Comment on Why don't we have one timezone covering the whole earth?

• bouh@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That time means nothing anymore. Time is something real, not a mere number that’s irrelevant to reality. Midday is the middle of the day and the zenith of the sun, or close enough. Midnight is the middle of the night. Etc. It doesn’t need to be exact, but it needs to mean something. In France for example 4PM is the name of the snack you eat that this time.

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  • person@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What would change about any of this? The middle of the sunlight hours would still be Midday, and the middle of the night would still be Midnight. If, for example, the Timezoneless time for France shifted it by 6 hours, could you not call 18:00 Midday? And 06:00 Midnight, and 22:00 snacking time? Isn’t it a social construct to say that Midday should be 12:00?

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    • bouh@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Language is also a social construct.

      So, let’s put it this way. Let’s say you have this nonsensical idea of a unique timezone for the planet. We’ll base it on UTC for simplicity.

      You are in new York. It’s 1000. For you in new York, it’s the middle of night. You’ll wake up in a few hours. Your day usually goes about with wake up and work around 1400, lunch around 1800, end of work around 2200, sleep around 600. You can live you life with that. It’s merely a social construct. It’s completely stupid as a construct because it’s not setup for your actual day. The 0 means absolutely nothing. The 12 and the 24 neither. Why have a 24 hours clock for this? But a decimal clock would do nothing more.

      Now you need to work with someone in the UK. Can you talk to him right now? Who knows? You need to ask Internet about the time delay between where you live and where he lives. You learn it’s +6. Or -6. Who cares. Now you juggle with 2 times at your work: your usual one, and your colleague one. Congrats, you made a timezone again. When you need to know when he starts work, you do the maths : 1400-600=800. He must starts at 800, unless there’s some cultural differences.

      Now what you call 1800 is called 1200 for him. You made the same concept, the lunch time, have a different name depending on where you live, and that is after the translation.

      Why even have a time at this point. It’s more confusing than anything. Let’s just have minutes.

      You’ll have wakeup +200 for example. At wakeup +400, it’s midday. Midday +400 is the break. Break+400 is dinner. Dinner +400 is sleepy time. Now that would be much more sensible than your unified clock. There would still be problem with timezones interaction.

      But there’s nothing to do about timezones. It’s and effect of the spherical earth and general relativity. In physics, there is a clock for each and every position, and a delay between each. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, so you use your local time. But when it does, you do timezones. Because that’s how the world physically works.

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      • person@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You are in new York. It’s 1000. For you in new York, it’s the middle of night. You’ll wake up in a few hours. Your day usually goes about with wake up and work around 1400, lunch around 1800, end of work around 2200, sleep around 600. You can live you life with that. It’s merely a social construct. It’s completely stupid as a construct because it’s not setup for your actual day

        You say it’s not set up for your day, but how exactly? As a new yorker would it not be just as natural to wake up at 14:00 as it is to wake up at 7:00 today?

        The 0 means absolutely nothing. The 12 and the 24 neither.

        They mean the exact same thing. The start of July 22., the middle of, the end of.

        Why have a 24 hours clock for this?

        This has not changed at all either. Only reason to have that is because it can be divided up into nice chunks.

        Now you need to work with someone in the UK. Can you talk to him right now? Who knows? You need to ask Internet about the time delay between where you live and where he lives.

        In other words this has not changed either. So not a downside?

        But there’s nothing to do about timezones. It’s and effect of the spherical earth and general relativity. In physics, there is a clock for each and every position, and a delay between each. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, so you use your local time. But when it does, you do timezones. Because that’s how the world physically works.

        There is no reason to use this idea of time. By this logic time does not move at the poles in a day, since the earth’s rotation doesn’t affect it. Should we not have a special timezone that goes from 0 to 24 in a year, so it respects the sun’s zenith?

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  • knightly@pawb.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We already gave up the meaning of time when time zones where implemented. If it’s only going to be an approximation anyway then why bother with the added complexity of 23 extra time zones?

    Y’all are just mad that “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” wouldn’t make sense as a jokey excuse for day-drinking anymore. =3

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    • bouh@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Timezones exist because that’s how time make sense everywhere.

      Je joke works because the earth is a sphere btw. It’s not a joke, it’s a fact. That’s the whole point.

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      • hglman@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No, timezones don’t make sense everywhere, you clearly have not lived on the edge of timezones where the shift from what would be local time is notable.

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