I was born in the US and have switched by myself. My brother thought I was weird until one day we went to the hardware store.
I needed to buy a 15/64 in drill bit, but they didn’t have it. So then we thought, fine, maybe we can use the next closest size…
…
Except WTF is the next size up or down from 15/64??!!! Neither of us could figure it out. Internet wasn’t great. Sales people didn’t know. We left because we weren’t sure what to buy.
In metric, it’s trivial. 5mm drill bit, 4mm is smaller, 6mm is bigger.
After this, he stopped thinking I was a weirdo for using metric measurements. But he still uses imperial because murica.
Also, interesting, I learned that he thinks imperial units were invented by the US. I told him they were British units and I stopped caring about British units in 1776, but he didn’t seem to believe me.
16/64 is 1/4. Your next size up is a quarter inch. Is it intuitive? Maybe not. Is it really that hard? Only if your educational institutions have also failed you.
Except WTF is the next size up or down from 15/64??!!!
There’s lots of great reasons to switch to metric. Inability to do basic fractions isn’t one of them…
For the record, it would be 16/64, or, 1/4
For the record, it would be 16/64, or, 1/4
Nope! It’d be 6mm, then B gauge (6.045mm), then 1/4" (6.350mm). And that’s not including things like over/under reamers and such.
(Sorry, I’ve been watching too much Blondihacks lately.)
What does he think “imperial” means? “federal”?
To be fair the modern USA is imperialist, we just don’t call it that because imperialism is no longer considered a good thing.
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Any baking recipe that doesn’t list all measurements by weight belongs in the trash.
mfw I finally find someone else who writes “250gr water” in their cooking notes
Fortunately water is the easiest thing to convert.
Yeah man, can’t believe some recipes go to 11.
We went from posting Twitter screenshots as memes to posting reddit screenshots as memes
That’s called progress, imo
Excuse me, I think you mean X.com screenshots.
It’s so nice the US and Liberia are the only two countries to share both Ebola AND the imperial system. They’re buddy buddy.
TBF in practice a lot of countries use the imperial system, from Canada to the UK to Jamaica to the Philippines. They just “use metric” on paper.
Also, here in the Netherlands we use inches for screen sizes and cups for some cooking recipes. I will insist that my monitor is 55cm and even tech people ask me how much that is with full sincerity.
Yes like I certainly measure flour in cups in Canada lol.
I noticed some Canadians seem to use metric exclusively, while others very much use imperial systems through and through. Android defaults to imperial systems when it’s set to Canadian English, which confuses me even more but I suppose imperial must be used a lot, then
I find stuff like cups and spoons and pounds and inches are used here more than metric, but we definitely use kilometers only.
Android lied to me
Maybe it’s a plot by the Australian government because it led me to set all my devices to Australian English; they’re always 100% metric
@lord_ryvan @BonesOfTheMoon, I don’t understand how it can be in the 21st century that a system as idiotic and archaic as the imperial one continues to be used. NASA has already caused millions of dollars in damage by crashing several probes due to miscalculations with these outdated and devoid of any logic measurements, based on parts of the body of a king, dead centuries ago instead of clear physical and mathematical units as in the rest of the world.
I also don’t get it and my country is slowly adapting it too (Netherlands)
I absolutely hate it and try to counter it actively
The A* paper standard and the metric system. A Pythagorean can dream.
Mfs don’t realize we already fuckin use metric for all kinds of shit.
I bet the dang Nasa doesn’t measure their rockets by the barley corn.
Fun probably-already-known fact: NASA accidentally destroyed a $200 million Mars orbiter from of a missed imperial->metric conversion, because NASA does generally work in metric, and some Lockheed-Martin software provided numbers in imperial (while claiming to be metric)
Didn’t you see the meme: “There are 2 types of countries, those that ise the metric system and those that landed on the moon.”?
It’s also usually shared by the same idiots that don’t realise that barley corn is an actual measurement in their beloved imperial system.
Ask any of these smart arses how barley corns are in a foot or how many feet are in a mile and suddenly you hear excuses. Not to forget that the inch defined by the meter.
