Americans pick up weird habits and then insist that it’s the right way. How is August 9th any better than 9th of August when the 9th is a subunit of August and not the other way around?
Another good example is the use of the imperial system. I’ve heard Americans often declare that it’s a better system for manual use compared to the metric system. But the metric system has prefixes that differ consistently by 3 orders of magnitude, whereas the imperial system has rather arbitrary jumps between each successive unit. The metric system needs much less cognitive effort even for manual use.
I can understand that it’s a matter of habit for Americans. But it’s the lack of acceptance that there is a problem that leads to other problems like crashing a spacecraft onto Mars.
Generally speaking you’re usually from 0 to 720 hours in a month: how many time in a year you have to remind people what month they are into vs. the single day?
Guy A: “Hey, what day is it?”
Guy B: “It’s Sunday, the 13th.”
Guy A: “Of…?” (gesturing to keep going)
Guy B: “Ah, right, we’re just 390 hours into August. You may have missed that.”
That’s what kills me about people who rag on Americans.
We order our dates the way we say them, and we use a temperature system is a great way to describe feeling heat.
I’ve got no defense for imperial measurements beyond scooping up a cup of flour is easier than dumping it on a scale.
But people spend more energy shitting on the cultural norms of Americans than anyone else (especially Europeans) and then spend a lot of time telling us we have no culture.
and we use a temperature system is a great way to describe feeling heat
You know if you really think about it for even the slightest amount of time this makes absolutely no fucking sense. I can imagine why you state this, but to not spoil the fun I’d love to hear it from you.
The fahrenheit scale was created as a base for human temperature. The guy fucked up his math though because 100°f was supposed to be average body temp.
Fahrenheit based his scale on what he thought to be absolute zero (i.e. the coldest temperature he could produce in his lab with the tools of his time) and his body temperature, which he set to 12, because 12 was a convenient number and used in a lot of scales in his pre-metric time. He did realize though that this scale was impractical, and halved his degrees until they deemed sensible to him, resulting in the final degrees to be ⅛ of the first draft. 8 * 12 = 96, hence 96° F was his second fixed point.
Which is just senseless, as we know today, as the temperature of the human body fluctuates over time. If we took the original definition seriously, everybody would have their own Fahrenheit scale that would differ over time.
Fahrenheit is not based on body temperature, it is based on the temperature of a mixture of ice and salt and the body temperature of a certain individual, both in 1714. Who was, by the way, suffering from hypothermia.
I don’t see how intent is relevant, to someone using Celsius, 40 degrees is hot because they’re used to that, that’s the only thing that matters. Besides, when it comes to body temperature, Celsius is a lot closer than Fahrenheit. Not to mention “it’s freezing outside” in Celsius is actually sub zero, and not a number close to your body temperature as it is in Fahrenheit.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Americans write the date the way we would say it. August 9th 2023.
9th of August, 2023
No need for the extra “of”
4th of July
That’s a holiday and an obvious exception. Most people don’t go around saying dates like that
Americans pick up weird habits and then insist that it’s the right way. How is August 9th any better than 9th of August when the 9th is a subunit of August and not the other way around?
Another good example is the use of the imperial system. I’ve heard Americans often declare that it’s a better system for manual use compared to the metric system. But the metric system has prefixes that differ consistently by 3 orders of magnitude, whereas the imperial system has rather arbitrary jumps between each successive unit. The metric system needs much less cognitive effort even for manual use.
I can understand that it’s a matter of habit for Americans. But it’s the lack of acceptance that there is a problem that leads to other problems like crashing a spacecraft onto Mars.
Generally speaking you’re usually from 0 to 720 hours in a month: how many time in a year you have to remind people what month they are into vs. the single day?
Guy A: “Hey, what day is it?”
Guy B: “It’s Sunday, the 13th.”
Guy A: “Of…?” (gesturing to keep going)
Guy B: “Ah, right, we’re just 390 hours into August. You may have missed that.”
That’s in response to a poorly asked question.
"Hey what’s the date?
“August 13th”
Wait, you mean the last 2 are, in all fact, the same, exact, thing?
Yes.
That’s what kills me about people who rag on Americans.
We order our dates the way we say them, and we use a temperature system is a great way to describe feeling heat.
I’ve got no defense for imperial measurements beyond scooping up a cup of flour is easier than dumping it on a scale.
But people spend more energy shitting on the cultural norms of Americans than anyone else (especially Europeans) and then spend a lot of time telling us we have no culture.
You know if you really think about it for even the slightest amount of time this makes absolutely no fucking sense. I can imagine why you state this, but to not spoil the fun I’d love to hear it from you.
The fahrenheit scale was created as a base for human temperature. The guy fucked up his math though because 100°f was supposed to be average body temp.
Celsius is temperature based on water.
Kelvin is based on universal scale.
Fahrenheit is based on the human body.
Fahrenheit based his scale on what he thought to be absolute zero (i.e. the coldest temperature he could produce in his lab with the tools of his time) and his body temperature, which he set to 12, because 12 was a convenient number and used in a lot of scales in his pre-metric time. He did realize though that this scale was impractical, and halved his degrees until they deemed sensible to him, resulting in the final degrees to be ⅛ of the first draft. 8 * 12 = 96, hence 96° F was his second fixed point.
Which is just senseless, as we know today, as the temperature of the human body fluctuates over time. If we took the original definition seriously, everybody would have their own Fahrenheit scale that would differ over time.
Fahrenheit is not based on body temperature, it is based on the temperature of a mixture of ice and salt and the body temperature of a certain individual, both in 1714. Who was, by the way, suffering from hypothermia.
I don’t see how intent is relevant, to someone using Celsius, 40 degrees is hot because they’re used to that, that’s the only thing that matters. Besides, when it comes to body temperature, Celsius is a lot closer than Fahrenheit. Not to mention “it’s freezing outside” in Celsius is actually sub zero, and not a number close to your body temperature as it is in Fahrenheit.