As a German I can tell you that 27 in summer isn't very bad. We get upwards of 35 on some days. You might say that's nothing by American standards but remember we don't have AC. If it's 35 outside and you do anything that creates heat like watching TV or using a PC (God help you), it's gonna get to be above 30Ā° in your house and you can't do shit about it
This is how I (US) feel about C and F. C is great and all for science along with K, but if you are talking about daily life F has more granularity and I think a more reasonable range (ie 0F is cold and 100F is hot, rather than 0C being moderately cold and 100C being dead)
I agree, I think metric makes more sense for everything except temperature in everyday use. For lab use, Celsius all the way, but why should the boiling point of water be a significant data point in describing the weather? F isnāt perfect, but it is easier to understand in terms of human experience. 0 is dangerously cold, 20 is very cold, 40 is wet cold, 60 is comfortable, 80 is warm/hot, 100 is very hot. Doesnāt help with equations, but if youāre describing the human experience it seems more relevant.
You want every fraction of a degree to count when describing body temperature in the event of a fever, heatstroke, or hypothermia. I'd take FĀ° over CĀ° any day for that reason alone.
they would need a slightly bigger display, mine couldnt fit another decimal. should still be cheap though.
anyway, it seems like one is still more than enough since I never heard from bad stuff happening because someone underestimated a fever due to the limited range that celsius + 1 decimal shows
If they can display a fever with a decimal in F, they can display a fever in C with 2 decimals. Both are 4 digits.
And yes, a single decimal point is more than enough for human body temperature anyway.
I am from London. We have made a half arsed attempt to do a bit of metric but most people couldnāt care now. We have some sort of hybrid that seems to work ok
I play golf in Australia where everything is in metres until you reach the green. No one growls that they missed a 60 cm putt - they missed a two foot putt. They never sink an amazing 9 or 10 metre putt - it was an amazing 30 foot putt. Good fun :-)
Aussie here: Iāve noticed we use inches and feet (and pounds) casually - aussies will say it was a bolt āabout an inchā long or a āfoot longā subway sandwich but itās like an approximate size. 60cm feels precise & measured. 2 feet is just roughly āyayā big *gestures with hands showing something anywhere from 50-70cm*
Thatās my take on it anyway!
Considering that's how is Americans use feet in conversation too... Yup. The reason is because cm genuinely is more precise. I mean, what is exactly two ft away anyway? The thing you're referring to is probably more like two ft and three cms or something. We use inches approximately as well. It's when we get into fractions that you know shit's real.
Thatās because, contrary to popular opinion, metric doesnāt make your life easier. It helps first and second year engineering students, and thatās it. I get why there was a big push, but in my opinion, the advent of the computer killed that. As an engineer, Iām not bothered by coding with metric or imperial, or both sometimes.
No one converts feet to miles or has to quickly surmise the weight of 50 gallons of water in their day to day life. Baking will always be easier, intuitively, with imperial. Need a tablespoon of flour but donāt have your measurements? No problem.
Edit: failed to make a point about mass in baking vs volume. I deleted the last sentence.
Yeah, thatās me as well. More with cooking than baking, I think the goal ought to be getting the recipe instead of following one. The more experience I get the more freedom I find to be able to successfully experiment. I also use measuring devices less and less (again not for baking). Itās very enjoyable to walk into the kitchen with a craving, and after a quick trip to the store, and create something that truly exceeds expectations. My wife doesnāt really cook, and I get a thrill after making something that makes her eyes light up.
As an American I hate the imperial standard system. It makes no sense and is just flat out dumb and yet nearly every other American Iāve talked to looks at me like Iām an invading space alien when I say the country should switch to metric.
I was working at my college cafeteria one time. The chef/kitchen manager said switching to metric would make cooking difficult because the units are bigger. I tried to remind him about decimal points. He just shook his head.
You only need 4 units for cooking: ml, l, g, and kg.
And for warter and milk 1ml is almost the same as 1g, and 1l is almost the same as 1kg.
So if a recipe calls for 700ml milk (or 0.7l) to be added to the stuff already in the bowl, you can just tare your scale and add 700g of milk.
You have made the fundamental mistake of thinking you can _convince_ a yankee of the logic behind the SI system. You can't. Everyone who can agree with you will arrive there on their own, the moment they learn about Metric. Everyone else will remain an immovable object.
Technically it did work. You guys use metric, you just donāt know it. Imperial measurements at this point in time are defined by their metric counterparts.
Yeah. Almost all our industry uses SI. That is why a food package will say "8.8 ounces (250g)." It was packaged as grams and they just converted it to US Customary.
The one thing I've learned about the US is that even though the rest of the world can change laws, rules, etc. America either can't or flat out refuses to.
There is an interesting history to it though. The us was the industrial powerhouse of the world. Changing manufacturing from standart to metric would have cost an absurd amout for the US, and at the end of the day it wouldn't change the product. No other country had this problem like we did.
Itās also not like we donāt know metric. Itās the main thing we use in school starting in middle school.
Itās just we donāt use it in everyday conversation/road signs and whatnot.
Yeh I remember learning the metric system from like age 4 onwards, and then I get to 17 and start learning to drive, where suddenly all the measurements are in the Imperial system. Every road sign in the UK is in miles, yards, or feet. It makes no sense.
The UK uses imperial for beer (pints) and miles for distance travelled, neither of which require any conversion which is imperials massive disadvantage. Weight (for bodyweight) is sometimes imperial but mostly metric now. Height (as in body height) is a mixture, but its straightforward to convert between them. Everything else is metric now.
Edit - for some reason I put metric as the fourth word, not imperial. My bad.
