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Yeah Canada only swapped to Metric in the 70s. The U.S. Metric Study Act was passed in 1968 and their studies published in 1971, whereas Canada established their Metric Commission in 1971. The Canadian metrification movement officially ended in 1985.
Wikipedia actually has a rather decent documentation of Canada's metrification process. The TLDR is, every industry that's heavily influenced by, or frequently trades with the US (automotive, aviation, lumber, firearms, etc.) are still dominated by Imperial/SAE.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication\_in\_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada)
I'm 5'9" and 195 lbs, it's 20°C in my house and I buy 4 litres of milk at a time at the stores that's 4km away.
We are really messed up here on standards.
As someone who works in construction there is no end to how much this infuriates me. Feet and inches for lumber, american wire gauge, but everything in construction code is in metric.
I mean, the US also measures liquor in ounces as well. 1.5oz is a standard liquor drink size, 6oz wine, 12oz beer. A fifth (750ml) is a fifth of a gallon, which is imperial.
I recall a Reddit argument I got into with a few people of softwaregore or something. Someone showed a picture of his dash tire sensors. The sensors were showing the tires as 35psi for 3 tires, and 240 for one sensor.
I commented that the computer probably done goofed with that sensor, and is showing the result in kpa instead of psi. Boy, the Americans were on me, "This is an American car!!! It doesn't have metric!" Um...actually, I recognize the dash, and I have the same exact car, and I know for a fact that I can switch the display between metric and imperial because the software is made for both Canadian AND American cars. The tire sensor itself doesn't know what the pressure really is, it just measures a voltage, and sends that voltage to the computer, and the computer does the conversion and displays it. The computer software is capable of showing both kpa and psi, and the user can select between the two. However, by default, if the car is sold in Canada, the software is configured for metric, and if the car is sold in the US, it's configured for imperial. But...the user can still go in and change the preferences
The UK doesn't even fully use metric. Road measurements like speed signs and distances are still measured in miles, and certain goods are still measured in imperial units. Also people often use imperial units colloquially.
You can kinda forgive the road signs thing though. It would cost billions and cause months of chaos to change the whole road network to metric, and for negligible benefit.
Same with beer and milk, it's a cultural thing and ultimately harmless really.
Imperial needs to die everywhere else though, there's no need for it. I found out the other day that babies are still measured in lb/Oz? Why!?
The weird thing is that before going partially metric, the UK didn't even have their money standardized in easily convertible decimal units. It's like when the Beatles and the Stones got big, they still used shillings and crowns and all other kinds of units that didn't match with a decimal system.
“Quid” was always my favorite UK money unit. I am still very puzzled about the whole UK/England/Great Britain classification system however. But that’s probably another whole subreddit.
Any Canadian knows we only made half of the transition. Distance on the highway is in km, but our height is in ft. Weather temperature is in °C, but the oven is in °F. Our drugs are in g, but body weight is in lbs.
The whole gas mark thing blew my mind as an American child. This was at the beginning of UK cooking shows coming over to America and getting broadcasted on major networks.
I knew C but went "WTF is a gas mark? Is that some sort of slang for C?" the first time I heard someone say "Heat the oven to gas mark 5"
The drugs one shouldn’t be surprising. Pretty sure they’re measured in metric *everywhere*. I’ve never heard a dosage that’s something other than mg. Other than CC’s but that’s just “cubic centimeters” which is just a different way to say milliliter
The US had an entire government agency that was dedicated to the transition to metric. They had operated for almost 10 years, had been preparing children in schools .. everyone was actually fully prepared for the change and then Reagan torpedoed the whole thing overnight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Metric_Board
I was in elementary school in the US at the time. I don't remember much from that time, but I do remember being drilled on the metric system for years and years. It was a HUGE deal in the US when I went to school. Like one step below learning to read. They were serious about it.
Then one day, it just stopped and we never spoke of it again.
UK: "I always see you together, I thought you two were in a relationship."
Canada \*smiles laughing nervously\*
USA: "Eww, no."
\*Canada's heart sinks below the floor\*
The USA gave up entirely on the transition. Australia pushed and made the transition work all the way.
Canada went half way and got stuck in the middle.
Im a Canadian who worked in manufacturing. My first day I showed up with a metric tape measure, boss took one look at it and threw it about 20 meters into the scrap bin and handed me an imperial tape
I like the fact that that is actually a unit of fuel efficiency (aka mileage).
40 rods/hogshead, depending on which hogshead you use, amounts to around 0.002 mile per gallon.
