With Daylight Savings once again coming up, it never fails for it to spark discussions about its purpose in modern times. People hate it widely while few seem to be okay with it and depending where you live, others don’t even know what the deal is.
Politicians have actually put it on the docket to be voted on, but seems to have lost traction. Quite frankly, this is an issue that should be done and over with. Just end it, but please end it when we have the clocks dialed back than forward, because I wouldn’t like time going faster than it already is.
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The calendar’s arrangement, at least for America. I think would be better if we had 13 months, having 12 of them with exactly 30 days in their block. The 13th month has all the extra days, and is extended during a leap year. Coincidentally, elections for president should be held during the leap year, to give people an longer voting window.
During the voting window each year, the last five days of December, all the days in the 13th month, and the first 5 days of January, are eligible as vacation days. Voters pick five days during the 15 day voting window to be on paid vacation. If they fail to vote and have a job, their employer will be penalized with an amount of money that is double the pay of the worker for five days of work. Citizens, if they vote, get a $100 check from the government.
This creates a carrot for everyday people to vote, especially workers. Employers are punished if they try to interfere with voting and vacation days during the voting season, which in turn makes it easier for people to participate in democracy. The vacation days allow for research, to have ample time to send a ballot or go to the booth.
Also, I personally dislike the regular months having variable lengths. It is disorderly and annoying, to have them stretch and bend seemingly at random.
Disposable plastic. It should never have been a thing, but by now it really shouldn’t be a thing. No plastic food containers, no plastic textiles, damn near everything should be in cotton bags or paper boxes or glass jars or unlined metal cans but we’re so damn accustomed to convenience that the permanent externality is seen as necessary. I’m willing to make allowances for safety and medicine but even there the focus should be developing good biodegradable plastic.
Capir9
The Jones Act.
Executive Orders in the U.S. political system
I’m Canada we have the “Notwithstanding clause” which can serve a similar function; allowing a premier to unilaterally decide something without the approval of parliament.
Neither should be allowed to exist.
Also remove the entire idea of some countries having “veto” power in NATO and UN matters.
Problem is, the president is head of the executive and is supposed to give orders and tell the government employees what to do, within the law. How can the executive orders be avoided?
I still propose to turn the clock halfway between standard and dst.
Why have one extreme when you can do middle?
There are already countries doing that like Sri Lanka.I’d rather have accurate noon / celestial time for the few months it is still allowed and still have to switch twice a year than let the government make wrong-noon (“daylight saving”) time permanent. So, many of the “end time switching” movements I actively resist rather than support.
I imagine things like this aren’t “done and over” because there is no majority opinion.
RCV / a Condorcet Method might help.
I’m confused, why would “Accurate Noon” be important? And for countries that sit far enough from the equator, wouldn’t it be inaccurate regardless?
I’m confused, why would “Accurate Noon” be important?
Why is any particular time important? It serves me to be able to tell time without a clock and synchronize my internal clock with solar activity.
And for countries that sit far enough from the equator, wouldn’t it be inaccurate regardless?
No. Distance from the equator doesn’t significantly affect when the sun it at it’s peak. It does affect how high in the sky the peak is.
Time adjustments (like “daylight saving”) drags the Sun E/W (which is why we “need” timezones). Increasing latitude dags the Sun N/S.
The Electoral College
If we want to say we’re a democracy then we need to be a democracy.,
Here in Canada, parliament has been discussing universal basic income for years. Economists have proven it would save the government money. It would be a win-win. Do it already.
Canada did a study trial of UBI. People who could physically work ended up getting jobs while on it.
But, this is not the reality that sells in suburban Canada.
People are driven to work for fulfillment and nobody likes being poor. People will always try to make as much money as possible. The “welfare king/queen” is a rare mentality, most people are not content with being poor.
I think they’re doing another trial right away, and one of them’s in BC where Doug Ford can’t get at it.
Don’t worry we have plenty of asshat conservatives here we well
Oof, where do I begin?
- Fossil fuel companies
- cruises
- diesel cars
- low-cost fast fashion retail companies
- modern slavery
- racism
- misinformation
- political scapegoats
- two-party systems
- billionaires
- polyester
- Artificial food colouring
- non-medical drugs and smoking
- alcohol
- low-cost greasy fast-food chains
- kids on social media
I’m tired! 😩 We’ve normalised unhealthy, unsustainable, and elitist lifestyles way too much! There are ways to be successful, happy, stylish, and joyful without these things. Many countries are already committing themselves to such efforts, so I know I’m not asking for much. I understand freedom of choice, and I’m usually quite libertarian, but some things just bring temporary fun and no benefits at all. In fact, some harm those around us too.