I’m not sure what your point is? Some people not knowing a certain obscure unit of measurement doesn’t discount an entire system of measurements. Also your mile example doesn’t make sense because most people do know how many feet are in a mile.
You’re proving my point exactly. The imperial system is so convoluted that even people that INSIST that EVERYONE should use it, don’t understand its units.
Just because most people don’t have to deal with a certain conversion, doesn’t mean that none do. There are enough engineers that design stuff which is related to problems on these variations in scale. They waste hours in productivity in needlessly complicated conversions (because fractions). Not to mention the mistakes that get introduced like the famous Mars lander that crashed because of imperial unit conversions.
Not only are the units incredibly inconsistent, you also have the issue that Brits and boat people use variation of some of the same units. US Gallons vs British Gallons, mile vs nautical mile. MPH, vs knots. That barley corn that Holzkohlen mentioned defines shoe sizes, unless of course, you don’t wear shoes.
You have no point to prove! You’re just ranting like a crazy person about stuff no one’s heard of that doesn’t even matter!
Please, baking is such a pain in the ass because measurements are never consistent
And everything is measured by volume. Just tell me the amount of salt I need in grams and I don’t have to worry about if it’s kosher or not.
inconsistent flour hydration and packing density has entered the chat
Sure it is
You can teaspoon the shit out of everything. 3tsp to a table. 5ml to 15ml. Cut recipes by turning everything into a tablespoon. Need to make 1/2 of something that is already 1/4 cup? That’s 16 tbsp to a cup, so you were at 4, now half a 1/4 cup is simply 2 tbsp
For dry shit, get a gram scale and welcome to consistency city
I didn’t know the conversion for tbsp to cups, that’s super helpful!
Google assistant has gotten worse and worse but “Hey Google, how many tablespoons are in x” is pretty helpful
Or use DuckDuckGo
Or use the terminal app
qalc, which converts and calculates with everything!Does that plug into assistant speakers?
I’m not a massive fan of it but hands free cooking questions are nice. I use DDG for my browser search
I’m sure some open hardware hacker could get DuckDuckGo or
qalcto work through their home-soldered voice-controlled assistant.But other than that, no. For what it’s worth, I spend 2 to 3 seconds for each conversion through the terminal when preparing a recipe, or about 15 seconds unlocking my phone and looking it up in DDG on the spot
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Grocery volumes (Milk, dairy products, shampoo, basically anything purchased in a container)? litres.
Meanwhile, here in the US, we’ve got soda in liters but milk in gallons. Udder madness!
Carpentry measurements? Inches.
It amuses me that in metric countries, construction materials like plywood are often standardized to strange non-rounded measurements like 1220 x 2440 x 13mm because it’s actually just 4’ x 8’ x 1/2" in disguise.
Wrenches? whatever fits!
Interestingly, I can’t remember the last time I needed SAE wrenches. Even my old '96 Ford Ranger is metric, I think.
Cars have been all metric since the mid-80s IIRC, to better standardise them for international sales. The Ranger was really a Mazda B-series, so it’s definitely metric.
And Celsius? And 24 hour time?
We use 24 h format here where I live but we speak in 12 h format because it’s less awkward. Not all that shines is gold, I guess
Computer, wake me up at zero six hundred hours!
That’s absurd, we just say “wake me up at six hours” and it understands us.
And “wake me up at 18 oʼclock” for the pm variant.
When I was 6 in 1980, they told us we would be switching in a year or two.
I’d heard of that before so after a quick google America passed the Metric Conversion Act in 1975 then in 1982 the Metric Board was abolished by President Ronald Reagan…
So like the harbinger of doom for American progress he was Regan killed it…
Any day now
Just like daylight savings time…
We actually got rid of that in Denmark recently, but in a pretty foolish way: our time is now locked in on daylight savings time rather than the original unmodified time.
