[gerikson]

I see leap seconds as regulatory capture by astronomers :D Basically it's convenient for them to have civil time (UTC) never more than 0.5s from UT1.

[masklinn]

Astronomers don’t care, they already need like 5 different clocks.

Also the allowable variance between UTC and ut1 is 0.9.

[PeterisP]

Exactly - and if astronomers don't care, what other reasons are there to require accurate synchronization of UTC (and civil time) with earth's rotation?

[lostmsu]

Considering the rate of progress, timestamps might need to be replaced with reference-invariant coordinates.

[moffkalast]

Or one clock that can switch between 5 different times.

[masklinn]

I didn't necessarily mean 5 different timekeeping devices (though that would probably be more convenient in many cases), rather than an astronomer needs to keep track of multiple different "times" concurrently.