this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
969 points (98.4% liked)

xkcd

8588 readers
35 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

https://xkcd.com/2846

Alt text:

I average out the spring and fall changes and just set my clocks 39 minutes ahead year-round.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 49 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (10 children)

The vast majority of people want it to change, but we can't get organized enough to politically make it happen.

You can change the word "it" above to apply to a LOT of things.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (9 children)

It's really not worth the hassle tho...

Like, back when we had oil lamps and even when we first had electricity...

Sure, why not do it?

But now benefits are negligible, and the downsides like skyrocketing rates of early morning heart attacks are very real.

There's just no good reason to do it, and lots of reasons not to

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

it was never worth the hassle because its not for your benefit its for the benefit of your boss , you waking up earlier in winter gives your boss one extra hour of work from you in daylight

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I thought this was for farmers back when they were their own boss?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm not a farmer, but farmers don't really care for daylight savings time. Cows don't understand it, and won't wait an extra hour to be milked. It takes them time to adjust to the change, and in meantime either the farmer has to get there an hour earlier by the clock or the cows will be in pain, possibly sustaining real injury from being overly full of milk.

An extra hour of dark in the morning isn't useful for planting or weeding or harvesting, either.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

"The cows don't understand it" honestly that's the point that makes it hard to believe daylight savings is for farmers the cows horses the crops and the chickens all don't operate on daylight savings time if anything daylight savings time probably hurts farmers by giving them a nother thing to keep track of that makes it so you need to get adjusted real quick otherwise the cows are going to get over full of milk because the farmer watching the clock forgot its a hour behind what he got used to wouldn't be surprised if some farmers in the past had two separate clocks one that got adjusted to daylight savings and the other shows the time the farm operated on

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I grew up on a farm. We started before it was daylight, didn't matter what time was on the clock.

Why would the time on a clock matter to a self-employed farmer?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

When I asked that question once I was informed it had something to do for some reason with when the children of farmers would be let out of school (and thus able to help with chores) but honestly it sounds like bullshit to me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

We'd have people miss whole weeks of school due to farming duties...

Especially earlier than that, school always took a second seat. If there was work to be done, the kids weren't in school

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/British-Summer-Time/

In the UK it was brought in during the first world war as a method partly to save coal. Never had anything to do with farmers, but seems to have become a convenient explanation for it these days.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)