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ShaggySnacks ,

Ugh, who wants to change to a base-10 system when we keep what ever we have now?

PhlubbaDubba ,

I mean there’s really only four ways people use imperial over metric

For cooking, For weighing themselves, For measuring distances, For measuring temperature.

For most other purposes, especially where scientific accuracy is called for, Americans are perfectly aware of and capable of using metric, and mostly do so.

Metric pushing at this point is basically bashing non academics for continuing to use a colloquial measurement that serves them just fine for what they actually need to measure and visualize on a daily basis.

hOrni ,

Well, yeah. We are trying to make things easier for You.

PhlubbaDubba ,

Oh yeah, because constantly forcing a change it’s obvious nobody you’re trying to force it on cares about is definitely making things easier for them.

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Cooking has largely moved to metric (with the exception of spices/seasonings, weighing spices is tedious compared to spoons IMO)

Blue_Morpho ,

I have never seen a US cookbook or Internet recipe site that defaults to metric.

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes

xkcd.com/1053/

Blue_Morpho ,

I clicked the King Arthur link and the recipes default to English with metric in parenthesis.

PhlubbaDubba ,

That depends more on the setting, IDK about professional kitchens but most home cooking I’ve seen measures in imperial.

SpaceNoodle ,

I’ve seen them chiefly in US Customary.

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

A decent chunk of recipes I use are for baking (where weighing is important and grams are standard) so YMMV, though I don’t generally eat a lot of “american” food so my perspective is a bit skewed toward metric.

PhlubbaDubba ,

Tbf a decent amount of “american food” is prepared by intuition rather than by formula

If you’re checking measurements for a burger, it’s for the individual stacked items you’re putting together on the burger and not usually for how much ground meat you need to get off a chuck steak for the burger you want.

I only write down measurements in my own recipes because I’m chronically paranoid I’ll fuck everything up since so much of my stuff is already mishmash of previous recipes (just finished putting together a non dairy Knaffeh recipe so my SO can have it in spite of their allergies, had to figure out how to mimic Arrakawi cheese using fake mozz lol XD)

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Imperial is intermixed woth metric in constructionnand a ton of engineering projects as materials are still manufactured in imperial measurements. Farming is still stuck in imperial too.

Both are still around because an entire industry changing fundamental measurements is a lot of effort.

My second favorite example of the two living in harmony for the average US citizen is the liquir store. Beer comes in ounces but hard liquir and wine comes in metric.

My favorite is soda, which comes in 20 oz and 2 liter bottles on the same shelf. People opposed to the metric system tend to ignore the fact that they are already using it somewhere in their lives and just don’t notice.

dharmacurious ,

My favorite weird imperial/metric oddity in the US is 16.9 ounce bottles. People refer to them as “sixteen point 9 ounce” bottles. They’re 500ml. It’d be so much easier just to say “500 em ell”

PhlubbaDubba ,

Mine is that the most rabidly anti metric folks stateside are likely to be weapons enthusiasts who measure ammo calibur in metric.

ayyy ,

Nope, beer is measured in Fluid Ounces which is a measure of volume and is entirely unrelated to ounces except for having the same name. Oh also a fluid ounce is a different amount of volume depending on the context. It’s a greeeeaaaaat system.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

That is an interesting clarification, not a correction, because nobody calls them “12 fluid ounce cans.”

dual_sport_dork , (edited )
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

You forgot one: Fasteners, i.e. nuts and bolts, when all the rest of the world has been metric for decades and whatever it is you’re taking apart almost certainly uses metric bolts (car, appliance, electronic device, whatever). But your local hardware store still gives you attitude over metric being ‘’‘’‘’‘‘specialty’’‘’‘’‘’ and the majority of their selection of bolts and machine screws are fractional inch which will not fit approximately 99.8% of all manufactured goods from the last century, let alone this one.

GentriFriedRice ,

Having two sets of wrenches and sockets is absolute worst. Especially when it seems like 10mm does 80% of the work but is missing 100% of the time

kboy101222 ,

I found a 10 pack of 10mm once. Bought it immediately thinking I’d never need another 10.

That was 5 years ago. I have 2 left…

not_that_guy05 ,

Those 10mm are pros at hide-and-seek.

dellish ,

At least be consistent with it too! I don’t know what it’s like in the States but internationally we don’t get 7/16" bolts or whatever, we get 10-gauge or 8-gauge etc. What the fuck does that mean?? And wiring too: no 8mm wire, no no let’s have 6AWG. Jesus christ it’s like they enjoy making life difficult.

