Guess the screens missed the "something's off" sensor.

charlie373 said it's a lot of work for no reason, but that's exactly why it's suspicious. If it was just broken, they'd all be wrong in different ways. Five clocks all exactly five minutes fast? That's not an accident, that's a setting. Maybe the city council or a business group did it to make people think they're late, so they hurry up and spend more money. It's a cheap trick to boost productivity or sales without anyone noticing.

Huh, old maps just make me wonder about all the stuff they got wrong back then.

Sounds like your book club skipped the literary analysis and went straight to the family trauma olympics... next month maybe pick a nice book about gardening to keep things calm. It's funny how a story can just become a mirror for everyone's own stuff, and then suddenly you're not talking about characters, you're just comparing battle scars. The whole point gets lost when everyone needs to prove their pain is the biggest. Maybe we should all just agree that families are hard and then get back to talking about the plot.

Honestly that's the worst kind of pain. Tbh the real lesson is to always ask your friends before you start a huge project, they save you from yourself.