Sherwood Toney

Sherwood Toney

@aljodasch.bsky.social

"Absolutely stupid" —The New York Times (January 27, 2020) • Pittsburgh, and the City thereof

370 Followers 300 Following 3,862 Posts Joined May 2023
1 hour ago

I am sitting here in a parking lot in the North Side and the wind is so strong the car is buffeting and there is, like, a storm of fine sandy particles scouring the car

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23 hours ago

You should do it, now

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23 hours ago

Oh Lord

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23 hours ago

It only lasts 3-4 days in the fridge but I don't think that will be an issue

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1 day ago

Just made my own mayonnaise for the first time... WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE UP TO NOW.

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1 day ago

Every time I walk up Rialto Street I grow stronger.

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3 days ago

Every time I walk up Rialto Street I grow stronger.

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3 days ago

On a biological level yes it clearly is

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3 days ago

People hate the clock change itself, which is understandable. (Is it really that bad, though? Honestly?) Unless we're willing to radically change work and school schedules throughout the year, the seasonal clock shift is one of the few tools we have to keep daily life roughly aligned with daylight.

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3 days ago

Most of us are already living on a clock that has very little to do with the sun. Given that reality, the real question becomes: how do we make a rigid clock system coexist with a planet that has seasons? DST is basically the least bad answer anyone has come up with.

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3 days ago

A lot of the current debate frames this purely in terms of circadian biology ("morning light is good for your brain").

That may be true in theory, but for a huge number of people the morning is irrelevant. You wake up to an alarm, commute in the dark, and sit under fluorescent lights anyway.

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3 days ago

If we locked into permanent daylight saving time, on the other hand, winter mornings would become absurdly dark. In December the sun wouldn’t rise until after 8:30 AM. Millions of people would start work or school in complete darkness for months. That's also not obviously better.

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3 days ago

If we locked into permanent standard time, summer mornings would come absurdly early. In my region sunrise would be around 4:45 AM in June. Most people would sleep through two hours of daylight every day while the evening would get dark earlier. This is truly "wasted" daylight, and an inconvenience.

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3 days ago

DST is basically a bureaucratic workaround for that loss of flexibility. Instead of shifting millions of work and school schedules twice a year, we shift the clock once. This is deeply practical.

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3 days ago

Historically, of course, people didn't do this.

Agricultural and preindustrial societies shifted their daily schedules with the seasons. You woke earlier in summer and later in winter because the sun itself was the timekeeper.

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3 days ago

Modern life pretends that this doesn't matter.

Work still starts at roughly the same time. School still starts at roughly the same time. The bus still comes at the same time. The office still expects you there at the same time. Which is absurd.

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3 days ago

In a place like Pittsburgh the difference between winter and summer daylight is enormous. In December we get about 9 hours of daylight. In June we get about 15 hours.

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3 days ago

Unfashionable opinion: I think that switching between standard time and DST is actually the most sensible compromise we have.

The problem isn’t really DST. The problem is that society insists on keeping the same clock schedule year-round even though daylight changes dramatically with the seasons.

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3 days ago

If those schedules aren't going to move, adjusting the clock twice a year is at least a way to keep the active part of the day roughly aligned with daylight. Otherwise we're pretending the seasons don't exist

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3 days ago

Honestly I think the seasonal clock change is the most sensible compromise. Society already insists we show up to work and school at the same clock time year-round even though daylight swings by six hours between winter and summer.

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3 days ago

If we did permanent "normal time" the sun would come up in June at 4:45 AM.

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4 days ago

Let's never go back

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5 days ago

Solar noon occurs at 12:00 PM by the clock almost never, except by coincidence in a few places on a few days of the year

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5 days ago

Something close to my reason for being

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5 days ago

3:49 PM and the day is still so young! And I am young too

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5 days ago

I love the summer. Every part of it. I don't care for the winter very much. Bring on the 98°. Bring on the humidity. But I live in Pittsburgh, PA

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5 days ago

So at least in the summer there can be some acknowledgment that the works of man ought to bow to the movement of the heavens

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5 days ago

I don't really understand this line of argumentation. Times are arbitrary anyway. What's actually absurd is that I would be expected to be at work at 8:30 all year round, regardless of where in the track of the sun that time falls

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5 days ago

I'm definitely of the mind that if we keep a single time, it should be the time where we have more light in the evenings

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5 days ago

The radiance of my friends' opinions is like the light of a thousand suns

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