this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023

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94

European timezones are wild (i.imgur.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/mapporn

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So much politics going on in this map.

The eternal UK 🤝 Portugal alliance and the awkward space it creates between them.

Spain and Poland are in the same timezones.

The weird corridor created by Belarus.

Ukraine is in a separate tz from Russia, I wonder when that was established

What the hell is going on with the light blue in the east?

all 38 comments

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[+] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I thought many of the countries originally adopted it because of a certain mustache man.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That'd be most of them I think. Though it is right that we didn't change back after the war because it's convenient for business. And now everybody's holding off on getting rid of DST because some countries prefer permanent summer time and others permanent winter time (fucking degenerates, no I will not take anyone else's opinion on this, I am tired of explaining to people that time is made up but business hours won't change and therefore winter time = less/no daylight for office workers).

Anyway point is we'd probably have seen several countries switch timezones or off DST if business was not a concern.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Getting rid of DST and keeping standard (winter) time means the same winters we currently have. The sun just sets and rises 'earlier' during the summer according to clocks if they weren't set to DST.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's the part I'm pissed off about. I get off work at 5:30, so I don't get to be out in the sun for MONTHS whereas if we were in summer time I would be able to catch the sunset even in December.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

When time comes up, everybody seems to forget that working hours can just change too. Why ruin the whole organisation of timezones by being in summer time randomly if you can be in regular time and just shift the working hours if you have a problem with it?

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

That's wishful thinking. Offices/shops/etc. will be open 8-6pm and that's just the way they're going to operate, because that's what's in the work contracts, insurance contracts, etc. It's fixed in stone.

However we do have a very powerful tool to shift the working hours for everyone: move the damn clocks one hour. Why is it such a catastrophe that the sun would be at its zenith at 1pm?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Id rather the sun doesnt rise at 8am.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol you must live quite far south then. Here on the solstice, the sun rises at 8:40 and sets at 16:40 on winter time. Which means that most people don't get to see the sun before or after work; best case scenario is you start at 9 so you get a bit of sun on your commute, but it's not like you can depend on it for your circadian rhythm because you should already be well awake by the time you take the wheel of your car/bicycle/whatever...

At least with "summer" time I'd be able to see the sun for a little bit before it sets at 17:40 so I can start my free time with a bit of daylight, rather than optimize my day for the miserable early morning commute.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You are correct, the sun would be rising at like 9am, yuck. You've convinced me, I'd rather keep regular time for sure, winters are fine as they are, but the extra sun at night in summer is pointless, while the extra light at night in winter would be nice, it's not the end of the world as it is and a poor trade-off for such dark and grim mornings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Nah, the sun already rises at 9am for me. With summer time it would rise at close to 10am, but in either case I'm already in the office by then so why should I care?

I'm assuming you live MUCH further south than me, but that's the point I'm trying to make: you'll never gave the Italians, Germans, and Scandinavians agree on a single time zone without DST.

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

Santa Clause?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yosemite Sam

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Charlie Chaplin.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well whatta ya'know, you're 100% correct!

https://www.timetemperature.com/globes/europe-time-zone-globe.shtml

[–] AntifaNI 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

EU has a common time zone

Nobody told the Irish, Greeks, Finns and Baltic states ?

[–] BeepStreet 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Iceland UTCMasterrace 💪 UK and Portugal allowed to join during the winter

[–] 9point6 3 points 1 year ago

I hope when we inevitably get rid of daylight savings time, we go with UTC rather than BST

[–] joel_feila 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At least no time zone is doughnut shapes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This map doesn't have donut shapes, but don't look at Arizona ...

[–] joel_feila 2 points 1 year ago

Dear god you know

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

CET gang needs to start annexing neighbors until the whole world is CET red :D.

But for real, time of day is just numbers, it needn't be that eg 5:00 has to mean morning hours (as is it changes every day a bit bcs of Earths tilt + it changes with longitude and latitude even within the same arbitrary timezone).

If we have 'world clock tech' then let's have one world time. I'll still be late whatever the case.

