You're here early.

November 2, 2014 5:00 AM

Daylight Saving: The Motion Picture [SLYT]
posted by octothorpe (36 comments total)

"Daylight Saving... it's not plural!"
Ha! I was yelling this at the radio (NPR even!) this morning.
posted by MtDewd at 5:09 AM on November 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

You can reset all the clocks you want, but you can't reset a little dog's bladder. Hello, 06:00!
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 5:56 AM on November 2, 2014 [11 favorites]

That's wonderful. My cats wanted me to know I was a bad person for not going out to run at ...4:30. Spectacular.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:20 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

You can reset all the clocks you want, but you can't reset a little dog's bladder. Hello, 06:00!

INT: A DARKENED BEDROOM. JCPOLCHLOPEK RISES FROM BED. CLOSEUP ON CLOCK: 5:30. SOUNDS OF DOG NAILS ON FLOOR, PATHETIC WHINES.

MRS. JPOLCHLOPEK: It's Daylight Saving time. It's really only 4:30.

JPOLCHLOPEK: They don't care, honey ...

EXEUNT.
posted by jpolchlopek at 6:25 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I can report that my toddler doesn't care about daylight savings either.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:50 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

The only reason I am looking forward to smart appliances is so that my microwave (or "clock I sometimes cook things in" as Mitch Hedberg put it) makes Daylight Saving as seamless as my phone does.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:55 AM on November 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

The only clock I have to reset these days is the one in the car and it usually takes me a month to get around to that.
posted by octothorpe at 7:07 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

Umm, actually yesterday marked the end of Daylight Saving time. We are now on Standard Time. Does that make anyone feel better?


Actually hardest part seems to be figuring out which time pieces update automatically, and which I have to reset .... what do you mean my kitchen stove isnt connected to the internet!
posted by bumpkin at 7:30 AM on November 2, 2014 [7 favorites]

My kitchen stove is about fifty years old and doesn't have a clock.
posted by octothorpe at 7:36 AM on November 2, 2014

Daylight saving is one of those things that make me shake my head whenever I think about it, mainly because of the huge technological headache in maintaining software and systems where an hour of time disappears and reappears half a year later. Make me want to grab someone and shake them, yelling "Why don't you just get up earlier then? Do you really think that's more difficult than changing the agreed upon definition of time?!"
posted by cyberscythe at 7:43 AM on November 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is this something I'd need to own a clock to understand?
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:44 AM on November 2, 2014 [13 favorites]

That was really good. Thanks!
posted by mistersquid at 7:52 AM on November 2, 2014

I loved that.

I have plans with a friend today, and I have been annoyingly late to many of our previous plans (I mean, not hugely late, just consistently so) and I have been really working on that -- successfully, even! -- and so when we were setting up the plans last night I wanted to remind her about fifty times that the clocks! are changing! tonight!, because I had visions of my doing all the work necessary to show up on time and her still thinking I was an hour late.

I restrained myself to mentioning it just once. I hope she is not currently waiting for me.
posted by jaguar at 8:10 AM on November 2, 2014

I have to get up earlier this week, and was trying to ease into changing my sleep schedule. I thought, great, the perfect weekend for it. But when a sound woke me up, I couldn't get back to sleep. I just lay there trying to think what time it "really" was.
Long story short, I'm tired.
And I already hated it getting dark at 6:30 p.m., so 5:30 really bites.
Longer story shorter, I need more sun. And sleep.
posted by NorthernLite at 8:26 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I feel like people think it's because of the time changes that there's more or less daylight during the day. I mean, I know they can't really think that, but that's basically how people talk about the time changes. "Oh, there's more light at night" or "it'll be darker in the morning" or whatever.
posted by zorrine at 8:31 AM on November 2, 2014

Well, if I were Supreme Dictator, we'd be on DST all year long. I'd much rather have the light in the evenings, after work. After today it will seem like all the daylight hours are squandered, inside.

(Actually, where I live we have about eight weeks of going to work in total darkness and leaving in total darkness. Early skewed time only makes it worse)
posted by bumpkin at 8:35 AM on November 2, 2014 [8 favorites]

Nathan Barnatt saying a Vin Diesel line sort of made this for me.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 8:45 AM on November 2, 2014

I feel like people think it's because of the time changes that there's more or less daylight during the day. I mean, I know they can't really think that, but that's basically how people talk about the time changes. "Oh, there's more light at night" or "it'll be darker in the morning" or whatever.

I...might think that. Actually, I don't really even know what I think or don't think about daylight saving because trying to think about what it is or does hurts my brain. I just change my clock when they tell me.
posted by threeants at 9:27 AM on November 2, 2014

My gramma once described how people in Eugene, Oregon protested the imposition of Daylight Saving Time. People paraded with posters saying "KEEP GOD'S TIME." My gramma, a good Unitarian and sensible in all things, thought this was pretty funny.
posted by angrycat at 10:01 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