Renewable energy, electric cars, second-hand retail, artisanship, fair trade, multiculturalism, science-based education based on facts and credible sources, government transparency and accountability, a true democracy where the electoral candidates actually represent their party’s base and voters don’t feel hopeless, economic equality, socialism, natural fibres in fabrics, simple and natural food, therapy, mindfulness, healthy homemade packaged food, and kids staying off social media needs to be good again!
diesel cars
Gone for good reasons.
missing one Universal healthcare or using part of the defense budget to fund/subsidized Healthcare for all in the US.
easier to get proof citizen documents/things, like passport right now its a convoluted , lenghty process for first time, and Inactive users for things like passports.
Yeah sorry, we already have free and universal healthcare so I didn’t think of it 😅 But you’re right! My mind boggles at how terrible the healthcare system is in the US. I feel awful for people with chronic conditions and vulnerable situations, especially. The fact that the most reliable option is not to be insured and hope that you won’t ever get seriously injured or sick is depressing. The people who oppose universal free healthcare and those who deny healthcare to the less fortunate are evil. I know it’s obvious, but Luigi Mangione (or whoever it was) did a good thing. I wish it were all of them, but at least he got you rid of one asshole.
funny thing is conservatives are ON ACA, but they dont want to expand it or use it all. they have propagandized by fox that its "obamacare’ so they cant make that distinction that it was dem majority that had the law. and why the gop have a difficult time of removing it.
people with chronic disease are often disliked by insurance, because they know they would cost more, so they charge more for it. Also each company has thier convoluted payment systems.
Interestingly
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-adopting-year-round-daylight-time-9.7111657
We just got rid of it
Doesn’t that mean keeping it forever?
Define “it.”
Daylight savings. Daylight savings is one hour forward, which is the state being kept, no?
We’re going to stick to the summer time all year instead of the winter time
Coal. Coal should be over as a fuel, no ifs ands or buts. Arguing for coal right now is like arguing that whale oil is still a viable fuel.
The US has been completely eclipsed by other countries who are now making more or less free electricity from wind and solar. All arguments against them have been debunked to hell, if they were at all true we wouldn’t see China now mostly running of of renewables. While we listened to fossil fuel lobbyists push propaganda they were getting ahead.
They always trot out the line that it’s not fair to put all the coal workers out of a job, but when AI comes along and starts to put everyone else out of a job we’re all supposed to just suck it up.
They also completely ignore that they had free training for green energy jobs, because they killed off all of that free training so they could keep saying “they’re terking ther jerbs”
I blame Santa.
If that guy would stop being so jolly and load the naughties up with the coal they deserve, supply would plummet, prices would skyrocket, and it wouldn’t be a viable energy source why longer.
All arguments against them have been debunked to hell, if they were at all true we wouldn’t see China now mostly running of of renewables.
Germany has just ditched green energy.
What, no?
We didnt ditch it but Minister for Energy, Mrs. Reiche, is putting hard restrictions and obstacles in the way of revewable energies. Promoting coal and gas. She used to work for E-on in a high position. A gas energie provider. Saying “privat solar panels are detrimend and rival to the energie companies” for example
The entire conservative government is hellbend on undoing great green energie laws by the green minister Robert Habeck, of the last government.
Our government threw logic and the commitment to leave our children a world worth living out of the window. Because in the future the hydrogen fairy is coming and will provide us with cheap green hydrogen. Oh, and fusion will be viable.
Sometimes you have to wonder what they are smoking. But then again:
bribeslobbying.Op is kind of right in my opinion. We (our government) are about to ditch green energy/tech.
The issue with wind/solar is that they lack consistency, they are fantastic when the wind blows and it is sunny, but you can’t count on the output.
Nuclear on the other hand is highly consistent and way more environmentally friendly, the waste storage is a solved problem, and far easier to manage than the ash from coal plants.
It is insane how energy dense uranium is, and while the waste is dangerous, it is a tiny amount when compared to the ash from coal plants.
So yeah, get rid of coal/oil/gas power generation, replace it with nuclear, use the interim period until nuclear material has run out to build out the wind/solar capacity, and add battery storage facilities to enable consistent output.
You can mostly solve the solar issue by building more solar, it generates power in virtually any weather, maybe less but then you just build more to account for it. And when it’s not sunny it’s normally windy.