[–] zepheriths 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Crimea is technically the same time zone as Moscow, because Russia administers the region ............. for now

[–] AntifaNI 1 points 1 year ago

What's going on in Kaliningrad ?

[–] Resol 1 points 1 year ago

Morocco is in the same time zone as North Macedonia

[+] [email protected] -6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't wait until we all figure out that timezones are inherently useless, and just add hassle. One World Time.

[–] cynar 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That has been established for a long time. GMT is the reference time. Time zones are designed to allow us to keep our circadian rhythm in sync with the clocks. E.g. lunchtime and midday are at 1200. Otherwise Californians will be having lunch at 0500, while India would have it at 1730. That would get very confusing for travellers, very quickly.

It was extended further with Unix timestamps. They just count up seconds. No faffing with dates and conversions, no leap seconds or time zone changes to track. Just pure, unadulterated time. Unfortunately people get weird, if you give the date and time of a cinema showing in Unix time. The current time is 1694599045

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

Unfortunately even UTC isn't perfect once time dilation becomes a factor (eg. Satellites)

[–] cynar 1 points 1 year ago

It still works. You need to know your correction, but it's just like a computer with a slow clock. UTC doesn't explicitly state it, but it's reference is to a non inertial frame, on the earth's surface. (Rotational effects are far smaller than current clock errors, and transmission time errors)

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

So you're saying the confusion of someone visiting a different timezone and not knowing what hour of the clock the sun goes down or comes up is worth avoiding, but the confusion of anyone that has to deal with timezones in any way, such as tv programs, emailing your office overseas, calling your grandma in Ireland, waiting for the release of your new game, wondering what time your aeroplane gets in, etc etc etc is not worth avoiding?

It's not like the sun rises and sets at a consistent time anyway. Not that people have lunch at a certain hour.

A while ago we made a completely arbitrary 'setpoint', and then we've gone and put relatively arbitrary offsets on top of that, and have an arbitrary subset of those offsets change at relatively arbitrary times of the year. It's insane.

[–] joel_feila 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well time were first laid down because of trains. Every would have there clocks set to 12:00 the sun at or close to its highest point. And that was when a horse was the fastest you could ever travel. Then trains move fast and can just go around each other if they are on the same track. So we had to make times more offical so we wouldn't dispatch trains on collision courses.

[–] AntifaNI 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes trains and to a lesser extent telegraphs gave us time zones.

But now we have mass air travel and the internet.

[–] joel_feila 1 points 1 year ago

So metric time for all. I would be down for that.

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

Time zones are what let you know whether it's the middle of the night when you want to call gram gram in Ireland. Or are you proposing we all abide the same wake/sleep times and ignore the sun entirely? Who gets the good shift on that clock?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm proposing that our wake / sleep cycle should be linked to the sun, not what the clock says.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What's a good time to call gram gram is a good example.

She said 10:00.

Option one: Is that my 10:00, or her 10:00, which is 13:00 for me? Is she in daylight savings at the moment? So that would be 12:00 for me, unless we're in that weird period where one of us has started daylight savings and the other is not yet finished theirs, which would make it 14:00 for me? Or is it the other way around, and her 10:00 is my 11:00? Oh wait, she's visiting her sister in Morocco, what's the difference there?

Option two: 10:00 is 10:00, wherever the heck you are, be it down the street, in Greenland, or on Mars.

The clock is only roughly tied to the sun anyway. At the end of December, the sun sets at 8pm in Capetown, but half past three in Warsaw. These places are in the same time zone.

[–] AntifaNI 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

such as tv programs

People do view TV Channels across timezone boundaries right now.

A lot of folk in the Netherlands and Belgium watch British TV and North America, Australia, Russia etc must have lots of TV channels with audiences spread across more than one timezone.

To say noting of migrant workers/families in various countries who largely shun the local TV channels in favour of satellite/internet TV from their home country. (Indeed the advent of internet TV is making the concept of TV schedules pretty obsolete anyhows)

How do they cope ?