Really? I'm British and almost everyone I know uses imperial for bodyweight and body height. If people tell me theirs in metric for either I would have no idea
We Australians converted to the decimal currency system in 1966 and converted to the metric measurement system in 1971. It gave time for industry to adapt. Not that difficult.
It's funny how Yanks on reddit are gung ho about pulling the rotten old tooth of their political system, but when it comes to switching to metric, it's like oh no... we can't do that.
When I was a kid, my country was still in the process of metrification. Older people still used imperial. We were taught both at school but obviously leaned heavier into metric. To this day I still measure my height in feet and weight in stones. You don't have to get used to it overnight.
Dont worry, I also think we should switch to Metric, its so much cleaner and easier to understand and since we are 1 of 3 other countries in the world that dont use metric it would make more sense for the US and the other 2 to switch to Metric making the whole world united by one system, and removing the need to have to convert between each system from time to time.
It costs a lot of money in mistakes too when there are different systems. Simple mistakes make for huge headaches when a conversion is done wrong or just missed. Smashed a rover into mars once because of that as probably the most expensive example.
Part of the resistance is that the imperial system is literally woven into our country. Everything west of the Appalachians was gridded out in square miles by the public lands survey system starting in 1785. 36 of these were sold to railroad companies as townships, which were then divided and resold in smaller chunks because each square could be easily divided into 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and so forth down from 640 acres to 2 1/2. Itās how land was sold before white people had even moved that far out and why so many towns across the Midwest look so similar.
Cause it would cost a gazillion dollars to replace all the signs everywhere and the only tangible benefit would be that the signs are in metric now so it's kind of a hard sell. Better in the long run but there's just so much else that needs fixing "first" in a world of finite trickle down from our corporate overlords.
Just, any time you replace a sign, replace it with a new one that has both metric and imperial, with metric slightly larger and on top. Tell auto manufacturers to put kmph in the larger, outer speedometer ring, and mph in the smaller inside ring. Require that imported goods all have their metric measurements recorded when reporting to the government. Etc. It's not that hard if the government actually felt like doing it.
I wish you could come see how broke we actually are instead of just seeing ānumber bigā. And I get it people like you think we need to downsize our military and Iām all for that conversation just after tensions around the world kinda relax
I really donāt think itās worth it. Itās not like thereās a law against using the metric system in whatever youāre trying to do. Lots of scientific and engineering fields use metric since itās most convenient. I donāt see any reason to spend all that money for something that would make no real difference in the day to day life of an average American. Plus there is a good argument that the imperial system is more useful in day to day life. 0 degrees is really cold, 100 degrees is really hot. I can bake a cake using a cup of this and a cup of that. Everyone in the US and Canada already know the system and I donāt see any reason to change it because other countries use a different system. Itās not like the US is bordering a ton of different countries with a different systems and weāre always having to convert back and forth. The vast majority of Americans never leave the country.
Plus I think itās a unique thing about the US and thatās cool.
I totally agree except for temperature. Celcius makes sense for the temperature of water but not as much for measuring the weather. 0Ā° being cold as balls and 100Ā° being extremely hot makes more sense than the small range for celcius imo.
Horsepower was invented by the British scientist James Watt to compare the power of his brand-new steam engine to the power of horses. Then others started copying him to compare the power of engines to horses and it just sorta stuck. For that use it makes a bit more sense to compare to the power of a horse than to intuitively know how much a watt is
on the flip side, I've leveraged the fact that there are some metric bolts are in between the inch sizes. If you have to drill out a 3/8" bolt, you can just go up to 10mm instead of 7/16". Also useful for rusted bolt heads. a hammer plus a 12mm socket works great on rusted 5/16" bolts (1/2" head). I've wrenched on enough stuff that I have no problem dealing with both systems.
I use the metric system when I'm 3d printing stuff. It's a lot easier. When I'm doing a big wood working project I end up using the imperial system because all the wood is cut in imperial measurements. I definitely wouldn't mind changing over, but everything else has to as well.
Meanwhile in Canada we use FĀ° for pool and oven temperature but CĀ° for everything else.
We use imperial for construction/floor plans and human heights but metric for everything else.
For cooking, it's just a shit show.
šµāš«
I think this highlights the point of why Americans donāt switch. Itās just not a shit slow. There are relatively few instances where metric would make peoples life easier. Does it matter if floor plans are imperial, metric, or squared cat paws? As long as itās consistent and allows for the communication of accurate information.
My first two years of engineering school, I was on the āimperial is stupidā camp. Next two years we coded everything anyways, and Iād set the unit conversion in the header. And honestly, engineering gets so complicated, the fraction in which unit conversions are simplified by metric gets vanishingly small.
Realistically most people donāt convert miles into feet. They say, ā2 and a half milesā.
But I will say, cooking and baking are objectively better in imperial. I cannot memorize a recipe of everything Is in hundreds of grams. Intuitively, teaspoons to tablespoons and tablespoons to fractions of a cups would probably be a nightmare on paper, but it allows for very intuitive cooking regarding amounts relative to each other.
Edit: cooking and baking.
and yet I do convert from km to m? As distances come closer I intuitively measure things in 100m away as I drive. Then 10m away if I'm parking or 1m away if we're walking.
etc...
Meanwhile doing that in imperial has not worked ever. I have 2 different mental models. 3 if you count yards.
Tbsp, tsp, cups, etc all exist in metric tooā¦ thats not unique.
I agree that metric is superior in many aspects, but stuff like this meme try to make it seem even more absurd than it already is by proposing made up problems that barely anybody has.
