Exploring 120 Years of Timezones (2021)

(blog.scottlogic.com)

54 points | by colinprince 12 hours ago ago

11 comments

  • romanhn an hour ago ago

    My favorite video about the madness of timezones: https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY. Many great examples, but the one that blows my mind is Israelis and Palestinians living in West Bank observing different timezones in the same geographic location.

  • thecosas 2 hours ago ago

    Makes my head hurt thinking about long timeframe datasets across geographies and accounting for all of that as these continue to shift.

    • cf100clunk an hour ago ago

      In the name of logic it seems to me that a worldwide paradigm shift away from human-(un)friendly time zones to UTC with 24 hour clocks would do wonders. We're stuck with our present system, and instransigence means we probably always will be.

      • ghaff an hour ago ago

        Those of us who travel in particular like to know that, absent some cultural anomalies like eating dinner in Spain, local time roughly corresponds to activities where we’re from without constantly doing mental conversions.

        Yes, there are a lot of weird often politically-motivated time zones out there but for the most part it works

      • growse 23 minutes ago ago

        Ah, yes, the evergreen comment that suggests it would be better if people living far from the meridian experience the joy of Wednesday turning into Thursday at some point whilst they're awake.

  • ck2 2 hours ago ago

    we are getting a moon time zone, maybe, eventually, requires international agreement so maybe never

    https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243405460/space-news-moon-na...

    • rogerrogerr an hour ago ago

      Why does it require international agreement? This seems like the kind of thing even a private entity like SpaceX could just declare, and everyone else would fall in line naturally out of convenience and not-really-caring.

      • ck2 an hour ago ago

        US government has given spacex like $20 billion, I think you misunderstand who controls who and how

  • ape4 3 hours ago ago

    I imagine the Linux timezone database has grown a lot over the years

  • thomasdziedzic 5 hours ago ago