"1 brick equals about 1kg" - Plain. Boring. No pizazz.
"1 brick equals about 37 baby chicks." - Fun. Whimsical. Oozing pizazz.
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Yeah but can we talk about time?
Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time.
...It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion. โฆ
โRobert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living.
As quoted in the GNU coreurils documentation for date input formats
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Then there's my favorite cursed unit: the kip! 1 kip=1000 lbs. "Kip" is short for "kilo-pounds." It's a unit used frequently in American civil and structural engineering. And it is so deliciously cursed.
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Just came here to nit-pick that the metric prefix for 10^3^ is k and not K.
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Ugh. Kelvingram again.
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I'm an American and every last bit of my shop is metric. It is the superior unit of measurement in every aspect. I don't bother with imperial at all. If I have to list dimensions online in imperial, just multiply mm x 25.4 which gives me inches. That's as far as Ill go into inches and feet.
I've said this before and Ill say it again, the US was robbed of the superior unit of measurement.
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Damn Tucker Carlson mustโve stumbled upon this post. Someone should tell him that Russians use metric.
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Being a mechanical engineer in the US constantly switching between both systems really sucks. And for much more than just length and temperature
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Being purposefully stupid and arrogant about it is the single most American thing.
Also 1L water ~ 1kg
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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.
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BUT THIS IS HOW WE ALWAYS DID IT
Growing up in the Metric environment, I only have to deal with the Imperial system very rarely before the Internet. But later, I found out there's a whole country that only use Imperial, and that they almost always demand you convert your system to the one they understand, and almost never bothered with Metric when they write anything. But then again, I found out that they also use units that are totally novel. I just have to accept that this is the character of them, and continue using Metric.
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Bring forth the ceremonial cudgels, it's imperial units bashing time.
The chain (abbreviated ch) is a unit of length equal to 66 feet (22 yards), used in both the US customary and Imperial unit systems. It is subdivided into 100 links. There are 10 chains in a furlong, and 80 chains in one statute mile. In metric terms, it is 20.1168 m long.
ahhh good hit, that's the stuff.
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It annoys me so much that a small decision could have had me growing up with metric.
Can anyone with a deeper understanding of the history of the metric system explain why a gram is the base unit of weight, and a litre the base unit of volume?
I thought the foundation of the system was that a kilogram is the weight of a litre of water. But then why not name them 1 thing = 1 thing rather than 1000x a thing = 1 thing.
And yes I've had four cups of coffee and no sleep today.
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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.
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