I remember discussing with a huge group of European students what imperial had become mainly used for in UK and Ireland. It’s for height and pizza size. I was in a group with many girls so us guys stopped short of mentioning about dick size being one of the few things imperial is only used for in UK and Ireland.
The one thing metric screws up is file size.
A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes or 1,000,000 kilobytes or 1,000,000,000 bytes.
A gibibyte is 1024 mebibyte or 1,048,576 kibibyte or 1,073,741,824 bytes, because it needs to go by increments of a power of 2.
This would be fine except gigabyte also means gibibyte. So if a file claims to be N GBs, I don’t know if it actually means metric GBs or GiBs.
That is not exactly metric 's fault though. It’s whoever made the decision to portray stuff as such in operating systems
I’ve said it on this platform before: I will build furniture in inches until my hands can’t hold a chisel anymore. The inch system arose around the needs of carpentry and woodworking, it works in base 12, which is outright superior to base 10, especially when you divide by 3 and 4 more often than by 5.
Also, the closest tape measure I have to hand is my 5m metric tape. I build things in metric, just…not furniture.
I’m a carpenter as well, and I hear what you’re saying, but also my coworkers and I were just talking yesterday about how much better metric is 😅 Every base-12 advantage is weakened by the fact that I’m constantly expected to do fractions. Everything in metric is a whole number and it’s so hot. Love it when I get an actual number to build something to, instead of a math problem.
If you’ve ever ordered lumber from a Canadian company, you know how much easier it is to calculate and order in metric units vs. board-feet. I feel bad for their sales reps who have to deal with us Yankeestanis.
Also, all the really nice chisels and hand tools from Japan and Europe are already in metric.
I’ve setup a software that generate quotes, sales invoice and production order for a windows and door company. The sales person enter the dimensions and option of the window and it automatically calculate the price, the exact amount material, deduct it from the inventory and generate the cutting and assembly instruction.
They were all working with fractional inches. I’ve started setting up the system using inches and it was a NIGHTMARE ! I quickly decided to convert everything on metric in the back end and to do all the calculations on that and I reconvert it in inches at the end.
Now most of the workers are using metric because it just make more sense.
What do you do when a piece you’re cutting isnt exactly a foot, say, 11 or 13 inches? I know nothing about woodworking, but I’m assuming there isnt a unified standard to make everything match to the nearest whole foot, so then this whole base 12 thing goes out the window, or am I missing something here?
You look at your tape measure, at the number 11 or 13 as appropriate, put a mark there, then take it to the saw and cut it.
Basically there is a conflict going on amongst the woodworkers of the world between those who think clearer in decimals, and those who think clearer in fractions. The fraction folks will tend to prefer standard units, the decimal thinkers will tend to prefer metric.
What’s interesting to me is: you only ever hear Americans complaining about metric, but you never hear woodworkers from Europe or Japan talk about the advantages of standard units… while the Europeans and Japanese are also pumping out generally much higher-quality woodworking than most folks in the USA are. You can probably tell which I prefer lol
My take is, if the standard units were really that much better, I think Japanese and French folks would be using them, because their cultures care a looot more about fine woodworking than the USA’s culture does.
Japan had their own system quite similar to inches that was so popular Japan had to ban the sale or transfer of the rulers.
And yet the cowards refuse to use megagrams. If SI prefixes are so great use them consistently rather than stealing other unit names and giving them another definition.
Also metric byte sizes deserve the fires of hell. Powers of 2 or get out.
We don’t use mega grams because kilo is the SI unit. And there’s no such thing as metric byte. That’s the sales department finding out that 104 MB is a larger number than 100 MiB.
In SI units a megagram would be equal to 1000 kilograms, because that’s how SI unit prefixes work. Except we call it a tonne instead, which I believe is what the original commenter is referencing.
Thank you for this pedantry, I will now remove the word “tonne” from my vocabulary and insist I have only ever heard of megagrams. Bless you
We all know it’s a much better system. Reagan killed our attempt at switching. No one has tried since.
Personally, I use metric for 3D printing, and I use imperial for wood working. Until standardized material sizes change, it doesn’t make sense to use metric for wood working. That change needs to come from the top, from government regulation.
It’s obvious that there’s 1760 yards in a mile.
There’s 22 yards in a chain, which we can all remember because of the 22 yard line in rugby.
There are 10 chains in a furlong, which fans of metric can’t complain about.
There are 8 furlongs in a mile, just like there are 8 pints in a gallon.
And 22x10x8 = 11x10x16 and 11 is easy to multiply by in your head, so it’s really very simple to get to 1760.
/s
this but unironically.
You’ve been hit by…
You’ve been struck by…
A smooth metric system
Annie, are you Oakley? Are you Oakley, Annie?
And 1 ml of water weighs 1 gram and has a volume of 1 cubic mm
22 yds to a chain, 10 chains to a furlong, 8 furlongs to a mile.
Uh, no.
10 feet = 1 decafoot
100 centiyards = 1 yard
1x10^18 attoacres = 1 acre
I’m gonna start estimating distances in millimiles.
1 millimile ~ 5 feet, 3 and 23/64 inches.
makes perfect sense.
I kinda want a hexadecimal version of the metric system.
Measurement system doesn’t have anything to do with numerical base. You can use any base with any system.
16m = Fm
which is pretty ass if you ask me
Sir, this is a Wendy’s, we measure in common units around here…
I prefer absolute units and natural units.
Natural units? You mean like cup sizes? A/B/C/D/DD… ?
shopping for a new mailbox today, they used number of baseballs it can fit as the units and/or basketball for the big ones
Meanwhile the UK naming their currency after a sex act.
Yeah, after learning Japanese in 3 different writing systems, one of which has thousands of characters… I’m never hearing criticism of Imperial units again
If you consider hiragana and katakana to be different writing systems, then English lower and upper case letters are two different writing systems, too.
Not that it makes Kanji any easier to learn.
Sorry, I haven’t gotten to the katakana part yet. Are you saying they’re all the same sounds as hiragana, just slightly different shapes?
あ and ア are pronounced the same. Katakana is used for foreign words mainly if I’m not mistaken.
Pretty much, yeah.