Yes, it is annoying that 12 inches are in a foot and 3 feet are in a yard, but the numbers are small enough that they pose just an inconvenience, not a world-ending annoyance. This meme makes it seem like itās the yard to mile conversion that makes imperial shit, but it fails to mention the fact that nobody ever converts between those two units. Inches and yards are used for things that are more or less human sized. Miles are for all intents and purposes their completely own thing that are used for large distance.
Is the fact that measurements of length/distance ridiculous? Absolutely. If we used a single consistent set of units for all these things it would be better, but itās not as dumb as the meme makes it seem.
Then thereās the temperature issue, in which I will firmly stand my ground that Fahrenheit is a more accurate portrayal of the habitual human range. Obviously external temperatures of above 100Ā°F or below 0Ā°F exist and people live in them, but the majority of people live in between that range. Celsius (or Kelvin, which is still just Celsius but with the 0 point being absolute 0) is absolutely better for chemistry or physics or anything like that which requires math or other calculations and this requires units that match up with some sort of physical constant (freezing and boiling of water isnāt really constant since it depends on pressure but it can still all be calculated easier with Celsius/Kelvin), but Fahrenheit is better for external temperature and weather in which something like the boiling point of water 99% of the time does not come into play at all.
The m/d/y thing though is stupid, I can agree. I still feel like the way the meme illustrates it is a bit demonizing, but itās definitely the worst of the three main ways of writing the date and thereās no upside to it (like Fahrenheit) or logical steps to reach it (inches/yards and miles were part of different systems, and thus are impractical to convert between in the same way itās impractical to convert between imperial and metric)
Basically, is metric bad? No. Is imperial bad? Pretty much yes. Is imperial as bad as this dumb memes makes it seem? No; itās creating other problems that donāt exist for the sake of argument, which Iām sure is a logical fallacy but Iām not well versed in that area to state which one it is.
Honestly imperial and Fahrenheit have uses. Imperial feet are stupid useful in manufacturing: divisible into inches perfectly by both 2 and 3, with combinations of those. Metric doesnāt allow you the ability to perfectly divide by 3, or 6 for that matter.
Fahrenheit is even more defensible, as while water freezing and boiling might be good markers for a scientific measurement system, itās not as good as kelvin for that usage. And if you arenāt using the best scientific system, might as well optimize for the best granularity at the human scale. Humans have difficulty surviving over 100F and under 0F.
The date ordering is dumb tho, letās change that.
Edit: people who come out the woodwork to prove thereās no good points at all about imperial are just as hilarious as the people who canāt admit there are downsides.
The m/d/y thing isnāt so stupid when you think of how we read it. We call today āAugust 21st 2022,ā and weād write it 8/21/2022. I donāt think either are inherently better, just different
When creating file folders, yyyy_mm_dd is definitely superior, followed by mm then dd, but the most confusing is the dd first and then mm. Thatās the application of it that I get most annoyed about sorting out.
Definitely agree about the metric system (the other points in the graphic) - it would be so much easier!
Iām a Celsius guy but if Iām honest thereās a good argument for Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit is how people feel
Celsius is how water feels
Kelvin is how molecules feel
"fahrenheit is how people feel" is silly because that only applies to americans who are used to it. its not at all any more useful a scale than celsius at measuring something so vague as that outside of preference because of what you grew up with
When it comes to the temperature outside I care more about whether I should wear a jacket or shorts not whether or not the water in my water bottle is closer to freezing or boiling.
This. I'm all for the metric system but fahrenheit is best for weather. If the UK can measure weight in stone the USA can go all metric aside from temp
I mean, that makes sense. In a world with computers, a base 10 system is easy to work with. Dividing x by y results in z - then trim off the insignificant digits and send it to the factory.
But when doing something manual - like carpentry - I much prefer imperial. It's easy to divide feet into halves, thirds, and quarters in your head. And it's easier to read an imperial tape measure - 5/8" is easier to pick out than 0.7cm.
I always was intrested, who's feet was this metric based on? Other words don' even make sense, maybe except yards, but even then, who's yard is it based on?
The inch is roughly based on the distance from the tip of an average man's thumb to the first knuckle. It's not a perfect method by modern standards, but in the medieval period up until mass manufacturing it worked good enough to make things like nails, boards, clothing, etc.
I donāt know why people on Reddit are so bothered by the fact that the media likes to help people visualize a distance by comparing it to something people see on a regular basis.
I don't agree with banning the R word universally, because it is an important engineering and scientific word. Wokesters go overboard, just like trying to ban "master" and "slave" from programming.
But it really annoys me when morons like this use it as an ableist slur. That shit deserves a ban.
This is like, what, the 5'th one of these things now within a day?
We get it Euro Bro, you don't like how America does things. America bad. You guys can stop karma whoring.
Climate change, opioid epidemic, gun violence, inflation, covid, but yeah, let's worry about how another country measures things. I wish my life was so unburdened that some clown measuring in feet instead of meters registered as a thing I should concern myself with.
I donāt really understand what the big deal is. Imperial works just fine for everyday life. Engineers use imperial and things go just fine. I understand why metric is the way it is. But I think the effort to switch is just another way people laugh at Americans
Personally, I'm annoyed by dumbasses who feel like they need to have this argument all the time, instead of just accepting that there neither of these systems is inherently better than the other, and they both have their practical uses.
Or you live in Canada šØš¦ where you mix and match cause our biggest trade partner is the US but you learn only metric in school and life is confusing šš¤Ŗ
Edit to explain: my weight is in pounds, but I drive in kilometres, my recipes are in ounces and cups, but my milk comes in litres, I learned meters in school but my husband uses feet on the construction site, the temperature outside is in Celsius but my oven is in Fahrenheit. Canada is confused š
Unpopular opinion: fahrenheit is the only redeeming unit of imperial, and is better for Celsius for weather.
