Posted by marojejian 5 days ago
As a european: F is the only american system that is easy to use and reason with (considering its 0-100 range is spanning the "doable" temp range of too-cold to too-hot), unlike other imperial systems for lengths and whatnot.
Weight, mass and considerable distances, I’ll grant you, though.
Of course, for me Celsius is more natural and intuitive, but again - that's because I'm used to it.
It's pretty well calibrated as a 0-100 scale for human temperature perception.
So in other words Fahrenheit is a western centric measurement (or at least, temperature climate centric), while Celsius is universal.
I work in the food industry and this whole "room temperature" thing is a major bugbear for me actually because when so much food dates markings are designed around a room temperature of ~22C, it's a big health and safety issue for people (and shops, warehouses, restaurants) who don't know that and happily store the goods up to the date marking at 30C. Deciding that room temperature ~=22C and basing worldwide food safety on that is absolutely Western centric.
Obviously people here are not stupid and don't store meat etc. past when it's gone bad. But I've often bought e.g. oils from suppliers and it's clear that it's on the edge of rancidity even though it's got a year+ to go on the date because it's been stored at "room temperature".
Yes. And it is between 16 °C and 30 °C. (depending if the test room has AC or not).
But as you say: it is pretty universal everywhere.
Calling Fahrenheit "western centric" is nonsensical. Every other country has a narrower temperature range that fits within the US temperature range.
I assure you it does not. But I guess American Exceptionalism makes you want to believe that so go ahead.
A 5s google search suggests the country with the widest range is probably Russia.
I'm used to the idea that 0C is what splits the year between cold season and warm season. Obviously people from California will see it differently, for example.
So where I live it is like this:
30 or more - hot
15..30 warm
0..15 chilly
-15..0 calendar winter
-30..-15 real winter
..-30 - freezing, kinds younger than 12 don't go to school
Judging anything on a scale from 0-10 (or 0-100) is very common.
But this is not the case here, right?
Some people are used to higher temperatures and never seen snow while some people can't even imagine what it's like to have 40C (104F) outside.
0C is a great "common denominator" (irony). We all understand that generally this is when water changes its state and most people know how it feels.
And then your imagination can easily go lower or higher.
>Judging anything on a scale from 0-10 (or 0-100) is very common.
Now consider that many people live in places where 0F is warmer than what you actually have for a good part of a year.
As you said: it's what you're used to. I know 100F is a very warm day, but if someone said it was 50F I wouldn't intrinsically know how warm or cold that is. My brain works in Celsius, so someone saying its 20C I understand instantly.
Similarly length in US football fields - I don't know what that is, but it's second nature to someone who did grow up using them as a measurement.
273.15 Kelvin doesn't roll off the tongue like 0°C or 32°F.
For serious scientific and engineering applications the freezing and boiling point of water isn't actually 0°C and 100°C in most real scenarios.
Using zero as the freezing point of water makes sense for everyday use, and using the boiling point for 100 degrees does follow fairly naturally from that - but plenty of other potential reference points could have worked equally well.
That said, for all the American claims of "fahrenheit is more human", 100 °C is the temperature of a hot sauna so works much better as "the highest temperature you'll encounter in day to day life" than 100 °F.
This is among the least stupid claims us Americans make in defense of our measurement system.
It is not.
"Quick! Climb to 300 meters above sea level and the trex will boil and we will be safe!"
"Quick! Climb to about 1000 feet above sea level and the trex will boil and we will be safe!"
"climb to FL20 and the flying dinosaur thing will break" could work though
Since, annoyingly, international altitudes are done in increments of 1000 feet (ish, handwaving)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/climate/united-nations-cl...
Edit: Removed the headline quotation because the search listing and article heading differ.
Most conversation about climate change has been around global average temps raising in C. Further, switching that back and forth and doubling it for F would be seen as manipulative by people that don’t want to hear it.
On the contrary, the Times’s US audience (probably their main audience) thinks of body temp, which this is, in F.
To add further, the audience and writers that want to share cool, new dinosaur fact and the group that does an update on global warming are different people and operate and think differently around these specific things in these specific contexts.
Of course it would be easier to add the letter, but I can definitely see why it wasn’t included.
It also turns out, as someone else in this thread has noted, NYT's style guides say to not include the unit in headlines, so here we are :)
and as the sibling comment mentions, i am primed for science articles to be metric.
at least, that was the concept was drilled into me throughout all my schooling. perhaps that has changed in the last few decades.
(Even the NY Times gift link requires a login.)
Young engineers sometimes fall into this trap - that there is absolute truth, and everything else. It would be nice if true, but it's wildly out of line with reality.
"Believing" something is not the same as having a dogmatic faith in something. We (ideally) change our beliefs with every new piece of input. That's good.
sounds like a cope. like shifting goalposts. or no true scotsman fallacy.
if I see a tree in front of me, and 2 seconds later I close my eyes, and someone asks me if there is a tree in front of me, should I say yes because I "know" it, or because I "believe" it ?
In that 2 seconds, the tree could have fallen down. So if i said "yes", I wouldn't be lying but I would be incorrect.
Therefore all "knowledge" is belief about some past "truth". Whether you call it faith, evidence-based, dogma etc. they all do fall under the same bucket if you think deeply about it.
By the way, Google Fit's body-temperature entry is cool, but when it comes to "Location", why is "mouth" in the middle of the list and next to some other, unrelated parts? How is the list being sorted?
