Once there will be no more digits to use for displaying price per gallon they will be forced to display price per liter as it still could fit

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[–] 92 points 1 month ago (4 children)

The Americans will summon quarts or some other unholy measurement.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    1 quart = 1.14 litre. Price per quart will be lower than price per litre, so you're definitely correct. If it was the other way around I'd say there could be some wiggle room for the marketing benefit, but alas that is not the case.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 month ago

    This would be funny af

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  • [–] 21 points 1 month ago

    Is this gonna be like that time Americans didn't buy the 1/3lb burger from Burger King because they thought the 1/4lber from McDonald's was bigger. As an American myself, and a teacher for over a decade, people are legitimately retarded. I'm surprised shoes with laces is still the norm TBH.

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    [–] 19 points 1 month ago* (4 children)

    Many US gas stations switched to liters for a while during the original "gas crisis" in the 70s. One crooked station near my house switched to liters without saying so - they simply covered or removed "gal" on the price signs, so they said like $0.85 with no units, so the price for a gallon was over $4. To further hide it, when customers asked to fill the tank the attendants only put in about a quarter tank, so the price would be realistic for a fillup measured in gallons. It pissed off one guy so much he stood in front of the place for about a month with a ginormous sign that said "BUYER BEWARE! REG OVER $4/GAL".

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  • [–] 47 points 1 month ago (16 children)

    This would literally work. If one station has $9.49 (/gal) on its sign and the station across the street is $3.79 (/L), there are absolutely enough dumb Americans who will line up for the more expensive gas with the lower number.

    A&W nearly went bankrupt because Americans couldn't figure out that 1/3lb is more than 1/4lb. This is a good idea.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (15 children)

    A&W nearly went bankrupt because Americans couldn't figure out that 1/3lb is more than 1/4lb.

    Myth.

    Anyone who had their 1/3lb burger knows why A&W nearly went bankrupt, and it had nothing to do with the size of the patty.

    It was easily the worst burger I've ever experienced.

    "Americans don't understand fractions" is the marketing they used to save face. The reality is that they didn't have any repeat customers.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    The firm eventually conducted a focus group to discover the truth: participants were concerned about the price of the burger. "Why should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat?" they asked.

    It turns out the majority of participants incorrectly believed one-third of a pound was actually smaller than a quarter of a pound.

    https://awrestaurants.com/blog/memories-history/the-truth-about-aws-third-pound-burger-and-the-major-math-mix-up/

    They didn't almost go bankrupt, but yes they did have a focus group where the majority of people did not understand fractions.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    That literally only comes from A&W themselves, and the first mention of it was in the memoir of the former CEO at the time.

    After he released his memoir trying to rehabilitate his image after being released from prison for fraud.

    Not exactly a reliable account. There are zero other sources for the myth than the chain itself.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Focus groups commissioned by the company get the results that the company wants. That is the entire point.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    Are you saying the company wanted results saying people didn't understand 1/3 is more than 1/4?

    That would be stupid.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago

    Yes, that is exactly what they wanted.

    Ever hear the phrase "couldn't sell water in a desert"? A damning claim of incompetence, right?

    The A&W marketing team couldn't sell a hamburger to Americans.

    Americans.

    They couldn't figure out how to sell this hamburger. To Americans.

    Americans aren't particularly known for their rejection of fast food burgers, but here is a fast food burger, and here are Americans, noses upturned at the prospect of ordering it.

    A&W desperately needed a scapegoat, and "Our customers are stupid" was easier to swallow than their nasty-ass burgers.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    When you order one turd sandwich from my restaurant and never come back for another, the problem isn't that you think my 1/3 lb turds are smaller than BKs 1/4lb patties.

    The focus group did not capture the reason why the people who did buy it didn't become repeat customers. It was a fucking awful burger.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Are you serious dude? If i went to a restaurant, and thought I was paying MORE money for LESS food i would never go back. But go on your rant about how much you hate A&W or whatever.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    And I'm betting if you went to a restaurant and the food was absolutely terrible, you wouldn't go back either, or at least wouldn't order that same, terrible meal.

    A&W is great. They're one of the last drive-in restaurants in my area. I have coney dogs and root beer floats every time I go. But their 1/3lb burgers were so complete shit that I won't even try their burgers now. Their burgers were worse than DQ's. Worse than cafeteria burgers. They could have made them twice as large, and they still wouldn't have sold, because they were utter shit.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Naw, just post like 10.2... the exact pennies doesn't matter really. It would get printed on the receipt still, but doesn't need to be displayed everywhere.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago
    [–] 8 points 1 month ago

    The death throes of an empire. Dangerous thing, that.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Get your subscription to gas today!

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    I thought about this too while I was filling up my tank yesterday, but I think they would just switch to quarts since that is just 1/4 of a gallon

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    That's right. Europe uses liters because that's their biggest liquid measurement. Ours is gallons, so we'll just split that by 4. You think MAGAs are going to go along with switching to a foreign commie system for our beautiful American gas?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (4 children)

    We tried the metric thing in the 1970s - people hated it. Some things stuck like alcohol measurement in ml. Most didn't .

