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[-] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 16 points 1 month ago

Which units are best doesn't matter: the point is, nobody else uses standard units anymore, apart from a couple oddball countries, and only one of them - North Korea - isn't trying to extricate itself from it.

Everybody else tries to be a part of the world's technical and scientific communities by speaking the same language, but of course America has to be different. Because of course it does... And it's tiring if you ask me.

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

America does speaks metric, especially the technical and scientific communities. They just also speak standard.

Don't other countries get on Americans for not speaking more than one language? Why is that now a detriment?

[-] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 4 points 1 month ago

They just also speak standard.

Well they shouldn't. It's harmful.

[-] LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 6 points 1 month ago

US scientists also use metric.

[-] Rothe@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

US scientists are a very tiny minority of Americans, and getting tinier day by day.

[-] LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago
[-] Psionicsickness@reddthat.com 6 points 1 month ago

And I agree with you, fully, except for temperature. “If everyone was jumping off a bridge”, right?

The scale is stupid and I don’t give a fuck if it’s the “norm”. The norm is dumb.

[-] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 7 points 1 month ago

Norms may be dumb but they make everybody's lives easier when everybody follows them.

As for temperature specifically, there's nothing inherently better in Celsius or Fahrenheit. It's just a choice. The only unit that is superior to all of them is the Kelvin because it has a true zero, but it's not commonly used in everyday settings.

[-] Psionicsickness@reddthat.com 5 points 1 month ago

But there is something inherently better in Fahrenheit! 0 is fucking cold. 100 is goddamn hot. It’s a measure that makes sense to the perception of us, human beings.

0 in Celsius is a little cooler than brisk, and 100 means you’ve been dead for a while. It’s a dumb system for humans to use.

[-] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 10 points 1 month ago

Yet somehow Celsius seems to speak to everybody outside the United States just fine.

[-] teslekova@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

0 means water freezing, 100 means water boiling. This is actually quite helpful to know instinctively.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

This is such a bike shed issue. You're being ridiculous.

[-] ccunning@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I dunno - I had to buy a mattress bed and sheets in feet in Thailand. We don’t even do that in America.

And the steel tube was sold in inches, meters and millimeters ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[-] xav@programming.dev 2 points 4 weeks ago

You are calling that "standard units" ? When only 1 country uses them ? Oh the irony ...

[-] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 1 points 4 weeks ago

That's just the name of US customary units: they're usually called standard. Just like the old British customary units were called imperial when there hasn't been a British empire for quite a few decades.

this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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