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Write to us at startingpoint@globe.com. To subscribe, sign up here. Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk about you again. It’s been a week since the end of daylight saving time, where our shockingly early sunsets return, dragging with them an biannual question: What the hell are we doing? Now before we get into the ever-changing debate over how to fiddle with our clocks to best take advantage of something we can’t change — the amount of daylight — I’d like to state my firm position: Stop fiddling. Screwing with our clocks, which has occurred each year of my lifetime, cheats us out of something I’d quite like to feel before I die, and that is the rhythms of a year. Moving the clocks twice each year means we are never truly in sync with the story of how this little blue dot goes about its annual trip around our sun. Pick a lane. That’s my take. Arizona and Hawaii already do this. And, according to a recent poll, an increasing number of Americans agree with me. Only 19 percent of people favored the status quo of switching between daylight saving time and standard time each fall and spring, according to a Gallup poll taken earlier this year. It was the first time since 1999 that Gallup had done a survey on opinions about daylight saving time, and support for our biannual switcheroo had plummeted. Now we arrive at the problem: Forty-eight percent said they would prefer to stay on standard time year-round, meaning we would stick with time we use from the first Sunday in November through the second Sunday in March. Only 24 percent favored moving to our summer daylight saving time permanently. But when you add that to the 19 percent who like it the way it is, “this means 43% favor having daylight saving time part of the year or year-round, only slightly less than the 48% who would prefer not to have it at all,” according to Gallup, which I’ll assume did the math correctly. That’s far from a consensus. Americans all live in different places, at different longitudes, and so the “best” time to lock in is wildly subjective. And that’s because time zones are huge, especially the eastern time zone, which is a giant geopolitical mess. Let’s look at Boston and Grand Rapids, Michigan, which are both in the eastern time zone, even though Grand Rapids is 800 miles to the west. Our earliest sunrise this year was 5:06 a.m. and our latest sunset was 8:25 p.m. In Grand Rapids, their earliest sunrise was 6:03 a.m., and their latest sunset was 9:25 p.m. If the good people of Michigan are shouting “That’s too late,” I’d agree with them. Staying on standard time year-round would bump that all back an hour, making it like our summer best, which feels just right. But making the jump to standard time year-round would then make our summertime feel totally out of whack, moving our earliest sunrises to 4:06 a.m., which means first light would be around 3:36 a.m., which by all agreed-upon standards is the middle of the night. The solution, perhaps, is to acknowledge that New England has no business being in the same time zone as Grand Rapids. That’s the core of the argument made by Tom Emswiler, a Quincy man who found himself at the center of this national debate after writing a viral op-ed in the Globe in 2014 which called for Massachusetts (and the rest of the New England) to move to Atlantic Standard Time year-round, essentially keeping us on our current daylight saving time and aligning us with many others in our general longitude, such as eastern Canada, the Caribbean, and much of South America. His idea had momentum for a minute, and he went so far as to cosponsor a bill with his state senator, Quincy’s John F. Keenan, which got the attention of a few other New England states, which gave indications of “if you do it we’ll do it.” I’ve written about Emswiler, as have other journalists, usually around this time of year, but when I spoke with him this week, he told me I was the only reporter to reach out this time. “It’s not quite moving like it was a few years ago,” he told me, “but it’s not going away. People are still talking about it. People want a change.” True. Agreeing on what that change should be, however, doesn’t really seem to be our thing right now. Readers, should we stop this daylight-standard switching, stick to one or another, or just move to Atlantic Standard time? Let us know! 🧩 5 Down: Trudge | 🌧️ 57° Arctic air sweeps in Amherst fire: Firefighters battled a blaze over the weekend that destroyed a housing complex and displaced about 232 residents, most of them UMass Amherst students. The cause of the fire, now contained, is under investigation. LaMar Cook: He grew up in Springfield and lost friends to gun violence, but went on to co-found a nonprofit, work for Governor Healey, and become a pillar of his community. Until, the authorities say, 18 pounds of cocaine arrived at his state office. Brave new world: A year after a high-profile AI-plagiarism lawsuit in Hingham, few Massachusetts schools have set clear boundaries on the technology’s use. Many students are using apps like ChatGPT for assignments, leaving teachers scrambling to pay for their own AI-detection software or figure out ways to incorporate AI into learning. Global climate conference: This year’s summit begins today in Brazil. President Trump won’t be there, but other representatives will be from US states, nonprofits, companies, and cities. Welcome home: The recently identified remains of a US soldier from Weymouth who died in Germany during World War II are set to be buried with full military honors in Massachusetts today. World Cup: Hosting some of the soccer games in Boston is set to cost about $100 million. But with kickoff just seven months away, the host committee here has only secured about a fifth of that. Running dry: Nearly half of New Hampshire residents get their water from private wells. But drought conditions last summer, the state’s driest on record, have tapped out hundreds of them. Susan Collins: Democrats’ failure to unseat Maine’s senior senator in 2020 is fueling the debate over which candidate — Graham Platner, an outsider oyster farmer, or the state’s two-term governor — is better positioned do it next year. Carlos Sebastian Zapata: The Fitchburg man from Ecuador who suffered an apparent seizure while clinging to his wife and daughter during a struggle with ICE agents last week spoke to supporters at a vigil on Saturday. His wife was still in custody. Shedding dollars: Trump’s deal with drug companies to lower the cost of weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound, which Massachusetts’ biggest insurers won’t cover starting next year, is a lifeline for residents who worried about losing access to them. By David Beard 🐶 Ruh roh: What happened when a dog wandered into the Ted Williams Tunnel, dodging traffic? These people rushed to save it. 😀 ‘Gonna Drive Past the Stop ‘n’ Shop’: Conan O’Brian rocked an updated version of “Roadrunner” and joked about the paucity of Dunkin’ in L.A. as part of the big Comics Come Home benefit. Denis Leary, Sarah Silverman, and Michelle Buteau joined the fun. 🏡 Home of the Week: Splish, splash. Waterfront living in Canton in a 2-bedroom condo? 📺 This week’s TV: “The Golden Girls” at 40, “Sesame Street” on Netflix, and “X-Files” vet David Duchovny in “Malice.“ I guess the truth is still out there. 🎨 The ‘real’ Norman Rockwell: The late painter’s family has protested the use of Rockwell’s work in propaganda from white Christian nationalists and the Trump administration. Want the full Rockwell? Check out “Murder in Mississippi.” 🎅🏻 64 Holiday Things to Do: You want concerts? Festivals? Zoo lights? Train rides? Markets? All right here. 🛹 Sea of Tranquility: More than a decade ago, our sk8ter son was attending design meetings for what became the Lynch Family Skate Park on the Charles. As the Globe’s Stan Grossfeld shows, it has emerged as the centerpiece of a surprisingly peaceful part of town under the busy Zakim Bridge. Thanks for reading Starting Point. This newsletter was edited by David Beard. ❓ Have a question for the team? 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