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Anyone who thought changing the measurement system wasn't going to be met with resistance was delusional. People hate change. Sometimes, change is better. As someone who went through it in Canada, there was a lot of disgruntlement from the previous generation, but the rest of us just moved on (mostly), and being able to just use decimals everywhere instead of base 2 fractions here, decimals there, multiples of 12 over there was absolutely refreshing. Now my kids barely even use imperial and just shake their heads when the oldsters talk about it.

    And I'd still rather measure people's weight in pounds than in stone like a monster.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    That's a really great perspective I never had. I only see it as a kid growing up in the 70s usa. But you folks got through it and we didn't. That's telling on our stubbornness at the very least. Btw I never had more trouble with alcohol than the time I visited .. asked for a pint. Do you mean a Mickey? Chuckles.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    I can switch between metric and imperial with ease. Like many Canadians, I still do oven temperatures in F, height in feet and inches, and body weight in pounds. But I have a number of coworkers who use metric only, mostly immigrants and young people, and I will tailor my units for the people I'm talking to.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    I was in Middle School/ High School at that time, and remember the attempted transition well. I even remember a science teacher telling us that THIS is going to be the way things are from now on, and we'd just better get used to it.

    About 15 years later, I was using a standard American slide rule, and remembered that, and thought "Guess not, Poindexter."

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    [+] 8 points 1 month ago (4 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    More likely, the last cent digit will just drop because it isn't significant (rounding up of course, don't want to miss an opportunity to squeeze even more!).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    I want a liter of cola with my burger, and hold the spit.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    In the 70's when gas broke $1.00 per gallon and most pumps couldn't handle it, they just set the pumps to half the price and charged double that when you went in to pay. Pump would say $5 and you paid $10. That would be a lot harder today since rarely are people paying inside.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    Lol I can see the boomer tantrums now

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    It's a hypocritical gambit that works both ways. Here in Canada we are 'metric' but in our grocery stores we label meat for sale 'by the pound' because it looks cheaper on the label.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    jesse, what the fuc are you talking about??

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Liter is French, for give me some fucking gasoline before I break vous fucking lips.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    they need to make a "exchange your blood plasma for the same amount of gasoline" station at every gas stand.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    How many dollars.per millimeter?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (18 children)

    Fuel efficiency is already reported using the American backwards notation: miles per gallon. Why not use the same silly method to screw people at the gas pump as well. Just go with barrels per cent, if you’re feeling extra diabolical.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    Would you prefer we talk about .04-.07 gallons per mile?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

    Prefixes would be the obvious choice but ancient Roman’s hadn’t thought of that. I guess the next option is to use a smaller unit. Floz or something.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (3 children)

    Sorry, what do the ancient Romans have to do with it?

    And, ok, so we'd be talking numbers in the 5-10 oz/mi range. Why is that better?

    Status quo: "How far can I go with a unit of fuel?"

    Flipping it: "How much fuel does it take to go 1 unit of distance"

    It just seems arbitrary to me. What am I missing that makes the status quo backwards?

    Edit: I'm leaving this up, but nevermind -- after posting this reply, I read your replies to others in the thread. I think I see. Linear units vs. "confusion units" (lol, cute term!).

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

    Ancient Roman’s came up with some seriously messy but revolutionary systems. By today’s standards their units, money and even numbers were a total train wreck, but the Brits inherited them regardless. As the British empire conquered about half of Africa and as much of the rest of the world as possible, their messy systems also spread to those places. Incidentally, America wasn’t spared of this plague.

    Next time you step on the Lego of measurement systems, you can thank the Romans for that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I don't agree. It's easy to backseat drive the chariot now, but at the time? A mile as one thousand paces? That seems sensible when you're measuring distance for men marching and horses or oxen pulling wagons. I can't really speak to their monetary system, I'd have to read up on it more. And for numbers, well, you can hardly fault them for not using something that didn't exist yet.

    For units in general, though, there are definite benefits to a base 12 system over base 10: You can easily deal with halves, thirds, and quarters without introducing decimals.

    Oh, and I did chuckle a bit at your Lego remark. I'm glad you phrased it that way :D

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    They had to start from nothing, so even a bad system was obviously better than nothing. Developing the alpha version is great. But you're supposed to switch to the next update when it becomes available.

    Speaking of division, a couple of thousand years earlier the Babylonias came to the conclusion that base 60 is a great compromise. It has many divisors without the number itself being absurdly large. If you want something smaller than that, 12 is also pretty good.

    Having all of these divisibility properties is nice if you have to do calculations on pen and paper. As soon as you have calculators, the base no longer matters. Regardless, I can appreciate the beauty of divisibility enough to make a spreadsheet that explores this feature. If you want to have a number that is highly divisible without being absurdly large here are your best options.

    base divisors
    1 1
    2 2
    4 3
    6 4
    12 6
    24 8
    36 9
    48 10
    60 12
    120 16
    180 18
    240 19
    360 23

    Honestly, anything past 60 getting a bit silly. You may have also noticed that 10 wasn't even on the list, as it has only 4 divisors. If 4 divisors is all you need, go with base 6, because it's a more elegant way to get the same benefits.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (11 children)

    Argh. Miles per gallon makes me angry enough. And then you've got the metric using proto americans using km/L like that makes any sense.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    Fun fact: that's not the only non-linear unit out there. Like, the Mohs scale and all the various gauge units Americans love. Lots of fun units out there.