It definitely does confuse most people, and it makes it harder for people to notice the natural rhythms of the seasons. I find it hilarious that in the 70s the Republicans thought a good response to energy woes was to extend DST all year. Just think how much we could save then! Except that any alleged savings come from the switch itself. As to whether it actually does that is not easily answered, though.
When I was young I lived late into the evenings, and DST made absolutely no sense to me. These days I am an early bird, and I understand why we do it. I like to explain it like this:
Imagine if clocks were set by sunrise. from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice, each day would be a few minutes longer than 24 hours, and a few minutes shorter for the other half of the year. Then you could show up at work the same time every day, without having some days arriving before sunrise and some days waiting around with the sun already up before work. It appeals to busy-bodies like Ben Franklin who like to maximize efficiency. And it appeals to merchants, who think that we are more likely to go spend money if we have more light after work in the summer.
Of course resetting your clocks every morning would be a total pain, so let's just do it twice a year.
The idea that we do it for farmers is a bit silly. They are going to be getting up with the sun no matter what time you call it. It is really for first-shift workers.
That said, it is such an incredible waste of resources. I work with computers and the amount of time spent writing in special cases blows my mind. And a few years ago, good old W changed the day that it ended, (to appease the trick or treat crowd,) which left a bunch of "smart" appliances extra dumb.
posted by bitslayer at 10:23 AM on November 2, 2014

There is some evidence that the body never adjusts to daylight savings time.

In a large survey (n = 55 000), we show that the timing of sleep on free days follows the seasonal progression of dawn under standard time, but not under DST ... Our data indicate that the human circadian system does not adjust to DST and that its seasonal adaptation to the changing photoperiods is disrupted by the introduction of summer time.

posted by alby at 11:41 AM on November 2, 2014

Well done! That "movie trailer" is the only fun thing about DST ever.
posted by evilmomlady at 12:27 PM on November 2, 2014

I hate that this is the one day of the year I can't say 'it's later than you think'.
(But then, the day DST begins I can say it A LOT)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:45 PM on November 2, 2014

Very funny trailer, nice find.
posted by zardoz at 1:57 PM on November 2, 2014

The last scene could have been filmed through our window (except I would be trying to get my darling wife to perform a task on her computer).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:03 PM on November 2, 2014

It usually takes me six months for my body clock to sort itself out, which happens at about the time the clocks change again.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:18 PM on November 2, 2014

How do, how do... I don't understand, how do buses... what do, what do, people just, they just, they reset their watches when they commute? They change their watches every time they cross a time zone? What is this, a joke?
posted by officer_fred at 3:18 PM on November 2, 2014

Living for ten years in Arizona really spoiled me. I do think it is kind of magical how just when it is starting to be too dark for me in the morning, lo, there is a smiling god. But in the spring, when I have to struggle awake an hour earlier but it us still cold, so cold, for some unknown but cruel reason, I curse it and hate it.

It was much easier to deal with my out of state friends oscillating between two and three hours ahead of me, really.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 5:33 PM on November 2, 2014

My new favorite thing now that I live in Japan is that I don't have to deal with this nonsense. Of course, it's made things more difficult for my family when they're trying to figure out an appropriate time to call me, but WHATEVER, SUCKERS.

Also, no tipping in Japan. That is my other favorite thing.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 7:32 PM on November 2, 2014

I'll have to look that up again in April. Although I always find the autumnal change much easier to adjust to than the vernal.

I also feel this is an appropriate time to trot out the (possibly urban legend) story about Flo Bjelke-Petersen (wife of then-Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen) not wanting to have DST in Queensland because it would fade the curtains. To be fair, DST doesn't make much sense when you are as close to the equator as parts of Queensland.
posted by Athanassiel at 9:41 PM on November 2, 2014

The thing that makes this even more irksome is that it isn't globally synchronised: the EU changed a week before you. The US isn't even nationally synchronised as you change at 02:00 local time which, from the perspective of the rest of us, is just stupid.
posted by epo at 1:53 AM on November 3, 2014

"you" being the US, obviously. Sorry, it was before my first cup of tea.
posted by epo at 2:35 AM on November 3, 2014

November is a grim month. It is notable that while on Cavett, Richard Burton referred to the darkest days of alcoholism as "it's always November." The damn clock thing just makes it more so.

For years I worked jobs that required me to be in place, far from windows, before dawn. The only daylight I saw was on my trip home. When the clocks changed, even that ended and I was plunged into endless weekday nights for months. It was like a door closing.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:43 AM on November 3, 2014

I feel like people think it's because of the time changes that there's more or less daylight during the day. I mean, I know they can't really think that, but that's basically how people talk about the time changes. "Oh, there's more light at night" or "it'll be darker in the morning" or whatever.

Huh? Those people (at least some of them; I can't speak for everyone) understand perfectly well how DST works. If you define "morning" as "the time we get up for work", for example, then it's perfectly accurate to say that it's darker at 6 am during DST than it is at 6 am during standard time. That's kinda the whole point of DST.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:11 AM on November 3, 2014

The thing that makes this even more irksome is that it isn't globally synchronised: the EU changed a week before you.

If I'm remembering correctly, the US pushed the end of Daylight Saving Time back a few years ago because of Halloween -- they wanted to give little kids more of a chance to trick-or-treat after school in daylight. (Now that I'm posting that I'm worried it's an urban legend.)

Huh? Those people (at least some of them; I can't speak for everyone) understand perfectly well how DST works. If you define "morning" as "the time we get up for work", for example, then it's perfectly accurate to say that it's darker at 6 am during DST than it is at 6 am during standard time. That's kinda the whole point of DST.

For the first few weeks, yes, but we're getting less daylight as we move toward the solstice regardless of what time it says on the clock. Pretty soon it's going to be dark during the pre-work hours, too, and that's not because of the time change.
posted by jaguar at 6:43 AM on November 3, 2014

Ironically, DST was extended (on both ends) not for Halloween, but to save energy.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:04 AM on November 3, 2014