DMBFFF ,
@DMBFFF@lemmy.world avatar

How many centimeters in a kilometer?

How many inches in a mile?

FlyingSquid OP ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

American answer: “Shut up, Euro-freak. I’m trying to watch Big Bang Theory reruns.”

misterundercoat ,

Nobody knows

Hugh_Jeggs ,

Strange how you can easily work out the former, but the latter could be anything from 28 to 56285794

🤔

gimsy ,

Km is 10^3^m cm is 10^-2^m so the difference is 10^5^ i.e. 100000 (one with 5 zeroes)

Or more intuitively one centi-meter is a 1/100 of a meter and Kilo-Meter is 1000 meter therefore 100*1000 100000

It is quite intuitive, once you start using it

What’s weird is why we don’t use Megameters and megagrams (i.e. one metric ton)

LarmyOfLone ,

How many liters is 1 square meter of 1mm thick steel?

I’m definitely on board for megameters. One AU is about 150 gigameters and 1 light year is about 9.5 terameter!

uis ,

1*10^-3 m^3 = 1 dm^3(AKA liter)

fne8w2ah ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4ace7caf-b4e3-46e8-8cdb-09689dab42f8.png

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I believe in some countries in the world, the year goes first, then the month, then the day (2024/08/08 or 2024, August 8). Seems more logical to me than the literal inverse (08/08/2024 or 8 August 2024).

But yeah, the metric system reigns supreme.

JackbyDev ,

Year, month, day is the most logical. I’ll stand by month, day, year as being more logical than day, month, year because it’s somewhat more sorted lol.

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, I’m fine with the long form (August 8, 2024), but definitely not the short form, which today looks indistinguishable from DD/MM/YYYY anyway. I often think it’s the other way around and ask “since when was there a 26th month??”.

thebestaquaman ,

How in the world is (month/day/year) more sorted than (day/month/year)? I see two use-cases: Sorting things chronologically, in which case you want YYYY/MM/DD, or referring to nearby dates, where the year or even month can be assumed known implicitly, in which case you use DD/MM/YYYY. In no sane world does MM/DD/YYYY make sense.

JackbyDev ,

Because you put big numbers first! Three hundred twenty one is written 321 not 1, 20, and 300. 21 and 300 is more sorted. MM/DD/YYYY only has one element out of place instead of being totally backwards.

oo1 ,

Big numbers first is not the only way to sort - look at say how they sort the speeds of runners in a race.

If it is “backwards”, it is sorted, in reverse order. If it has an element out of place it is not sorted.

It’s only when they extend to hh:mm:ss dd/mm/yyyy that it becomes assorted. They need to fully commit and either use tzmm:tzhh+ fff.ss:mm:hh dd/mm/yyyy or just use fucking iso 8601. Fuck everyone who doesn’t; fuck M$, fuck oracle, fuck humans.

JackbyDev ,

Runners use minutes before seconds

Omniraptor ,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I would’ve mentioned it but I forgot what it’s called. Thanks for reminding me.

Bertuccio ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/92efd1ec-a95a-428d-a1c9-28ea626344a9.png

_donnadie_ ,
@_donnadie_@feddit.cl avatar

Wouldn’t the second one make more sense as an upside down pyramid?

Bertuccio ,

Because the first digit in each of the numbers is larger than the second digit it would be the triple inverted pyramid as shown, where the larger numbers correspond to larger sub-pyramids and larger digits correspond to the larger side of the sub-pyramid.

The colored text and marks on the pyramids are to show that.

_donnadie_ ,
@_donnadie_@feddit.cl avatar

I imagined, but I was too lazy to actually look at the colors lol. Thanks for explaining :)

Fedizen ,

The medical system ended up using the metric system anyway

uis ,

America has medical system?

AntEater ,
@AntEater@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

It’s more a system of an abuse and profit than speficially “medical”. That anyone gets better is purely a marketing/sales feature.

uis ,

Ah, you mean private medicine. When people talk about some country’s healthcare, they talk about about what state provides for its citizens.

trolololol ,

Nope, that’s why they didn’t duck up with it

ninekeysdown ,
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

The US Government is entirely metric. It’s just the US Citizens that aren’t. So there’s this entire separation where no one uses metric, so nothing is made for metric, since nothing is made for metric, no one uses metric.

Obviously that’s changing over time plenty of people use a mixture of both systems all the time. The machines are mostly driving adoption at this point. 3D printers, cars, etc.

