this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
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US has imperial for everything but guns and drugs, there are countries that use a lot of both (like UK) but there are many countries that use no imperial
I live in a country that's gradually moved to metric over the last 30 years. The only thing we use imperial for now is height and pints in the pub. Older folks still use it for body weight.
Speed limits were less of an issue than you might think as they convert pretty closely - 30mph is very close to 50kph etc.
I love that a litre of water weighs a kilo and takes up 100 cubic centimetres.
There's a really good reason for this, the first being that there is no metric equivalent of a pint because if there was it would be 500ml and an imperial pint is 570ml, nobody wants less beer in their pint. Poor Americans have a 475ml pint.
The height one (and any other remnants of imperial numeracy) is largely due to American cultural media exports and it's easier for non Americans to convert to American imperial units due to exposure to both, to engage in effective communication.
We use both for guns, caliber is imperial (.22, .45, etc).
We exclusively use metric for science
If we're talking legal drugs, my prescriptions all come in milligrams.
If we're talking illegal drugs, though fractions of ounces or pounds were more common, it wasn't unusual to come across someone selling stuff by the gram back in the day, and I can't imagine that's changed. The weed dude would sell any amount at $10/gram - and yes, I did see someone come with $3 once. 😂 I don't remember the coke dude's prices because that was much longer ago, but he was also totally fine with selling single grams.
Maybe my experience was different because I live in a college town, so the black market was supportive of the small purchases necessitated by student budgets.
Really shows their priorities
Drugs, guns, baking, construction, manufacturing... actually, the better way to put it would be "literally fucking everywhere but the road signs and speedometers."