    All of it makes sense if you want to screw around with people. For example, this figure went from 20 to 15 while that one went from 50 to 45. It's the same difference, right? Who needs linear units when you can have confusion units.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    I don't understand? What's the alternative?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    L/km, or L/100km practically because it puts the litre value in a useful range for comparison.

    50mpg = 4.7L/100km
    45mpg = 5.2
    20mpg = 11.7
    10mpg = 23.5
     9mpg = 26.1
    
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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

    Linear units follow the format [what you give]/[what you get]. That format makes comparison easier. With non-linear units a 1% change can be negligible or huge depending on where you’re at the scale. Linear units are always very clear regardless of where it’s used.

    If your fuel consumption drops from 6 l/100km to 5 l/100km, it’s exactly as useful as the drop from 16 l/100km to 15 l/100km. Try that with mpg, and you’ll see how deceptive those numbers are.

    Edit: That 1% stuff was wrong. The argument would have made sense if I had written something like 1 unit change can be negligible or huge.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    I don't get how the change between 5 and 6 (47 to 39mpg) is the same as 15 and 16 (16 to 15mpg). One is a much smaller change than the other.

    I always just think stuff like 30 mpg means a full 10gal tank can go 300 miles.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Let's say you drive the a 300 mile distance with two cars. First one does 45 mpg and the other one does 40. Seems like a small difference, and it is. Once you reach the destination, and compare how much money you spent on gas, the difference is probably something like 3.6 dollars.

    Next, you do the same trip with a different set of cars: 20 and 25 mpg. That was a small difference, right? Not any more. At the end of the trip you compare the receipts and find that it's a 13.2 dollar difference now.

    As gas is the material being consumed and miles is what you get in return, having them in the mi/gal configuration implies you should care a lot more about the miles. However, the distance you need to drive usually isn't something you think about that much. Instead, people care much more about how much you have to spend on gas. The volume of gas connects with how much you end up spending, and that's why you should put it on top, not below.

    If gas was nearly free, an all you cared about is distance, mpg would be ideal.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    Both this and miles per gallon are linear.

    Edit: A 1% change is THE SAME no matter where you are on both. A 1% increase in miles per gallon is a (100/101) times [decrease] in gallons per mile (which is linearly convertible to l/100km). What you did is two different % changes.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago

    You guys don't even know how devaluation works.

    I've lived thru 2 on other lands.

    It goes like this : wow! The government is doing great! I can fill up my car with just $4decidllars.....

    wow! The government is doing great! I can fill up my car with just $4newdollars.....

    wow! The government is doing great! Ever since they defaulted the currency by 10, I can fill up my car with just $4.....

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  • [+] -20 points 1 month ago* (8 children)

    Actually, I am employed at the US standards office in Washington DC, AND this was indeed discussed! But we figured out (based on the last census results) that only few fellow citizens understand the concept of “liters” - in fact only scientists seem to be able to handle this unit, and they are being fired right, left and center (government strategy). I would still vote for Trump though, in an upcoming election.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    You aren't. What you are is a liar. Your recent comments make this incredibly clear.

    1 Actually, I am employed at the US standards office in Washington DC...
    2 Actually, I’m a veteran and directly affected by this. As a US marine I’ve see
      n direct action in three wars...
    3 South African here, Arie van der Hoek (M, 38) and I’m happy that the Grote 49t
      h president of the US...
    4 Actually, my husband and I live on top of one of those! We discovered this wh
    5 Actually, I live in Kansas and it’s HELL! My oldest son died of fentanyl, my s
      ec...
    6 Actually, Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I’m from Texas. I once witnessed
       a gu...
    7 Actually, I used to know this, but since I’ve turned vegatarian,...
    8 Actually, I live in Kentucky and I’m directly affected by this. We...
    
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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    Actually, ever since my partner and I moved from Johannesburg to Topeka to start work at the U.S. standards office, changing to liters has been a big focus of mine. I've been living half of the time in Louisville, KY where I work on drafting the new policy in my free time when the PTSD eases up and allows for it.

    Much like I was drafted into WWII to lead the charge on D-Day.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Please read further. I can't be bothered to quote them all but (almost?) none of what follows after the actually seems genuine. Here's the full Texas one for example:

    Actually, Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I’m from Texas. I once witnessed a guy who took a lady cyclist right of way, nothing much you may say, but I got my gun out and shot a hole in the car’s motor the size of a bowling ball. An eye for an eye, thought him a lesson I tell you. Alas, this altercation was witnessed by the police, and I was arrested for aggravated assault. Seems the female cyclist didn’t have the right of way after all. I write these lines from prison, but I would still vote for Trump in the next election.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    For sure, each one of them is complete bullshit and I encourage everyone to read through em. Like you, I didn't want to post all of them but just to give my Lemmys a taste.

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