Ask Lemmy

It's because a lot of the way humans go about their life is based on traditions. Getting everybody to switch from a system that already works pretty well is just a hassle.

Examples:

• English spelling is faaar from phonetic and children take longer to learn how to spell than in Spanish for example. (though, cough, enough, plough instead of something like thouğ, koff, enaf and the US plow)
• Metric system adopted globally would streamline a lot of global industries that have no cater to each system.
• Driving right side everywhere. Sweden switched but asking India to switch makes way less sense.
• Date formats. Arguably the best if everyone uses ISO 8601 but nobody does.

So if I'm in Vancouver BC it would go from Friday to Saturday in the mid afternoon? Is Friday night the first night of the weekend or the last night of the work week?

Almost a century ago, the fascist dictator of Spain wanted to appease Hitler and decided to move the timezone from the UK one to the German one. With daylight savings the situation in summer was a bit ridiculous: dark until 9 am and sun until 10 pm, it was very confusing as a tourist to have all the stores to open so late in morning and go out to eat dinner so late

I can't imagine what kind of mess would be going to Japan as a tourist on UTC+0

Here are some reasons told through what-if.

TL;DR: People like to sleep in the dark generally, and businesses that close are open when more people are awake.

Why should the UK get to be the only place with an accurate local time? I don't want to live on UK time.

I see this argument all the time. Forget all the tradition, "people like noon near solar noon", all that.

Date changes mid day some places and not others would be a nightmare for so many things.

What're you doing on the Tuesday half of June 15/16th?

Because the vast majority of people aren't terminally online and/or affected by timezones.

Milliseconds since the epoch is the only true time

Swatch Internet Time tried doing something like that

Because timezones were a result of town specific clocks, which were a result of people liking certain hours happening generally in line with where the sun is, like "noon" which still technically refers to when the sun is at its highest point.

Because who the hell wants to say it's 11 in the morning while it's dark out?

I'm now imagining that playing out.

"France, we're thinking about adopting British time as the global standard. Do you have any thoughts or input on the matter?"

because despite all the technological advancement, we still live enclosed in these self-ambulatory lumps of flesh that crave the sun.

TL:DR -> https://thelemmy.club/comment/19143233

Examples:

• The year doesn't start at the shortest day (Persian calendar is better in that regard).

• month length is not evenly distributed. Why is February shorter?

• time is almost never power of 10: there is 12, 60, 24

• time zones are used to follow alliances: see al the nations that went to CET after fall of URSS

• you can easily estimate your local time by looking at the sun

• Holidays tend to happen on the same approximate dates even when major cultural changes happen. See how Christianity took over a lot of things from Romans.