this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
257 points (97.8% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
26661 readers
4449 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because Americans will use practically anything before they use metric.
We do such a shit job at teaching our own actual measuring system that nobody has an intuition what a pound feels like, what an inch and a foot look like and how to scale those up. So we resort to objects and comparisons instead of actual measurements.
I don't blame anyone for failing to teach imperial. It's surreal.
I grew up with both (gen x Australian), and when I lived through the transition, metric is a godsend.
Feet. Pound. Stone. All I see are objects. But they are easily objective to the imagination.
There are now only 2 countries left I believe, dragging their heels, and officially using Imperial
Our measuring system is so shit I rather use hamburgers as a distance than miles.
Ehhhhh... measurements aren't that hard to learn. They're still measuring the same kinds of things. All measurements are still arbitrary to a human.
Basically the ONLY thing the metric system has over imperial is it matches our number system by being base-10. I know I know, it's a BIG difference for a lot of calculations to not have to throw in non-matching unit conversions, and the metric system is ultimately based on absolute values pulled from the universe. At least by definition, as meaningless as that fact is to humans just looking at a length and going, "yup, that's about 1 1/2 meters.".
Anyone who failed to build an intuition simply didn't use units enough. A lot of US carpenters like imperial units for a similar reason most like the metric system: The ratios match up to what they work with. Most people work with base-10 numbers A LOT more than base 8, 12, or 16. Though for woodworkers, when boards come in feet, blades are clean fractions of inches in size, and buildings are sized 8' tall, etc, etc, it all lines up nicely to reduce a worker's mental load.
I still think metric is superior, but imperial very much is not "senseless". The biggest reason we'll never switch is because so many industries have their ratios set for imperial units or interact with other American construction based on those ratios. Not to mention maintenance on things already built. It'd be a huge headache of a transition for many industries.
It's not that it's hard to learn, it's that we don't have a strong intuition. It's not that difficult to know there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard or that metric is entirely based around factos of 10. But its the intuition of what an inch looks like, what a pound feels like to hold in you hand. Most people wouldn't be able to pick up an object and say, "that weighs about a pound" or look at an object and say "that's about 3 feet long" but a lot of people do have an intuition what an energy drink can looks and feels like and can imagine getting hit by one, a lot of people have picked up a pineapple at the grocery story, people have the intuition of how big a football field is or how big a city bus is.
I agree, that's why I said, "... they simply don't use the units enough."
I know imperial VERY well, but that's because I lift weights listed in lbs and craft things all the time, which takes measuring. I also do 3d printing in metric, so I have a solid feel for millimeters, centimeters, and decimeters, but less so full meters because I seldom work on that scale.
Considering I had an intuition for lbs as a child, though... I don't really buy that people suck at their native units as adults. If they do, they're simply not paying attention.
It's true, all Americans jointly held the camera to take this picture then sat down together to write the headline
That's right. We all got together and decided to write moronic headlines like this.
It definitely isn't just a handful of editors in a few newsrooms making these decisions on their own.
As you prepare a cup of tea with a teaspoon of sugar...
Sorry mate, but I prepare 350ml of tea with no sugar