You could overlay this map onto the enthusiasm for permanent DST and see a pretty good pattern. Those of us on the western edge of a time zone have a lot to lose in that scenario(9AM sunrises) where folks on the eastern edges would be worse off in a permanent ST plan (3pm sunsets).
Pretty much the real reason for the time change imo. If you pick a permanent time, there are winners and losers. So… we keep doing this dumb shit.
Folks on the eastern side of the time zones wouldn’t be any more worse off with permanent ST than we already are. We already use ST in the winter when the effective daylight hours are shortest. Permanent DT would be a quality of life improvement for eastern edge of timezone folks in the winter at the expense of late sunrises for western edge of timezone people. Permanent ST I think is at least better than the switching in that it doesn’t make the short day hours any worse and gets rid of the clock change silliness.
Time change don’t alter the angle of the earth. You don’t have enough hours of sunlight to get light at both ends of your day. It’s not standard time, it’s your latitude.
I live in the Arctic and polar night is the most beautiful time of year. The sun almost comes up and paints the clouds red, while the sky to the north is stained purple. Then at night you frequently get the aurora and even if you don't you get a beautiful crisp starry night surrounded by snowy mountains.
You'd be surprised what some sunlight will do vs none at all. But the light that does come is very low on the horizon making it feel like sunrise/sunset and then it's gone again.
Going south makes the earliest sunset happen later (because every sunset happens at the same time at the equator) and going west within a timezone makes it happen later too (since the sunset moves from east to west). Put those together and you get the diagonals.