this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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We're taught both metric and US customary units in school. I prefer metric for most things, to the point I have a metric-only tape measure among other things.

However, I'll die on the hill that Fahrenheit is superior for ambient air temperature. 0 degrees to 100 degrees neatly encompasses the range of average surface temperatures seen throughout the year in the contiguous US.

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[–] Orygin@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can just scale it down and have the same experience. It's all just habit and familiarity

[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The whole point is that it is ironically base 10. I thought that was the goal?

[–] schnapsman@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

Base 10 is nice for crossing regimes of scales, orders of magnitude. But we don't really engage with temperature that way. The problem I have with F-heit on its own, is that it's much too precise. The difference of a degree is meaningless, especially when considering weather. Fahrenheit weather maps are cluttered, dials and buttons on thermostats and in cars are slow, thermometer readings change too frequently, etc. USian shoe sizes have the opposite problem. If you need to use half sizes all the time then FFS just multiply the scale by 2.

[–] Orygin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That's incidental:

he adjusted the scale so that the melting point of ice would be 32 degrees, and body temperature 96 degrees, so that 64 intervals would separate the two, allowing him to mark degree lines on his instruments by simply bisecting the interval 6 times (since 64 = 2⁶).

[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

I mean, base 2 is superior imho.