this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Damn, Spain and Morocco being UTC+1 is nuts. Even France and Algeria are stretching it a bit far for my liking. And it gets even more crazy for the European countries for over half the year when they play pretendy-magic-time and go to UTC+2.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (2 children)

France amd Spain being +1 is apparently a relic from the 40s when Germany occupied France and the Spanish government felt they needed to switch to appease Germany. It is kinda funny neither switched back.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Similarly, this holds for the BeNeLux countries. NED: GMT +0:19:32 / +0:20 since 1937, BEL and LUX used GMT since 1918

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Germany changed it in occupied territories to simplify administration.

For some reason it never changed back despite being out of natural sync.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Portugal was understandably like "nah fuck you guys". Still like a bit lonely on a map though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Otherwise the people on the Azores would go nuts.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, the difference to the mother country would be even larger.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Different time zones are said to make business more complicated. I think that's why the CET/CEST time zone is stretched out that much.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

It's already -1 so it's already different

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The issue with the current time zones in Europe is that they are far from being natural... The more you go to the west the later the sun is raising and setting, the more you go to the east, the opposite. Current western European time zone is too large... There are initiatives to improve that but will it be done ?

For example: https://timeuse.barcelona/what-we-do/permanent-time-zones-eu/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Love that proposal!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The old Spanish time makes more sense. Whenever I am on Spain, 9AM feels more like 7AM.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

You can thank Franco buddying up to Hitler for that!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That's ok, Spaniards are always late anyways

Look at culture map book/concept for the cultures different ways of handling personal time

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My god, at this rate UTC+1 and UTC+3 will dominate the whole world by 2223!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You mean like The Netherlands will once some madman drains the seas?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Fun! I want I Google Earth version of this with a time slider.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I find it amazing that there were places without official time zones in 1923.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ukraine didn't exist, Romania was a shitshow, etc.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ukraine existed, but was part of USSR. Strangely enough that there were no official time zones for all parts of the USSR.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yes, I ment the independent state didn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The Dutch timezone was actually UTC + 20 minutes until WW2.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Exactly, UTC+0020!

While every surrounding country did use offsets in full hours, mind you!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Fun fact: The stereotype that Spanish people eat much later and stay up much later than most other Europeans comes from their time zone being synced to the EU, not to the sun.
Midday is around 1:30-2pm there.
If they had the "fitting" time zone for their geographical longitude, they'd eat and sleep at the same time as everyone else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

"Time is an illusion anyway, who cares if noon isn't at 12?"

Looks at China: 1 time zone

"Maybe we oughta get our shit together just in case"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

interesting, so if China did have time zones it would look like this

But since they are all in the green +8 time zone, that means the people on the far west side of China have to function at 5am the same way people are expected to function at 8am.

And when everybody's going to bed around 10pm, the far west of China has to go to bed at what is actually 7pm according to the sun.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Time is an illusion anyway"

Lunchtime doubly so

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

You take that back!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Technically every 30 metres there should be a 1 second time zone adjustment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Then we'd be back in pre-railway era.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Actually every 463 meters.

40 075km is circumference of Earth. There are 24x60x60 seconds in a day.

40 075×1 000÷(24×60 ×60) =~ 463.8

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't it depend on latitude? It would be much less than 463 metres at the latitudes of Europe

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yes, distance of 1" on equator (463.8 m) × cosine of latitude ~~longitude~~. This means approximately 350 m in Rome, 285,6 m in Berlin and 232 m in Helsinki. In reality a bit less, as I didn't take the ellipsoid shape of the globe into account.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

France and Spain: See you in an hour, England!

Portugal: I gotchu fam.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I wish we had the lines to compare.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Funny how it went from pretty much correct to completely fucked

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Now the Spaniards are lobbying against constantly keeping the DST...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Rightfully so. Always DST makes the countries that are already off their natural time even more off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

In principle, they have DST already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

i like how instead of adding +3:30 to the ledger they just used yellow and green together

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago