this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Standardization
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Mostly, except fahrenheit and Celsius are pretty much equally arbitrary, and day/month/year is consistent, but also the worse possible choice... Just an internally consistent poor choice. YYYY-MM-DD would be a consistent and good choice. dd-mm-yyyy starts showing it's deficiency pretty much immediately when you add time to the mix, though mm-dd-yyyy is obviously worse there too.
On the C vs F side, they both go from 0 to 100, and C is obviously better for defining scientific findings, but as an everyday tool saying the temperature that I've dorms is important enough to be worth setting the range to 0 but the limit to what humans can generally stand is like 40-ish is so much more arbitrary than have 0 be around the lower limit of what we can stand and 100 being around the upper limit + right near or normal body temp, above which is difficult for us to function. I mean 'when we start getting ice' is useful and all, but a lot of the world gets colder than that for a good chunk of the year and it's not until it gets below 0 F that we start needing to take extra care to survive, just like when it starts above 100 F for too long.
TBH the temperature humans can stand is easy in metric too. 10-30 is livable. 30-40 is getting real fucking hot. 0-10 is cold but you can cope with a little clothing
-30 to 0, though, you're gonna need special winter clothes and shit. I would not consider 0F (~ -17C) to be the limit of what we can stand, and I'm Canadian.
Yeah, 0 isn't the limit of what humans can endure, but it is a decent limit between 'you need a reasonable coat and it's not going to be comfortable being outside for long' and 'ok, we need to be taking some precautions and take things seriously until it comes back within reasonable temps'... Really similar to over 100...90s is pretty uncomfortable but most healthy adults with reasonable accommodations can deal with cold down to 0 and heat up to 100. Above and below those temps and you have to start prioritizing temperature into your planning for safety rather than comfort.