I’m moving my posts from Reddit to Lemmy before delete them.

This post is from 2022-07-13.

  • 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, imperial is… confusing… like you have inches, but then you don’t get decainches, you get feet 😒. And then you don’t have kiloinches, you have miles 🤦.

    • NightAuthor@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      What drives me nuts is that everyone likes to pretend America came up with this shit. But it was Britain, they just decided to abandon it for a new standard and were were too busy building a damn country and hating Britain to just adopt a new measurement system.

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Then they also use 1000ths of an inch. Because fuck it, let’s just throw in a single base 10 unit.

      Biggest dislike is lb-mol and Rankine. Like, it you’re gonna do science, use the metric system, Jesus. Ain’t no one gonna take you seriously using your off-brand clown units.

      • 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster
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        1 year ago

        Then they also use 1000ths of an inch. Because fuck it, let’s just throw in a single base 10 unit.

        Well, to be completely honest, you could say the same about miliseconds… I mean, they are the only ones that do base 10 regarding time measurement 😂.

        Ain’t no one gonna take you seriously using your off-brand clown units.

        🤣🤣🤣 gave me a good chuckle 🤣🤣🤣

    • cerement@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago
      • 1 foot = 1.2 decainches
      • 1 yard = 3.6 decainches
      • 1 mile = 5.28 kiloinches
      • 1 mile = 1.76 kiloyards
      • 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster
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        1 year ago

        WTF, I though they were related in 10s, that’s not even true 🤦.

        EDIT: Shit, now I got it, they’re related in 12s, like in dousens… why, WHY!

        • The Gay Tramp@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          It’s not like base ten is some magic thing that’s better in all aspects. I’ll admit that imperial is inconsistent sure, but a dozenal system makes sense when you need to divide things a lot. One foot being twelve inches means you can half, quarter, third, or sixth it without dealing with fractions

          • 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster
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            1 year ago

            I have to agree though that this is true. Still, it makes it more difficult if you have to work with 10s, like take a 10th of the measurement.

            • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              From Wikipedia:

              “A “dozen” is a unit of measurement. It means twelve (12) items of something. The term goes back to duodecim, which means 12 in Latin. Humans might have started to count on a base 12 because there are approximately 12 cycles of the moon in one cycle of the sun. In other words, a solar year has 12 months. The first to have used the unit were probably the Mesopotamians.

              12 dozen (144 items) are a gross. 12 gross (1728 items) are called a great gross. A great hundred is 120 or ten dozen (a dozen for each finger on both hands).

              The dozen is convenient because its multipliers and multiples are convenient: 12 = 3 × 2 × 2, and 360 = 30 × 12. The French word douzaine means “about twelve” and is part of a family of words with similar meanings, e.g. vingtaine – “about 20” centaine – “about 100” etc. A baker’s dozen, also known as a long dozen, is thirteen.”

              So, as you can see, the idea of a dozen seems to be deeply ingrained in our history and psychology to the point that we probably shouldn’t question it too much and leave bakers to ponder the mystery of 12=13.

        • stringere@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          EDIT: Shit, now I got it, they’re related in 12s, like in dousens… why, WHY!

          Haha, if only.

          Distance

          -12 inches = 1 foot

          -3 feet = 1 yard

          -22 yards = 1 chain

          -10 chains = 1 furlong

          -8 furlongs = 1 mile

          Weights

          -16 drams = 1 oz

          -16 oz = 1 pound

          -14 pounds = 1 stone

          -8 stone = 1 hundredweight = 112 lb

          -20 hundredweight = 1 ton

          Volume

          -20 fluid oz = 1 pint

          -8 pints = 1 gallon

          • 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster
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            1 year ago

            What? They measure in chains and stones 🤨 😂. I actually didn’t know that 🤣🤣🤣. Regarding oz, I thought it was a liquid (volume) measurement unit… cuz I’ve seen it on milk containers… oh well, guess I was wrong 😂.

            EDIT: Oh wait, no, it’s for both weight and volume 🤣🤣🤣.

            EDIT 2: Nope, there is a volume and a weight oz 🤣, this thing just keeps getting better and better 🤣.

  • 342345@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    And now let’s look at our time units… leap years, leap second. A month has 28, 29, 30 or 31 days. A day has 2*12 hours. An hour has 60 minutes or 3600 seconds (Babylonian mathematics :) )

    I see room for improvement.

  • irkli@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What does make sense of systems prior to the modern metric system is that they were based on needs and abilities of centuries past, which – surprise! – have changed.

    What does NOT make sense is not so much inertia in making change, but people who get all butthurt and complainy when suggested they change practices, like many nitwits in the US. Hell the British did it, we can.

    Some of the measures of volume and length make reasonable sense – though the names are funny many are half or double of others, or times 4, or multiples of 2 or 4.

    When most people never ventured more than 20 miles from where they were born only traders had to worry about shit like that.

    England and the US, prob others I just don’t know, had * local time *, I mean at the town to town level. How would they know they’re different? Few people had portable clocks. That ended with train systems. In the 1840s I think.

    I was on a car forum where members complained that the metric system caused the space shuttle explosion, and why can’t we have mercurochrome and hitting children in schools back. Luckily they’re all dying off now.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s mostly just people like to attack conversions no one really does. Even with it’s nice easy conversions, the average person isn’t going to tell you how many nanometers are in a megameter, which isn’t qualitatively different than barleycorns in a league.

      Science also just invents new units of measure when it’s convenient, light years, parsecs, astronomical units, moles, etc.

  • tuto@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Where is the first picture from? I’ve only seen the statue in Bremen (Germany), but never really looked up what it meant or where it really comes from.

  • shield@lemmy.tf
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    1 year ago

    Please help me I’ve been balancing the donkey on this seesaw for 30 years

  • topRamen@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Imperial was based on using body parts and common items to measure things. Inch was about the width of a mans thumb, foot the size of his foot, yard was the length of his arm, etc. But we have more access to things to measure now so like its kinda pointless but just stuck.

  • Blamemeta@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I know its bait, but why do Euros care so damn much if we use a different system? Better than the UK

    • gonzo0815@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The world is connected and it’s really annoying to look a YouTube video or some tutorial page and needing to convert every time.

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      As others have pointed out, it’s not just the Europeans (Australian here). But really it’s because of how prominent the US is. We can’t avoid them more often than we’d like.

      Irks me as an engineer whenever I’m forced to use such an annoying set of units in my work. Btu/hr is especially awful. Like it’s got British right there in the name, how embarassing for a system of units touted to be patriotic.

      (There are many reasons metic is better, but it’s a foregone conclusion at this point, so I’d rather focus on the petty reasons to soothe my frustration)

      • cerement@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        to add insult to injury – US “considered” metric conversion back in the ’70s and did manage to pass through a couple pieces of legislation that architectural and engineering plans were allowed to be submitted in metric – but any home owner attempting to submit plans in millimeters will still get stomped on

    • SamirCasino@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      We wouldn’t mind so much if your system wasn’t so damn arbitrary, and if you weren’t literally the only country on earth to refuse to come together with the rest of us.

    • muhyb@programming.devOP
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      1 year ago

      It is bait. Human mind can adapt to anything, either it’s metric or imperial, even bananas. However unlike imperial, metric is systematic and you really only need to know one rule: Multiply by 10. It’s also transitive, meaning 1 liter equals to 10 dm^3. Other than this, rest of the world using metric so it’s tedious to being have to convert measurements every time, from both sides.

      Also scientists, gun owners and drug dealers already using metric. /j