This just in – the Earth’s rotation speed is not perfectly constant, and it has recently sped up. This has to do with tiny changes in the relative movements of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. It probably has always been happening and we have just recently developed the technology to measure it more accurately.

…starting in 2016, Earth started to spin unusually fast.

For instance, on July 4 of 2024, Earth set a new record by completing its daily spin 1.66 milliseconds faster than usual. Around one year later on July 10, 2025, it spun 1.36 milliseconds faster than usual, with other shorter-than-usual days occurring on July 9 and July 22. This has led experts to warn about a “negative” leap second—subtracting a second from UTC—to keep UTC aligned with UT1 as early as 2029.

Subtracting a second doesn’t seem like that big a deal. I certainly remember a few seconds being added in my lifetime. But apparently, this has caused serious problems for modern infrastructure and industries such as computers, GPS, and banking. The decision is made by something called the General Conference on Weights and Measures, and the leap seconds were causing enough problems that they decided in 2022 not to add them any more. The solution they are considering is to add (or subtract? I had trouble following the article) a whole leap hour, which would have to be done much less frequently. It makes sense to me – over decades or centuries, I suppose not making the small time adjustments would result in astronomical events (solstices and equinoxes – what are the plurals of these words) and the weather eventually not matching the calendar (although let’s be honest, the weather is f-ed anyway…). That would actually happen pretty fast if we didn’t add the one leap day every four years – in my 50 year lifetime, the calendar would already be off by 10 days or so compared to the Earth’s actual journey around the sun.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a good podcast that explains (along with some fart jokes) that this actually happened in the centuries after the Roman calendar was invented. At that time it became noticeable, the authority on timekeeping was the Pope, and the Pope decided to skip 10 days in October one year. Problem solved. (I suppose people outside the Catholic world had their own calendars, their own observations/calculations of astronomical events, and their own ways of dealing with these changes.) Even not considering the recent changes scientists are now able to measure, Tyson explains that there would need to be some additional adjustments from time to time.

Now, I say if we start messing with the calendar it is also time to go to 13 months, where each month has exactly 4 weeks, except there is an extra New Year’s Eve. Then every four years there can be two New Years Eveses. Let’s throw ourselves one little bone every four years and make leap day a holiday. Or maybe an election day which is also a holiday. It just makes sense. And to hell with daylight savings time! Let’s make it happen.