Also grids normally span multiple areas, you don’t build all your solar in the same spot, you spread it around so it’s sunny somewhere.
Batteries or even pumped hydro also solve the problem of power being generated at a different time than needed.
Outside of the US, solar capacity is being added at speed because it has become so cheap.
Yeah, solar IS fantastic, but as someone who lives in northern Europe, when we need stable power, in the winter, there is very little sun.
I realize that I am probably projecting our climate onto the entire nuclear question world wide, and that is unfair.
I just want us to shut down fossil plants as soon as possible, while maintaining a supply for baseload, and the way I read it, the grid isn’t ready for dispersed power generation yet, and while solar is very cheap, it isn’t yet able to deal with a baseload in northern europe.
There is also a geopolitical question here, the vast majority of solar panels and wind powerplant components are made in China, until we can produce our own panels and components of similar quality/cost we are in a quite vulnerable position if we become dependant on China for everything needed for power generation.
Nuclear obviously have similar issues, but seems less so as Europe has the capability of building our own reactors, and the cost is less of an issue due to longer lifetimes.
Eh, I freely admit that I am quite tired of the anti nuclear crowd who for decades has been against nuclear power out of fear and not reason, and thus prevented closure of fossil plants earlier.
Who cares if most of the panels are made in China? Panels last for decades. If China decides to embargo the EU and cut off the supply of panels, it would be a decade before that embargo really started to hurt. Enough time for Europe to spin up and entire PV supply chain from scratch.
You can’t apply the logic of petrostates to electrostates.
Remember when there was the thing about China possibly putting backdoors into telecoms equipment a few years back?
I would not put it past them to not do it with solar panels as well.
They’re stupid simple devices though. There’s not even any circuitry in a solar panel. There’s nothing to slip a backdoor inside. There’s caution, and then there’s just xenophobic paranoia.
I was thinking about the inverter.
China alone is pushing the world into the renewables age. For the rest of us, we just follow the wave.
Nuclear does not have similar issues. Nuclear is a super long game that basically leaves a few states left to explore and invest in this area. Nuclear power is basically a bespoke option that needs to be developed like an art piece and an investment. Any nuclear power installation requires massive budgets, massive budget overruns, and over 10 years of development and installation which will overrun as well. By the time a nuclear project breaks ground, only the next generation will possibly enjoy whatever power is generated.
Nuclear also requires massive investments of teams of specialists. They basically need teams to operate over huge periods of time to retain the institutional knowledge of building, maintaining, and improving upon these installations. In that sense nuclear is similar to rail companies in that we want teams with over 100 years of experience in this business to maintain a certain level of competence.
Nuclear is fun to drop like in SimCity or Civilzation, but it is completely, seriously inaccessible for many.
You’re right, but probably being downvoted because the wording you’ve used is the same as that used by conservatives to reject renewables all together.
Nuclear is not “the” solution, but it’s part of the energy mix of the future, particularly as we transition away from petrol and diesel transport, and gas cooking and heating.
In some cases it just doesn’t make sense. Australia for example has never had a nuclear industry and doesn’t have the requisite population density. It would take thirty years to build a nuclear plant and in that time we could build the same capacity with solar and wind.
However, if you already have a nuclear industry and do have large dense population centres then it’s a great alternative to coal.
Ah, that explains the weird response I got about lemmy.zip being fascist, thank you for explaining it!
You are absolutely right, nuclear is not the solution, it is an interim solution giving us 100-200 years of remarkably clean energy, if we designed a standard reactor that could be built inside existing fossil power plants, I think we could cut down on the build time by 80%, though that requires that we have approved designs.
I also believe that we in Sweden/Scandinavia should build large underground nuclear waste disposal sites, and offer to take care of nuclear waste from around the world, we have stable bedrock, our politics have been stable for decades. If would be a nice income stream while solving the issue for other countries. It has to be done, and we are well suited for it.
Solar plus battery is much cheaper than nuclear. And it adds immediately. Nuclear takes years and doesn’t come online til the project is finished. Solar comes online incrementally and can be anywhere.
True, however I live in northern Europe, even with huge batteries and large solar infrastructure, I have doubts that it will be enough during winters.
Also I am annoyed at the anti nuclear crowd who for decades prevented nuclear power from being built, and increased our use of fossils.
I shouldn’t let it cloud my general judgement of solar however.
Iceland pretty much runs on thermal energy. You can also use hydroelectric dams, tidal energy and wind energy. And a lot of countries are using that instead of fossil fuel. Of course, there’s lunatics like Merz, who wants to literally replace renewables with nuclear, but the less said about that b-st-rd the better.
