this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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No one in the US knows WTF a long and short ton are. A ton is 2k lbs. And most Americans probably don't even know the exact weight of a ton outside of "a shit load."
For the most part, we generally only use pounds, feet, miles. Everything else is a mystery. Even ounces, cups and gallons are some fucking magical mystery. Just follow the recipe.
I switched everything to metric years ago, and have never been happier. It made a huge difference in most of the things I do, having a system that makes internal sense. The only thing I still routinely use standard for is sewing, because it's damn near impossible to find any patterns or things like cutting mats in metric in the right sizes for quilting.
There recently was a discussion on lemmy where several US citizens (one of them allegedly an engineer…) tried to explain to me that metric might be „more precise“ (? 😂) but the imperial system more practical, because „everybody knows what a foot is“. When I asked them to add feet to miles I got shouted at (in CAPS) that noone (ever) does that. 🤷♀️
Lol, that sounds very much “as a black man”
I’ll tell you, most of us in the states would love a total switch to metric. We use it where is matters most, but we also have an aging population raised on lead has fumes that think anything they don’t know is “communism” or “wholeness” or whatever else the propaganda right spews. Those are the assholes that pretty much stop progress on anything.
I’m big into 3D printing, actually got into the same argument with another 3D printing guy…. And I’m like, literally EVERYTHING we do is in metric. The whole damn hobby is metric.
I hate humanity
You mean the „engineer“? Well, what can I say, he was insisting his professor at uni taught him „a true engineer can work with every system“.
I mean yes, but the difference is one engineer is just happily pushing around decimals, the other one goes pale when you ask what 1/5th of a gallon in cubic inches is…
Hehe, yea, I was poking fun at the “engineer”. There was a congressman a while ago that got caught posting right wing stuff on twitter from an alt account “as a black man” (dude was white of course”
Sometimes I like to think about the logistical challenges with a switch to metric. The one that always gives me pause is highway signs. Thinking about the monumental task of replacing every speed sign, distance sign, and mile marker across the country in any timely period makes my head hurt.
It could certainly be done, and is probably easier than I think with all the state DoTs working independently on it especially over time. We have a lot of road with a lot of signs.
That's a good point, but we don't have to even fully replace them. I admit I don't know the name of the technology but I see many street signs or construction signs that have basically a printed metal sticker slapped over the old information.
I honestly hate that argument. "it would cost so much to change all those signs" is just negative talk for "it would employee a shit ton of people, create a lot of jobs, and be a major infrastructure project that could help our economy.". Honestly, the economic benefit of major infrastructure works is rarely talked about as much as it should be. Mainly, I think, because the people it benefits are the ones actually doing the work. And that's scary to a certain segment of society that would like very much that not to be the case.
I don't think it's a valid argument against metric, just a thought experiment to consider about the time needed to implement. Converting would be a slow process, but I agree it could be an economic boost as swapping things is a largely a manual process
Meant to mention in my first comment, I haven't met many other people who like to randomly imagine the ways major structural changes would take place. Lol.
I like to pick a huge project. Like, say, single payer healthcare, or the nationalization of an industry, and then imagine the individual steps that would need to be taken to get there. Doesn't necessarily have to be a project I'd support, I just have fun imagining the ways it would need to happen.
I think the bigger one is the construction industry.
2"x4" studs. 4'x8' plywood. 16" O.C.
Changing to 44x95, 1219x2438, 406 O.C doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We could switch over to the metric equivalents (like 1250x1250 or 600 O.C.), but that would mean switching out machinery and would break a lot of standards.
I say that Metric is like color vision. You can see things in whole new and easier ways. People in USC can't understand what others see and insist things are just fine the way they are. Thus the "no one ever does that", "why would you need to know that", "who cares", etc.
It is true that no one ever does that though. That doesn't mean its not a problem, but I've never seen anyone do it. If you need to do something like that and you have a brain, you use metric. Just because its flawed doesn't mean imperial should be completely abolished though. What needs to stop is people thinking imperial is better than metric somehow. Aside from that, its just a weird flawed measurement system.
We don't use imperial in the US, we use US customary. Some units have different sizes in imperial. For example, a US pint is 16oz and an imperial pint is 20oz.
That's how they get you. They make the beer smaller.
I saw that too, and many of them claimed they learn both Metric and Imperial British systems and convert between them all the time. So this stood out now:
I mean, it's true. Ask an American to visualize an ounce of anything other than drugs, and they probably won't be able to. Ask how many ounces in a gallon, and they'll Google it. Even cups aren't well understood. We can eyeball a mile on the interstate, or tell you how tall someone is, or lift a box and guess it's weight to within 5 pounds. But honestly, that's about it. We just aren't really taught to visualize our weights and measures, it's why newscasters keep saying shit like "8 Olympic swimming pools!" Or "the size of three football fields" because we just don't have a coherent system ingrained in us. That's also, I think, why we're so against metrification. Because weights and measures feel hard, because we're basically only semi-literate in our own mother tongue, so a "foreign language" feels like it'd be this huge undertaking.
This really isn't an American thing - it's just human, we can't really visualize dimensions accurately unless we have a good reference. Some may measure the Olympic swimming pool in feet others in meters, but the effect is the same.
Really? ... Am I super weird then? Because I can visualize volume and distance really well. I just assumed that was being, like, literate in both systems of measure.
