I feel like the title should qualify that this is 16degF
I feel like if you went to a French article and it said "12 degrees" you would know to convert that to Fahrenheit, if you needed. And that's an even less common situation than second-language English speakers ending up on American articles.
The first clue is the date, which is mm—dd-yyyy, only really used in the US.
Also, while not “from glancing”, the article speaks in the context of heat in US cities.
But yes, the author is likely taking for granted that non-US residents would read the article.
Why should they need to? Should French journalists account for French-speaking Americans? What about German, Nigerian and Chinese ones?
The only reason this argument ever comes up is because English is the most common second-language spoken. American, British, Aussie, etc journalists have no more moral or reasonable responsibility to account for non-native/foreign audiences than any other nationalities do.
If you want to read a foreign publication, it's on you to deal with their local norms.
They don't have to: French, Germans, Nigerians, and Chinese all use Celsius.
>The only reason this argument ever comes up is because English is the most common second-language spoken.
No, it only comes up because Americans are the only people who use Fahrenheit.
> A heat dome that descended on Portland, Oregon,
> FastCompany is an American company
American companies tend to write for American audiences, especially when the article leads off with a bunch of American anecdotes.
If it was fastcompany.co.uk and it started off writing about how dangerous temperatures were going to be in London, and Liverpool, I would have assumed it was British.
The "intended audience" isn't just "people who can speak this language", and there are plenty of other context clues other than just "it's in English"
https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2024/06/22/legislat...
Explicitly, not in the form of contextual clues (their domain name and language).
Correct, they do not. As the vast majority of published articles do not.
It's a very popular publication in the United States and is a US company.
> A huge number of people speak English as a second language.
Yes, and if they're reading native articles, they're most certainly from the context of a small group of countries. It's not those nations' responsibility to make their articles accessible to every other nation simply because English is the most common second-language in the world.
> Usually the notation follows the number, so it's kind of lazy to just say it's written for americans specifically
I'm in France at this moment and haven't lived in the US for over half a decade. I've never once seen a Celsius-based nation put "15c", nor any non-english publication do so. They write for their audiences, the same as American, British, Canadian, etc publications do.
> moreso as a counter to someone saying it's Farenheit instead of Celcius since I also clicked immediately thinking how is that possible.
Correct. The publication is written for Americans and is done so from that context. The scientific paper it is discussing is much more specific, as it should be.
It's not the same. There's only 1 Fahrenheit-based nation, and that's the US. Every other nation uses Celsius. So all the others just take it for granted and use Celsius degrees, and assume everyone else will assume it's Celsius, because 95% of the world uses Celsius. So they aren't "writing for their [local] audience", they're writing for anyone who happens to read it, and assuming, like most of humanity, that the reader will automatically assume Celsius. The C/F issue only becomes apparent when dealing with American readers or publications.
And when that nation's people write for their own people, that don't need to care about what the other nation's use. Period.
You're missing the main point in all of your grandstanding about America being different/unique in something. If you want to read American articles, it's on you to convert them. Just like Americans reading Die Welt, l'Republique, Xinhua. They don't owe you their audience just because 20% of the world speaks English.
95% of the world population uses Celsius scale, all scientists and military use it too, and ignoring units when having bombastic claims is either negligence or more probably on purpose.
I am pretty sure the team (and subsequently company/companies) behind it is not limiting itself strictly to US market and willingly ignoring rest of the world, when there are countries with much bigger heat issues than US.
>.. spectrally selective hierarchical fabric (SSHF) with emissivity greatly dominant in the atmospheric transmission window through molecular design, minimizing the net heat gain from the surroundings. The SSHF features a high solar spectrum reflectivity of 0.97 owing to strong Mie scattering from the nano-micro hybrid fibrous structure. The SSHF is 2.3°C cooler than a solar-reflecting broadband emitter when placed vertically in simulated outdoor urban scenarios during the day and also has excellent wearable properties.
That's hardly true. Even if it was it's not a justification for forcing people to change their common parlance.
Also, if you really want a temperature scale, you'd have it referenced to absolute zero so it's an actual ratio quantity. So, a lot of "scientists" use Kelvin or in some cases Rankine.
> ignoring rest of the world
There's a conversion factor. We don't keep it secret. We're not "ignoring" the rest of the world, we're just operating in a mode that most convenient for us.
Forget the idiom and focus on the content itself.
The article is written for an American layman audience. The scientific publication it is discussing uses specific terms, as it should. You would know this if you read passed the headline instead of knee-jerk complaining about "Americans wrong".
> I am pretty sure the team (and subsequently company/companies) behind it is not limiting itself strictly to US market and willingly ignoring rest of the world, when there are countries with much bigger heat issues than US.
FastCompany is an American publication and American company. Their audience is most certainly American. The fact that non-Americans can read it is no more important than French-speaking Americans being able to read Le Monde; a publication that also doesn't bother converting or specifying terms for a non-French audience.
(The article does include both units. It is only the title trying to be sensationalist)
There is no need for anyone outside the USA and Canada to use Fahrenheit, ever.
Oh no they shouldn't, because that's idiotic; as it is for any national publication in any language. You want to read foreign articles, you deal with the conversions/idioms/colloquialisms/etc.
(Also, I think Fastco should realize that they're being read by English readers all over the world who only know Celsius, but I guess they do measure their audience.)
It gets up to 16 versus more insulating fabric. I'm sure it is even more "cooling" compared to my winter jacket.
> Because of this dual usage, one must not rely upon the unit name or its symbol to denote that a quantity is a temperature interval; it must be unambiguous through context or explicit statement that the quantity is an interval. This is sometimes solved by using the symbol °C (pronounced "degrees Celsius") for a temperature, and C° (pronounced "Celsius degrees") for a temperature interval, although this usage is non-standard. Another way to express the same is "40 °C ± 3 K", which can be commonly found in literature.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#Temperatures_and_inter...