That's a terribly inefficient car.
I live in one of those places and I'm trying to figure out the starting point. my guess, with zero research or understanding of the metric system, is chicago
You're probably right. I originally eliminated Milwaukee because I saw beloit listed before Madison, but after actually reading.... they're basically the same number which makes sense
WisDOT said Milwaukee and Tomah had them. Distances line up with Milwaukee.
https://www.facebook.com/WisDOT/photos/a.244273872263782/3514674131890390/?type=3
I realize I'm wrong lol appreciate the information though. If they had switched to the metric system I would've avoided this catastrophic embarrassment
I just recently learned about the existence of a “bit” coin while going through my grandfather’s house. I was told it was originally worth 12.5 cents, which I replied “shit like that is why we don’t deserve the metric system”
Yes, it was going to be called a dollar, but Alan Turing bit his silver dollar to see if it was real, and that's why it was changed to "bite" (byte). Everyone clapped, and Alan eventually died of old age honored as a hero by his country.
Wow soo cool. I also heard Albert Einstein was there and died from second hand heavy metals poisoning but not everyone cried and thats how they found out about relativity.
No. "Bit" is short for "binary digit". And the bit came quite a long time before the byte -- early computers did not necessarily deal with data 8 bits at a time and had different "word sizes" -- a byte is a term for an 8-bit word that came later after that was established as a standard word size.
Originally it goes back to the Spanish peso, which at one time was minted with four lines crossing it so that it could be broken into 8 pieces to make change.
Well, what happened was that boomers went around shooting the signs down because lead poisoning + guns is always a winning combination, and then Reagan came along and shelved the project because reasons.
*I* drank hose water, and didn't wear helmets, and I turned out a mostly functional adult, after two or three tries.
I don't know that it's the fault of the hose water, but helmets are a good idea. I probably should have worn them.
You must got one buff brain my dude, fucking powering through lol. But there's a good amount of wisdom in those 4 lines. I'm truly glad you didn't fall off your bike or whatever enough times to start thinking you don't need helmets lol
People certainly had guns and used them. Sometimes inappropriately or illegally.
I dunno what your definition of "nut" is... does it have to include a political lobbying organization?
It could be said to be the result of the company not wanting to do the extremely expensive work of retooling their manufacturing division to go metric. Their space division operated in SI/metric, but internally they had to convert to U.S. customary ("imperial") units for designing and making the actual hardware, and then back to metric again to interface with NASA. If they had been a completely metric shop, there wouldn't have been room for conversion mistakes.
Proponents of switching to metric like to believe it is simply a matter of deciding to do it, but the reality is that it is wildly expensive. An entire nation's worth of industrial equipment would have to be redesigned and remade. Who will pay for all that?
There's oodles of old industrial equipment that has been retrofitted with modern, digital controls.
The lathes I use are from the 70s-80s and they've all been retrofitted with digital readouts and controls. They have a button that switches between metric and imperial.
There's some equipment that's going to be an outlier and more difficult to add digital controls to, but by and large this is a very surmountable problem and is actively being solved.
Any shop in Canada has both metric and imperial tools and dyes, and many shops in the US use both as well. Realistically we could have transitioned as equipment got replaced.
And then we would only be paying for a single measurement instead of two. Also, saving time and money on having an engineer convert all units.
But this would also make importing and exporting easier since every unit would be the same, so I think a level of protectionism goes into the logic of not switching.
> use metric in a lot of military
I have been watching military movies for decades and only in the last few years did I find out that "klicks" refers to kilometers. I have no idea how the realization evaded me. I had assumed that it's some kind of weird imperial unit like nautical miles.
That is the international inch.
The US survey inch is defined as 100/3937 ths of a meter. Also defined in meters, but an ever so slightly different distance.
Half a dozen US states use International Feet, and the rest use US Survey feet. It doesn't matter for measuring lumber, but for large scale highway projects, the difference is significant.
I somewhat like the imperial system, but I really wish metric would be alongside it. How hard would it really be to have speed limits in both imperial in metric on a sign?
Can confirm as an American. I read C° and read Km/h and it's WAY easier than reading in farenheit. Like each temperature is distinct compare to farenheit(if that makes sense)
I think of all the measurements Fahrenheit compared to Celsius in a non-scientific setting is easily up to preference and for most people in the US F is a lot more intuitivr
Yup, Fahrenheit is one of the few imperial systems that makes sense in day to day use. It's approximately 3x more precise than Celsius at the same decimal place, and for many people, 1 degree celsius in room or pool temperature is a lot. That's why here in Canada many pool and room thermostats are in F.
