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
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.
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
that's basically why timezones were created. before then, every town had its own local time.
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.
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.
yeah, my problem is that nobody use UTC. And we have problems like gas pumps in finland breaking because they programmed timezones incorrectly.
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.
yes, except it's not the only time system we use, the primary time system we use is universal now.
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?
yeah, it's 12 00 in america, it's 12 00 literally anywhere else in the world, you show up at 12 and that's when the meeting happens.
So what are these offset's you mentioned? They are not used?
they're used less frequently than timezones are now. Because the offsets only purpose is to show to explicit time of the local solar time, anywhere in the world. relative to your local solar time (which is not very useful.)
Your proposal is exactly how time is used at my work. All meetings are in GMT. You use the timezone time when thinking locally. Instead of everyone using GMT and timezones already, why should we introduce a while new concept?
you say you already use this at work, but then say it's an entirely new concept. I don't think you've quite comprehended this properly.
We are literally already doing it, there is no reason not to switch to it.
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.
At this point, I don't know if you are trolling or not. You keep saying that this is nothing like timezones, while describing something that really looks like timezones to anyone else reading it.
Do you suggest we all use one unique time, regardless of local solar time? Or do you suggest we all use our own local solar time, based on each person's exact longitude on the globe, regardless of borders and current timezones ?
it depends on how it's implemented, but essentially, we do away with our current concept of timezones, and then use UTC or something, for example. But we reimplement the timezone maps for our local solar time offsets. So that way we still have a consistent system. Just without timezones.
You mean like a watch that goes by timezones? 🤔
that admittedly, would be pretty funny, but no unfortunately not.
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.
Too bad movies never use shit like ambient moon lighting, or darkness
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.
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).
too bad windows don't exist, it's also not like movies ever fudge lighting to make it look better.
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.
or you could just say "late morning" after taking a page out of your book.
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.
here's the thing though, you wouldn't need to do that second part. You only need to know what the relative time for london is in the event that you fly over there, or something, and even then. It's still going to be real time, you would just naturally transition over to it. You have no reason to know what time some place else is referenced to, unless you're over there, except for the rare instance where it's convenient.
here's the thing though, you wouldn't need to do that second part. You only need to know what the relative time for london is in the event that you fly over there, or something, and even then
What? Sorry, I must be misunderstanding your viewpoint here. People interact all across the globe all of the time; it's important to know what part of day it is in the different places for all of that. You want to call someone in Singapore? It doesn't help to know their clock shows the same time as you, you need to know if it's the middle of the night, or maybe it's likely lunch time etc. That's why you need to know the offset from "your" time.
And you glossed over everything else... I'm not talking about movies for no reason. Movies tend to need to convey lots of information in a short amount of time so it's a useful example of the differring amounts of information that can be communicated when we all share cultural understandings of things. If 3am means essentially the same thing everywhere that's super useful in communicating all sorts of ideas.
What? Sorry, I must be misunderstanding your viewpoint here. People interact all across the globe all of the time; it’s important to know what part of day it is in the different places for all of that.
no, it's not, it's important to know what time other people are available at Regardless of what you're doing, you're going to plan it to the hour specifically, due to the fact that it's a meeting, you're going to agree independently, on a shared time, between the two of you. It doesn't matter what your or their local time is, because you agree on it, and can simply figure it out yourself, if you REALLY needed to, like i said, you could just look it up, and now instead of it actually changing the time, it just shifts it, given that they're halfway across the globe, and the sun normally does that.
Maybe it's lunch time, ask them when they have lunch. They'll tell you, and it'll map directly to your time. It's INCREDIBLY explicit, compared to our current solution. You shouldn't be planning things based on what the timezones say, you should be planning things based on what the time says.
I'm not sure i can think of a single instance, where it would be important to know what point the sun is in the sky at, in fucking mongolia, while i'm in the US or some place. It already means nothing to me, even if they were to tell me, because i don't know what their timezone is, and if i do know, now i'm just hoping that they have exactly the same schedule as me, with no deviations, which, you know is, very reliable. Maybe you work in a global office, where this would be a thing, but then again, it's literally the same amount if not less effort than just using timezones like you would normally do. And like i said, it doesn't remove the local solar time, that's what "timeoffsets" would be for, so if you REALLY cared about it for some reason, you could just look it up with the same amount of effort as timezones now.
The ONLY difference is that instead of the sun being in the middle of the sky at noon where you are, and noon where they are, it's noon here, and there at the same time, and the sun is in the peak at 12 00 here, and 14 00 there. For instance. I genuinely just can't think of any significant events where i would be globally contacting someone, in regards to their specific local solar time, in reference to my own, in significant enough capacity, where having to add or subtract a number would make it harder.
Timezones are arguably inherently more confusing, because if it's +2 here, and it's +5 there, then that means they're 3 hours ahead, so if it's 12 00 here, it would be 15 00 there. Which is significantly more effort. As opposed to, "i'm 3 hours ahead of you, and we use global time so just add 3 to your number, and that's my schedule now" it just removes one variable from the equation.
and regardless of that, you act like morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night, midnight, and after midnight, don't exist. If you're communicating local solar time in passing, you're likely using those anyway. They're fuzzy terms, they're perfect for it. And if not, you probably should be anyway.
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.
Stop using drugs, you're making literally no sense.
Actually, it makes perfect sense.
The loose terms like morning, noon, night etc are related to the suns position in the sky and exist regardless of what the wall clock happens to say
maybe you should try drugs, might make this concept of no longer having timezones conceptually understandable for you.
EVERY time i suggest this, without fail. People lose their shit over even the most basic of interpretations of how timezones could possibly not exist.
