As if most of the population does not work with their fucking computers that emit fucking light themselves on their fucking own.
As if most of the other population does not have any automation that help them achive whatever needs they have.
As if — again — we did not have fucking lamps.
What the actual hell? Whom should talk to, so to stop this fucking madness?
Hear me out. Those of us who wants to do anything in the dark, we have lamps.
I’m telling it as a person, who survived three winters in a warring country with fucking blackouts. That’s when you have no electricity for prolonged periods of time, and your neighbour too, and the whole neighbourhood. And the entire city sometimes.
Lamps help, when it comes to the lack of light.
When it’s dark outside, it’s not even a problem to start with. It does not need to be solved.
Our bodies, they have issues with that. They have their day-night cycle, and it’s not natural to start doing all the things one hour late or early.
The body would adapt, you won’t just die from that. But why the hell the body needs to do that? What for?
How many people overslept their alarms?
How many people were late whenever they needed to be on time?
These days, we have most of our clocks automatically updated to accomodate the madness. God bless.
Oh, brave new world! Could we have, say, our bank accounts be positively updated for no fucking reason?
No?
Why not?
I train my body to go to sleep at, say, 9 pm.
If I miss that time, my next window for sleep is 10:30 pm, which could be too late for me to get a restful amount of sleep.
And if I miss that, my next window is about midnight, and it’s a dangerous territory already,
as just half an hour after that, and I won’t be able to get asleep for a very long time, for 3 hours easily.
Since I wake up at 5–6 am, it’s a wasted night for me, if I managed to miss two sleep opportunities, at 9 pm or 10:30 pm.
Now, we changed time. For everyone. All of the sudden, I need to go to sleep at 8 pm, otherwise I have only one sane window to get asleep properly.
And while 9 pm is somewhat tolerable by the society — ‘uh, you’re that old?!’ — going to sleep at 8 pm, most people would react as if I’m mad.
The most stupid creatures would even dare to say something like I have nothing to do, so blessed I am to go to sleep that early. As if it wasn’t vice fucking versa. I’m controlling my sleep, so I could be productive the next day, and start early.
You see, actually, in the real world, nothing changed. I want to go to sleep at the same time. I do that every single day. My body isn’t aware of the collective madness. It’s the world outside that decided it’s okay to live that way.
It’s the new norm. But just for a while, so you could adapt, and then we’d break your body cycles again, right? Why? Fuck you, that’s why.
Why won’t we collectively not change some other aspect of our lives? Why won’t we agree on other things?
Let’s collectively agree that living in a polluted city harms our health.
Let’s collectively agree that junk food is a poison.
Let’s agree that clean tap water is a must.
Let’s agree that ivading neighbouring nation isn’t okay?
Yeah, there’s international law for that, but it seems like these days even the world police — the U.S. — doesn’t give a single fuck, their representatives with this incompetent bunch of losers in power.
Let’s agree on some more broad things, fucking war is not okay.
Let’s agree on being rude and aggressive with the modern society is just intolerable.
Let’s agree that minorities does not need to be judged in any way, especially when they do not harm anyone?
The whole LGBTQ+ community, people of other races and any other background. Just let them be theirselves and don’t fuck with their basic rights, okay?
Let’s agree we as humanity, we destroy our planet. Let’s do something about it, till we actually can. Stop polluting the world outside of your flats and houses.
Let’s agree the whole world needs proper education, and everyone on the planet benefits from that.
Let’s agree that not all people are neurotypical, and hence we need to create our surroundings and cultures accordingly.
Let’s agree the world is a dangerous place, and our planet might be destroyed by an extraterrestrial power, being it a comet or aliens, or radiation, or whatever else you can think of. So we need to help each other and be kind, right?
You see? The whole world is just fucking mad. People cannot agree on some basics, yet they managed to agree on this madness of changing clocks.
Obviously, most of the equatorial countries do not change clocks, they have no winter,
most of African countries do not do that;
most of South America do not do that either.
For some reason, Russia stopped this madness in 2014.
Fucking Russia! A barbarian land. A failed state. A 404-country that has a vast territory and 1.5 cities, the capital and that pseudo-real museum as a city on the north.
The rest of their country is simply their occupation of other nations.
In case you were wondering how they got that big and why their land is so not developed.
They don’t know how to do that, they know only how to enslave other nations and steal from them, torturing and raping their way. It’s literally the opposite of developing their human capital and their lands.
They have no reason to develop those they enslaved and destroyed. Why not just rip off them instead?
They wanted to stop changing clocks in Ukraine. One of the arguments against it was, you know, ‘we don’t want to be like Russia.’ Fucking hell! I don’t want to be like Russia too! But you see, they also breathe and eat there too, in Russia.
Turkey does not change their clocks. They’re closer to the equator, however.
Belarus does not change their clocks. Ah, they have a mad ruzzian bitch dictator there. Don’t want to be like them either.
Okay, Iceland. They do not participate in that madness too, and they’re not equatorial, and they have no dictator, and a pretty nice society.
I want my country to be like Iceland, am I allowed?
