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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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According to my weather app, the current "feels like" temperature (in the afternoon in the Midwest US) is -20 degrees Celsius. And it's not going to get much warmer for at least a week and a half.

Why the hell is everyone telling me this? I don't doubt that the US can get very cold. I'm just asking what unit of measurement is used. Most of the world uses celsius. In a story where the temperature is highly relevant it would be best to specify the unit.

Americans are going to use Fahrenheit, that's just the way of the world. It's probably a better measurement system in many ways but I will never bother to learn it.

You can make whatever argument you want for metric, but F is objectively superior to C in daily life. There's no 'metric' advantage to C, you don't multiple or divide temperatures real world use cases. Both are effectively arbitrary.

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.

The only time these numbers are really relevant in daily life is internal temperature of meats, but it's nearly arbitrary numbers with either measure, so C brings nothing to the table here.

Finally, Farenheit is over twice as precise as C, and right around human noticability. You can distinguish 1 degree F, but not really 1/10th degree Celsius, making F a more useful and intuitive unit.

This is complete nonsense. All you've done is follow 'objectively superior' with a list of subjective claims.

It is objectively true that the range of double and single digit numbers is more fully used by F for day to day use. You can make subjective arguments about how relevant that is, but I think those numbers are easier to remember and work with.

The one advantage of C, that it benchmarks nicely to water, is not really something you need to think about, and doesn’t even hold true for people living at altitude.

I’m an American who goes out of his way to buy metric tools. I’m a big metric fan. Temperature is the one area were it’s just worse.

It is objectively true that the range of double and single digit numbers is more fully used by F for day to day use.

That would depend on your day to day, wouldn't it? 0°F is a random freezing temperature while 100°F would make a really cold sauna. 0°C is a much starker boundary where the outside world begins to transform, turning either to snow and ice or into slush and water. A day in frost is very different from a day in the positives. If the temperatures dip below 0°C your crops will die. And I could just as well say that Fahrenheit wastes an extra digit into the entire 38°C to 99°C range.

The one advantage of C, that it benchmarks nicely to water, is not really something you need to think about, and doesn’t even hold true for people living at altitude.

I don't know anyone quite so privileged that they don't need to think about water. I personally don't live on a mountain top and find it neat to know what the temperature of something is from the physical phenomena occurring in its water content without having to memorize the magic numbers 32 and 212.

I’m an American who goes out of his way to buy metric tools. I’m a big metric fan. Temperature is the one area were it’s just worse.

Well, I'm glad you can see reason somewhere!

When boiling water for cooking, the temperature doesn’t matter, just the state of matter. That’s what I mean when I say you don’t think about it day to day. The boiling and freezing point of water as they relate to other temperatures almost never come up. The freezing point does matter a bit, but you never care what temperature your water is boiling at, just that it is doing so. I doubt most people living above sea level even know their normal boiling point it is so inconsequential.

Well, sure if you're cooking so crudely that you don't even need to know the temperature, then there's no argument for one system one way or the other. Then would you support switching to Celsius in a context where the boiling point of water does matter? Like a lab where superheated liquid water might explosively flash into steam or if you're dealing with distillation. Even if you're, say, in Denver, it's easier to recognize and remember that 95°C is the local boiling point since it's close to 100°C.