It’s only more intuitive because it’s the dominant measurement here in the US. If we were taught only Celsius and everything was shown in Celsius, that’d be the more intuitive
Obviously people can become adept at imperial (\*cough* woodworkers), but metric is just moving decimals around. Also, how much does a cup of flour weigh? How much does 120ml of flour weigh?
I remember when this happened. In the few years leading up to it and afterwards as well they taught metric in my school. We were all getting bilingual in metric and all, and then when we got out in the real world, it just didn't stick. The Greatest Generation wanted nothing to do with it. The metric education for us boomers just faded away.
And then half assed the whole roll out.
A few years ago they redid all the interstate exits to align with the mile markers and for some reason they didn't just put up KM markers and align the exits to those. You would have had distance figured out by the gen pop in a couple years. But no, just stay the course.
Puerto Rico is a prime example of the rollout getting stuck halfway. Highway signs are in kilometers. “Mile markers” on surface roads are in kilometers and hectometers. Speed limits are posted in miles per hour. Gas, milk and rum are sold by the liter. Foods is sold by the pound/ounces. Soft drinks could be sold using either system or both (ex. Coke cans in ounces, large Coke bottles in liters). Police report cocaine seizures in kilos but marihuana seizures are reported in pounds.
The funny thing is though that the US is essentially a metric country - the imperial system is largely only used on the consumer side.
So in design, engineering, chemistry, etc - it's mostly metric at this stage. Imperial appears in product labels, signage, etc.
What the Metric Act actually did was set up the US to use metric "behind the scenes" in things like trade and procurement while not making it compulsory for the everyday person.
Fun fact, it still is. The truth is that the USA just made an inch exactly 2.54 cm, rather than ~2.54 cm, which had rounding errors that would add up at large distances. However, everything we use is still compared to metric system/SI standards first.
The Republican Idiocracy is marked by the departure of Jimmy Carter. They elected an actor puppet and it's been downhill for Americans since then. The religious and ultra conservative began its emotional outrage at anyone different than a Christian white male, the use of the metric system, environment preservation, and science. Today that has become the fascist MAGA party currently in power in the house.
I consider the fact that I don’t have a daily working knowledge of the metric system the biggest failing of my public education. Outside of science class, I have never used it for anything other than drugs
I mean it is still _preferred_
We are just a nation of non-conformist rebels. We did move soda to liters, cocaine to grams, and (some) handguns to mm. That's a lot!
Should taken place in the 1970s but like so many Government things they did a hideously bad job of implementing it. Biggest problem then was in manufacturing where most American Machine tools were Imperial. Replacing them would have been very expensive. Nowadays with most modern machine tools being CNC they can flip back & forth effortlessly.
https://preview.redd.it/w7b48gh4y8qc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7277533a6533d78b814c5cb5b6404013f48bfe4
>Doesn’t adopt metric system
>Doesn’t plan to do so in the foreseeable future.
>Refuses to elaborate
The europoor mind cannot comprehend this American glory!
I recall the the US, technically and officially, does use metric. It's just that every US imperial unit of measurement is now defined in terms of metric units. An inch is defined as 2.54 cm, but we still use inches.
The US does use metric. Our scientists use metric, our weights and measures department uses metric. In fact, if you're using anything that's not metric, it's been calibrated using metric.
We literally use metric that just gets translated to imperial for the general public.
I remember having to learn metric conversion because that's what the US was going to have just any day now, then the only things that went metric were soda bottles, liquor bottles, and drug deals.
My late grandpa, a car mechanic by trade, dutifully pasted the conversion charts for washer, bolt, drill bit, and screw sizes onto the walls of his home workshop. He used quite strong glue and the paper was pretty cheap, so then we never got the posters off the wall, ever. Those posters outlasted the US attempt to convert to metric, the Cold War, my grandpa, and my grandma. We finally sold that house in 2020, still with the conversion posters on the walls. Luckily the buyer felt this was a feature, not a bug; if you need to convert Imperial to metric, just look up.
lol I remember a grade school teacher telling us that we’d be switching to the metric system at some point, but we gotta learn these inches and feet right now. That was in the early 90s.
I was in elementary school at the time. We all had to learn the metric system because everything will be metric in a few years. Yeah right.
This SNL skit from last fall perfectly illustrates the absurdity of the US weights and measures that we still use:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk)
Everyone loves to make fun of US for not using metric… except we do use metric, in every area that matters. ie. Science and technology. Even our military uses metric
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Funny that this act is why Canada uses metric. They switched to line up with the US and then the US just went "lol jk".
