With Daylight Savings once again coming up, it never fails for it to spark discussions about its purpose in modern times. People hate it widely while few seem to be okay with it and depending where you live, others don’t even know what the deal is.
Politicians have actually put it on the docket to be voted on, but seems to have lost traction. Quite frankly, this is an issue that should be done and over with. Just end it, but please end it when we have the clocks dialed back than forward, because I wouldn’t like time going faster than it already is.
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The calendar’s arrangement, at least for America. I think would be better if we had 13 months, having 12 of them with exactly 30 days in their block. The 13th month has all the extra days, and is extended during a leap year. Coincidentally, elections for president should be held during the leap year, to give people an longer voting window.
During the voting window each year, the last five days of December, all the days in the 13th month, and the first 5 days of January, are eligible as vacation days. Voters pick five days during the 15 day voting window to be on paid vacation. If they fail to vote and have a job, their employer will be penalized with an amount of money that is double the pay of the worker for five days of work. Citizens, if they vote, get a $100 check from the government.
This creates a carrot for everyday people to vote, especially workers. Employers are punished if they try to interfere with voting and vacation days during the voting season, which in turn makes it easier for people to participate in democracy. The vacation days allow for research, to have ample time to send a ballot or go to the booth.
Also, I personally dislike the regular months having variable lengths. It is disorderly and annoying, to have them stretch and bend seemingly at random.
Private health insurance companies. Study after study has shown that Americans pay more, get worse care, and are completely at the whim of these unnecessary middlemen. What the fuck!? EVERY OTHER MODERN COUNTRY HAS SINGLE-PAYER. It’s efficient, it’s obvious, it works.
The United Healthcare CEO further enriched himself by denying more legitimate claims than any other company. A private company, that can decide whether you can afford to live or die. Entire families are completely bankrupted over medical bills. Every. Single. Year. In the United States of America. It’s the entire reason Luigi Mangione garnered so much understanding and sympathy. (Not that it could have been him, he was at my place, we were playing Super Nintendo…)
Can confirm, he was at this guy’s place.
What Super Nintendo game were they playing?
Mario Is Missing, obviously.
IDK about this, and I mean I honestly don’t know.
I don’t know what single payer means.
In Australia we have private health insurance but it’s just nothing like the situation in the US. Our
privatepublic health care system is fine.I would nip that shit in the bud if I were you guys. Private companies only want one thing and it’s not to help you get better.
That’s not going to happen.
It’s been this way my entire life and probably long before. Most things here work this way.
There’s a public / socialised system, and then a private tier in addition. Education is the same, public funded institutions which are free up to university, or private schools as an alternative.
3 years ago my partner fell pregnant with twins, our first children. It was a complex pregnancy for a range of reasons. We had to relocate to a major city 5 hours drive away, and we were there for 3 months. The specialist team was the best of the best, and the things they did to land two happy and healthy twins was just miraculous, honestly. My partner was in intensive care for 4 days and the kids were in the premature infants ward for 2 weeks. This was all under the public health care system. We didn’t pay a dime and even got reimbursed for the apartment I rented while I was there.
Since then with a young family we decided to get private health insurance. The insurer is a not-for-profit, so of course there are employees to be paid but everything paid goes towards paying benefits. There are for-profit insurers, but ofc they’re competing with the not-for-profit ones which keeps it real. it’s the same dynamic with the private hospitals that the private insurers are paying - yes there are private profits but the existence of the healthy public system keeps it reasonable.
Single payer is the same as our version of Medicare. Odd way to phrase it though.
The essence is that one entity is dealing with payments for hospitals, doctors, specialists, etc. The “single payer” would be an organ of the federal government that collects a portion of tax revenue and is billed for services. The term implies that the government is not itself providing any services.
That is weird. I always thought it was weird to go to the GP and horse around where you pay $x and get $y back from medicare, more like multiple-unnecessary-payers IMO. I guess if you invented a new system now it wouldn’t be so daft.
Oh sorry I forgot about that bit. I meant the bulk billing style.
I’d rather have accurate noon / celestial time for the few months it is still allowed and still have to switch twice a year than let the government make wrong-noon (“daylight saving”) time permanent. So, many of the “end time switching” movements I actively resist rather than support.
I imagine things like this aren’t “done and over” because there is no majority opinion.
RCV / a Condorcet Method might help.
I’m confused, why would “Accurate Noon” be important? And for countries that sit far enough from the equator, wouldn’t it be inaccurate regardless?
I’m confused, why would “Accurate Noon” be important?
Why is any particular time important? It serves me to be able to tell time without a clock and synchronize my internal clock with solar activity.
And for countries that sit far enough from the equator, wouldn’t it be inaccurate regardless?
No. Distance from the equator doesn’t significantly affect when the sun it at it’s peak. It does affect how high in the sky the peak is.