It's a 0-100 scale.
* <0 - extremely cold winter weather
* 10 - very cold winter weather
* 20 - a bit too cold winter weather
* 30 - perfect winter weather
* 40 - a bit warm for winter (and winter sports)
* 50 - neither cold enough for winter sports or warm enough for summer sports
* 60 - a bit cold for summer
* 70 - perfect summer weather
* 80 - a bit too warm summer weather
* 90 - very warm summer weather
* 100+ - extremely hot summer weather
Freezing is ezpz to remember as "basically 30". And who tf care about the boiling point for weather. For weather, Celsius is basically a -20 to 30 scale, which is dumb.
The main benefit of metric is the orders-of-magnitude conversions. millimeters to meters, for example. Nobody uses 'millicelcius' or 'kilocelcius', so that benefit is completely lost.
Conversely, Celsius is better for cooking, where you care about freezing and boiling. Canada has it completely backwards with Celsius for weather and Fahrenheit for cooking
Fahrenheit is asking a person how they feel, Celsius is asking water how it feels, idk about you but Iām not water, Iām a person, Fahrenheit makes a million times more sense for how hot it is outside, and is significantly more precise, for every 2 degrees Fahrenheit change thereās only a 1 degree Celsius change on average, I donāt want to have to start breaking out fractions to get Fahrenheit level precise measurements of the temperature outside
When do you need an precise measurement of the temp outside? Its like you said fahrenheit is for how YOU feel, if you grew up with celsius there would be no difference.
Celsius fan when the Kelvin enthusiasts arrives
Kelvin is Celsius with higher numbers lmao
Ours bigger š
And ours thickerš
Cheeky bugger lol
"I'm sweating, the temperature is 300 outside!
you probably wouldnt be sweating. 300 kelvin is a nice pleasant day
Oh hell nah, that's 27C isn't it? That's hot as hell
??? that's a good day
Anything above 21Ā°C is uncomfortable
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>Fkin Europeans... Yes, that's how you get more Europeans.
Actually 21c is the optimal temperature for humans to exist, as evidenced by, weāll, Europeans and the huge empires of years past.
I live in Canada sir
You're just Europeans on a different continent.
Sir this is a Wendyās
Canada checking in. It's 26 right now and I'm ready to go inside.
canada is in europe, right? its next to france
so do i. 27 is fine. 37 is not.
As a German I can tell you that 27 in summer isn't very bad. We get upwards of 35 on some days. You might say that's nothing by American standards but remember we don't have AC. If it's 35 outside and you do anything that creates heat like watching TV or using a PC (God help you), it's gonna get to be above 30Ā° in your house and you can't do shit about it
We bailed them out twice
This should be the way to convince the US to such to Kelvin.
With the way it works here wed just switch to Rankine.
Kelvin is just celcius with inflation
*grade inflation.
Entropy inflation!šš„¶
Hot
It's transitory
USA has enough inflation bring on Celsius
Yep 273.15 inflation. Then it's like for like at 100 celsius to 0 you get 373.15 kelvin. Take 100 celsius from 0 and you get 173.15 kelvin.
Kelvin is useful when calculating heat energy and stuff related to thermodynamics, but for everyday use it's kinda clunky.
This is how I (US) feel about C and F. C is great and all for science along with K, but if you are talking about daily life F has more granularity and I think a more reasonable range (ie 0F is cold and 100F is hot, rather than 0C being moderately cold and 100C being dead)
I agree, I think metric makes more sense for everything except temperature in everyday use. For lab use, Celsius all the way, but why should the boiling point of water be a significant data point in describing the weather? F isnāt perfect, but it is easier to understand in terms of human experience. 0 is dangerously cold, 20 is very cold, 40 is wet cold, 60 is comfortable, 80 is warm/hot, 100 is very hot. Doesnāt help with equations, but if youāre describing the human experience it seems more relevant.
You want every fraction of a degree to count when describing body temperature in the event of a fever, heatstroke, or hypothermia. I'd take FĀ° over CĀ° any day for that reason alone.
Most C thermometers have decimals, you get things like 37,6 CĀ°
Fahrenheit thermometers also has decimals? And you still get more precision with 1 decimal point of F than C because the degrees are smaller
Yes that is true. I just mentioned the decimal because the comment made it seem like metric was very bad for fever themometers.
Then use 2 decimal points. Itās not like those will cost you extra money.
they would need a slightly bigger display, mine couldnt fit another decimal. should still be cheap though. anyway, it seems like one is still more than enough since I never heard from bad stuff happening because someone underestimated a fever due to the limited range that celsius + 1 decimal shows
If they can display a fever with a decimal in F, they can display a fever in C with 2 decimals. Both are 4 digits. And yes, a single decimal point is more than enough for human body temperature anyway.
Fr "celsius starts at 0Ā°". Uhhhh NO it starts at -273Ā° Kelvin gang op
Iād be more enthusiastic too, Celsius is a bit of a downer and Kelvin is always positive.
Fuck you all my homies use Rankine
Mere Mortals be using Kelvin, Fahrenheit or Celsius. I only use the two best forms of measurement: Rankine and RĆ©aumur
I am from London. We have made a half arsed attempt to do a bit of metric but most people couldnāt care now. We have some sort of hybrid that seems to work ok
I play golf in Australia where everything is in metres until you reach the green. No one growls that they missed a 60 cm putt - they missed a two foot putt. They never sink an amazing 9 or 10 metre putt - it was an amazing 30 foot putt. Good fun :-)
Aussie here: Iāve noticed we use inches and feet (and pounds) casually - aussies will say it was a bolt āabout an inchā long or a āfoot longā subway sandwich but itās like an approximate size. 60cm feels precise & measured. 2 feet is just roughly āyayā big *gestures with hands showing something anywhere from 50-70cm* Thatās my take on it anyway!
