You must log in or register to comment.
Amerifats cant get over their imperialist england brain to work in tandem with rest of the world. It creates just enough division and tribality between the world the US to justify its colonial nature and settlement enterprise in the americas.
You cant bury your disgusting history.
Yes, the US is trying to sow discord in the world with it’s choice of measurement system in order to further its imperialist agenda.
Nevermind the documented instances of US government military intervention and collusion with far right-wing groups to disrupt popular leftist movements and governments across the world. It’s the measurement system that’s the problem.
You are being insidious. This also contributes to the main directives. It wasnt JUST THIS.
People dont hate Trump because he is orange. But it definitely doesnt fucking help it either.
Or teams dont choose green as their team color because it helps them win more. But having these features helps with the morale.
Jesus Christ, you’re broken.
Yes, morale is at an all time over here because some Anglophile chose Imperial as our weight and measurement standards 200+ years ago.
By the way, we all have horns and rub our hands together evilly and cackle when a European is inconvenienced by an American website.
Everytime I see one of these posts I have to make the same comment. The US is metric, everywhere that it matters. In the military, in the medical field, and in the scientific field. The ONLY reason we haven’t converted every other part of our lives to metric is that our country is 50 times the size of the average European country. Do you know how expensive it would be to replace the infrastructure we’ve built and maintained over the past 200 years? The tax payers could not handle that burden, and it would require every state to agree to the terms of the change for a total conversion.
At this point, it is just part of our identity. It would be like asking the French to eat day old bread. They could, but why?
It’s also that imperial uses body measurements for basic stuff. Your foot is about a foot long, so you can pace off distances. One yard is about the length from your collarbone to the opposite wrist, so I can roughly measure fabric quickly. From your fingertip to the crook of your thumb is about five inches, and the knuckles on your fingers are about an inch apart.
I used to do industrial embroidery at an immigrant-owned shop, and the boss switched from metric to imperial because measuring a couple inches with your fingers is faster than finding a meter stick and measuring centimeters exactly. When you’ve got multiple inches in your margin for error, there is no need for the precision of metric, and the speed of imperial just makes more sense.
I have seen US companies try, but it is so slow.
We did customs tooling. In the 80s 90s it was inch sizing and inch components. Late 90s still inch tooling but Metric components, and so drawings would have REAM for .236 Dowel ( instead of 6mm) LOL In mid 2000s tooling was metric sized as long as it was close to a purchasable inch size from the steel foundary. So block would be 608mm wide, to order a 24" block.
So 2025 mostly you can see places working full metric.
Then there are places I have worked recently that still use Fractional inch on projects and then wonder why assembly problems arise. Like design intent is 8.541 and maybe clearance to adjacent part has to be .039". Drawing has 8 9/16 + 1/32, so not only is sizing wrong compared to mating part, the fractional inch means dude uses a tape measure by eye, rather than a 3 place decimal measure tool. It’s such a mess.
Then why are all your english content in freaking fantasy units???
Every country switched at one time in history, the longer you wait the more expensive it becomes.
One, they aren’t fantasy units— this is real life, son.
Two, the country was built on imperial, so the trades use imperial to maintain the country. Everyone in the US grows up learning in imperial, and then learns metric when they get into physics and chemistry.
Three, I addressed the fact that WE CAN NOT AFFORD TO SWITCH. It does not matter if it is going to be more expensive in the future. We can’t afford it NOW.
I understand the spirit of your reply. This is just the reality of what having 50 different states, who can’t agree on anything and are loosely tied together by an over-arching government, is like.
There are 27 counties in the European Union, and they are filled with reasonable people in government(for the most part). We have 50 states that are filled with greedy little assholes who will do everything in their power to gain more power to leverage in a bid to destroy what they deem “the enemy”, so they can make even more money and gain more power.
We are never going to convert wholesale to metric. We can’t even agree, as a country, that poor people are people, at a government scale. That is entirely motivated by profit and nothing more.
It simply does not pay to switch to metric.
This thread is full of middle schoolers who don’t realize that you can measure things in whatever system you want, regardless of country. The whole premise of this circlejerk is faulty.
anyone can do whatever on their own, but if it affects anyone else than that one person its not just that one person’s business. I cant see the insistence of using imperial system as anything else than america has used it in the past, and therefore its american system and because america is the best it must be the best system to use and to claim anything else is to hate america.
I’m sorry that you can’t seem to see it any other way, but that is just not reality. The imperial system has many uses that the metric system is not apt for.
for example?
