site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

However with Farenheit, 0-100 is basically, human habitable range. 0 is dangerously cold, 100 is dangerously hot. With Farenheit, 1-100 are basically every day weathers around the globe and in every day life describing your freezer up to your body temperature. Meanwhile 40-99 C are nearly useless.

You do not use 100 points of precision to tell the weather.

Like the other guy said, everybody just recognises like 3 to 5 ranges of temperature for the weather. Very cold, cold, light jacket, t shirt, very hot.

Do you think you need a much wider range of numbers to work this out? You don't, and in practice nobody does. They just snap-lock certain ranges to be relevant.

Celsius is definitely intuitive and a metric system more broadly works better on the whole.

The people of Arizona spend a surprising amount of time discussing each degree between 100 and 120, and they do actually matter for "eh, pretty hot, the metaphorical ice has broken on the sand river" and "get in a pool or inside right now before you faint."

I'm from Australia. We talk about the heat too.

Do you say "celsius" every time you do? Because I wouldn't expect you to. If someone said "it's 40 degrees out! I'm sweltering!" I could infer what they mean.

Both systems seem to provide about the same value as far as I can tell, more than for length measurements, where metric has clear benefits.

I do like that 100 is a nice round number, and have always been a bit disappointed that in human terms it represents a mild fever, not the baseline human body temperature.

Do you say "celsius" every time you do?

Lol of course not. My GF literally said "it's 43 tomorrow" 2 mins ago.

You’re conflating two separate points. When setting a thermostat you can tell the difference between 66 and 67. It’s a good increment of noticable but slight. Celsius degrees are too far apart and tenths are too small.

Separately, 0-100 is roughly human haitable weather

On the metric point, there’s nothing more “metric” about Celsius. It doesn’t math any differently. It’s just set to a different reference point, which is less human centric

Celsius degrees are too far apart and tenths are too small.

There is no way you can start with "objectively better" and end up with this lol. You're talking about a half degree of difference. My aircon works in denominations of .5. If you have a preference for 18.5 degrees, there's no limitation on this if you use Celsius.

Parsimony is objectively better. Fewer significant figures for the relevant precision.

We can get into philosophy of good and what not, but this is a silly gotcha. I’m making a point about an objective feature and describing why I think it’s better

Nah man. I think you're just used to it.