- cross-posted to:
- memes@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- memes@sopuli.xyz
You must log in or register to comment.
I’m originally from the US. Since living in Europe, I can’t believe how much easier the metric system is. I can not convert between the two so I dropped imperial. The only time I deal with it is when I call family in the states.
I do recall, when I was a kid, they tried to convert the US to metric, but it failed miserably.
they didn’t really try. it’s more of a suggestion (and still is). metric is standard in the US within science, just not among regular folks because commercially it’s not as dramatic, i.e. news stations dramatize 100F!!! since it sounds way more dramatic than 38°C. if the news and commercial products started using metric, people would quickly switch over.
unfortunately a lot of imperial shit has started migrating to europe due to chinese products being produced for the US market and then sold in europe as an afterthought using imperial units.
deleted by creator
Change is hard. In Europe we wanted to drop daylight saving time, but nobody could agree on which hour to keep. So it’s here to stay. Sigh.
Same thing in North America.
Actually no. This year was the last spring forward, at least for the US. We’re not falling back to standard time this year and never will again.
Leave it to the US to, in the choice between a “standard” thing and an off-standard thing to choose the off-standard option.
I had once heard described that fahrenheit’s best feature is that you can go “oh, 1-100, ‘sheesh, that’s really cold!’ to ‘hoof, that’s pretty hot!’” and yeah, while I was in the US where most temperatures (RIP Florida) change all the time, that sure was convenient.
However, living in a country that always stays in the 80-100 range, the ‘oh fuck, the water’s freezing’ to 'oh fuck, the heat death of the sun is upon us’ range is a MUCH more useful scale to knowing if we’ve been struck by some sort of apocalyptic event today
Removed by mod
Some older people in the UK still prefer Fahrenheit, Celsius is still the official/default unit however.
A politician here recently tried to promote returning the UK to Imperial units, it has gone nowhere so far.
Are you serious? That’s pretty funny!
It does seem superior for the weather and cooking.
Having the weather between 50-100 instead of 10-40 kind of makes sense.
And for the cooking, having the steak temperature at 130-135 or 135-145 is clearer than 54-57 or 57-63.
Not that I’d think it would make sense to change, but it just seems plain stupid how we like to pretend the imperial system would be inferior and stupid.
US centrism summed up.
!ShitAmericansSay
Someone should set up a new “shitamericanssay”
Ik it exists on reddit, but it would be nice to not make it around Americans.
yeah, actually… !stupidonsocialmedia ?
Something around people, who think that what they’re used to is default everywhere
“notthedefault” ?
I live in the United States and although I grew up here using Fahrenheit, I switched to Celsius almost 10 years ago. Part of my reason for switching was the rest of the world was using Celsius and every time they would mention the temperature, I had no clue if that was very hot, or just right and kept having to convert, so since there were not that many countries that used Fahrenheit, I switched. I still know what the comfortable range is in Fahrenheit, but now I also know in Celsius as I use it every day. Also, I no longer appear to be an old curmudgeon that is resistant to using a system the rest of the world already uses.
Having the freezing point of water be at 0 instead of 32 just makes infinitely more sense.
Fahrenheit’s 0 is the freezing point of water - salt water that is. Not that I think it’s better, just that there was some thought put into it.
It… isn’t. That would change wildly depending on which sea/ocean you get your saltwater from (more salt = colder freezing point).
It really is defined relative to a very specific brine mixture (in the most scientifically generous origin story - some say he literally just measured the coldest winter day he could). Well except it isn’t anyway, because like all US units nowadays it’s defined against metric units (namely the Kelvin, just like 0°C is actually defined to be 273.15 K).
There is no freezing point of salt water. Cause water can have a very small or very large amount of salt in it. There isn’t even a “default” amount of salt that’s just assumed.
I like to refer to them as Freedom units and Communist units (in jest, obviously). I will say, though, that Fahrenheit feels like a more precise scale for measuring temperature even if the units are goofy.
I don’t get the precision argument. It really doesn’t matter for personal use because you wouldn’t feel the difference anyways and if you really needed it to be as precise as possible (for… I don’t know, science) you’d use decimals. And if you’re sciencing, you’d use the system that allows easy conversion, which is metric.
What additional arguments besides personal experience would you give to back this precision claim?
Temperature scales are arbitrary by nature, and the criteria behind their definition can be useful or not. Fahrenheit’s isn’t that much useful compared to Celsius’ or Kelvin’s.
I’m not arguing on Fahrenheit’s behalf or saying it IS more precise. I just said it “feels” more precise because you have finer increments in whole numbers. 70 degrees F is about 21 degrees C while 90 degrees F is about 32 degrees. 20 degrees of increment in F versus 12 in C which feels more precise. It’s the same way metric length measurements feel more precise because there are whole number millimeters rather than fractional inches.
I have no strong opinion any one way, other than I feel like everyone should endeavor to be comfortable converting between various systems of measurement.
You can simply use as many decimals you want to make Celsius more precise. You don’t see it used in general because it really isn’t needed.
The little digital thermometers I have around the house read to one decimal place. The precision argument is just bizarre.
As someone who moved to the US later in life, I learned to use fahrenheit because there’s no way to talk to anyone about the weather or cooking otherwise.
If you need to do the same one day, don’t bother trying to convert in your head. Just learn the numbers conversationally. Familiarize yourself with how the weather feels with the number the weather app shows.
I can’t convert at all but I can use both C and F in conversation because one rarely needs exact numbers anyway. You learn the ballparks pretty quick.
I find the conversion between the two easy enough to do it my head.
This isn’t exact but is close enough for conversations and 99% of my needs.
(Temp in F - 30) / 2Examples
70F: 70F - 30 = 40 40 / 2 = 20C 10F: 10F - 30 = -20 -20 / 2 = -10The actual number is 21 / -12 but this is close enough for me 99.9% of the time
When you actually need to convert, sure. For conversation, try it my way. It’ll be noticeably more efficient.
F is kinda nice for weather as a scale of 1 to 100 of really cold feeling to really hot feeling. But for anything scientific or calibration related, C is great
Disagree. Celsius is super helpful for determining if it’s gonna snow or not, a key weather thing where I live. Humid and cold and below 0? Snow. Humid and cold and above 0? Rain or freezing rain.
Also helps with plants. Below 0? Frost.
I’d argue you can’t get more intuitive than 0 is cold, below 0 is very cold. Celsius also plays nice with round numbers, every 5 or 10 degrees is a change in feeling. 0 is cold, 5 out is cooler, 10 out is cool, 15 is moderate, 20 is comfortable, 25 is room and warm, 30 is hot, 35+ is very hot. Every ten degrees we’re doing big changes. 0 is frozen, 10 is cool, 20 is comfortable, 30 is hot. 32 being frozen doesn’t feel as intuitive.
Fahrenheit is better. Fight me
Ha! You can’t just say “fight me” and then disappear! What are your arguments?
The range for livable temperatures follows a more reasonable scale. Hot is really high numbers. Cold is low. The exact temperature is more precise because the range is larger.
Celsius is fine for scientists but for the regular person Fahrenheit has a better range.
Also I’m biased.