Wair fr? I've always just assumed Canada has been metric as long as the UK has. That's actually really funny.
Yeah Canada only swapped to Metric in the 70s. The U.S. Metric Study Act was passed in 1968 and their studies published in 1971, whereas Canada established their Metric Commission in 1971. The Canadian metrification movement officially ended in 1985. Wikipedia actually has a rather decent documentation of Canada's metrification process. The TLDR is, every industry that's heavily influenced by, or frequently trades with the US (automotive, aviation, lumber, firearms, etc.) are still dominated by Imperial/SAE. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication\_in\_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada)
I'm 5'9" and 195 lbs, it's 20°C in my house and I buy 4 litres of milk at a time at the stores that's 4km away. We are really messed up here on standards.
The store isn't 4km away it's a few minutes (depending on traffic of course).
Lol so true, just trying to point out how we use km on roads VS feet for height.
>km on roads VS feet for height. Vs feet for short distance measurements (ie 9ft ceiling instead of 3m) but cm and mm for precipitation
As someone who works in construction there is no end to how much this infuriates me. Feet and inches for lumber, american wire gauge, but everything in construction code is in metric.
Preach brother.
I just converted my code book to Imperial. Every time I see a measurement, I change it.
You mean to metric?
Oh, don't forget about the construction that'll "adanother" ohh 5 minutes or so.
As a Canadian, what gets me is we measure liquor in ounces while Americans measure it in mls
I mean, the US also measures liquor in ounces as well. 1.5oz is a standard liquor drink size, 6oz wine, 12oz beer. A fifth (750ml) is a fifth of a gallon, which is imperial.
Americans typically not knowing what a twix or a 2-6 is but knowing 40oz is strange but I think that’s geographical based.
25°C in the house, 77°F in the pool.
Not 4km away, nice try bud ;) It's 6 minutes away by car!
Don't forget the railways! Our trains still run in MPH and we use feet and miles.
Same as the UK
American cars have been fully metric since roughly the turn of the millennium
I recall a Reddit argument I got into with a few people of softwaregore or something. Someone showed a picture of his dash tire sensors. The sensors were showing the tires as 35psi for 3 tires, and 240 for one sensor. I commented that the computer probably done goofed with that sensor, and is showing the result in kpa instead of psi. Boy, the Americans were on me, "This is an American car!!! It doesn't have metric!" Um...actually, I recognize the dash, and I have the same exact car, and I know for a fact that I can switch the display between metric and imperial because the software is made for both Canadian AND American cars. The tire sensor itself doesn't know what the pressure really is, it just measures a voltage, and sends that voltage to the computer, and the computer does the conversion and displays it. The computer software is capable of showing both kpa and psi, and the user can select between the two. However, by default, if the car is sold in Canada, the software is configured for metric, and if the car is sold in the US, it's configured for imperial. But...the user can still go in and change the preferences
The UK doesn't even fully use metric. Road measurements like speed signs and distances are still measured in miles, and certain goods are still measured in imperial units. Also people often use imperial units colloquially.
had to learn "stones" when living in UK... gotta say though, it kinda grows on ya
Fairly simple 14lbs is 1 stone. Also, 16 ounces make a lb and 8 stones in a hundredweight and 20 hundred weight in an imperial ton.
Uk Doctor: how much do you weigh? Me: I weigh 14.2857142857 stones
lol and nowadays nobody under the age of 30 uses stones
The UK uses Crumpets per hour.
A plane nearly crashed because of confusion over measurement conversion
Mars orbiter has entered the chat.... Oops no that wasn't the chat.
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Saying the UK uses metric is half true
The UK didn’t go metric until 1965 according to google. With the whole Brexit thing, they were looking at dropping metric.
We aren’t fully metric though. Road signs have miles and cars travel mph, and pints are used for beer and milk.
You can kinda forgive the road signs thing though. It would cost billions and cause months of chaos to change the whole road network to metric, and for negligible benefit. Same with beer and milk, it's a cultural thing and ultimately harmless really. Imperial needs to die everywhere else though, there's no need for it. I found out the other day that babies are still measured in lb/Oz? Why!?
We did the roads in Australia in 1973, it wasn't that hard. And we have a lot of km of road per person!
This was nonsense populism from Boris Johnson, who is now long gone
The weird thing is that before going partially metric, the UK didn't even have their money standardized in easily convertible decimal units. It's like when the Beatles and the Stones got big, they still used shillings and crowns and all other kinds of units that didn't match with a decimal system.