Here's a fun fact about time for you, there was a period during the catholic church, where they just removed like 7 days from the year.
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
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
sounds like a skill issue to be honest.
based name
it really is one of the best thoughts i've ever had.
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.
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
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.
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
that's basically why timezones were created. before then, every town had its own local time.
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.
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.
yeah, my problem is that nobody use UTC. And we have problems like gas pumps in finland breaking because they programmed timezones incorrectly.
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.
yes, except it's not the only time system we use, the primary time system we use is universal now.
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?
yeah, it's 12 00 in america, it's 12 00 literally anywhere else in the world, you show up at 12 and that's when the meeting happens.
So what are these offset's you mentioned? They are not used?
they're used less frequently than timezones are now. Because the offsets only purpose is to show to explicit time of the local solar time, anywhere in the world. relative to your local solar time (which is not very useful.)
Your proposal is exactly how time is used at my work. All meetings are in GMT. You use the timezone time when thinking locally. Instead of everyone using GMT and timezones already, why should we introduce a while new concept?
you say you already use this at work, but then say it's an entirely new concept. I don't think you've quite comprehended this properly.
We are literally already doing it, there is no reason not to switch to it.
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.
At this point, I don't know if you are trolling or not. You keep saying that this is nothing like timezones, while describing something that really looks like timezones to anyone else reading it.
Do you suggest we all use one unique time, regardless of local solar time? Or do you suggest we all use our own local solar time, based on each person's exact longitude on the globe, regardless of borders and current timezones ?
it depends on how it's implemented, but essentially, we do away with our current concept of timezones, and then use UTC or something, for example. But we reimplement the timezone maps for our local solar time offsets. So that way we still have a consistent system. Just without timezones.
You mean like a watch that goes by timezones? 🤔
that admittedly, would be pretty funny, but no unfortunately not.
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.
too bad windows don't exist, it's also not like movies ever fudge lighting to make it look better.
or you could just say "late morning" after taking a page out of your book.
here's the thing though, you wouldn't need to do that second part. You only need to know what the relative time for london is in the event that you fly over there, or something, and even then. It's still going to be real time, you would just naturally transition over to it. You have no reason to know what time some place else is referenced to, unless you're over there, except for the rare instance where it's convenient.
What? Sorry, I must be misunderstanding your viewpoint here. People interact all across the globe all of the time; it's important to know what part of day it is in the different places for all of that. You want to call someone in Singapore? It doesn't help to know their clock shows the same time as you, you need to know if it's the middle of the night, or maybe it's likely lunch time etc. That's why you need to know the offset from "your" time.
And you glossed over everything else... I'm not talking about movies for no reason. Movies tend to need to convey lots of information in a short amount of time so it's a useful example of the differring amounts of information that can be communicated when we all share cultural understandings of things. If 3am means essentially the same thing everywhere that's super useful in communicating all sorts of ideas.
no, it's not, it's important to know what time other people are available at Regardless of what you're doing, you're going to plan it to the hour specifically, due to the fact that it's a meeting, you're going to agree independently, on a shared time, between the two of you. It doesn't matter what your or their local time is, because you agree on it, and can simply figure it out yourself, if you REALLY needed to, like i said, you could just look it up, and now instead of it actually changing the time, it just shifts it, given that they're halfway across the globe, and the sun normally does that.
Maybe it's lunch time, ask them when they have lunch. They'll tell you, and it'll map directly to your time. It's INCREDIBLY explicit, compared to our current solution. You shouldn't be planning things based on what the timezones say, you should be planning things based on what the time says.
I'm not sure i can think of a single instance, where it would be important to know what point the sun is in the sky at, in fucking mongolia, while i'm in the US or some place. It already means nothing to me, even if they were to tell me, because i don't know what their timezone is, and if i do know, now i'm just hoping that they have exactly the same schedule as me, with no deviations, which, you know is, very reliable. Maybe you work in a global office, where this would be a thing, but then again, it's literally the same amount if not less effort than just using timezones like you would normally do. And like i said, it doesn't remove the local solar time, that's what "timeoffsets" would be for, so if you REALLY cared about it for some reason, you could just look it up with the same amount of effort as timezones now.
The ONLY difference is that instead of the sun being in the middle of the sky at noon where you are, and noon where they are, it's noon here, and there at the same time, and the sun is in the peak at 12 00 here, and 14 00 there. For instance. I genuinely just can't think of any significant events where i would be globally contacting someone, in regards to their specific local solar time, in reference to my own, in significant enough capacity, where having to add or subtract a number would make it harder.
Timezones are arguably inherently more confusing, because if it's +2 here, and it's +5 there, then that means they're 3 hours ahead, so if it's 12 00 here, it would be 15 00 there. Which is significantly more effort. As opposed to, "i'm 3 hours ahead of you, and we use global time so just add 3 to your number, and that's my schedule now" it just removes one variable from the equation.
and regardless of that, you act like morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night, midnight, and after midnight, don't exist. If you're communicating local solar time in passing, you're likely using those anyway. They're fuzzy terms, they're perfect for it. And if not, you probably should be anyway.
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.
Stop using drugs, you're making literally no sense.
Actually, it makes perfect sense.
The loose terms like morning, noon, night etc are related to the suns position in the sky and exist regardless of what the wall clock happens to say
maybe you should try drugs, might make this concept of no longer having timezones conceptually understandable for you.
EVERY time i suggest this, without fail. People lose their shit over even the most basic of interpretations of how timezones could possibly not exist.
Here's a fun fact about time for you, there was a period during the catholic church, where they just removed like 7 days from the year.
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
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
sounds like a skill issue to be honest.
based name
it really is one of the best thoughts i've ever had.
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.