Time adjustments (like “daylight saving”) drags the Sun E/W (which is why we “need” timezones). Increasing latitude dags the Sun N/S.
Capir9
Disposable plastic. It should never have been a thing, but by now it really shouldn’t be a thing. No plastic food containers, no plastic textiles, damn near everything should be in cotton bags or paper boxes or glass jars or unlined metal cans but we’re so damn accustomed to convenience that the permanent externality is seen as necessary. I’m willing to make allowances for safety and medicine but even there the focus should be developing good biodegradable plastic.
The Jones Act.
I still propose to turn the clock halfway between standard and dst.
Why have one extreme when you can do middle?
There are already countries doing that like Sri Lanka.Executive Orders in the U.S. political system
I’m Canada we have the “Notwithstanding clause” which can serve a similar function; allowing a premier to unilaterally decide something without the approval of parliament.
Neither should be allowed to exist.
Also remove the entire idea of some countries having “veto” power in NATO and UN matters.
Neither time matters, it’s all the same. But don’t change it!
Its the adjustment that sucks.
Daylight is going to be the same length either way, it’s just an arbitrary number, but if you keep changing that number it gets very annoying.
Noon should be as close to zenith as possible, tho. But yeah, it’s more important to keep the same timezone all year.
Let’s go for maximum chaos. Set the Solar zenith to 1 AM.
Nah, set it to 11 FM.
I don’t agree universally, from a societal standpoint, because Dolly Parton sang about the 9-5. While standard time keeps my noon within 20 minutes of zenith, my temperate zone winter solstice sun rises at 7am (I get up at 8) and sets at 4pm (I leave work at 5pm). I drive in with plenty of light but leave in nearly full night time. Living in DST with zenith around 1pm would let me at least drive home at sunset. Would it really make winter life acceptable, though? Maybe, maybe not. I’m sure the temperature is a major factor as I can’t remember the last time summer sunset ended the day for me.
Still, I get it for when you had to manually set clocks based on the sun, but we have time zones and automatic syncs now. With rigid time zones, everybody has some inaccuracy at some point to the zenith anyway. Even if you’re dead center for the winter solstice, the true zenith location slides East for the spring equinox, returns for the summer solstice (though will be 1pm with DST), and then slides west for the fall equinox. The variation is more extreme nearer the poles. Then you have extreme cases with places like China and India, with single time zones across the countries and 70-80 minutes of zenith variation across the majority of the population (excluding China’s western half).
Pennies buckles and dimes. Inflation has rendered anything less than a quarter useless.
I like the idea of redenominating the currency instead. We issue a v2.0 of the dollar. No existing dollars are rendered invalid. You just start issuing new coins with 100x value. The new penny is worth one old dollar.
What are we, Zimbabwe?
People like to react that way to the idea, but it need not need be the purview of tinpot dictators. It’s good for a country to have a small amount of inflation. If your country is successful enough to maintain its currency for centuries without collapse or revolution, your currency will inevitably be devalued to the point of comedy. It should be just a reasonable thing for countries with healthy economies to do once every century or two. Sure if you do it every other year, it means you have a problem. But if it’s done only every few generations, it’s not something we should be afraid to do.
Hey I need those buckles!
I’m sure I’m gonna get some spicy replies to this, but guns and gun culture in the US. There was a major shooting in my city in the past couple of days, and you can’t even guess where because it happens every goddamn day somewhere in the country.
Any situation where there is a gun or the likelihood a gun is present immediately escalates it. Everyone is on edge because at anytime someone might be carrying. A minor argument or altercation can easily turn into a homicide. I avoid large crowded events when it’s outdoors and there are no security gates and checks. I stay away from bar districts on weekends because the chances of someone intoxicated and carrying is much higher. I’m tired of having my head on a swivel everywhere I go.
And for the 2A folks, that used to work back when you can actually successfully take up arms against the government when they’re oppressing you. Joe Redneck’s 500 guns in his house won’t help stop the government from taking away his rights.
Here’s the deal, if I could snap my fingers and remove all semi-automatic firearms across the US I’d do it in a second. The problem is, the cat’s already out of the bag. Some back of the napkin math here, but there are about 20 million AR style rifles in the US. Let’s say we do a buyback program that gets rid of a full quarter of those (that’s a crazy high number, but makes math easy) for $250 a pop. Just on payouts alone, nevermind the logistical overhead, that’s 1.25 billion dollars to make sure that if someone previously had access to 4 rifles on average, now they have access to 3. Not to mention all the other types of semi-auto firearms available like pistols, different rifles, etc.
What we need to do is improve the material conditions for people in their daily lives. It’s a whole hell of a lot harder to radicalize someone when they’re happy, healthy, and have a bright future ahead of them. Nationalized healthcare, an improved housing market, and sane tax laws in this country will go a hell of a lot farther to reduce gun violence than just making them illegal ever could.
