this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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TranscriptionA map of the world with vertical lines marking the time zones from UTC-12 to UTC+12. It has a legend:

Wrong Time

"Natural time zones" are 15° in longitude. Land in red observes a time other than the zone it lies within. Smaller islands depict their 12 nautical mile territorial sea, for visual effect. In some cases this includes a state's archipelagic waters.

Plate Carrée projection, WGS-84 datum. December 2018 © International Mapping, all rights reserved.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

This map really brings home how awful this projection is for this map's purpose and how awful most projections really are near the poles. Greenland isn't that big. I know this map is Plate Carree, not Mercator, but the size issue of an equirectangular projection is really similar when comparing longitude and size for the entire globe from pole to equator. 15 degrees of longitude for a timezone stops making sense that close to the poles. Greenland would mostly fit in the central time zone of the United States for example. Given its sparse population, dividing it up into 3 timezones seems unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 22 hours ago

15 degrees of longitude for a timezone stops making sense that close to the poles

Yeah exactly. The concept of time zones themselves really starts to break down at those latitudes, and I don't think it matters what map projection you show it on (though something like Robinson or Winkel-Tripel, with curved time zones, would definitely make things clearer), it's a fundamental aspect of the way in which light is hitting the Earth's surface.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Wrong title, it should be:

A Map of the world showing where the local time zone is wrong more than half hours

An hour is a human concept, we just divided the day to 24 parts, we could use whatever else division. Local time is correct only on the center longitude, which is a line with zero thickness.

Also it's clearly visible that France and Spain are in the wrong time zone, and it was changed by the Nazis. Before WW2 France and Spain was in the same zone as Britain. France changed because of the German occupation, and they forgot to change back after the war.

[–] Weborl 12 points 1 day ago

Correction: Spain time zone was not changed by the Nazis, It was changed by the Fascists. Franco changed it to have the same time as Germany.

Fun fact: Have you seen videos of dogs begging for food the day after the time change, having to wait an extra hour? Spaniards were the same, and after the time change, they continued eating lunch and dinner according to their biological clock. That’s why Spaniards have lunch and dinner at later hours.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

France, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands are in the wrong time zone because of Nazis https://lemmy.ca/post/2220899

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

Not only that, most of Spain (except the Canaries), the most extreme case, Is on a time zone that has a border with Russia, while actually being on the Greenwich meridian.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

That doesn't exactly explain why they're still in those time zones 80 years later, despite only having been under Nazi control for less than 6 years.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

Time zones are fundamentally wrong and immoral. Only the Time Cube is correct.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Absolute classic.

I would have voted for the TimeCube guy over Trump.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

even Caves of Qud celebrates this legacy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

Oh man, I did not know that Qud had a TimeCube reference...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

If you want a real trip click through the different archive dates on this site. Dude goes through a whole progression of who he's pissed off at month to month.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago

It's great. He adds them randomly in the middle of rants too.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

An item on my bucket list has been to create a map with "gradients" (really just 1-minute rectsngular bands) of what time the high noon is in that location. This map is just a subset of that, coloring red the areas with an over-30-minute offset. I'd make one for January and one for July to account for DST on both hemispheres.

I'll probably convert a publicly available timezone shapefile into a Plate Carée (or similar) projection SVG, create a "gradient" spanning the entire globe and then use it as texture for the SVG shapes, horizontally offset appropriately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

That would be really cool!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I still like China time same for whole big ass country. Everyone in NA go by NYC time. fuck that tv schedule.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I think it's kind of dumb tbh. I imagine at certain times of the year, you will have farmers on one end of the country waking up in complete darkness, while others are waking up in broad daylight (I didn't do any actual critical thought to determine if this is actually true or not, but it seems right).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

Spain more than France, but both, tend to eat later, wake up later, as a response. Farming schedules are going to be dawn till dusk, and food market/retail hours would tend to follow. Stock market traders will match sleep/work schedule to market hours.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

The real problem with this is the official dictate that businesses in the west of China have to operate to Beijing time hours.

If you just said "businesses in the west open at 11 and close at 7, while Beijing does 9 to 5", it'd be like a smaller-scale version of what I (and others, including elsewhere in these comments) have advocated for: everyone operating on a single time zone, worldwide (usually UTC).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You should make one that shows how much the official time is wrong with respect to the local time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

That would require way more effort than "find picture from elsewhere on the Internet, scale it down to a size my Lemmy instance will let me upload, and then upload it."

But anyway, you can basically get that from this chart, for the most part. The rightmost edge of each red section is 30 minutes ahead, or the leftmost is 30 minutes behind of where it should be, when those edges are caused by the time zone itself (rather than national or regional boundaries like state lines), growing by an hour per vertical line.

So, the westernmost parts of Spain are about 1 hour 30 ahead, while the easternmost parts of Poland are 30 minutes behind. The westernmost tip of China is about 3 and a half hours ahead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

Yes, I know about China and Spain, that's why it would be interesting to plot it.

[–] Misspelledusernme 14 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Lets just do a single time zone

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I prefer the current way


I can be in another state or another country and I know that 7am is a good time for breakfast, around noon is a good time for lunch, and so forth. (If you don't change latitude sure, just go outside to figure this out, but it's complicated if it's overcast, or the latitude isn't what you're used to, or...)

Time has a number of meanings


UTC is great for machines, local time is (IMHO) a good concept for humans.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

We ought to get rid of that minus one time zone - nobody's using it.

Actually I think I don't understand the concept. I think some of the guys in the other time zones might be using the minus one but be wrong.

Damn this is confusing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (8 children)

when?

in the summer or winter?

[–] frostysauce 2 points 1 day ago

One of the many reasons this makes no sense.

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[–] gedaliyah 13 points 1 day ago

World: So China, you are one of the largest landmasses on the planet. How many time zones do you want?

China: No thanks. * sips tea *

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"wrong". technically it's entirely made up. you can write whatever number you want on the scale where the sun hits the zenith as long as all people nearby can agree to it.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

It strikes me that the Middle East, central Europe, and south-east Asia are the best places for time zone accuracy, while western Europe, western Africa, and northern Asia are the worst.

[–] kazerniel 4 points 1 day ago

Spain and western China are fucked 😬

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It sort of makes sense for most of the countries on there, as they (or the slice of them in the awkward timezone) aren't big enough to justify splitting their timezones in half. Just pick the one that matches the most people and move on...

But what the bloody hell are countries like Spain, Portugal, and France doing?? Basically their whole country is in the wrong timezone!

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