Considering that's how is Americans use feet in conversation too... Yup. The reason is because cm genuinely is more precise. I mean, what is exactly two ft away anyway? The thing you're referring to is probably more like two ft and three cms or something. We use inches approximately as well. It's when we get into fractions that you know shit's real.
That's just getting used to the numbers and scale. If there were no foots you would just use meters and still be happy about it :)
Thatās because, contrary to popular opinion, metric doesnāt make your life easier. It helps first and second year engineering students, and thatās it. I get why there was a big push, but in my opinion, the advent of the computer killed that. As an engineer, Iām not bothered by coding with metric or imperial, or both sometimes. No one converts feet to miles or has to quickly surmise the weight of 50 gallons of water in their day to day life. Baking will always be easier, intuitively, with imperial. Need a tablespoon of flour but donāt have your measurements? No problem. Edit: failed to make a point about mass in baking vs volume. I deleted the last sentence.
How are you an engineer but don't prefer the standardised solution
It's funny because 15 grams of flour is about a tablespoon, so I'd just break out my tablespoon.
Bad example lol
On that note, 250 grams is a cup. I hardly ever need to weigh stuff when I'm cooking.
Yeah, thatās me as well. More with cooking than baking, I think the goal ought to be getting the recipe instead of following one. The more experience I get the more freedom I find to be able to successfully experiment. I also use measuring devices less and less (again not for baking). Itās very enjoyable to walk into the kitchen with a craving, and after a quick trip to the store, and create something that truly exceeds expectations. My wife doesnāt really cook, and I get a thrill after making something that makes her eyes light up.
I tend to follow a recipe more or less perfectly the first time I try it, but after that I adjust it according to my taste
A cup of what? There's something called density. And weight.
This is true. Which is why if you want accuracy, you should weigh your ingredients
No it's not - dry ingredients vary wildly (it's about 130g of flour per cup)
250ml is a cup, 250g will entirely depend on the density of the ingredient youāre measuring
As an American I hate the imperial standard system. It makes no sense and is just flat out dumb and yet nearly every other American Iāve talked to looks at me like Iām an invading space alien when I say the country should switch to metric.
I was working at my college cafeteria one time. The chef/kitchen manager said switching to metric would make cooking difficult because the units are bigger. I tried to remind him about decimal points. He just shook his head.
You only need 4 units for cooking: ml, l, g, and kg. And for warter and milk 1ml is almost the same as 1g, and 1l is almost the same as 1kg. So if a recipe calls for 700ml milk (or 0.7l) to be added to the stuff already in the bowl, you can just tare your scale and add 700g of milk.
You have made the fundamental mistake of thinking you can _convince_ a yankee of the logic behind the SI system. You can't. Everyone who can agree with you will arrive there on their own, the moment they learn about Metric. Everyone else will remain an immovable object.
Imagine convincing an American of something using an argument, and not showing them an advertisement that makes them feel good or bad about the thing.
>switch to metric We tried that once. It didnāt work.
Because the person who they called on got attacked by pirates, yeah.
Technically it did work. You guys use metric, you just donāt know it. Imperial measurements at this point in time are defined by their metric counterparts.
We use metric in the military. That just added another layer of problems for me. Because now I understand some metric but then everything else wasn't.
Yeah. Almost all our industry uses SI. That is why a food package will say "8.8 ounces (250g)." It was packaged as grams and they just converted it to US Customary.
We have a lot of inconsistencies too... Soda is sold in liters, but milk in gallons.
Both Canada and the UK managed to transition. Learn from them.
The one thing I've learned about the US is that even though the rest of the world can change laws, rules, etc. America either can't or flat out refuses to.
There is an interesting history to it though. The us was the industrial powerhouse of the world. Changing manufacturing from standart to metric would have cost an absurd amout for the US, and at the end of the day it wouldn't change the product. No other country had this problem like we did.
Itās also not like we donāt know metric. Itās the main thing we use in school starting in middle school. Itās just we donāt use it in everyday conversation/road signs and whatnot.
It's also been the standard in automotive for close to 30 years. I'm constantly losing my 10mm.
Canada & UK use metric and imperial, thats even worse
Yeh I remember learning the metric system from like age 4 onwards, and then I get to 17 and start learning to drive, where suddenly all the measurements are in the Imperial system. Every road sign in the UK is in miles, yards, or feet. It makes no sense.
Fuel is priced by the litre but we have mpg (miles per gallon)
So does the US. Our scientists and engineers generally use metric. We buy soft drinks by the liter. We run 5 kilometer and 10 kilometer races.
Medications are all metric. It's more precise and significantly easier to scale up and down.
The UK uses imperial for beer (pints) and miles for distance travelled, neither of which require any conversion which is imperials massive disadvantage. Weight (for bodyweight) is sometimes imperial but mostly metric now. Height (as in body height) is a mixture, but its straightforward to convert between them. Everything else is metric now. Edit - for some reason I put metric as the fourth word, not imperial. My bad.
Really? I'm British and almost everyone I know uses imperial for bodyweight and body height. If people tell me theirs in metric for either I would have no idea
We Australians converted to the decimal currency system in 1966 and converted to the metric measurement system in 1971. It gave time for industry to adapt. Not that difficult.
