# Git Bash `TZ=` is silently ignored on Windows — never use it for current-time reporting

**Date:** 2026-07-09
**Source:** Winter correction, Len's Auto browser-hijack thread (Discord bot session)

## What happened
Reported "current time" to Winter as `4:40 PM AZ` using
`TZ="America/Phoenix" date '+... AZ'` in Git Bash on BEAST. MSYS/Git-Bash has no
tzdata for that zone name, so `TZ` was silently ignored and the command printed
**UTC** (16:40) — which the format string then labeled "AZ". Real local time was
9:40 AM AZ. Winter caught it; caused a confusing side-quest about whether BEAST's
clock was a month off (it wasn't — clock + NTP + timezone all correct).

## Rule
- For current date/time on a Windows machine: use **PowerShell `Get-Date`**
  (system local time — BEAST is already set to Arizona), or `date` in bash with
  NO TZ override (MSYS date honors the Windows local zone), or an external HTTP
  `Date:` header for authoritative UTC.
- Never trust `TZ=<IANA zone>` in Git Bash — unknown zones fall back to UTC with
  no error, and a hardcoded zone label in the format string turns that into a
  confidently-wrong answer.
- Calendar math (`date -d 2026-06-05 +%A`) is unaffected — that stays fine.