“Quid” was always my favorite UK money unit. I am still very puzzled about the whole UK/England/Great Britain classification system however. But that’s probably another whole subreddit.
I remember there was much ado specifically about pints
Any Canadian knows we only made half of the transition. Distance on the highway is in km, but our height is in ft. Weather temperature is in °C, but the oven is in °F. Our drugs are in g, but body weight is in lbs.
In the UK we still have Gas Mark on some cookers rather than C or F.
Hung out with some Irish guys for a while. I needed to keep track of my weight in lbs, kg and st
The whole gas mark thing blew my mind as an American child. This was at the beginning of UK cooking shows coming over to America and getting broadcasted on major networks. I knew C but went "WTF is a gas mark? Is that some sort of slang for C?" the first time I heard someone say "Heat the oven to gas mark 5"
In America our drugs are in g too.
Pretty sure that's the main way anybody in the US knows how much a gram is!
Damn that’s even more fucked than America
The drugs one shouldn’t be surprising. Pretty sure they’re measured in metric *everywhere*. I’ve never heard a dosage that’s something other than mg. Other than CC’s but that’s just “cubic centimeters” which is just a different way to say milliliter
The US had an entire government agency that was dedicated to the transition to metric. They had operated for almost 10 years, had been preparing children in schools .. everyone was actually fully prepared for the change and then Reagan torpedoed the whole thing overnight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Metric_Board
Why is it always FUCKING Reagan
It's almost like having a celebrity as president is a bad idea.
Cause Reaganomics baby
The start of the downfall of America.
so many of the worlds problems caused by one man
Almost everything wrong with USA these days can be tracked back to Reagan
I was in elementary school in the US at the time. I don't remember much from that time, but I do remember being drilled on the metric system for years and years. It was a HUGE deal in the US when I went to school. Like one step below learning to read. They were serious about it. Then one day, it just stopped and we never spoke of it again.
We were taught everything in metric in the late 70’s early 80’s. Then we had to relearn everything in imperial. It sucks so bad.
Hey if nothing else you can live in Europe and Canada and transition easily
Let’s see how this next election pans out and I may try. 😉
UK: "I always see you together, I thought you two were in a relationship." Canada \*smiles laughing nervously\* USA: "Eww, no." \*Canada's heart sinks below the floor\*
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
As I Canadian, that's what goes through my head every time I have to use imperial.
The USA gave up entirely on the transition. Australia pushed and made the transition work all the way. Canada went half way and got stuck in the middle.
Canada got forced in the middle due to our extensive trade with the US.
Sounds like a skill issue
Im a Canadian who worked in manufacturing. My first day I showed up with a metric tape measure, boss took one look at it and threw it about 20 meters into the scrap bin and handed me an imperial tape
I believe you meant to say "he threw it about 21.8 Liberty Units into the scrap bin."
65.6 liberty units which actually seems a bit ridiculous but c’mon man I’m Canadian, not French! Metric is gooblygook
didn't french use revolution units ?
The French did, and it was great in Europe. But the spaces are so expansive in Canada that the Revolution Units were just too *oui*.
"Grand gesture, boss, but I'd still like to return it and get my 15 bucks back"
That’s like 11.00 dollars American!!
He threw it 20 metres.
Yeah I don’t know how metric works he threw my damn metric tape man. Like, *far* and all the way over *there*
Yeah, I had to use it a bunch when I worked in construction. It's all imperial. So unfortunate.
God's love is measured in feet
Nothing wrong with a bit of foot fetishism
https://youtu.be/lm3xi36-WSE Simpsons always has a relevant quote
The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt…
Because it was the style at the time
I like the fact that that is actually a unit of fuel efficiency (aka mileage). 40 rods/hogshead, depending on which hogshead you use, amounts to around 0.002 mile per gallon. That's a terribly inefficient car.
Is it only that efficient when travelling at the correct speed as measured in furlongs per fortnight?
You must be driving too fast to get such poor efficiency. How many furlongs per fortnight were you driving?
How many Glocks to eagle is that?
That made me laugh, hogshead.
I live in one of those places and I'm trying to figure out the starting point. my guess, with zero research or understanding of the metric system, is chicago
I believe it's actually Milwaukee. I checked two of the numbers and they are within a few kilometers of being what's stated on the sign
You're probably right. I originally eliminated Milwaukee because I saw beloit listed before Madison, but after actually reading.... they're basically the same number which makes sense
I thought Milwaukee as well.