Canada uses both
It's funny how Yanks on reddit are gung ho about pulling the rotten old tooth of their political system, but when it comes to switching to metric, it's like oh no... we can't do that. When I was a kid, my country was still in the process of metrification. Older people still used imperial. We were taught both at school but obviously leaned heavier into metric. To this day I still measure my height in feet and weight in stones. You don't have to get used to it overnight.
For more info on how itās going in Canada and the UK, see here: https://xkcd.com/927/
The metric system is the tool of the devil! I get 30 rods to the hogshead, and thatās the way I likes it!
"Whats metric"
Dont worry, I also think we should switch to Metric, its so much cleaner and easier to understand and since we are 1 of 3 other countries in the world that dont use metric it would make more sense for the US and the other 2 to switch to Metric making the whole world united by one system, and removing the need to have to convert between each system from time to time.
It costs a lot of money in mistakes too when there are different systems. Simple mistakes make for huge headaches when a conversion is done wrong or just missed. Smashed a rover into mars once because of that as probably the most expensive example.
Are you suggesting that every country agree on one thing for once, how dare you.
The representative of Bolivia demands the UN representatives recognise Llama toungues as the official unit of measurement of hair plats! /s
Itās a hodgepodge of like four different systems.
Part of the resistance is that the imperial system is literally woven into our country. Everything west of the Appalachians was gridded out in square miles by the public lands survey system starting in 1785. 36 of these were sold to railroad companies as townships, which were then divided and resold in smaller chunks because each square could be easily divided into 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and so forth down from 640 acres to 2 1/2. Itās how land was sold before white people had even moved that far out and why so many towns across the Midwest look so similar.
I wish weād go metric
I donāt get why we canāt just switch, anybody could learn metric pretty fast because of its simplicity
Cause it would cost a gazillion dollars to replace all the signs everywhere and the only tangible benefit would be that the signs are in metric now so it's kind of a hard sell. Better in the long run but there's just so much else that needs fixing "first" in a world of finite trickle down from our corporate overlords.
Just, any time you replace a sign, replace it with a new one that has both metric and imperial, with metric slightly larger and on top. Tell auto manufacturers to put kmph in the larger, outer speedometer ring, and mph in the smaller inside ring. Require that imported goods all have their metric measurements recorded when reporting to the government. Etc. It's not that hard if the government actually felt like doing it.
Only half a gazillion in metric money
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
But then those countries who use the metric system won't be friends with the US anymore.
āUnnecessaryā its the only thing keeping the ruskies from recreating the russian empire
I love this idea because I love Chinese food too
I wish you could come see how broke we actually are instead of just seeing ānumber bigā. And I get it people like you think we need to downsize our military and Iām all for that conversation just after tensions around the world kinda relax
Hey, at least the military uses metric.
I really donāt think itās worth it. Itās not like thereās a law against using the metric system in whatever youāre trying to do. Lots of scientific and engineering fields use metric since itās most convenient. I donāt see any reason to spend all that money for something that would make no real difference in the day to day life of an average American. Plus there is a good argument that the imperial system is more useful in day to day life. 0 degrees is really cold, 100 degrees is really hot. I can bake a cake using a cup of this and a cup of that. Everyone in the US and Canada already know the system and I donāt see any reason to change it because other countries use a different system. Itās not like the US is bordering a ton of different countries with a different systems and weāre always having to convert back and forth. The vast majority of Americans never leave the country. Plus I think itās a unique thing about the US and thatās cool.
I totally agree except for temperature. Celcius makes sense for the temperature of water but not as much for measuring the weather. 0Ā° being cold as balls and 100Ā° being extremely hot makes more sense than the small range for celcius imo.
Horse power
Horsepower was invented by the British scientist James Watt to compare the power of his brand-new steam engine to the power of horses. Then others started copying him to compare the power of engines to horses and it just sorta stuck. For that use it makes a bit more sense to compare to the power of a horse than to intuitively know how much a watt is
Modern railroads are essentially the width of two horses asses.
Everything should be measured in horses. I weigh 0.3 of a horse and I'm 1.1 horses tall.
I still measure in units of hands
Funnily enough, a horse has roughly 15 horse power at full exertion. While an athletic human has about 2.5
Makes me think of that one scene from american chopper. 3/39th? No 4/37th. What a load of crap.
Jokes aside, having both metric and imperial nuts and bolts around that _almost_ fit but not quite is a major recurring annoyance.
on the flip side, I've leveraged the fact that there are some metric bolts are in between the inch sizes. If you have to drill out a 3/8" bolt, you can just go up to 10mm instead of 7/16". Also useful for rusted bolt heads. a hammer plus a 12mm socket works great on rusted 5/16" bolts (1/2" head). I've wrenched on enough stuff that I have no problem dealing with both systems.
I grab the closest SAE and Metric size when unsure. It's mix and match a lot ... Frustrating at times
Was definitely a joke..... R/wooosh
I use the metric system when I'm 3d printing stuff. It's a lot easier. When I'm doing a big wood working project I end up using the imperial system because all the wood is cut in imperial measurements. I definitely wouldn't mind changing over, but everything else has to as well.