Base 10 measurement systems such as the metric system cannot divide distances into thirds or sixths without creating irrational numbers. This can be a problem for interior designers and landscape designers, for instance, who regularly need to create drafts for projects that break up measurements that way. The imperial system is more versatile in this particular instance because you can break a foot into 12 inches, which is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (yes, still wouldn’t be irrational), and 6. Much more versatile when your contractor needs to actually go out and make a measurement in the real world. While metric could be “good enough” for that purpose, it is not the most ideal.
i’d say its still easier to just choose desired level of precision with 3.333333333 than deal with imperial’s conversion maddness, even if you can divide them evenly. I guess imperial is ok if you dont ever have to use it with any other system, but lack of combitability is quite isolationist.
With imperial, every unit is like it’s own singular instance where in metric each unit is part of the system. Trying to convert between them seems like a nightmare (i dont want to even try, but i assume those who use imperial just have to.)
Like, how many inches are on 1000 miles? Try to convert that exactly in your head without using calculator or paper and within 10 seconds. How many square feet are on 37 acres? How much does 5,5 gallons of water weigh in stones?
Or lets say we have container with measurements of 3x3x3 inches (i’ll be merciful and use same unit for each dimension) MysteryLiquid™ (use calculator for this one if you try to calculate it) with density of 3,337 pounds / …perch…? or more commonly 0,00625 acres (not many area units in imperial). How much does the MysteryLiquid™ in the container weigh in stones?
In metric the density would be about 301 kg/m3.
3 inches is 0.0762 metres so container would be 0.07623 which is 0,000442450728m3 which is 442.450728 cm³
So m =p x V = 301kg x 0.000442m3 = 0.133kg, try calculating that whole thing in imperial, using crazy different units without ripping out your hair. I used sensible units for metric in this one, but i could have used nanograms, mm3 and decimeters instead and it would just mildly inconvenience me when calculating, and also produce way bigger numbers but at least the conversion factors would remain same.
Not being able to divide some measurements in even numbers is very small price to pay for being able to calculate things more easily.
You can use both without using them in the same project. Yes, I understand how conversions work.
You can make the same argument going the other way. Isn’t is complicated to go from metric to imperial? May as well just use imperial! See, it’s not a good argument.
well my point was to make those calculations using only imperial units, not randomly go between metric and imperial. Metric calculation was there to just illustrate how it would go using metric units.
You can but there are real examples where mixing units results in failure. NASA lost a 125 million dollar mars probe in 1999 because JPL and NASA use metric but Lockheed Martin added acceleration data in American imperial units.
It might be a circle jerk but it is also best practice to use a standard system and there’s really only one holdout on not using that system. I say this as an American who wishes people would just use metric because it’s just easier unless you just fucking love fractions of an inch.
Your example of not mixing systems up within projects is somewhat valid, but not applicable to the whole. There are a lot of uses for Imperial, and using Imperial in landscaping does not have a chance of causing catastrophic failure in rocket science.
There are a lot of uses for Imperial
Other than it being “cultural” and laziness there’s no point in keeping imperial. Stop using an obsolete system so we Canadians can switch our stoves to Celsius without having to worry about you yanks cooking with our equipment and hurting yourselves.
I’m going to use metric for height and weight. I don’t care if some wanker American complains they can always head south if they want or visit Liberia for a getaway, get with the times already.
The metric system, base 10, is not easily breakable into thirds without irrational numbers. In aesthetic fields, such as landscaping or interior design, the ability to break something into exact thirds, quarters, halves, fifths, sixths, and so on, is invaluable. It’s not just cultural. It sounds like it is to you, which is weird… why are you personally identifying with a unit of measurement?
I also don’t understand your Liberia reference. Could you elaborate?
The metric system, base 10, is not easily breakable into thirds without irrational numbers.
Says the metric that freaking uses fractions…
Find me a fraction on a meter stick, go ahead!
Liberia, until 2018, used the imperial system. They were one of three countries that used the imperial system, Myanmar being the third one. They are currently in the process of using metric, but it appears they are using both for now.
Not sure why you can only go to Liberia, I’m sure you can buy a meter stick when you arrive in Europe.
Man, we should all just use the same currency so we don’t have to do all these crazy conversions! Maybe we all start just using the US dollar? /s
I was just explaining the Liberia part of the comment, I was not the commenter. I am American and like both metric and imperial. I prefer metric for baking and applications where higher precision is useful, but use imperial for most other things since that is what is commonly used around me.
As a brit, the only thing I care about is the extra 68ml I get in my pint.
Damn Tucker Carlson must’ve stumbled upon this post. Someone should tell him that Russians use metric.
So you admit your precious meter isn’t up to the task of being decided by three and you have to find ways to compensate for its inadequacy.
Metre*
Just came here to nit-pick that the metric prefix for 103 is k and not K.
Case in point: Platinum melts around 2kK.
