Modest proposal: we could end the daylight savings time debate ONCE AND FOR ALL if we just get rid of the Earth's axial tilt! Just think, with a tilt of 0° every day and night would be precisely 12 hours long, everywhere on Earth!
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@cstross Little known fact: the planet isn't just spinning on its axis like a top, it's rolling "downhill" on its path thru space. https://youtu.be/Kf6omePf9D4
@cstross And build Ankh-Morpork somewhere ...
That's going to have to be a really big gyroscope.
@cstross That would still encourage discussions about which 12 hours to use.
Counterproposal: back to solar time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time. It was perfectly aligned, we should never have moved away.
@cstross Enough people will still want to be getting up a certain time after sun rise, and not want all the pain of changing signage for opening times, that I'd wager we'd still end up with some sort of offset away from "just use localish solar noon!".
@cstross A touch of geo-engineering should fix it!
Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition (1872–1874) already did that. British Arctic Expedition (1875–1876) sent by the British Admiralty was given task to reach the North Pole via Smith Sound and return axial tilt back to it's origin.
@cstross
I think we should enshrine in law the human right to not gie a fuck what time it is.
@cstross The Earth IS a clock! All these mechanical and electronic timekeeping devices are just superfluous social engineering.
@cstross that's The Shot at Kilimanjaro by Jules Verne!
@cstross But did you ask the turtle and the elephants how they feel about this?
@cstross Make sure to also circularize the orbit around the sun to eliminate small variations from that. Might need to blow up the moon to really get it properly circular.