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points by mahboi 9 hours ago | 0 comments
0-100˚F lines up well with weather ranges, and 1˚F is about the smallest diff someone can feel. Many digital thermostats use integer ˚F and introduce 0.5 steps if you switch to ˚C, even in countries where ˚C is default, so they kinda admit it.

Pounds vs kg, similar story as F vs C. Pound is pretty much the human-discernible granularity. Otherwise doesn't matter.

0-100 MPH lines up well with car speeds, which is usually the thing you're measuring with that. KPH is excessively granular for that. Probably not by design, but yeah.

The feet/inches vs meters/cm thing matters less. It's base-12 vs base-10. You can do decimal feet or fractional meters of course, but it's less common, so apparently both ways are fine.

[–] throw0101a 2 hours ago
As a Canadian I have no idea what 72˚F means or feels like: is it warm or cold? I do know what 22˚C feels like and how to dress for it. How "intuitive" a temperature number is completely learned behaviour and cultural acclimation.

Pounds vs kg: see above. All the non-American people seem to have "intuitive" grasp of metric measurements.

> 0-100 MPH lines up well with car speeds, which is usually the thing you're measuring with that. KPH is excessively granular for that. Probably not by design, but yeah.

So 'more granularity' is good for temperature but not for speed. Got it.

> The feet/inches vs meters/cm thing matters less. It's base-12 vs base-10. You can do decimal feet or fractional meters of course, but it's less common, so apparently both ways are fine.

By "foot" do you mean 'regular' foot or survey foot:

* https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot

Because there are two different units in the US customary system, used for basically the same purpose, that use the same name. And the "foot" isn't the only unit like that:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force)

Here's another one: which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold? A pound of feathers. Because feathers use one 'pound-system' [1] and is 453g, while gold uses another pound-system [2] and is 373g. But of course an "ounce" of gold (31g) is more than an "ounce" of feathers (28g), because Troy is 1/12 of pound but Avoirdupois is 1/16. In addition to the above "ounces" there is also "fluid ounces".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight

[–] mahboi 1 hour ago
I didn't say it's about being used to one. It can be "in the 20s" C for multiple months, kinda silly. 22.0˚C also feels different from 22.5˚C. There's a right amount of granularity for temperature and for speed.

Foot and pound have unambiguous meanings in the US. There's a reason the whole survey foot and gold-pound thing is trivia that nobody knows, they're niche or abandoned systems that you only use if you're being clear that it's not regular feet or pounds. I also know that the US system is technically not "imperial," but nobody cares.