Being purposefully stupid and arrogant about it is the single most American thing.
who the fuck are these absolute twats that are simping over a system of measurement? good for you, your governance made a good choice, but it was hardly like OP invented it or was responsible for the adoption, so whoop de fuckin’ doo. or Le Whoop if you must convert.
we don’t like imperial, it’s not like you’ll find people (outside hicksville or maga) claiming to defend it’s superiority.
and get off your silly pretensions, for all your metric elegance the UK is still measuring shit in stones and miles.
Well the UK isn’t in Europe anymore. They moved away a couple years ago. Besides the best system is the French Revolutionary System
The UK isn’t in the EU anymore. As far as I know their island didn’t drift away from our continental plate.
hon hon hon mes oui yeah whatever
Honestly who uses stone to measure their weight? And if we switched to km for roads tomorrow I’d be happy, might take a minute to adjust but it’s fine.
Brits, and only for body weight, as far as I know.
I just use kg, makes more sense
Heavily depends on the use case.
Yeah, sometime you use grams, or dekagrams, or hectograms
Or Megagrams and Gigagrams if you want to go bigger.
Nope. Household use in Europe is Gramm “g” and Kilogramm “kg” (often shortened to just “Kilo”). Maybe Ton “t” (metric ones, of course) if you are handling large loads like building materials, but nobody uses Megagramm “Mg”. Likewise with Gigagramm “Gg”, where one uses Kiloton “kt”. Not really SI, but still with the same conversion factors.
Going down from the Gramm, people use the Milligramm “mg”, often used in pharmacy related context.
Some Austrians (especially the older ones) still use Dekagramm “dg” or Deka, primarily in cooking and baking, but these are the only outliers. Anything else is just factor 1000 for each step.
Much easier than cups, ounces, pounds, and buttloads.
Honestly who uses stone to measure their weight?
elder limeys
Mad?
Nah, about what? I didn’t make the decisions. you didn’t either, so if you’re proud, that’s fucking dumb too.
we don’t like imperial, it’s not like you’ll find people (outside hicksville or maga) claiming to defend it’s superiority.
Every time metric vs imperial comes up on the internet there will be a gazillion Americans defending their system, claiming it is more “human” or some similar sort of nonsense. So yes, are a lot of Americans who will defend its alleged superiority.
Every time metric vs imperial comes up on the internet there will be a gazillion Americans defending their system, claiming it is more “human” or some similar sort of nonsense. So yes, are a lot of Americans who will defend its alleged superiority.
pfft ok bud. there are schmucks in the UK that love stones. it’s a tiny minority on both sides.
They use a blend of metric and imperial as do we.
the secret of the sauce is just the right blend. give them predictable units for most things then hit them with the hogshead when they get comfortable
I like metric weight for cooking (on the rare occasion I make something that involves careful measuring, and for my bread making) and MILES can fuck right off, km are fine for measuring long distance. And fine with meters, cm for short distance.
But I do like how feet are 12 inches, because 12 is so evenly divisible, and like that a gallon splits in half and half again and again until you get cups. It’s like RAM,
Cup is 8 oz
Pint is 16 oz
Quart is 32 oz
Half Gallon is 64 oz
Gallon is 128 oz.
That doubling sequence is satisfying.
Your 16 oz pints are a pathetic 455ml. Europeans have 500ml.
Meanwhile a true UK pint is 568ml.
You can see why we cling to Imperialism.
specifically woodworking I like doing in inches, because 12. For the tasks I often do in the wood shop, fractional inches work well.
I’m confortable working in both systems, but I build furniture in inches.
In metric, the 12 really isn’t important anymore which kinda invalidates that. We normally go to the nearest mm or, if needed, some fraction of that (not normally needed in my life at least)
My favorite fact about the metric system that blows imperial believer’s minds is that if you take a 1cm thick tube you put 1 liter of water it weights 1kilogram and it it 1 meter tall the measure.
In the US, we should make things even more confusing to anger the metric folks. I propose we redefine the “foot” every four years. The length of the foot will always correspond to the actual measured foot length of the current US president.
the fact that you think this will anger metric folks who already don’t make sense of your dumb system rather than ruin many aspects of your country … uh … never mind, you’re already ruining many aspects of country. ignore what I was going to say. carry on.
Yeah, and she gonna be mad as fuck about that too!
What if we defined a foot such that a cubic food of some good, say potatoes or something, is a specific amount of money. So it’s tied to inflation.
What a wondefull idea!
We should bring back hogsheads, rods, fathoms, etc.
IIRC some of those crazy units are still referenced in certain laws of old…
That first diagram looks exactly like the dumbass step functions in my company
Ugh. Kelvingram again.
💔
but at least there’s a space
Also 1L water ~ 1kg