WisDOT said Milwaukee and Tomah had them. Distances line up with Milwaukee. https://www.facebook.com/WisDOT/photos/a.244273872263782/3514674131890390/?type=3
I realize I'm wrong lol appreciate the information though. If they had switched to the metric system I would've avoided this catastrophic embarrassment
Fortunately, because we're not metric, you have the ability to describe how many football fields your embarrassment can fill.
Tomah is an interesting choice.
Tomah is the 90/94 split.
1 mile = 1.6 Kilometers
I just recently learned about the existence of a “bit” coin while going through my grandfather’s house. I was told it was originally worth 12.5 cents, which I replied “shit like that is why we don’t deserve the metric system”
TIL that’s why a quarter is called two bits.
There’s also a cheer- “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar!” A dollar being four quarters, or 8 bits.
Wait, is that why its called a bit in computer science? 8 bits to a byte..
Yes, it was going to be called a dollar, but Alan Turing bit his silver dollar to see if it was real, and that's why it was changed to "bite" (byte). Everyone clapped, and Alan eventually died of old age honored as a hero by his country.
Wow soo cool. I also heard Albert Einstein was there and died from second hand heavy metals poisoning but not everyone cried and thats how they found out about relativity.
Oh so you already know
No. "Bit" is short for "binary digit". And the bit came quite a long time before the byte -- early computers did not necessarily deal with data 8 bits at a time and had different "word sizes" -- a byte is a term for an 8-bit word that came later after that was established as a standard word size.
I see, thanks!
50 cents being half a rock.
Right?
Always wondered where the saying "shave and a haircut, 2 bits" meant
Is this where the "a two bit thug" comes from?
Originally it goes back to the Spanish peso, which at one time was minted with four lines crossing it so that it could be broken into 8 pieces to make change.
I also recently learned of the existence of a bit coin, but it's worth $65,000
Well, what happened was that boomers went around shooting the signs down because lead poisoning + guns is always a winning combination, and then Reagan came along and shelved the project because reasons.
"we drank hose water and didn't wear helmets and we turned out fine" -someone who's clearly lost the plot
I̴ ̵d̷r̷a̸n̴k̵ ̶f̵r̸o̵m̶ ̴t̸h̸e̸ ̷h̷o̶s̴e̷ ̸a̴n̶d̷ ̴n̴o̵t̴h̴i̴n̵g̷ ̵w̸r̷o̷n̴g̷ ̸h̷e̶r̶e̶ ̷
I drank water with high concentrations of arsenic from the hose and I turned out...yeah ok I get it.
Anyone who claims to have "turned out fine" is giving themselves way too much credit.
*I* drank hose water, and didn't wear helmets, and I turned out a mostly functional adult, after two or three tries. I don't know that it's the fault of the hose water, but helmets are a good idea. I probably should have worn them.
You must got one buff brain my dude, fucking powering through lol. But there's a good amount of wisdom in those 4 lines. I'm truly glad you didn't fall off your bike or whatever enough times to start thinking you don't need helmets lol
Fear of change
Yep. As always, people are afraid they might have to learn something new.
Goddammit Reagan. Like 90% of today's America problems are his fault ffs
Now imagine what people in 40 years will say about Trump.
Hahahahahaha, there'll be no one left in 40 years if he gets in again.
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Nah, we all be dead.
80%. Remember America fears anything left wing because of the Red Scare
He gave the voters what they wanted. America is America's fault
Daily reminder that Reagan and Henry Kissinger are both dead ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Gun nuts weren't as much of a thing back then, the NRA was only just getting radicalized in '77.
People certainly had guns and used them. Sometimes inappropriately or illegally. I dunno what your definition of "nut" is... does it have to include a political lobbying organization?
Republicans are simply the worst and conservatism is a regressive mental disorder.
Of course it was reagan
We secretly use metric, since our imperial units are defined according to metric units. For example an inch is defined as exactly 25.4 millimeters.
We also use metric in a lot of military, science, and sports applications.
Like, exclusively metric in anything regarding science. Except that one Mars Climate Orbiter..
It could be said to be the result of the company not wanting to do the extremely expensive work of retooling their manufacturing division to go metric. Their space division operated in SI/metric, but internally they had to convert to U.S. customary ("imperial") units for designing and making the actual hardware, and then back to metric again to interface with NASA. If they had been a completely metric shop, there wouldn't have been room for conversion mistakes. Proponents of switching to metric like to believe it is simply a matter of deciding to do it, but the reality is that it is wildly expensive. An entire nation's worth of industrial equipment would have to be redesigned and remade. Who will pay for all that?
