American measures are shit

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ToroidalBoat said:
There is an advantage to America -- still the world's largest economy -- not adopting metric: it can hinder globalization.

(if you see globalizing as a bad thing that is)
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Whenever people say "it would be easier to switch to metric" they mean "it would be easier for ME if YOU switched to metric."
 
Zamzz said:
I mean this has been known for quite a long time, there's a reason imperial units are known as exceptional individual units in the rest of the world. Everytime I hear someone say gallon, cup, inch, feet or whatever dumbfuck units americans use I want to roundhouse kick them in the face.
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If I shared your autismal sentiments I would have to fight every person over the age of 40 I came across, because a lot of people here still use pounds and ounces informally despite two centuries of the metric system. Must suck even worse for the French, because a decent chunk of their basic counting system is vigesimal and follows the same type of mathetical logic on which the Imperial system is based. Better punch yourself in the face every time you look at a clock as well.

It's retarded and downright larpy to get buttmad over Imperial units, because whatever flaws the system might have aren't that relevant to normal, everyday life. It's only when you start using complex math that the benefits of a highly regular and interchangeable, decimalized system of measurement becomes obvious, which is why NASA and the US military have largely switched to metric.

But for the average Joe, shopping for groceries? Who gives a fuck. Both systems are perfectly functional, it's really just a matter of what you grew up using and are most comfortable with.
 
Don't forget, America tried the metric system in the 70's and it failed (it was optional not mandatory). I remember when I was young seeing road signs giving distances in miles and kilometers. We're just stubborn as hell and it would be a monumental undertaking. It's too ingrained our daily lives. In healthcare we do everything in metric, so I'm very familiar with it, but my brain will always think in Imperial units.
 
Mesh Gear Fox said:
Don't forget, America tried the metric system in the 70's and it failed (it was optional not mandatory). I remember when I was young seeing road signs giving distances in miles and kilometers. We're just stubborn as hell and it would be a monumental undertaking. It's too ingrained our daily lives. In healthcare we do everything in metric, so I'm very familiar with it, but my brain will always think in Imperial units.
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We'll do it when we damn well feel like it and not a second before.
 
Mesh Gear Fox said:
Don't forget, America tried the metric system in the 70's and it failed (it was optional not mandatory).
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I have a small National Geographic collection with issues from the '60s to the early '10s or so. You can see that in them: the '60s issues only use imperial, the '70s and '80s use metric, and by the end of the collection, it's back to only imperial IIRC.
 
Un Platano said:
Hot take: time measurements are as convoluted as distances are in American units but everyone still uses those.
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Yeah, it's retarded to harp on about how inherently illogical Imperial is when we all use similar logic for time.

That having been said, there are good reasoms why decimalisation of time never caught on. First off, the overarching reason for introducing the metric system wasn't just to create a more logical way of measuring things, but a standardized way. Back in those days, pretty much every town in Europe had its own, wildly different idea of how long an inch was. Rather than getting everyone to adhere to redefined forms of age-old terms, it was a lot easier to just invent completely new ones, without all the bagage of tradition. In contrast, by the 1790s everyone in the Western world had long agreed on what a minute, hour and day was, and the Gregorian Calendar had become the standard for most.

And the reason why people had agreed on that already is that time is just fundamentally different from measurements like distance and weight. With the latter, all you really have to do is just come up with some measurements, and then use them as benchmarks. It doesn't matter if you're using feet or metres, you can accurately calculate distance with them because of the understandable value they represent. But you can't really do that with time on a grand scale, because concepts like 'days' and 'years' are so important, as they refer to and are influenced by natural phenonena that rarely correspond neatly to human forms of calculation. You can invent a nice decimal system of hours, days and months, but if it don't roughly correspond to actual 'sun-up/sun-down' days, or doesn't help you have a sense of when winter arrives, it's pretty pointless.

To this day we still have to basically cheat with our calendars and 12-hour days, in order to make them line up with a physical reality that doesn't give a shit about how we try to make sense of it.
 
Chive Turkey said:
It's exceptional and downright larpy to get buttmad over Imperial units, because whatever flaws the system might have aren't that relevant to normal, everyday life. It's only when you start using complex math that the benefits of a highly regular and interchangeable, decimalized system of measurement becomes obvious, which is why NASA and the US military have largely switched to metric.
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While metric may help with complex logistical calculations, I’d guess that the main reason the US military standardized on Metric has more to do with coordinating with allies. The US has jerked NATO around on it’s leash many a time but forcing everyone in Western Europe to deal with Imperial measurements was probably a bridge too far.

