It'd still be nice to not have this tied to hover, relative dates are more useful to get a gist of how long you've got - those absolute dates are usually what you need to sell it to management.
As far as I know, no browser actually does anything special with `<time>` elements. Might be nice for screenreaders though, so I'll see if I can switch.
I don’t know if this has been done but I suppose a good use of the `<time>` element would be for browser addons to target it and use the `datetime` attribute for something like “add to calendar (ical)” or “translate the text content to my locale” or something similar.
It's an annoying UX antipattern. It doesn't work on mobile, and forces one to use the mouse instead of just seeing the information in its more useful form.
If anything, why not put the "N days from now" text in the title attr instead?
Not every pattern that is controversial is an anti-pattern. Relative time is useful for a different reason than absolute time. One use case is not worse than the other, they're just different.
