I honestly can't tell if you are pro or anti time zones from this comment.
Nobody likes missing a train.
In this scenario, missing a train is caused by timezones.
It's sarcasm. So against timezones.
Maybe, against more granular timezones, ok with status-quo, but would be happy if all official correspondence happened with UTC.
Possibly completely against timezones.
Maybe a mix of all of the above
I think it would be intuitive to people after a while
it's the less arbitrary version of having timezones, the only difference is that the time doesn't change, because it doesn't it's the solar time that changes.