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[–] 31 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

European variant:

[ is it displays? ] -yes-> [ inches ]
 ↓ no
[ is it screws? ] -yes-> [ inches ]
 ↓ no
[ metric ]
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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Never seen screws in inches in europe (though I'm sure they exist, just don't see them being common), but you're missing wheels, pipes, hoses and fittings, socket wrench drivers, screwdriver bits, clothes (sometimes) and perhaps more

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  • [–] 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    It's a bit out of date, and definitely varies by individual, but broadly, yes.

    Like I'll weigh myself in kg and give height in cm but most people won't understand it outside a medical context.

    And most cooking is in grams or Celsius, except my oven, which is F.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    We’d need several versions of this in the UK with a decision tree required to select the relevant decision tree. It would need to take age and where you were brought up into account.

    I think that the most complicated is distance. For me it is imperial for a person’s height, metric for short distances that I measure, imperial for short distances that I estimate (that one’s weird), miles for ground travel distances and time for air travel distances.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    It would need to take age and where you were brought up into account.

    And which sports you've been involved with, and how nationalistic your parents were when you grew up, and whether you've had chronic health issues, and whether your oven runs on natural gas, and whether you visit mainland Europe often.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

    Speed I'm bilingual in, I'm old enough to remember when we changed from miles to km and watching the road signs gradually get replaced. Manitoba also runs a grid pattern on roads throughout a lot of the southern province, having at least a gravel/dirt road nearly every mile, so you kinda grow up with that burned into your brain.

    Temp wise, C all the way. Fahrenheit totally screws me up. I know 70 is around room temp but beyond that I need to convert it for my simple brain to understand.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    JFC I though America had it fucked up sideways

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Canadians are surprisingly confusing with their measurements when they're so easy to understand about most other things.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Doubly colonized. Very porous border with supplies all engineered in ‘freedum units’.

    Some industries have been extra slow to convert, usually due to supply chain dependencies. Also generations have to die before giving up key habits drilled into them as kids. I distinctly remember grandparents talking about mass in stones, yet canadian-born.

    Settler states can sometimes be stuck in preserve old ways while imperial centers move on. Metis fiddlers sent a delegation to Scotland (? or thereabouts) to reteach them forgotten reels from a few hundred years ago.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago*

    Is it for agriculture?

    Imperial. Sorta.

    I literally use units like mL per acre for something like boron application with fertilizer.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Certainly got a chuckle out of this.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago*

    As a Canadian-American living in Japan.

    Height/Distance: metric

    Cooking: metric (ml for volume, but I normally translate all recipes into weights and just throw things into a bowl on the scale) for both amounts and temperatures

    Weight: metric

    Speed: metric (m/s for wind, kph for basically anything else not science-y enough for other units)

    Certain products: bicycle tires (maybe frames?), screen sizes, and more I'm forgetting.: inches but not called inches and almost always with the size in mm/cm written next to it. I have never met a Japanese person who knows what an inch actually represents unless they lived in the US or work closely with the US in certain industries (e-commerce is one for unit conversions)

    Property sizes: In my own usages, metric (square metres). Dealing with Japanese real estate, home centers, etc: 帖 (jou the counter for tatami mats) and 坪 (tsubo the counter for area).

    Consuming:

    • soda, milk, water and whatnot: metric
    • 日本酒 (nihonshu, what most people would call "sake" in the west): x合瓶 (x goubin; where x = 1 -> 180ml, 2 -> 300ml, 4 -> 720ml or so); masu (a box being around 8 shaku -> 144ml); xお猪口 (x ochoku) for x sake cups.
    • other alcohol: I still sometimes will refer to a 750ml liquor bottle as a fifth if I'm not thinking about it

    This is ignoring all of the counters Japanese has (一枚 one flat object like a sheet of paper, 一本 one cylnindrical object like a pencil/cigarette/whatever, and dozens more). Bonus: they're not all the same between Japanese and Chinese which feels weird. I don't know about Korean on that part since I think the counters are mostly written in hanguel anyway.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    I never understand why Imperial shows up so much in these posts.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Does... the chart help at all??

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    While I set my oven to 180 and measure out how many grams of flour to use, I pause to see my pool temperature is 28. On my way back I stepped on a bathroom scale that read 80kg and I thought back to secondary school weigh ins where I was in the under 60 bracket.

    No, the chart doesn't help. As I said, I don't understand how Imperial shows up so much on them.

    Using Imperial for construction is true because we buy/sell to the US. But that's really it, maybe one day we'll weigh things in stone and cook using gas mark.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    Why limit youreelf to only 1 or 2 ways of measuring things?

    12 miles away? 12 kilometers away? Boring.

    126,720 hot dogs away is much more whimsical and fun.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I use metric far more than this chart indicates. While I might say something in a recipe calls for a cup, if I need to be specific, it's 250ml. Even height and weight I ususally know them in both metric and imperial. I was starting elementary school when the metric changeover began which made shopping confusing but eventually retail mostly caught up. I do agree with the travel distances though. Time is a much more common measurement: it will take 10min or 1/2 hour or 15 hours is more likely measurement than x km because it is specific to mode of travel: walk, bike, car, transit, plane.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    This is not funny, it's a fucking problem. I'm a metric purist and have an unreasonable negative emotional response when others are not.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    American, can you quantity your negative emotions in a 4 point precision float of 9/11s so I can follow along?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I wonder if this will change thanks to the current and likely long-term antagonism between the USA & Canada.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    also,

    construction drawings: mostly imperial Office paper: imperial (8.5x11, etc)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Canadians may not be bicontinental, but they are a little euro-curious.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    Can't believe Canadians use fahrenheit for cooking. Must be because of American cookers.

    Any Mexicans here? Is it the same there for cooking?

    Ireland: everything is metric except....

    • human height, very slowly changing
    • pints in the pub
    • human weight for older people who still use "stones" (this is quickly declining towards zero). A stone is 14 pounds.
    • I think some plumbing stuff as a hangover
    • edit: oh yeah, TV's as someone else pointed out
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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    I think mexico is weird because officially it uses metric and a lot of people know that, but as you go north closer to US you get people who say millas, libras etc. This is my experience as a non-mexican who spent a few months over there and drove all throughout it.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    how to measure things, like a canadian.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

    Wait, the Arctic-Americans do meteorology in Centigrade?

    Yeah trade relationships between Canuckistan and the First World just weren't meant to be, were there? Next you'll tell me you still have a king and spell "color" with a U.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Centigrade

    For the last time its celsius

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    I thought you weren't supposed to deadname. So much for the tolerant left.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    Brother centigrade hasn't been a thing since the 1940s, and it isn't exactly equivalent to celsius.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (2 children)

    "Time" haha, no no no! You mean "Conventional Sexagesimal Time".

    Everyone loves the metric system until you bring up metric time, go ahead, go find your biggest metric fanboy/girl and ask them how they measure the passage of time, I'll wait.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    i feel your pain. this feels like my arguments my wife and i have about whether to measure something by weight or volume when we're cooking (i always say weight, she always says volume. it's gotten to be a running joke where i will get the scale out for water just to tease her if we're in a good mood)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I guess the Canadian being so measured must be that 4th route, Mass. 😜

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  • [+] -8 points 2 months ago (2 children)