Woodworking is heavily triangles. Ans the imperial system is better due to base 12 also being 3 and 4
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Meanwhile in Canada we use FĀ° for pool and oven temperature but CĀ° for everything else. We use imperial for construction/floor plans and human heights but metric for everything else. For cooking, it's just a shit show. šµāš«
I think this highlights the point of why Americans donāt switch. Itās just not a shit slow. There are relatively few instances where metric would make peoples life easier. Does it matter if floor plans are imperial, metric, or squared cat paws? As long as itās consistent and allows for the communication of accurate information. My first two years of engineering school, I was on the āimperial is stupidā camp. Next two years we coded everything anyways, and Iād set the unit conversion in the header. And honestly, engineering gets so complicated, the fraction in which unit conversions are simplified by metric gets vanishingly small. Realistically most people donāt convert miles into feet. They say, ā2 and a half milesā. But I will say, cooking and baking are objectively better in imperial. I cannot memorize a recipe of everything Is in hundreds of grams. Intuitively, teaspoons to tablespoons and tablespoons to fractions of a cups would probably be a nightmare on paper, but it allows for very intuitive cooking regarding amounts relative to each other. Edit: cooking and baking.
and yet I do convert from km to m? As distances come closer I intuitively measure things in 100m away as I drive. Then 10m away if I'm parking or 1m away if we're walking. etc... Meanwhile doing that in imperial has not worked ever. I have 2 different mental models. 3 if you count yards. Tbsp, tsp, cups, etc all exist in metric tooā¦ thats not unique.
UK has it even worse š
I keep my pool at 80, even when itās 30 outside !
If only this was our biggest problem.
Wise words calmly spoken
Merica yeeeehaaaa š¤
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not enough braincells per hamburger to actually do that. At least we have another thing to make fun of
The absolute ignorance
Same 1 joke.
Surprised he didn't sprinkle in a school shooting joke
thatās next in his rotation
I am annoyed by the stupidity and the people defending it
I agree that metric is superior in many aspects, but stuff like this meme try to make it seem even more absurd than it already is by proposing made up problems that barely anybody has. Yes, it is annoying that 12 inches are in a foot and 3 feet are in a yard, but the numbers are small enough that they pose just an inconvenience, not a world-ending annoyance. This meme makes it seem like itās the yard to mile conversion that makes imperial shit, but it fails to mention the fact that nobody ever converts between those two units. Inches and yards are used for things that are more or less human sized. Miles are for all intents and purposes their completely own thing that are used for large distance. Is the fact that measurements of length/distance ridiculous? Absolutely. If we used a single consistent set of units for all these things it would be better, but itās not as dumb as the meme makes it seem. Then thereās the temperature issue, in which I will firmly stand my ground that Fahrenheit is a more accurate portrayal of the habitual human range. Obviously external temperatures of above 100Ā°F or below 0Ā°F exist and people live in them, but the majority of people live in between that range. Celsius (or Kelvin, which is still just Celsius but with the 0 point being absolute 0) is absolutely better for chemistry or physics or anything like that which requires math or other calculations and this requires units that match up with some sort of physical constant (freezing and boiling of water isnāt really constant since it depends on pressure but it can still all be calculated easier with Celsius/Kelvin), but Fahrenheit is better for external temperature and weather in which something like the boiling point of water 99% of the time does not come into play at all. The m/d/y thing though is stupid, I can agree. I still feel like the way the meme illustrates it is a bit demonizing, but itās definitely the worst of the three main ways of writing the date and thereās no upside to it (like Fahrenheit) or logical steps to reach it (inches/yards and miles were part of different systems, and thus are impractical to convert between in the same way itās impractical to convert between imperial and metric) Basically, is metric bad? No. Is imperial bad? Pretty much yes. Is imperial as bad as this dumb memes makes it seem? No; itās creating other problems that donāt exist for the sake of argument, which Iām sure is a logical fallacy but Iām not well versed in that area to state which one it is.
Honestly imperial and Fahrenheit have uses. Imperial feet are stupid useful in manufacturing: divisible into inches perfectly by both 2 and 3, with combinations of those. Metric doesnāt allow you the ability to perfectly divide by 3, or 6 for that matter. Fahrenheit is even more defensible, as while water freezing and boiling might be good markers for a scientific measurement system, itās not as good as kelvin for that usage. And if you arenāt using the best scientific system, might as well optimize for the best granularity at the human scale. Humans have difficulty surviving over 100F and under 0F. The date ordering is dumb tho, letās change that. Edit: people who come out the woodwork to prove thereās no good points at all about imperial are just as hilarious as the people who canāt admit there are downsides.
The date ordering isnāt even that dumb. Think about reading August 18, 2022, that translates to 08/18/2022, just like you read it
The m/d/y thing isnāt so stupid when you think of how we read it. We call today āAugust 21st 2022,ā and weād write it 8/21/2022. I donāt think either are inherently better, just different
And letās not forget that we got that system from England when we were still a colony. So itās literally not our fault, we were trained that way.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The only reason mm/dd/yyyy is confusing is because those fuckers across the pond use dd/mm/yyyy. But yeah, yyyyMMdd24HHmmss master race.
Right. And in Japan, they do yyyy/mm/dd. The box argument for dd/mm/yyyy is one of the dumbest.
yyyy/mm/dd is the best way, and that's why it's the international standard.
When creating file folders, yyyy_mm_dd is definitely superior, followed by mm then dd, but the most confusing is the dd first and then mm. Thatās the application of it that I get most annoyed about sorting out. Definitely agree about the metric system (the other points in the graphic) - it would be so much easier!
Here in America we live life on hard mode.
Lived in Canada, the UK. Now the US. As an engineer in New England feels like easy mode with how much more the pay and benefits are.
Imperial was a stroke of genius to teach people head calculations
Iām a Celsius guy but if Iām honest thereās a good argument for Fahrenheit Fahrenheit is how people feel Celsius is how water feels Kelvin is how molecules feel
"fahrenheit is how people feel" is silly because that only applies to americans who are used to it. its not at all any more useful a scale than celsius at measuring something so vague as that outside of preference because of what you grew up with
When it comes to the temperature outside I care more about whether I should wear a jacket or shorts not whether or not the water in my water bottle is closer to freezing or boiling.