Well planned hydroelectric dams are fantastic, but they do disrupt ecosystems quite badly.
The local environmental impacts are horrific, we really shouldn’t build more hydroelectric dams if at all possible. (And should be actively transitioning away from and dismantling old ones, but that comes with lots of new problems) Yes it’s great having consistent, reliable renewable energy but we’re putting everything that relies on healthy salmon populations in danger of extinction.
Are you the only Lemmy user who missed Technology Connections recent video?
I don’t really watch that channel, never got into it
Don’t take this wrong, but you’re repeating misinformation, and that’s quite damaging to the acceptance of renewable energy that is necessary to reduce the magnitude of the upcoming ecological catastrophe.
That does it I’m filtering out that entire instance, fuck you Lemmy.zip, fascists mouthpiece fucks
What?
How does nuclear power equal fascism?
lol 😂
what does nuclear have to do with facism
Neither time matters, it’s all the same. But don’t change it!
Its the adjustment that sucks.
Daylight is going to be the same length either way, it’s just an arbitrary number, but if you keep changing that number it gets very annoying.
Noon should be as close to zenith as possible, tho. But yeah, it’s more important to keep the same timezone all year.
Let’s go for maximum chaos. Set the Solar zenith to 1 AM.
I don’t agree universally, from a societal standpoint, because Dolly Parton sang about the 9-5. While standard time keeps my noon within 20 minutes of zenith, my temperate zone winter solstice sun rises at 7am (I get up at 8) and sets at 4pm (I leave work at 5pm). I drive in with plenty of light but leave in nearly full night time. Living in DST with zenith around 1pm would let me at least drive home at sunset. Would it really make winter life acceptable, though? Maybe, maybe not. I’m sure the temperature is a major factor as I can’t remember the last time summer sunset ended the day for me.
Still, I get it for when you had to manually set clocks based on the sun, but we have time zones and automatic syncs now. With rigid time zones, everybody has some inaccuracy at some point to the zenith anyway. Even if you’re dead center for the winter solstice, the true zenith location slides East for the spring equinox, returns for the summer solstice (though will be 1pm with DST), and then slides west for the fall equinox. The variation is more extreme nearer the poles. Then you have extreme cases with places like China and India, with single time zones across the countries and 70-80 minutes of zenith variation across the majority of the population (excluding China’s western half).
On the topic of daylight savings, I used to prefer that we stay on the daylight savings side of the time. But honestly at this point I am fine with staying on standard time if that means no more switching.
Otherwise one thing lately that I wish was done and over with by now is physical junk mail. Literal paper showing up in my mailbox that I now have to dispose of. Something I don’t ask for and will never look at. And I can’t help but think that happens to millions in my country every single day all for an irrelevant number of people to even look at. I can’t imagine how many trees are lost each year for something that has zero usefulness.
Imperial measurement system. Ffs just convert to the metric system already
I’m in Australia and it still shits me to tears that I can’t mathematically communicate with Americans. We just changed one day and it was done.
That said, the Australian mainland is running 5 different timezones right now. Some zones are only 30 minutes apart. We also have a little island just off the coast of Sydney where the DST shift is 30 minutes. The entire planet does an hour. We’ve introduced this edge case for the sake of 400 people and some stick insects.
Lord Howe Island is my fav timezone
Canada has a portion of Newfoundland that does the thirty minute thing as well.
Speaking of which. Imperialism.
Anyone tangentially studying anything scientific with real life measurements in the US is versed in metric. Imperial really is for the dum dums and their precious feel feels.
I just wish i didnt have to own 2 sets of tools. Even if we officially swap, im still going to have to keep 2 sets because of all the legacy junk around.
Really though, phillips heads screws bother me more than anything else. There literally designed, on purpose to strip.
Fuck, I forgot about auto work.
Also, I think hex heads are more prone in smaller applications. Phillips should’ve been the square head.
Phillips was going to be the square head, but there pattent / licencing issues i think. Torx is my fav now, but i also understand that its expensive and complicated to manufacture, especially in the past.
I’m a torx lover after rebuilding my deck! Box of 500 comes with one bit and that’s all you need.
Phillips should’ve been the square head.
Robertson.
Canada uses Robertson screws in construction. You can put them on a screwdriver and screw straight up, and they are much harder to strip out.
Yeah, you know, except for the entirety of engineering degree fields. Everything is still done to one thousandth of an inch.
This is because their bosses will not allow them to buy new lathes and milling machines.
