How many hands long do they get?

And legally America does use the metric system…

And the worst part is, they didn’t even adopt it completely. They were not even going the complete mile.

Are there any? E.g. here in Germany we use kcal instead of kJ for food energy density. Also horsepower is used instead of W for engines. But for the most part we use only metric.

I’m wondering if there are countries where they completely conform to the metric system.

If I might make an argument for the imperial system? I’ll acknowledge that it is bad, particularly from a scientific perspective, but one advantage that imperial has over metric is its use case for human related issues. Most of the stuff you interact with daily is much more easily measured in feet and inches vs meters and centimeters (this ignores decimeters, but I’ve literally never seen anyone use decimeters in my entire life). Another good example is temperature. 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.

All that is to say: If I’m at work and someone uses imperial for an official measurement, I’m putting my fist through the drywall, but from a day to day perspective, I actually prefer imperial.

Also, the mile is fucking indefensible. I’ll happily leave all 5280 of its feet out to rot.

Easiest way to avoid formatting the list is to put a backslash before the dot:

12345\. Blah blah...

This was a common problem in Reddit in NaNoWriMo when people posted their daily wordcounts and what they had been doing.

Oh, you!

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)

Soccer was only ever a nickname tbf, It stood for a(socc)iation football.

I guess an equivalent would be like calling your police the bobby force.

The imperial system and the US customary system are different for volume and weight

Also, the metric system is french.

Called football everywhere except north America where you use the term football for the game you play with your hands…

Well, at least it fits the theme with the ass backwards imperial system.

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.

FRENCH‽

i just want to call soccer “footie”. i still prefer sepak takraw though.

Most of the stuff you interact with daily is much more easily measured in feet and inches vs meters and centimeters…

… only if it’s what you’re used to.

Don’t forget to give your weight in stones and a horses height in hands…

At least when you use calories and kilocalories you don’t have to multiply by 12 or 3 or 5820 when you want to compare a big and a small number.

Of all the terrible non-metric things Americans use the Fahrenheit is the most defensible. It’s just idiotic when the rest of the world uses metric.

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.

Yes, it was implemented during the French revolution.

Yes, since the 60’ in the US the measurements are based on the metric system.

In 1959 the inch was redefined to be exactly 25.4mm.

So the US and any other country using the imperial system is just using metric but which weird conversion just to make things harder.