this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
135 points (97.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36198 readers
822 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've learned about them in school, but I've never heard anyone say something is 8 decameters long or anything like that. I'm an American.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

"Similar" = "not exactly"

Your point?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think the point op is making is with 'stones' or 'furlongs' etc you need to already know what that unit represents to make sense of it.

With metric units, even the infrequently used increments can be reasoned out just from the name of the unit, as it's a standard prefix in fixed multiples of 10, not a random number that must be learnt.

So they're neither similar or exactly the same in principle really.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In fairness, you also need to already know what grams, meters, and seconds represent. And the prefixes are hardly self-explanatory. You’d still have to look up the unfamiliar ones. Just like you have to look up nautical miles or knots.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well with metric there are alot less words you need to know to use them I think is the point of difference.

Like you need to know that a stone represents a weight, and that that weight is 14 pounds. What's a pound? Oh it's 12 ounces. None of those words are the same out of context but all describe a weight and the size of the weight.

In metric you only need to know that grams measure weight, metres length, litres volume. Then everyday use is normal prefix increments like OP said.

And again the prefixes apply consistently across units too, so a millimetre, a millilitre or a milligram will all be the same fraction of their base.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It seems that we're both fans of SI units. I'm not arguing against metrics. But you still have to know what the words mean, and to do that, you have to look them up. You can also look up deebles if necessary.

And not to pick nits, but grams measure mass, not weight. Weight is newtons. A pound is 16 ounces, not 12. A lot of the measures, such as weights and volumes, use powers of two: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 63, 128.

It's easy to get imperials confused. That's why I'd rather call a pound about a half kilo in my head and be done with it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Haha, I promise I didn't intentionally make my point about how obscure imperial units are in conversion. I looked it up but clearly transcribed wrong!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

LOL! I had to look it up too, and I was raised with them. I know the dozen or so that I use everyday, and that’s about all. Volumes are especially bonkers. I can never remember how many cups in a gallon or how many ounces in a pint.