Most of Asia does not change clocks, and I won’t dare to call them stupid. Their civilization is ancient, and I’d even say much smarter than our, western civilization.
When our daughter was born, I’ve got another set of issues with this clock-change intrusion into my life. Namely, sleep issues.
She’s autistic, and it’s very difficult for her to relax. So it takes more time for her to get asleep, usually an hour or two, sometimes three or even four. I would carry her for hours, before she’d relax enough to be sleepy. Every single night, for years.
You see, my wife and her family, they’re not into some smart experiments, to put it midly. Her mum is the dumbest person I ever met. It’s a miracle she’s able to read and write.
No offence to the dyslexic folks, she’s not dyslexic, she’s just plain stupid. It’s the type of person, so you’d get the vibe. Usually, she won’t read through a couple of sentences.
We were cursed to live with her during the first 1.5 years of our baby, and she was anything but helpful.
She would place knives, toxic chemicals, iron nails, all over the place, within the kid’s reach, for no fucking reason. That’s another story, for sure, but this kind of people actually isn’t as rare as I thought.
The kind of people who’s living completely unaware and following their impulses only.
They’re unable to reflect on their deeds.
They’re unable to think through.
Most times, they watch TV, and wander around their house, if they’re blessed to have their life in order by someone else. Not all of this people are actually disabled people in need of real help. Personally, I know countless of people like that, doing nothing in particular and wasting their lives for no real reason.
‘Oh, why would you want to sleep at 8 pm all of the sudden’ I would hear her mumble.
And not just her. It’s the collective people all around. They’re not even thinking about these things.
‘Yeah, might be a minor inconvenience, but it’s happening for a reason right?’ might someone reply to my complaints.
Our first winter with the newborn child was exhausting. My wife’s mother would do her best to make us even more miserable by making our lives much harder, and placing the kid’s life in more danger than it was necessary.
And on top of all this, this stupid clock change.
On all the previous occasions, it was a minor inconvenience to me. I didn’t pay too much attention to this.
I never liked the clock change, but, well, humanity is mostly stupid after all, right? To me, this was just another element of that collective stupidity.
I could compare that to living in an autocratic state. A minor inconvenience, till you’re not affected or you don’t pay any close attention. But it still affects you, even if you’re mostly unaware.
We had our routine mastered, and even despite the kid was deeply troubled, we learned that by this time at night, she’s asleep. If we start early.
This schedule works the same way with the kids, and I bet it’s very similar to all others. I’d simplify it as 9 pm, 10:30 pm, midnight as three points in time when the body wants to get asleep. Many processes follow the 45m cycle, also that’s a typical attention span for many activities. Sometimes it’s twice that, 1h30m. For sleep it’s something like that, maybe it’s 45m to achieve deep sleep, and 45m to return from it.
But that’s my observations from tracking my time of all my activities for many years.
I made a tool to help me track my time easily, it’s called Ampmle. It’s not public yet, but is planned to be.
So, it’s 9 pm. The kid is willing to sleep, we’re starting our bedtime routine, and by 10:30 pm she’s asleep. Worst-case scenario, she’s asleep by the midnight. Usually, it’s when we missed the time. We start late, by 10:30 pm she’s not relaxed yet, and so it’s 1h30 minutes more. It’s exhausting.
What happens at winters? The clock changes. And we’re not magically go to sleep one hour earlier, at 8 pm, our routine is built for 9 pm. Which was 10 pm just the previous day! Which is too late, if we want the kid to sleep by 11 pm. Now we have our worst-case scenario every single night. For 4 months. Convenient!
And since the much-over-midnight sleep time is cursed, it’s almost guaranteed that the kid would have a disturbed sleep, and could wake up at night. And not sleep for a couple of hours. Convenient!
I have the same issues, but I’m an adult. So, most times, I can do some deliberate practice to relax. Or just be miserable the following day. Since I’m trained in that, I’m aware that I’m slow because of the poor sleep, and so I try to take extra measures for some tasks.
E.g. I’m trying to be extra cautious when driving, knowing my reactions are clumsy.
My smart watch of choice is a cheapo Chinese strap, Xiaomi MiBand 3. It’s very minimalistic and has everything I need: notifications and time.
It even has some countdown and timer features, but I never use them so poorly they’re designed.
I use these things on my iPhone mini heavily.
I’ve tried all the other smart watches, and while I want Apple Watch to be what I want it to be — unfortunately, for me it’s just even more useless than what I have no. It’s only usable feature for me is being stylish.
Might want to write a separate series of stories on smart watches later, that’s why I have this tag issued.
Since this wristwatch is Chinese (from communist China), I don’t trust their app too much, and that’s why I don’t sync my watch with the app too often. Maybe once a month or two. It’s sleep analysis is mostly useless too, so I don’t sleep with it no more.
So, this experiment, it happened just naturally. The time had changed, and I realised I’d just not sync my watch with the app till it all finishes.
Here comes an interesting thing: for some reason, electrical clock cannot be precise with time, and that’s why we have special time servers, they even have their own network time protocol. In layman terms, some central computer has the correct time, and you sync your favourite devices with that computer. It all happens automatically, so most people unaware of that thing. But if you happen to not sync that time for a very long time, you’ll notice your clock is off by a minute or two.
