Due to upcoming changes in Numpy deprecating timezone-aware handling by numpy.datetime64, and the numerous essential libraries which depend on Numpy,
we have defaulted to timezone-naive.
The .forceutc() function still allows coercing to UTC if desired, but this is **no longer** used internally as it used to be.
Also CI now uses `flake8` and `mypy` type checking. As usual, type checking helped uncover some corner cases.