W Celsius

69C is hot

Milk bottles in the supermarkets in the UK are now using weird sizes like 1.136l, because apparently that easier for some old cunt to read.

I had an American explain “well you just know that 68 is long sleeve warm, 80 is shorts” or something, as if people cannot memorize that 18 is chilly and 21/22 is usual room temperature, 26 is shorts.

The only thing I dislike like about Celsius is that my thermostat supports both, but doesn’t allow half degrees Celsius, so it provides less granular control in Celsius than if you set it to Fahrenheit.

People who say 100°C is warm make my blood boil.

*For some definition of warm

I think it's sort of useful for weather, since in most places you're not gonna see temperatures under 0F or above 100F much if at all, so the scaling seems a bit easier. Other than that though, yeah, it's pretty terrible.

Nobody uses those in every day conversation.

They will be used in specific contexts, like measuring fluids with syringes where space is limited and accuracy needs to be high.

I'm guessing that the 1.136 L comes from not wanting to change actual package size when switching to metric. Can't be a coincidence that 1.136L is 2 imperial pints.

What I'll defend, however, is fractional measurements when precision matters.

With decimal measurements, precision can't be nearly as granular. If your measurement is precise to one 1/8 of a unit, how do you represent that in decimal? 0.625 implies your measurement is precise to the nearest thousandth, but rounding it to 1 also isn't precise. 5/8, however, tells you the measurement AND the precision.

With fractional measurements, you can specify precision by changing the denominator to any number, whereas decimal is essentially fractional measurements, but with fixed denominator at powers of 10. For instance, a measurements of a half-unit with levels of precision between 0.1 and 0.10, fractional can be 6/12, 7/14, 8/16, 9/18, 10/20, 24/48, etc. Decimal can't specify that precision without essentially writing a sentance.

What's simpler to record? "24/48" or "0.5 +- 0.208333...."

Certain ones get used a lot, like centimeters and dekapascals.

This hurts my brain. Why do we care about all the weird fractions? +/- 0.1 is just another way of saying 1/10. You can still do that if you want without having to do fraction math in random denominators.

Hey I'm American and think we should switch to metric. While Celsius has a more objective basis than Fahrenheit, doesn't seem like the same slam dunk as the other measurements.

Are there applications where we're measuring in centicelsius or kilocelsius? There aren't weird non-base ten increments of Fahrenheit. In Fahrenheit 0 is cold and 100 is hot as well...

I'm still fine changing to it, just doesn't seem to have the same "in your face" value for this graphic.

I'm in Québec, -10 is chilly, 14 is shorts

It's like this in Canada for years, everything in groceries is strange numbers in ml or g, converted from pounds/qt/whatever units

You really recognize these weirdly precise numbers in packaging.

355ml. 454g. 25.4mm.

Yeah, suuuuure your chocolate bar is precise to 3 sig figs..

I was about to say, in Denmark i definitely have shorts on in the teens, else I'd barely need to own any

It is a very tepid temperature for tea.

I had a running gag once with my cheese guy where i would order in hectograms. I probably found it more amusing than he did.

Your cheese guy? You may be doing life better than me.

As you approach 0°F it is getting dangerously cold. As you approach 100°F it's getting dangerously hot. Celsius is obviously better scientifically, but fahrenheit is pretty reasonable for everyday use (unlike other imperial measurements).