site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   1910 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I dislike DST, but it'd be nice if sunsets were an hour later in Winter...

Annual cost of daylight saving time (DST): peer-reviewed and policy-analytic estimates for the U.S. range roughly from a few hundred million dollars to several billion dollars per year depending on which effects are counted.

  • Narrow, direct estimates (increases in heart attacks, strokes, workplace and traffic accidents) ≈ $0.4–0.8 billion/year (Chmura-type estimates $672M/year).
  • Broader estimates that include lost productivity, sleep-related chronic health impacts, reduced educational outcomes, and wider economic effects range from about $1 billion up to tens of billions per year; some academic work (and media summaries of sleep-cost literature) point to much larger figures when chronic sleep loss is included (hundreds of billions for all sleep-deprivation impacts, though not all attributable to DST).
  • Bottom line: if you count only acute, measurable harms from the clock shifts the cost is on the order of 10^8–10^9 USD/year; if you include broader productivity and health-channel impacts the implied costs can approach 10^9–10^10+ USD/year (and different studies disagree).

Cost to extend daylight by 1 hour using space‑borne mirrors (back‑of‑envelope):

  • Technical concept: a mirror in space would need to redirect sunlight to a region on Earth to extend usable daylight. For a continuously illuminated 1‑hour extension over, say, a midlatitude city (10^6–10^7 m^2 effective populated area) the delivered extra solar energy is enormous.
  • Energy requirement example: solar irradiance ≈ 1,000 W/m^2 at noon. For 1 hour over 10^7 m^2 that’s 1e3 W/m^2 × 1e7 m^2 × 3600 s ≈ 3.6×10^13 J (10^10 Wh ≈ 10 GWh) of additional daylight energy delivered to that footprint. *Mirror size and launch/placement costs (order-of-magnitude):
  • A perfect flat mirror reflecting full-disk sunlight to that footprint would need an area comparable to the footprint projected to the mirror distance and geometry. Realistic space mirrors would be many km^2 for city‑scale coverage. For Earth‑orbit mirrors the required reflective area likely ranges from 1 km^2 to 10^3 km^2 depending on orbit/beam shaping — i.e., 10^6–10^9 m^2.
  • Manufacturing, launch, deployment, and operations costs for lightweight space mirrors today scale roughly $1,000–$20,000 per kg launched (variable), and large-area thin-film structures still require many thousands to millions of kg or advanced in-space assembly. Conservatively, building and deploying a multi‑km^2 mirror system would cost at least tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars; more realistic/optimistic engineering might still be in the low trillions if you require durable, steerable, and safe systems.

Wouldn't actually extending the day with a giant space mirror significantly mess up the climate, plants, and animal behavior?

Most of the cost in DST is in switching twice a year. I personally prefer summer time, but would be happy if we just picked one.

Most of the rest of the cost is schools and work places picking opening hours inappropriate for the location, or poor indoor lighting. Fixing your indoor lighting and buying a sunrise alarm or just a 'smart' bulb if you are cheap, seems way easier than spending your days advocating for space mirrors.

My interior lighting is bright enough and Standard Time has an earlier sunrise than DST - the tradeoff of DST is a later sunrise for a later sunset.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats