Daylight stupid time

Next week we ‘fall back’ 1 hour to return to standard time. Only to resume the madness of ‘springing forward’ an hour next year. I would feel glad to have one hour extra to sleep during the winter for couple of days, get adjusted to the routine and then next year in March.. BAM!.. we go through the charade of setting the clock one hour ahead, lose sleep, miss alarms, drink more coffee, and then fall into the routine as usual. Yeah sure, one can adjust to any routine given enough time but why does it have to be at the cost of fooling ourselves? We don’t live in dark ages to fear a dark morning. Those who want to enjoy leisure time will find a way to enjoy the longer daylight in the evening. One who does like to get up early with the daybreak to utilize the sunlight can still do it. Set up your own god damn alarm instead of making the whole country change the clock.

A quick stroll through Wikipedia tells us the history of DST and how it came into being. The actual proponent of modern day DST, George Hudson, just wanted to spend his leisure time in the evening enjoying his love for entomology. A British guy, William Willet, who had a major role in making DST popular, wasn’t happy that Londoners were wasting away summer mornings. He could have just minded his own business and played golf a little early but no, he wanted the whole country to change the clock. Perhaps the DST made sense when the world ran on coal and a World war was raging on. We don’t live in that world anymore. We don’t face the energy crisis of the 70s. Please feel free to knock anyone out cold if they start talking about the economy. The retailers can bear the 1 hour loss of daylight (oooo sooo scaaary in spite of all the artificial lighting 🙄️). Those who want to make money out of DST are already filthy rich. Surely Golf industry won’t die if they don’t make an extra $200 million? Sleep deprivation because of DST leads to all sorts of issues. Accidents on the road and work. Heart problems. Suicides. Stress. Problems that cascades problems. All because Mr. Willet wanted to enjoy his golf.

We now have robust software and hardware that takes care of this transition seamlessly. As if managing date and time wasn’t hard enough already. All that time in managing DST to make sure our machines ran properly could have been spent fixing real issues. The benefits of abolishing DST and keeping a standard time outweighs the losses and yet we won’t see this happening in near future. Sad really.

Day 30 - Join Me in #100DaysToOffload