20 Comments on “(Just Past) Sunset, 11/5/23”

1. I wish they’d just settle on a time and stick to it. It’s never going to be 100% ideal for anyone but I’m with you – I’d rather have more daylight in the evening than in the morning.

2. You have it backwards. Daylight saving time just ended. We are now back in standard time.

3. I know that “standard time” now lasts less time that non-standard (aka Daylight Saving) time, but it’s the first night after Daylight Saving, not the first night of Daylight Saving.

   First night of Daylight Wasting Time, maybe?

4. First night of Standard. Which I greatly prefer, in fact.

5. I loved in Arizona for 15 years and, amazingly, the seasons took care of themselves.

   The senate passed a bipartisan bill kicking dst to the curb (I think after staying in it and not falling back.) But the House dropped the baby. This is an overwhelmingly stupidly silly bill that just need an up and down vote.

   That’s my inflated .02 and it’s what it’s worth. I’m going back to getting my mother’s Cat’s things out of my car so he can set up his fifedom again.

6. Here in the Maritimes Canada we are roughly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. I will take all the light in the morning I can get.

7. Here in the Maritimes Canada we are roughly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. I will take all the light in the morning I can get. Too close to the land of the midnight sun and all that.

8. Daylight Saving Time. Singular.

   And yesterday was the last day of Daylight Saving Time. We’re now where we should be.

   As for the photo? Gorgeous!

9. Thank you for Starter Villain.
   Really enjoyed it.

10. Yo Scalzi: you made a minor typo back on https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/10/31/the-big-idea-elly-swartz/

    Opening sentence; you said “Sometimes, a good thing takes longer than you might thing“

    Just thought I’d let you know.

11. I’m old enough to remember the mid-1960s discussions of Daylight Savings Time. One major reason for returning to Standard Time in the fall is school busses: rural parents didn’t want their kids standing along country roads and state highways in the pitch black before dawn. Probably still don’t. I lived in a county-wide consolidated district where some of the kids got on the bus well before 6:30 for an 8am school start.

12. While I STRONGLY prefer Standard time, I would gladly take year round Daylight Saving Time just to get rid of the stupid back and forth.
    But surely school kids in the morning dark is a local matter and could be addressed by local adjustments to school hours.

13. L and Granny Roberta have the right idea: grownups can handle coming home from work in the dark. Kids should not have to go to school in the dark; it isn’t safe! I also wish I could find a link to one of the sites discussing how our body’s circadian rhythm works better on standard time than daylight savings. We don’t need DST, so get rid of it permanently, please!

14. The obvious answer is to live in the northern hemisphere during its summer and the southern when etc etc. I have an old friend that does just that.
    And maybe don’t send kids to school in the dark by not starting school so f”ing early?

15. Lovely picture.

    I agree; I’d much rather the dark hours happen in the morning. That said, I’d live with either one if we could just pick one and leave it the heck alone! It’s the switching between the two that’s most difficult for me.

16. Would you like to have it still dark at 9 AM? Stay with daylight savings.

17. Sunset here is at about 5pm. And while I still don’t have to drive to work, my October 7am phone calls (a perfectly reasonable East Coast time for a call) meant getting up in the dark.
    Because of DST change I woke up at 7am clock time this morning, dawn had happened, but it was getting ready to rain again so still gloomy.

    I did NOT like the year-round DST experiment that gave me a year of walking to high school in the dark in December/January. But I’d still take that over changing twice a year.

18. I deeply hate trying to get out of bed when it’s pitch black at 8am.
    Of course, I also hate trying to stay awake when it gets dark at 4pm.
    You’d think California would be better at this, but axial tilt comes for us all.

19. Dear Folks,

    Expanding upon what L, Granny and Sandra said…

    It’s not just less safe for kids, it’s UNHEALTHY! This isn’t opinion, or theory or social engineering. It’s been studied and researched to death for decades, and the answer is always the same. Children do less well, in every respect (health, learning, mental state) when they are forced to get up too early… and school starts TOO EARLY!

    Too early for best learning, too early for best health, and we don’t change the school schedules to something later because it’s soooo inconvenient for the adults. And, not so incidentally, the large corporations.

    So… much as I’d love the extra of hour of light in the evening, being the sort who doesn’t get up before 10 AM… oh HELL no to year round DST!

    pax / Ctein

20. My school district has a staggered start. The older boy gets on the bus at 6:45, the younger one gets on the bus at 8:45. The large time difference is due to the need to share busses between elementary and middle/high schools. Pushing start times for school back just means some schools here won’t start until 1100 in the morning, fucking up work schedules entirely.

    Last week I would walk the older one to the bus in pitch dark and we would stargaze. It’s nice to be able to have a couple weeks when we will have some light before we’re back to stargazing in January.

    If we go to year round DST, boy the elder would stargaze at the bus stop, stargaze during 1st period, and boy the younger would get on the bus shortly after dawn.

    Days in winter are just shorter. I wonder how many proponents of full time DST will regret it when they start realizing they have to start the first hours of their day at the ass end of night.