• Sludgeyy@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Sioux Falls SD is 43.5460°N

    Rapid City SD is 44.0805°N

    Sioux Falls Sunset is at 5:13pm CST

    Rapid City Sunset is at 4:38pm MST

    If both cities were in CST, Rapid City sun would set at 5:38pm CST

    Due to the latitude difference, the sunsets should be 25 minutes apart

    However, they are 35 minutes apart due to the time zone difference

    If you said “Sioux Falls is farther south than Rapid City” and tried to base sunset time on just that, you’d be wrong.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      And? We’re not abolishing timezones any time soon. So there’s always going to be that issue of the easternmost and westernmost towns in a time zone. That’s not a reason for anything.

      • Sludgeyy@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Like I said, “It’s not just north or south.”

        Time zones change the sunset time east and west as well.

        Abolishing time zones has nothing to do with “fixing” daylight savings.

        Even if we all switched to UTC and got rid of time zones . Everyone would have to decide when to go to bed, when to wake up, and when to work to fit it around the sun.

        5:13pm CST is 11:13pm UTC

        If Sioux Falls wanted to stay “standard time” for the sun. They would have to start work at 3pm UTC and get off work at 11pm UTC. (9am to 5pm)

        Yet they could decide that they wanted to get “daylight savings time” for the sun, they would start work at 2pm UTC and get off at 10pm UTC. They would get one extra hour of sun after work instead of before.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          Okay we’re not talking about the same thing here.

          The length of your day is not defined by your time zone. It is defined by your latitude, how far north of the equator you are. X degrees north gets Y hours of sunlight at N time of year.

          It’s that simple. So instead of creating a fucking nightmare for commerce and programming, we should be working the hours that make sense. Being on the western edge of a time zone means your work hours should be different than on the Eastern edge.

          If you shift the zone, you’re not going to get more sunlight, you’re going to get a later time to go home from your boss. The problem isn’t the time zone. It’s capitalism demanding you work the entire day away even though productivity has increased massively and we work far more than our ancestors from supposedly dreary times.

          That’s why shifting the time zone is, at most, going to get you the sun in your eyes as you drive home. It’s not going to give you any more hours of sunlight. Those don’t magically appear. And it wastes energy as people try to heat the coldest part of the day instead of staying under their blankets. Savings Time literally is the worst option except in the one regard of trying to preserve afternoon light for people rich enough to enjoy it.