US/Eastern offset

[Ian Kelly]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 4:19 PM, Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 2:49 PM, Skip Montanaro
> <skip.montanaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In a small application I realized I needed all my timestamps to have
>> timezone info. Some timestamp strings come in with no TZ markings, but
>> I know they are US/Eastern. so, I built one:
>>
>>>>> import pytz
>>>>> tz = pytz.timezone("US/Eastern")
>>>>> tz
>> <DstTzInfo 'US/Eastern' LMT-1 day, 19:04:00 STD>
>>
>> What's with those extra four minutes? Here is one such timestamp I
>> logged in my app:
>>
>>     2016-12-22T20:35:05-04:56
>>
>> WTF? Has my brain turned to mush, and the people in New York now move
>> so fast that they are four minutes closer to their London counterparts
>> than they used to be?
>
> Not sure, but LMT suggests that it's coming up with a Local Mean Time
> zone rather than the proper EST zone. The four minute offset suggests
> that this is a local mean time for a meridian one degree east of EST.

You mentioned New York in your post, and incidentally the 74th
meridian west passes right through New York City. So it could be an
LMT for NYC, though I'm still not sure why it would come up with that
specifically for US/Eastern.