I wish this was an issue we could just legislate a fix for, I really do, but it’s a symptom rather than a disease. That’s not to say laws can’t touch the issue. Sane and fair gun laws can and should be implemented, but on their own they will just drive the issues underground.
I hear ya. It’s the culture that needs to change. There are a lot of other countries where guns are available, but there’s no culture celebrated around it and it’s not ingrained into being such an important/integral thing to society.
A spicy reply in favor of your post: guns are obsolete. They’re completely useless and unnecessary in modern society. The only thing guns provide is the illusion of “safety”, which is only necessary because guns are allowed to exist. It’s a simple fact that getting rid of guns entirely would have the death rate plummet, especially for kids. Thousands and thousands of lives are sacrificed every year to enrich a powerful lobby and make people with smol pp energy feel a false sense of security.
I’ll take a shot at a spicy reply: they aren’t wrong, at least not completely. Having a lot of guns won’t stop the government from taking your rights, but it does limit their options. That’s why American conservatives have to bend over backwards to make sure you know: if you’re an American who identifies with gun culture, they are unequivocally on your side *. The current administration would love to restrict gun ownership, but they’re still afraid of losing the support of that bloc. And I think it’s at least partially because they have guns.
*^provided you follow the law and support the troops and all the police as well and also aren’t openly queer or melanated^
On the topic of daylight savings, I used to prefer that we stay on the daylight savings side of the time. But honestly at this point I am fine with staying on standard time if that means no more switching.
Otherwise one thing lately that I wish was done and over with by now is physical junk mail. Literal paper showing up in my mailbox that I now have to dispose of. Something I don’t ask for and will never look at. And I can’t help but think that happens to millions in my country every single day all for an irrelevant number of people to even look at. I can’t imagine how many trees are lost each year for something that has zero usefulness.
Oof, where do I begin?
- Fossil fuel companies
- cruises
- diesel cars
- low-cost fast fashion retail companies
- modern slavery
- racism
- misinformation
- political scapegoats
- two-party systems
- billionaires
- polyester
- Artificial food colouring
- non-medical drugs and smoking
- alcohol
- low-cost greasy fast-food chains
- kids on social media
I’m tired! 😩 We’ve normalised unhealthy, unsustainable, and elitist lifestyles way too much! There are ways to be successful, happy, stylish, and joyful without these things. Many countries are already committing themselves to such efforts, so I know I’m not asking for much. I understand freedom of choice, and I’m usually quite libertarian, but some things just bring temporary fun and no benefits at all. In fact, some harm those around us too.
Renewable energy, electric cars, second-hand retail, artisanship, fair trade, multiculturalism, science-based education based on facts and credible sources, government transparency and accountability, a true democracy where the electoral candidates actually represent their party’s base and voters don’t feel hopeless, economic equality, socialism, natural fibres in fabrics, simple and natural food, therapy, mindfulness, healthy homemade packaged food, and kids staying off social media needs to be good again!
diesel cars
Gone for good reasons.
missing one Universal healthcare or using part of the defense budget to fund/subsidized Healthcare for all in the US.
easier to get proof citizen documents/things, like passport right now its a convoluted , lenghty process for first time, and Inactive users for things like passports.
Yeah sorry, we already have free and universal healthcare so I didn’t think of it 😅 But you’re right! My mind boggles at how terrible the healthcare system is in the US. I feel awful for people with chronic conditions and vulnerable situations, especially. The fact that the most reliable option is not to be insured and hope that you won’t ever get seriously injured or sick is depressing. The people who oppose universal free healthcare and those who deny healthcare to the less fortunate are evil. I know it’s obvious, but Luigi Mangione (or whoever it was) did a good thing. I wish it were all of them, but at least he got you rid of one asshole.
funny thing is conservatives are ON ACA, but they dont want to expand it or use it all. they have propagandized by fox that its "obamacare’ so they cant make that distinction that it was dem majority that had the law. and why the gop have a difficult time of removing it.
people with chronic disease are often disliked by insurance, because they know they would cost more, so they charge more for it. Also each company has thier convoluted payment systems.
Yeah that was a jawdropping discovery… How people just decide to shoot themselves in the foot because the media told them some fake news. I heard some didn’t even know that they were benefitting from that Act. It’s ridiculous!
And yeah, I know the jist of how it works (not!) :/ It’s not like people choose to become chronically ill… I’m just sorry for the people who still have to live with the consequences of the actions by a bunch of obese anti-vaxxers who will be dead in a couple of years. This is why I believe that the insurance companies and those who voted against the ACA are murderers. They kill innocent people with them.
The Electoral College
If we want to say we’re a democracy then we need to be a democracy.,
Personally I am for staying on Daylight savings time permanently, rather than getting rid of it. But getting permanently off of it is preferably to the back and forth every year.
