I read that some senator was working on a bill to permanently switch to half-DST, which is where we set our clocks to halfway between regular time and DST. I've been advocating for that forever so I hope it will at least get people thinking/talking about it. It should solve the argument between whether to permanently stay on one time or the other. Split the difference and just get it done already!
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
54 points (95.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
38348 readers
2320 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
"but then things would be different from when i was a child and that makes me scared and angry."
People already complain about seeing the sun at 9pm or not seeing the sun at 9am. Not having DST would just exasperate that.
exacerbate
*ducks*
Why must you always exacerbate the ducks?!
I'm saying it'll be really annoying hearing the complaints.
We keep DST for more months than ST so I think more people like it more.
I kinda think it runs backwards, making the sun set even earlier in the clock day during winter. So much more dispiriting to come home in the dark than to go to work in the dark.
My argument for ending it is that you can't make days longer or shorter by moving the clock around, but I think we should just keep adding weeks onto DST and taking them away from ST until eventually it's just DST. But settling on either scheme would be ok, better than switching back and forth.
We already tried year-round DST in the 70s. It didn't last through the first year because kids were getting hit by cars on the way to school in the early morning darkness.
Yeah but it's dark in the morning anyway. Elementary school here starts at like 7am, that is a bigger problem than the DST. I thought they hated it because they switched it back in January? If it just never changed I'm sure it would not feel so shocking.
Already we do 8 months of DST and only 4 of EST here.
I didn’t care until I had to take care of my niece. During half of the school year it’s dark outside going to the bus. And why are we fighting what nature intended our body clocks to be? I have to get up for work at 4:30AM, it’s hard even with blackout curtains to get the room dark at 8-9PM.
So why not keep time as a constant and if individual places want to change times they can do that
Even just single states can have vastly different sunrise and sunset times and changing 300m people’s schedules so that a few people can have a few extra minutes of sun in the morning for part of the year seems absolutely ridiculous
A local school district could very easily do a 1 hour shift as the sunrise gets later so that it properly aligns with their local school pickup times
Exactly! Why does no one ever consider changing the time they do something instead of making the whole country adjust to time change? I know with schools, maybe their starting times are geared to when parents have to be a work or something, but surely they can figure out how to adjust their particular schedules around their particular needs and leave the rest of us alone.
BC/Vancouver just removed it but made it DST year round. My only worry against that is that mornings would be hella dark. For where I live, sunrise in the winter (standard time) is around 7:55AM, meaning that's crack of dawn first light. Spring forward, so 7:55 becomes 8:55, meaning our first sunlight of the day won't be until about 9am. Now, our evenings will be a bit longer (sunset is around 4-4:30, so now 5-5:30, but still most people won't even see sunrise.
You morning people already have the world scheduled around you. At least let us night owls get to enjoy a sunset in the winter.
Why did this turn into an us vs them?
Because night people hate daylight savings changes for different reasons than morning people, especially in northern latitudes.
A lot of people, schoolchildren included, are up way before sunrise anyway, regardless of where we put the clocks.
Personally, I'm just sick of moving back and forth. I don't care what we change it to, just stop changing it. Where I live, we get 8 hours of daylight in the winter. Someone is always going to be in the dark sometime, no matter what we set our clocks to.
I live basically on the border on the US side and pray that BC changing will allow WA to change.
Full DST is better imo. Having light after work/school/the day makes the dark months so much more tolerable. Helps alleviate my SAD partially, personally.
The problem is that if you're far enough North, the days are so short that if you work full time, no amount of clock-adjusting will keep you from either going to work or going home in the dark.
I used to be in the make-DST-permanent camp because I enjoy it being lighter later. Then I saw a set of US maps illustrating sunrises before 7am and sunsets after 5pm. Permanent DST completely hoses the western areas of the time zones. I can't in good conscience support that option anymore. Ditch DST altogether, and just make standard time permanent.
Yeah I saw a map like that illustrating how which side of your time zone you're on makes a big difference. I wonder if adding another time zone so they're all a bit skinnier would help with that aspect of it.
Yeah in my area standard time would be better. The summer would be a bit more sane, I think sunset can be as late as 10:30 at the peak of summer, so losing an hour isn't horrible there
Personally, I'd rather have it dark on the way to work than night before I get home.
When I was a kid if I had to be at school a full hour before the sun even rose I would be even fucking dumber.
DST shifts make more sense for higher latitude than it does for southern ones. ironically.
I lived in BC. It did suck to only have like 6 hours of full daylight. All of which were during the workday when you were inside anyway.
load more comments
(1 replies)
We tried it once, and quickly went back, is one.
Might be a case of greener grass. Virtually none of us has lived without it, apart from Arizona, so we just don't know what we have.
We quickly went back because one news story which blew a completely unrelated traffic incident out of proportion, and the driver blamed the time change for it. Despite living somewhere like Florida which was barely affected by the difference in sunlight.
I'm in AZ, I think y'all are so dumb for doing that(not that any of you have a choice). I don't want to live anywhere that fakes the time. The days change throughout the year, they get shorter and longer , it's natural, get over it.
Unless that was a well organized and faithful attempt to switch, that shouldn't prohibit us from trying again.
They last tried DST “year-round” starting in January 1974 and people quickly hated it, with support dropping from 79% before it started to 42% three months in. Morning accidents increased and schoolchildren were injured or killed.
I don’t necessarily love the idea of the sun starting to rise as early as 4am in the summer, but I think if we’re going to stay with one we might as well stick to standard time year-round. We’d still have light past 8 PM where I live and it would mean activities better for the dark could start earlier. I see places wanting to take advantage of the warm weather for things like outdoor movies but they can’t start until after 9.
This is the most reasonable approach, and it meshes with medical studies about how DST affects our mental and physical health. We don't need sunlight until 9 or 10 pm, and the sun is supposed to be approximately overhead at noon, not 1pm.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'll give you the only argument I ever give for this.
Congress once voted to end it, the backlash from constituents was severe and they could not reimplement it fast enough.
No they enacted permanent DST in the 70s. OP is asking for arguments against ending DST. The backlash against permanent DST in the 70s was because kids going to school in the early morning darkness were being hit y cars.
They went about it in a stupid way and now we're doomed for all time because it gets pointed to as proof we can never end DST 🥲
But they changed it suddenly in January, instead of just not changing back in the fall. That was dumb.
I personally would rather have more daylight in the mornings than in the evenings during winter. Makes it way easier to wake up. Maybe lots of other people feel the same way.
I've found people would either like change or not mind it.
But like you said, they can't agree on which way so thus it is.
I honestly dgaf about any of it. I'm fine with the current system.
That only works at a certain latitude. Further north it remains dark in the morning anyway
It still helps, it's just not as big a difference as further south.
view more: next ›