this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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If I'm understanding what you're getting at, I think you're misunderstanding. I wasn't saying the day of the month change would happen at different times of day for different days of the month. I was saying the day of the month change would happen at different times of day for different longitudes. (I said "for different people", though "for different longitudes" or "for different locations" would have been a better way to say that.)
I believe you are correct. I read your statement as meaning when the month changes.
But your explanation also seems backwards. Currently, every timezone changes to the next day at their time. US/Eastern switches days at 4:00am utc (assuming DST) and US/Central follows an hour later. With no timezones, everyone would switch days at the time time 00:00 UTC. It just may be 5/6 hours early than we're used to in US/Central time zone for example.
Well, I do think it's useful to be able to speak in terms of "the period of time from the middle of the dark period of the day to the following middle of the dark period" for conversations with other locals. And that's what I was talking about with regard to the days of the week changing over at "midnight" (that is, the middle of the dark period).
So, if I lived somewhere where the sun rose at 14:00 UTC every "day", I would have to keep track of the fact that the date would change to the next date (from the 19th to the 20th, for instance) every mid-to-late "afternoon". A small price to pay, in my estimation, but still a price to pay.
So, I dunno. Doesn't feel backwards to me. Folks are still probably going to think in terms of their "day". Like from when they get up to when they go to bed. Not in terms of when Greenwich gets up and goes to bed. So I do think it's worth considering things from the perspective of people who just want to make sure they get to work on time so they don't get laid off. And from that perspective, it makes more sense to say "the date changes over one hour before I get off of work" (which is "mid to late afternoon" even though it's UTC 0:00).
You're replacing codified standards for local time with ad hoc conventions like they had before time zones.