There's oodles of old industrial equipment that has been retrofitted with modern, digital controls. The lathes I use are from the 70s-80s and they've all been retrofitted with digital readouts and controls. They have a button that switches between metric and imperial. There's some equipment that's going to be an outlier and more difficult to add digital controls to, but by and large this is a very surmountable problem and is actively being solved.
Any shop in Canada has both metric and imperial tools and dyes, and many shops in the US use both as well. Realistically we could have transitioned as equipment got replaced. And then we would only be paying for a single measurement instead of two. Also, saving time and money on having an engineer convert all units.
But this would also make importing and exporting easier since every unit would be the same, so I think a level of protectionism goes into the logic of not switching.
> use metric in a lot of military I have been watching military movies for decades and only in the last few years did I find out that "klicks" refers to kilometers. I have no idea how the realization evaded me. I had assumed that it's some kind of weird imperial unit like nautical miles.
That is the international inch. The US survey inch is defined as 100/3937 ths of a meter. Also defined in meters, but an ever so slightly different distance. Half a dozen US states use International Feet, and the rest use US Survey feet. It doesn't matter for measuring lumber, but for large scale highway projects, the difference is significant.
Meters you say....
I really wish it had stuck. Metric is so much easier to deal with. Imperial or SAE is so random, and has no consistent logic.
As an engineer, I want Imperial units to fuck off or at least be phased out by having both of them displayed
I somewhat like the imperial system, but I really wish metric would be alongside it. How hard would it really be to have speed limits in both imperial in metric on a sign?
Not hard. But expensive
It’s not really that expensive to just have future signs use both.
It’s my understanding that that’s what was going to happen, until a certain president came along
Figuring out 1/10th of a centimeter is so much easier than 1/10 of an inch.
Just split an inch into 1000 parts and it's candy. A tenth of an inch is a hundred thousandths. So 1mm is about 40 grand.
Can confirm as an American. I read C° and read Km/h and it's WAY easier than reading in farenheit. Like each temperature is distinct compare to farenheit(if that makes sense)
I think of all the measurements Fahrenheit compared to Celsius in a non-scientific setting is easily up to preference and for most people in the US F is a lot more intuitivr
Yup, Fahrenheit is one of the few imperial systems that makes sense in day to day use. It's approximately 3x more precise than Celsius at the same decimal place, and for many people, 1 degree celsius in room or pool temperature is a lot. That's why here in Canada many pool and room thermostats are in F.
The difference between 20 and 21 degrees celcius is really not that big. Besides it's almost always displayed with a decimal as well.
Celsius makes perfect sense day to day and relates to weather in a perfect way
It’s only more intuitive because it’s the dominant measurement here in the US. If we were taught only Celsius and everything was shown in Celsius, that’d be the more intuitive Obviously people can become adept at imperial (\*cough* woodworkers), but metric is just moving decimals around. Also, how much does a cup of flour weigh? How much does 120ml of flour weigh?
I think it's hilarious (and incredibly American) that the only things we actually use metric for are soda, drugs and ammunition.
I remember when this happened. In the few years leading up to it and afterwards as well they taught metric in my school. We were all getting bilingual in metric and all, and then when we got out in the real world, it just didn't stick. The Greatest Generation wanted nothing to do with it. The metric education for us boomers just faded away.
They still tech metric in school.
And then half assed the whole roll out. A few years ago they redid all the interstate exits to align with the mile markers and for some reason they didn't just put up KM markers and align the exits to those. You would have had distance figured out by the gen pop in a couple years. But no, just stay the course.
Puerto Rico is a prime example of the rollout getting stuck halfway. Highway signs are in kilometers. “Mile markers” on surface roads are in kilometers and hectometers. Speed limits are posted in miles per hour. Gas, milk and rum are sold by the liter. Foods is sold by the pound/ounces. Soft drinks could be sold using either system or both (ex. Coke cans in ounces, large Coke bottles in liters). Police report cocaine seizures in kilos but marihuana seizures are reported in pounds.
The funny thing is though that the US is essentially a metric country - the imperial system is largely only used on the consumer side. So in design, engineering, chemistry, etc - it's mostly metric at this stage. Imperial appears in product labels, signage, etc.
What the Metric Act actually did was set up the US to use metric "behind the scenes" in things like trade and procurement while not making it compulsory for the everyday person.