Especially when dealing with things that are literally matters of national security.
 
"I'd walk 1.6 kilometers for a Camel"
"Give me 0.45 kilograms of your flesh!"
"12.8 Kilometers High" by the Byrds
"1.82 Meters Deep"
"28.3495 grams of prevention is worth 0.4536 kilograms of cure"
"2.54 Centimeterworm, 2.54 Centimeterworm, measuring the marigolds"
"Dance remix available on 30.48 centimeter vinyl"
"1.6 Kilometer High Stadium"
"I'll have 473 milliliters of Foster's, mate"
"110474 Kilometers Under the Sea" by Jules Verne
"Come within 2.54 centimeters of your life"

This is why the metric system is gay.
 
Dutch Courage said:
"I'd walk 1.6 kilometers for a Camel"
"Give me 0.45 kilograms of your flesh!"
"12.8 Kilometers High" by the Byrds
"1.82 Meters Deep"
"28.3495 grams of prevention is worth 0.4536 kilograms of cure"
"2.54 Centimeterworm, 2.54 Centimeterworm, measuring the marigolds"
"Dance remix available on 30.48 centimeter vinyl"
"1.6 Kilometer High Stadium"
"I'll have 473 milliliters of Foster's, mate"
"110474 Kilometers Under the Sea" by Jules Verne
"Come within 2.54 centimeters of your life"

This is why the metric system is gay.
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The numbers could just as easily be fixed because the sense of magnitude that those measurements give is far more important than the specific number. You can say "a gram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure" and the meaning is unchanged. I do agree though that it's hard to make anything sound poetic about metric units.

Speaking of weight, that's one situation where the imperial system is truly superior to the metric system because in it people measure weight using units of weight. I absolutely abhor hearing kilograms used to describe force because it's based on a fundamental misconception that most people have about units. That's one of the reasons why people are talking out of their ass when they say that metric is better because "it's more scientific." If the average person had anything to benefit from this concept of "scientificness" they wouldn't be measuring their weight in kilograms.
 
Dutch Courage said:
"I'd walk 1.6 kilometers for a Camel"
"Give me 0.45 kilograms of your flesh!"
"12.8 Kilometers High" by the Byrds
"1.82 Meters Deep"
"28.3495 grams of prevention is worth 0.4536 kilograms of cure"
"2.54 Centimeterworm, 2.54 Centimeterworm, measuring the marigolds"
"Dance remix available on 30.48 centimeter vinyl"
"1.6 Kilometer High Stadium"
"I'll have 473 milliliters of Foster's, mate"
"110474 Kilometers Under the Sea" by Jules Verne
"Come within 2.54 centimeters of your life"

This is why the metric system is gay.
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."Hell's Half Hectare" soungs ok though. Evwn though I have no idea what the fuck size a hectare is supposed to be.
 
metric is real useful when you start math and geometry stuff, especially in more than one dimension, because the measurements all scale and convert into each other very nicely (because they were designed to do exactly that)
1000mm is 1m, 1000m is 1km, 10mm is 1cm, 10 cm cubed is 1000 cm^3 which is 1 liter, 1 liter of water weighs approximately 1kg which is 1000g, etc
i can't imagine what horrible mess you'd get from trying to up-convert a volume measured in cubic inches to cubic feet and then figure out how many pounds that volume of water would weigh

but for everyday use all that shit doesn't really matter, so unless you work in a scientific or technical field metric vs imperial is a real pointless debate to have
 
hear me out:

download.jpg

Inch worms are cute
main_housecentipededesktop.jpg
Centipedes are gross.

Checkmate, Europe
 
Imperial units for baking are fine, most of old cooking and baking was measured in old units, anyway.

What gets a lot of immigrants from metric systems is the temperature measurements more than anything. 180 Celsius is equal to 350 Fahrenheit, which is s a pre-set temperature for most ovens, but if you're used to 200 Celsius which is pretty standard for Russian baking, for example, you have to crank it up to 392 in Fahrenheits, and not 400. Eventually, you learn to approximate, memorize the exact conversions or just get used to a particular oven you cook with, but that requires at least some failed experiments.
 
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