[bad_user]

So the problem is that seconds were measured relative to the duration of a day, but that standard changed and now seconds are measured with atomic clocks, making a day to not be equal to 24 hours, yet we pretend that it is, hence the need for leap seconds.

I understand that this isn't ideal for people dealing with actual dates and times, but the upside is that timespans expressed in seconds are now universal, so for example Unix timestamps actually have meaning that doesn't change according to earth's rotation.