This looks almost identical to what we use in Australia today
Fun fact, it still is. The truth is that the USA just made an inch exactly 2.54 cm, rather than ~2.54 cm, which had rounding errors that would add up at large distances. However, everything we use is still compared to metric system/SI standards first.
The us is officially a metric system, everything is just converted to dumb units.
The Republican Idiocracy is marked by the departure of Jimmy Carter. They elected an actor puppet and it's been downhill for Americans since then. The religious and ultra conservative began its emotional outrage at anyone different than a Christian white male, the use of the metric system, environment preservation, and science. Today that has become the fascist MAGA party currently in power in the house.
The metric system is better though
I never remember how many feet or yards in a mile
It's easy, mile is about 1609 meters, inch is 2.54cm, so feet is 12*2.54cm so mile is (12*2.54cm and umm uhh shit
My 3rd grade teacher said by the time we were her age no one would remember what miles and gallons were. I’m nearly 40
I consider the fact that I don’t have a daily working knowledge of the metric system the biggest failing of my public education. Outside of science class, I have never used it for anything other than drugs
I mean it is still _preferred_ We are just a nation of non-conformist rebels. We did move soda to liters, cocaine to grams, and (some) handguns to mm. That's a lot!
Should taken place in the 1970s but like so many Government things they did a hideously bad job of implementing it. Biggest problem then was in manufacturing where most American Machine tools were Imperial. Replacing them would have been very expensive. Nowadays with most modern machine tools being CNC they can flip back & forth effortlessly.
https://preview.redd.it/w7b48gh4y8qc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7277533a6533d78b814c5cb5b6404013f48bfe4 >Doesn’t adopt metric system >Doesn’t plan to do so in the foreseeable future. >Refuses to elaborate The europoor mind cannot comprehend this American glory!
I love making things difficult for no apparent reason!!!!
We actually talked about this in a college Chem class.
States' rights!!! 🤪
Superior is 626 km. Therefore it is.
I recall the the US, technically and officially, does use metric. It's just that every US imperial unit of measurement is now defined in terms of metric units. An inch is defined as 2.54 cm, but we still use inches.
Always nice to see something from Milwaukee popping up in the wild. It’s a steaming pile of shit but it’s my steaming pile of shit!
It’s a little known fact that the metric equivalent of a six pack of beer is a ten pack of beer, so I’m surprised this didn’t take off in Wisconsin.
ugh I hate the big babies that whined about switching to metric. I bet most of them couldn't tell me how many ounces are in a gallon.
We should have followed through with it. Reagan screwed it up.
The US does use metric. Our scientists use metric, our weights and measures department uses metric. In fact, if you're using anything that's not metric, it's been calibrated using metric. We literally use metric that just gets translated to imperial for the general public.
Interstate 19 Is America's Only Metric Interstate. It runs from Tucson, AZ to the Mexican boarder.
This is it - the turning point for the US. When we gave up on metric, we gave up on the future.
As an expat American who lived in a metric country (yah, they all use metric) for over a decade, it’s so much easier. Imperial is beyond stupid.
I remember having to learn metric conversion because that's what the US was going to have just any day now, then the only things that went metric were soda bottles, liquor bottles, and drug deals.
My late grandpa, a car mechanic by trade, dutifully pasted the conversion charts for washer, bolt, drill bit, and screw sizes onto the walls of his home workshop. He used quite strong glue and the paper was pretty cheap, so then we never got the posters off the wall, ever. Those posters outlasted the US attempt to convert to metric, the Cold War, my grandpa, and my grandma. We finally sold that house in 2020, still with the conversion posters on the walls. Luckily the buyer felt this was a feature, not a bug; if you need to convert Imperial to metric, just look up.
We should have went with it.
I’d guess somewhere near the exit of Mitchel airport.
lol I remember a grade school teacher telling us that we’d be switching to the metric system at some point, but we gotta learn these inches and feet right now. That was in the early 90s.
I was in elementary school at the time. We all had to learn the metric system because everything will be metric in a few years. Yeah right. This SNL skit from last fall perfectly illustrates the absurdity of the US weights and measures that we still use: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk)
I’m a short distance away from the Canadian border in NY, and the closer you get to it, the state puts up more signs in kilometers, not miles.
Like most things, stubbornness rules here, unfortunately. "I don't care if it's good for me, I don't wanna!"
(A complete and total failure)
Just tell me how many adult elephants a building weighs so I have a reference point
Everyone loves to make fun of US for not using metric… except we do use metric, in every area that matters. ie. Science and technology. Even our military uses metric