Everyone can visualize volume and distance really well in their own head. Doesn't mean they're right. Try it for yourself, maybe you're gifted?
They are right, no one ever does that. Their reasoning for the imperial system being practical is stupid though. The reason it can be practical is that its useful to have a unit the size of a foot sometimes. Metric is better in general, but there are aspects of the imperial system I would miss if I switched entirely. I just use imperial in casual conversation and metric for anything important.
edit: To be clear I'm not saying conversion from feet to miles isn't a problem because no one does that, its the opposite. No one does it because its a problem.
I wish decimeter was used more commonly. It kinda takes up the place of the imperial foot.
That's the great thing about being a metric user in the US. It's not the common system here, and the only people who really use it consistently are those who do so for work, and those who just enjoy it the same way one might enjoy learning a new language. It's sort of a grassroots thing here. And because it's not the standard system, there's no one here telling us what measures are socially acceptable to use and which aren't. Use the decimeter. Hell, if you like it, use it in Europe, you might get a weird look, but it won't be like asking for the distance to the deli in leagues. They'll still understand. In the US, use the decimeter if you want. I've used the metric system exclusively for so long, started as a sort of personal test, that I tend to think in metric now. I look at something and think "30cm" more than I think "a foot," occasionally I'll think "bout a 1/3 of a meter."
Have fun with it. Also, hot tip. If you ever struggle with temps, it's percentage of boiling. 0% of boiling is frozen. 100% of boiling is boiling. 20% of boiling is nice.
Sigh, here we go again…
Yes YOU don’t do that. Because you can’t.
Everybody in Europe can and does so. There’s nothing arcane or mysterious about the metric system. I have no issues telling you how many litres of water go into a 50 x 50 x 200 cm aquarium, or a pool with a 3.5 m diameter and 80 cm height. Good luck doing that with your inches and feet and quarts and gallons.
There’s nothing „more useful“ about either a foot or a meter. Either you know how much it is or you don’t. Everybody knows what a meter is. For me it’s a large step. My arm from elbow to fingertips is 50 cm. Or 1/2 m… A sheet of paper is 30 cm (actually it’s 297 mm, but that’s another story), and so are rulers. Which, btw, is very close to a „foot“.
Your foot btw most likely is not as long as a „foot“, and a small woman’s size is easily 20% off. And no, that’s not „in the ballpark“.
I won't argue that, its a flawed measurement system. My goal isn't to show you why imperial is so much better than metric, because its obviously not. That doesn't mean imperial is never useful though.
They can both do the same job, but its more convenient to have smaller units depending on what you're measuring. I find the size of a foot to be convenient for measuring things in casual situations where accuracy and precision aren't priorities.
We don't literally measure it with our feet, that's just what its called.
See, that’s what apparently many people don’t understand: with metric you don’t have „larger or smaller units“. You have one unit and you scale it to your needs. It’s not like we have „the meter“ and „the centimeter“ and have no clue what’s in between. There’s absolutely nothing more convenient about having multiple units for the same physical property.
Again: There’s nothing more or less precise about metric or imperial. You have a mental image of a „foot“ the same way I have a mental image of a ruler or a sheet of paper, i.e. 30 cm.
I don’t really know what a litre is. I know what a beer bottle looks like, or a milk carton, the same way you know what a quart of milk looks like. Pour a quart on the floor and ask someone how much that is, they probably don’t know.
Oh, I definitely had other people tell me imperial is „more human“ because a foot is the size of your foot and an inch is the size of the tip of your thumb.
Sometimes I think there was a missed opportunity in defining an easy conversion between inches and cm. It is 2.54 cm to 1". Why couldn't it simply be 2.5? Then a 2x4 from the building supplier could simply be renamed a 5x10. 5.8x11.6 doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well.
My understanding is that the metre was inspired by nautical measures? So the distance from pole to equator along sea level is supposedly 10000 km. But that's pretty approximate, and there is a more rigorous definition that involves the wavelength of a certain type of radiation. But that number is quite arbitrary-sounding. Couldn't they have chosen it to line up with the imperial system at some level to aid migration? Anyway, that train has left the station and I'll stop ranting now…
At the time when the metric system was created, imperial units weren't standardized at all, so if centimeters lined up with one definition of inch, they wouldn't line up with the many other definitions anyway.
Point taken. Reading up on it on wikipedia, I love the the legal definition from 1814, wherein one inch = "three grains of sound ripe barley being taken out the middle of the ear, well dried, and laid end to end in a row".
I mean, if you're converting feet to miles, you're doing something weird.
How many 39 ft rails do you need to build a 100 mile railroad?
lbs = elbows? 2 thousand human elbows?!
Yes. Jesus, why can't Europeans educate themselves on real measurements! We measure in feet and bald eagles for distance. We measure in shotgun shells, elbows and pounds for weight. We measure in ATNT for temperature. That's Ambient Truck Nut Temperature, which is the temperature of a pair of truck nuts after driving for 80 bald eagles at 40 bald eagles per Active Shooter Warning, at sea level on a Wednesday. It's not complicated.
it's from the Latin "libra", for balance, like a set of scales. the £ symbol for pounds as in money is a stylised L for the same reason!
etymology lesson over, imperial/customary gtfo resumes. metric ftw.