Probably gonna mean some dark mornings when the times come and we don’t switch back, which’ll suck for those of us who have a hard time getting out of bed before the sun’s up…
It’s so nice to measure fluid in milliliters and grams, it all works so well.
Measuring flour in cups can fuck right off.
fr baking needs precision
Weight is the only acceptable way to measure flour and water for baking.
Super selfish reason but as an architect in the US, I deal with nice round imperial numbers all day. Door frames, typically 2”. Standard commercial door, 3’x7’. All the codes are based around imperial too. ADA door width, 3’. Masonry Dimension, every 8 inches. At this point, it would be hard to remember that ADA turning radius is 1525 mm (not the easy 5’…. And yes, I know that’s changing to 67” soon). There are literally hundreds of dimensions I would have to relearn. I suppose it’s probably for the best to switch over and rip that bandaid off, but damn, it would be a headache and take me much longer to review drawings in metric (in the short term).
How long is that thing?
A foot.
How long is that?
About as long as a foot.
Oh cool, I have two of those to compare right here. Thanks for telling me how long stuff is in an easy to understand way.
What about that thing?
30 centimeters.
How long is a centimeter?
A hundredth as long as a meter.
How long is a meter?
As long as the distance light can travel in a vacuum in 1/299752458 of a second.
Please throw yourself off a bridge for using bizarre measurements developed by frenchmen.
Whose foot? Chances are yours isn’t even a good approximation.
Jokes aside, there isn’t even such a thing as foot anymore. All these idiotic measurement units like feet and elbows have thankfully been deprecated and are now simply a name for a certain amount of civilized units. Foot is exactly 0.3048 meters since 1959.
+/- 20% is good enough for e6 and covers the overwhelming majority of men’s foot lengths.
For making a measurement without a tool +/-20% should be fine.
It’s all fun and games, but I take issue with calling metric “civilized units”. Human civilization developed all kinds of units appropriate to the work being done and calling the ones defined almost in defiance of everyday use the civilized ones is absurd.
Being able to easily convert between various units makes the metric system the only one worth considering civilized.
Every time I see a wrench labeled with some insane fraction like 18/32 my eye starts twitching. I honestly cannot tell which size is bigger without dividing and converting to decimal.
Human civilization developed all kinds of dumb shit we’ve since discarded. Please let’s discard the idiotic units in my lifetime.
I think you mean a 9/16. It’s be pretty crazy to see one labeled 18/32.
When you wanna make fun of sae use an odd number on top so no one can make fun of you for not reducing your fractions like a fourth grader. Or so you whip out 9/12 and get elementary school math mogged anyway.
How is it easier to convert between units under metric? I don’t have any use for a kilogram length of lumber or a meter of gasoline. What unit conversions are you doing?
Nah, my ruler has cm on one side and inches on the other. The side with inches actually, unironically, lists 1/8 through 7/8 in each inch, including 2/8, 4/8 and 6/8!
It’s not @[email protected] who is being dumb, the Imperial system is.
I can’t see what you described the sae side as because of a word filter, but I can guarantee a worse pejorative was used for people who chose that ruler on a job or worse, were assigned it in shop class. I think there’s a not for dumb people use for the unreduced scale but for the life of me I just can’t think of it.
Is that really the complaint, that people don’t wanna do fractions?
I called it dumb with stronger wording, but that was unnecessary and I’ve updated my comment to be more clear.
And yes, among many other reasons. The main complaint is that the systems uses many different conversions internally; 12 inch in a foot, 72 points in an inch, 3 feet in a yard, an arbitrary amount of yards in a landmile, and slightly more at sea… I understand this wasn’t designed deliberately, that imperial is really just 3 measurement systems in a trench coat. But that’s exactly the problem.
But also yes, I’d rather do 9 mm or1 cm, than 3/8 inch
Actually not accurate for “Rest of the World”, China uses year month day.
Which is the best date format for sorting stuff alphabetically.
Iso standard time
I personally fucking hate ounces. Recipes could mean volume or weight.
They could but let’s be realistic. Anyone who uses volume for recipes is a moron.
And now we’ll add a pound of milk