PanArab ,

Metric is just easier and the founders of the US actually considered it but wars -obviously- distracted them from switching to it.

AnarchoSnowPlow ,

Fuck that, we should be measuring everything in Stone.

I’ll take a seventh stone of chicken please.

And lengths in Royal cubits.

If we’re gonna go weird we need to go all the way.

someguy3 ,

My comparison is that the metric system is like color vision. It’s like colors for traffic lights, but USC people insist it’s fine memorizing which light is which location. In metric you just see the world in a way USC can’t, but USC people insist they’re just fine.

vga ,

Jesus this is dumb. And it worked?

phoenixz , (edited )

Doesn’t the reason why the avg US citizen wants imperial units boil down to “sounds cooler”?

Kilometer vs Miles, the former latter sounds easier and cooler to work with

Centimeter vs inch, same.

How will they now call a two by four?

It’s kind of the same for the pro gun arguments, it all boils down to “but guns are cool toys!”

Edit: fixed a duuuhhh

Vailliant ,

A “five by ten” I would say, doesnt sound to bad.

I think its mostly ingrained into the population at this point.

Capsaicin1337 ,

You forgot that a 2 by four isn’t actually two by four inches .

It is actually 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches. The 2 by 4 references the rough cut lumber before planning.

Malfeasant ,

Planing. Planning wood is very different.

phoenixz ,

That, and conservatives just can’t let go of old crappy ideas

SLVRDRGN ,

Between the kilometer vs miles, isn’t the “former” here the kilometer? So you’re saying the metric system sounds cooler? But then you went on to say two by four which is an imperial thing… am I confused?

exanime ,

Yeap, they got former and latter crossed

phoenixz ,

Yeah my bad. I meant latter there, and fixed it… Thanks!

TheReturnOfPEB ,

A 2x4 is actually 1.5" x 3.5" so you are not standing on solid ground with that one.

Malfeasant ,

When you build a wood house, how far apart are the studs? I once tried to hang a shelf made by/for the European market, it had predrilled holes that were far enough apart that I could almost hit two studs, but not quite.

ZealousSealion ,

6dm

phoenixz ,

I read that as “I once tried to hang myself…” and was shocked for a second

trolololol ,

Inflation?

phoenixz ,

That says a lot about how crappy the imperial system is, really.

postmateDumbass ,

Americans choosing the system with tougher math requirements is suprising.

Malfeasant ,

We see it as sticking to what we’re used to… As conservative as we are overall, is it really that surprising?

phoenixz ,

It’s all conservatives clinging to really outdated and stupid shit

postmateDumbass ,

How will they now call a two by four?

Stud wood.

Bgugi ,

With a wink. Yes, every time.

Malfeasant ,

Then how to differentiate from 2x6? 2x8?

phoenixz ,

5x15 and 5x20 respectively.

threeganzi ,

They’ll be happy to know the metric system also has miles.

10 km = 1 mile (metric mile)

PlexSheep ,

I have never heard of metric miles, did you make that up?

ZealousSealion ,

Also known as the Scandinavian mile. It is very commonly used in Sweden and Norway to describe long distances.

Before the introduction of the metric system, there were many local miles. Some a bit shorter than 10km, some a bit longer.

PlexSheep ,

Good to know

threeganzi ,

Ah, perhaps not as standard as I thought!

Trigger2_2000 ,

Uncle Sam couldn’t handle the success the metric system would bring. /s

probableprotogen ,

This is his punishment for war crimes.

JeffKerman1999 ,

Imperial US system is defined using the metric system…

polle ,

And the most ridiculous (or inclusive) thing are tiresizes in Europe (perhaps somewhere else, too?). 195/55r16 195 is the width in millimeters 55 is the height in percentage of the width R16 is the radius of the wheel in inches

Malfeasant ,

Same in US…

Lucidlethargy ,

Lol this thread got spicy. Today I learned base 12 is actually superior to base 10 in a myriad of ways.

It seems the most reasonable people in this thread are arguing for a new system, not one or the other. I concur with this thought.

So… Fuck the imperial AND metric system. I’m team new system.

Shou ,

Same. Until then, I use both.

postmateDumbass ,

The base 12 system was real popular in Sumeria.

So your new system is akshualy the oldest.

Malfeasant ,

Base twelve would be great if we went all-in, as in new symbols for single digit representation of ten and eleven, then 10 would mean twelve. Having a base that’s divisible by several primes is handy.

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