My watch was off by 3 minutes, by being 3 minutes back. So when it’s :00 I had it :57. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the last time I synced my watches before the experiment, as much as I did not pay my attention when my clock started to be off. The last couple of months it was off already, so it’s possible it was off even before the experiment.
I decided I’d keep it that way, for no real reason. Once my wife joked ‘KGB time!’ meaning Moscow time.
Moscow time is one hour ahead of Ukraine during winters, and there’s no time difference since 2014, when they stopped this collective madness for themselves.
That’s when I actually realised I could just issue a separate time zone for my watch, and keep it synchronised to that time zone. Which I’d probably do the next year. This year, I decided to keep it as it is and see what would happen.
It was 4 months of doing unnecessary math in my head.
Not that I’m alien to that. I have a school friend, he’s autistic (too?), and he’s invented a game: we would count car plates numbers. In our region cars have 4 numbers, and so we would add first two numbers to second two numbers.
E.g. a 1234 car plate would become 12 + 34 = 46. The game was to find the cars which sum would be 100. I’m doing this till these days, and I’m very quick at counting these numbers.
It’s Rain Man level of quickness, I need just a second to glance at the number to define whether it’s 100 or not, I don’t need to count the numbers, actually.
Since I decided to not sync time, I did double math: correcting the time by not just 1 hour, but by 57 minutes. Or, actually, by 1 hour back and then 3 minutes forward.
This 3-minutes-forward thing wasn’t bad, I enjoyed it. It trained me to be 3 minutes earlier to appointments… by being 3 minutes late. I learned that the correct time is :57, not :00. Which is great, as oftentimes it’s not bad to come a couple of minutes earlier.
I did not touch any other clocks, so only my wristband stayed with the ‘old’ time. There are plenty of clocks everywhere, so it was not a problem to find the correct time without doing the math. But the original time was a wrist move away (to wake up the clock). To myself, I called it ‘body time.’ My body is not aware of this change.
If yesterday I was having my lunch at 1 pm, it’s midday now.
If yesterday I was willing to sleep at 9 pm, it’s 8 pm now.
Back to the future, is when we moved the clock back, from 2 am to 3 am. Now, a few days into the change, I noticed I calculate the time backwards. Now all the clocks show correct time for me, even the wristwatch. But — again — regardless of this experiment, our schedules shifted. Because all the outside world shifted too.
People who work in the same time zone, most of them started working with a different schedule.
Kindergarten for our kids, its working time shifted.
Even traffic jams time shifted, obviously.
Now, I remind myself that if yesterday I’ve been having lunch at midday, it’s safe to have my lunch at 1 pm now, it’s the same time after all. If yesterday we were going to sleep at 9 pm, well, today we can go at 10 pm, no big deal. We’ll slowly transition to this ‘new timezone’ over time, obviously. And I like this new original schedule more. Just because it allows me to be at least a little bit closer to the early bird I am. Still, this first week of the change, I inevitably do the new math, all over again.
This weird experiment is pointless and needs to be cancelled for everyone.
I mean not my ‘not gonna change time’ experiment,
but ‘let’s we, half the planet, change the time, because some dudes of the past did that too’ cargo culty experiment.
It must change. It ought to be cancelled, everywhere.
I hope it happens soon, but I don’t expect it to happen everywhere within my lifetime. In general, people are stupid. And I don’t expect masses to ever rethink that. It’s a miracle this silly idea was implemented into life in the first place. People widely agreed that changing time twice a year is a great idea. Just imagine how crazy is that!
Next time, in just 7 months, this shit is returning into my life. My actions?
I’m not going to obey, I’m keeping my time. This time, I’d just change time zone for the watch.
I may change my smart watch by that time (not likely, but possible). If the watch allows, I may have two time zones simultaneously. Apart from Moscow, there are two nearby countries that does not follow the madness, Belarus and Turkey.
I’d try to promote this idea, that changing time twice a year is not natural and is actually harmful for our health, for no benefit.
I’d try to find a way to making this fight easier,
both internally, by finding easy ways to adapt, such as keeping two timezones simultaneously, one for oneself and another for everyone else around;
and externally, by finding ways to change that in my country of living.
No-big-dealing this is akin to no-big-dealing autocracies. It may be a minor inconvenience for someone, when it’s a major inconvenience for someone else. We don’t have to live like that, because having this time change benefits nobody. Even autocracy has more benefits, at least to the autocrat and their cronies.
I’d love to find some crazy-ass conspiracy theory for this, that would dismantle someone benefiting from this change, but I’m afraid there’s nobody. I cannot imagine anyone. It’s purely a historical thing, when a factory owners benefited from their workers having more light during the workday. It’s no longer an argument. At least for decades, since we have powerful, cheap, and energy-efficient LED-lights.
Doing that math — and I bet everyone does at least some bits of this unnecessary math — is not something everyone should practice doing. It’s just some extra problems for our not-problem-free lives. We could find some means to easen the life of others, not harden it.