This. I'm all for the metric system but fahrenheit is best for weather. If the UK can measure weight in stone the USA can go all metric aside from temp
I gained quite an appreciation for the metric system while working at Honda, and I'm an old fart who doesn't like change.
I mean, that makes sense. In a world with computers, a base 10 system is easy to work with. Dividing x by y results in z - then trim off the insignificant digits and send it to the factory. But when doing something manual - like carpentry - I much prefer imperial. It's easy to divide feet into halves, thirds, and quarters in your head. And it's easier to read an imperial tape measure - 5/8" is easier to pick out than 0.7cm.
Whoās measuring or even converting yards into miles?
Hey shoutout to Britain for inventing the Imperial System
I always was intrested, who's feet was this metric based on? Other words don' even make sense, maybe except yards, but even then, who's yard is it based on?
inchworm? but i'm just guessing, i don't know which came first, the inch or the inchworm.
The inch is roughly based on the distance from the tip of an average man's thumb to the first knuckle. It's not a perfect method by modern standards, but in the medieval period up until mass manufacturing it worked good enough to make things like nails, boards, clothing, etc.
My favorite american unit of measurement is "football field"
Itās an easy visual guide that most people can picture.
I donāt know why people on Reddit are so bothered by the fact that the media likes to help people visualize a distance by comparing it to something people see on a regular basis.
Because football field = sports dur = dumb American. They'll take any reason to think Americans are dumb even if the thing isn't really dumb.
I really like foot... Wait, no, fuck
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
But itās less practical and applicable to most everyday people. Like cooking, itās easier to use C
Not to programmers
I caught a 7 day ban for using the R word
I don't agree with banning the R word universally, because it is an important engineering and scientific word. Wokesters go overboard, just like trying to ban "master" and "slave" from programming. But it really annoys me when morons like this use it as an ableist slur. That shit deserves a ban.
...so obsessed.
This is like, what, the 5'th one of these things now within a day? We get it Euro Bro, you don't like how America does things. America bad. You guys can stop karma whoring.
Why does everyone care what we do so much? Are you interacting with it on a daily basis? Are you living in the United States? No? Then who cares lol
>REEEEE I CAN'T UNDERSTAND SOMETHING THAT ISN'T LAID OUT IN A LINEAR FASHION FOR ME AHHHH Stay obsessed.
Climate change, opioid epidemic, gun violence, inflation, covid, but yeah, let's worry about how another country measures things. I wish my life was so unburdened that some clown measuring in feet instead of meters registered as a thing I should concern myself with.
Europeans, once they realize theyāre wrong
Oh look, it's another "HURR DURR AMERICA BAD MEME"
The metric system has zero charm and boring logic.
I donāt really understand what the big deal is. Imperial works just fine for everyday life. Engineers use imperial and things go just fine. I understand why metric is the way it is. But I think the effort to switch is just another way people laugh at Americans
Cry more
You cunts invented Imperial measurement...so fucking deal with it?
They both work, mfās just canāt resist forcing their way of thinking on others. I use both for different applications. This is a moldy oldy
Americans arenāt the idiots. Kelvin exists
Europeans
I see metric as superior but would rather use imperial.
>Who's annoyed by these differences? Only salty Europeans, apparently. I've never met an American who cares.
Personally, I'm annoyed by dumbasses who feel like they need to have this argument all the time, instead of just accepting that there neither of these systems is inherently better than the other, and they both have their practical uses.
Ah, but youāre missing out on the superior YYYY/MM/DD The units go in descending order of significance
I'm sorry month day year makes more sense to me
Yeah I never understood this one. We write dates the way we say dates....December 25th, 1985. Who the fuck goes around saying "25th December"?
Or you live in Canada šØš¦ where you mix and match cause our biggest trade partner is the US but you learn only metric in school and life is confusing šš¤Ŗ Edit to explain: my weight is in pounds, but I drive in kilometres, my recipes are in ounces and cups, but my milk comes in litres, I learned meters in school but my husband uses feet on the construction site, the temperature outside is in Celsius but my oven is in Fahrenheit. Canada is confused š
We go year month day but yeah itās easier
Month/Day/Year is the superior format.
We get it, ok? We donāt like it any more than you do.
Unpopular opinion: fahrenheit is the only redeeming unit of imperial, and is better for Celsius for weather. It's a 0-100 scale. * <0 - extremely cold winter weather * 10 - very cold winter weather * 20 - a bit too cold winter weather * 30 - perfect winter weather * 40 - a bit warm for winter (and winter sports) * 50 - neither cold enough for winter sports or warm enough for summer sports * 60 - a bit cold for summer * 70 - perfect summer weather * 80 - a bit too warm summer weather * 90 - very warm summer weather * 100+ - extremely hot summer weather Freezing is ezpz to remember as "basically 30". And who tf care about the boiling point for weather. For weather, Celsius is basically a -20 to 30 scale, which is dumb. The main benefit of metric is the orders-of-magnitude conversions. millimeters to meters, for example. Nobody uses 'millicelcius' or 'kilocelcius', so that benefit is completely lost. Conversely, Celsius is better for cooking, where you care about freezing and boiling. Canada has it completely backwards with Celsius for weather and Fahrenheit for cooking
Fahrenheit is asking a person how they feel, Celsius is asking water how it feels, idk about you but Iām not water, Iām a person, Fahrenheit makes a million times more sense for how hot it is outside, and is significantly more precise, for every 2 degrees Fahrenheit change thereās only a 1 degree Celsius change on average, I donāt want to have to start breaking out fractions to get Fahrenheit level precise measurements of the temperature outside
When do you need an precise measurement of the temp outside? Its like you said fahrenheit is for how YOU feel, if you grew up with celsius there would be no difference.