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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Over here (NL) our default timezone is already one hour too early,

    Then you have a completely different, localized problem, and you should fix that locally. The solution you are advocating is completely unsuitable outside of that localized area. You should change your time zone, so you don’t have this problem.

    The sun moves through the sky at 15 degrees per hour. An ideal timezone is one hour, or 15-degrees wide. Solar noon is at 12:00pm (Winter Time) in the middle of that timezone. At the eastern end, solar noon occurs at 11:30AM, and at the west end, 12:30. If the longest day of summer is 16 hours of daylight, the western end of this timezone experiences sunrise at 4:30AM. But, the center of the timezone experiences sunrise at 4AM, and the eastern end of that same, idealized timezone experiences sunrise is an hour earlier: 3:30AM.

    Sunrise at 3:30 in the morning

    This is nucking futs. Landscapers and construction workers have to wait for noise ordinances to expire at 8:00AM, 4.5 hours after sunrise, just in time for the day to start getting hot.

    For coordinating the activities of daylight-oriented workers with clock-oriented workers/students, winter time is terrible. But summer time is actually very reasonable. In summer time, (with idealized timezones):

    • The earliest possible sunrise (on a 16-hour summer day, east end of the time zone) is 4:30AM. (The west end of that timezone has sunrise at a more reasonable 5:30AM)

    • The latest possible sunrise (on an 8-hour winter day, west end of the time zone) is 9:30AM (The east end of that timezone experiences that sunrise at a more reasonable 8:30AM)

    • Earliest possible sunset is 4:30PM (east end of the zone, 8-hour winter day; with the west end experiencing it at 5:30PM)

    • Latest possible sunset is 9:30PM (west end of the zone, 16-hour summer day; the east end experiences that same sunset at 8:30PM)

    None of these extremes are ideal, but none of them are completely ridiculous either. Year-round Summer time is simply the best alternative to the biannual time change.




  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todaytoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldIn heat
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    3 days ago

    Winter SAD is caused primarily by the winter time change suddenly stealing the only hour of unallocated daylight we had for ourselves, and refusing to give it back for three months.

    Lock the clocks on spring/summer/fall time; give Little Johnny a PT belt for his morning walk, and stop fucking over the entire planet with this time change nonsense.

    My tiny dick thanks you for your consideration.


  • I reject your premise that “a job” is somehow a contribution to society, or that someone without one is a “negative”.

    If you’re stuck with a capitalist mindset, go ahead and think of government as a corporation. The business model of USA, Inc (for example) is providing the infrastructure needs of businesses and consumers of the United States. Its various business units provide infrastructure essential to roads, rail, air, and sea transport. It provides last-resort arbitration in our courts; general security, both domestically and abroad; financial security to our banking and trading systems; and a whole host of services essential for business.

    But here is the important part: We are shareholders of that corporation. The authority they have to provide those services is derived from our individual political power. Our governments are wielding the political power we invested in them to charge taxpayers for services rendered. Our governments owe each of us a return on that investment.

    The unemployable person you are describing is a shareholder of their government, and is similarly owed a return. If he chooses to live off that return alone, that is his prerogative. But make no mistake: He is not “being a negative on society”. He is owed his share of his government’s “profits”, just as you are.




  • Don’t worry about speed. Speed is a practically worthless metric, especially when you’re starting out.

    Your focus should be on developing a sustainable cadence: the frequency of your pedal strokes, and the pressure you exert on the pedals. It’s a balancing act. For a given output, the faster you pedal, the less pressure you need to put on the pedals. Speed up or slow down from your ideal cadence, and you just wear yourself out without improving your speed.

    I looked to maintain about 65-75 strokes per minute, and not pushing so hard that my thighs would start to burn. Some people prefer slower and harder; some prefer faster and lighter.

    The purpose of shifting is to maintain consistent stroke rate and pedal pressure. Speed is incidental: if your cadence is good, whatever speed you get will also be good. That might be 7mph; it might be 17mph. It might be barely above a walking speed while you climb a steep hill in low gear, or 40+mph downhill.

    Ignore your speed. Stick with your sustainable cadence. Downshift (and let the bike slow down) if the pedals are too hard. Upshift (and let the bike speed up) if they are too soft.




  • The reality is that “tactical” and “strategic” are functionally meaningless adjectives when applied to weapons or systems.

    Theoretically, “tactical” refers to how a military unit engages another military unit. It is how a commander wins a battle against an enemy unit.

    “Strategic” refers to how a nation engages another nation. It is how a government wins a war.

    The term “tactical nuke” referred to something that a lower level commander could have been authorized to use under his own judgment. If Soviet tanks were rolling across Europe during the cold war, commanders may have been granted the discretion to use small nuclear weapons to halt their advance.

    Since the the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction was established, there has been no such thing as a “tactical” nuke. Any wartime use of a nuclear weapon of any kind demands an escalation to total annihilation. I used the term “tactical” ironically, to refer to a pre-“MAD” doctrine that can no longer exist.

    In declaring that conventional bombs cannot penetrate this fixed bunker, it seems that someone is pushing for unconventional warfare. The reality is that this bunker is not impenetrable. It shares the same weakness as any bunker: getting into and out of it. Bomb the entrances to the bunker, and it will take months or years to tunnel back in. Whatever they are doing inside it, they won’t be doing until they manage to dig it up again.