How many hands long do they get?
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Most of the stuff you interact with daily is much more easily measured in feet and inches vs meters and centimeters
Hard disagree. The centimeter is the best measurement there is for everyday stuff, you can easily express both round values or weird ones, and don’t need to switch between two scales as you do with feet and inches (and the stupid fact that there’s 12 inches in a feet, wtf). Meters are for distances.
(this ignores decimeters, but I’ve literally never seen anyone use decimeters in my entire life)
BECAUSE THE METRIC SYSTEM IS DECIMAL AND YOU DON’T NEED STUPID CHANGES BETWEEN UNITS, MOST PEOPLE JUST SAY TEN CENTIMETERS!
Celsius is more objective, but when dealing with the standard sorts of temperatures humans are generally concerned with, Fahrenheit gives you more granularity within that range.
If you’re measuring ambient temperature, 99% of the time being more precise than 1°C is pointless, in a room you may have more variance than that from a corner to another, same goes for outside. For things where you need better precision you sure as hell wouldn’t be using the imperial system, and you could instead take advantage of this neat trick called DECIMALS.
Edit: addendum for everyday convenience: buying shit at the supermarket. The label expresses price per kilo but the packaging is in grams? You don’t even need to think about it. Drinks? They can even mix litres and kilos, no problem, the difference would be below negligible.
Here in Italy we usually ask for meat cuts in “etti”, aka hecto grams aka 100grams, so I look at a cut, I see it’s 35€/kg, I ask for 3 etti, immediately know it’ll be 10.5€ (ALSO BECAUSE SALES TAX IS INCLUDED ON THE LABEL FFS)Fair. I’ll acknowledge I’m biased here in retrospect. In particular, I’ve realized my argument for Fahrenheit (increased granularity) is directly contradictory to my argument against centimeters (too much granularity). Indeed, my view (however poorly conveyed) was that imperial units of length measurement, and the foot in particular, lend themselves to day to day estimation of size, as meters require estimation with fractions/decimals and centimeters require estimation in quantities too large to be reasonably accurate, so I was of the view that the lack of decimeters in common usage was a problem, but you make a good point that this is a fundamentally flawed assumption. After all, if you’re familiar with metric already, it’s not particularly difficult to just say ‘10cm’ and estimate in relation to tenths of a meter.
Well argued, and certainly more impassioned than my tepid defense of imperial. Consider me convinced; I’m switching teams lol.
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It is not best for “human related” issues at all, imperial is pretty bad for those as well, but because you have grown up with it it seems so to you.
Yeah, I’m realizing this is just a bias toward familiarity on my part. There’s several bad assumptions that I made in there which I hadn’t really given too much thought; bad practice on my part, I’ll admit.
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Don’t forget that distance is somehow different on water, though.
Don’t forget to thumb your nose at the Americans for using these systems you made up in almost the same way you guys do, just a different mixture.
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Shout-out to horses. They’re measured in hands (4 inches) but ONLY up to their shoulder. The neck, head, and ears don’t count towards their height.
Well, it is called shoulder height.
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It was an international group that met in France that created the metric system.
The British didn’t even begin to adopt the metric system until in the last third of the 20th century or so, and even then thr transition was not immediate.
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Actually we use both. For example, body weight is (traditionally) stone and lbs, but parcel weight is usually kg.
The same is true for length; height in feet, but stuff like room measurements in cm.
I think the only area where we’re actually consistent is traveling distance? All signs and gauges are in Mph rather than Km/h. In fact the only time I can think of someone talking about distance in kilometres, is to do with sports (IE a 5k/10k running event).
In Canada, which transitioned to metric in the 70s and 80s, people’s height are still measured in feet in casual conversation. Weights for groceries still often have lbs and kgs with them.
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Only if it’s something really old and they can put it in a museum.
Or words from another language.
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And the size of your land in acres/hectares. And a lot of ingredients in cups (which has never been a set amount in the UK since its beginning). And distance sometimes in yards
At least area in acres does avoid the issue of 10 square unit. Does that a 10 by 10 square or a square with a Total area of 10?
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One problem metric solved was that each country had their own value for inch, mile, pound etcetera. This is partially fixed by everyone but the US going to metric. But I highly encourage everyone to ask “Okay, but is that a Swedish mile, nautical mile, Roman mile, or Chinese mile?” whenever miles comes up with Americans. Similar for inches, feet, and so on.
He jokes on you i only use kilofeet when talking about long distance. Now everyone is confused by saying 318 kft.
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But isn’t it very British to take everyone else’s shit and claim it as their own?
Very true. It’s also a very French thing too though, to be fair
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Actually we use both. For example, body weight is (traditionally) stone and lbs, but parcel weight is usually kg.
The same is true for length; height in feet, but stuff like room measurements in cm.
I think the only area where we’re actually consistent is traveling distance? All signs and gauges are in Mph rather than Km/h. In fact the only time I can think of someone talking about distance in kilometres, is to do with sports (IE a 5k/10k running event).
Brits should never lecture someone on having a sane measurement system when even Americans are more consistent.
Like say what you want but a pound is a pound whether it’s at the grocery store or on my bathroom scale.
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Brits should never lecture someone on having a sane measurement system when even Americans are more consistent.
Like say what you want but a pound is a pound whether it’s at the grocery store or on my bathroom scale.
Do you think lbs change depending on what we’re measuring? A lb is a lb here too…
I’d argue a comprehension of both metric and imperial is superior, as well as provides insight into which the inferior measurement is, but you do you mate.
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In Canada, which transitioned to metric in the 70s and 80s, people’s height are still measured in feet in casual conversation. Weights for groceries still often have lbs and kgs with them.
Glad to hear we’re not the only country with an imperial hangover! Our experience is pretty much the same. Bathroom scales, gym weights etc all have both kg and lb on them. Over time society here does seem to be shifting more toward metric; most people tend to know their height in both these days, whereas 20 years ago it would have been predominantly ft rather than cm.
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Says I miss the point and then straw mans an entire system of measurement. Seems like you’re just a little too invested in the metric system.
I merely compared the idiotic randomness behind the imperial system to those behind my made up measurement system, showing that both are similarly stupid
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The British didn’t even begin to adopt the metric system until in the last third of the 20th century or so, and even then thr transition was not immediate.
Or complete
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Shit, did we move on from Giraffes?
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Yeah but the 800 hamburgers are including bones, how many legit venison burgers could you make out of a average deer?
I have seen American food standards, it’s 800.
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37 degree commie = 98.6 degrees freedom.
310.15 degrees King
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The British have a stupid mix of Imperial and metric. We usually measure distance in meters/centimeters but feet and inches are still used fairly regularly especially if you’re measuring the height of a person. Large distances are usually measured in miles unless you’re going for a run in which case you probably use km. Then you go for a drive and measure your speed in miles per hour, and your fuel efficiency in miles per gallon. Except you now need to fill up so you go to the petrol station where the prices are listed in pence per litre. Most other liquids are also measured in litres unless you’re buying milk or beer.
Then if you’re weighing things you probably use metric, unless you’re weighing a person or you’re an old person cooking. Temperature is also measured in celcius unless you’re old.
Beer depends on where you get it. Bottle/can? ml. Glass at the pub? Pint.
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And the size of your land in acres/hectares. And a lot of ingredients in cups (which has never been a set amount in the UK since its beginning). And distance sometimes in yards
If you are nobility perhaps, I only have 37 miliacres if you combine the house as well as the garden.
