Saturday Night Live actually had a good sketch about this a few weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
Washington: "We fight for a nation where we choose our own laws… choose our own leaders… and choose our own systems of weights and measures.
I dream that one day, our proud nation will measure weights in pounds, and that 2000 pounds shall be called a ton."
Rebel: “And what will 1000 pounds be called sir?”
Washington: “Nothing. Cause will have no word for that.”
…
Washington: “Distance will be measured in inches, feet, yards and miles. 12 inches to a foot!”
Rebel: “12 feet to a yard…”
Washington: “If only it were so simple. 3 feet to a yard.”
Rebel: “And how many yards to a mile?”
Washington: “Nobody knows.”
Rebel: “Ok, how many feet to a mile?”
Washington: “5280, of course! It’s a simple number that everyone will remember.”
wait 100 F is only 38 degrees?
Wow that’s funny. I’ve seen so many people complain about extreme heat below 100 F.
I get that what you’re not used to is difficult but like 38 degrees is a relatively ordinary (now) summer day for me.
From how people spoke about it I thought 100 F was more lile 45
I think that if the air is moist enough 38 degrees will overheat the body and kill it. Because the human body sweats to lose heat.
So some regions on earth are probably less pleasant when the temperature rises. While other regions are more tolarable for humans.
So there might be a reason why some people complain that they suffer from the heat. There could also be other reasons like their living conditions. A lack of ac and water, or living in a urban heat hell.
Lets not trivialize experiences of people who suffer.
Fun fact. -40 degrees is the same in both C and F, and is also called “January” where I live.
I’ll grant that farenheit has merit, but for me, the foot/inches distance works a bit better for casual measurements, and stuff that doesn’t have to be very precise.
Beyond maybe someone’s height, I’d rather work in metric. I’m also very much in favor of celsius and I still have trouble converting between the temperature scales. I grew up with temps in degrees C, and height and some sort distances in feet/inches. IDK, I’m weird.
The date thing drives me nuts though.
I’ve adopted year month day as the superior sorting method
This is the only way. DD-MM or MM-DD is confusing when it’s something like 12-03-2023. Is it December 3 or March 12?
It’s confusing because of USA, if they applied what everyone in the world uses it wouldn’t really be a problem.
Fever is not 100F. A fever is defined as 100.4F. Why 100.4 when 100 is a much easier to remember and handle number? Because fever is defined in humans as 38C, and that converts to 100.4F.
fuck BOTH these date formats.
ISO-8601 OR DIE.
Good morning on this beautiful day, 2023-W47‐2T10:26
This is actually a super fascinating example of the way data can be displayed in a technically correct way to lead the viewer to completely invalid conclusions.
“Inches in 8.33 feet”
“Mm in a foot”
Fool, the scientist in me is infuriated. Good work, mate!