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genewitchyesterday at 9:39 PM2 repliesview on HN

up until very recently, the only units that made it even remotely "universal" was US customary units. Or, as Arduino Vs Everyone on youtube says: "units that have gone to the moon."

Now, i speak larger measurements in metric if i think the person i am talking to understands or doesn't care; but short measurements i still use "quarter inch" or "teenth" or "thou" pronounced like "wow", from the beginning of "thousandth".

I know km, liters - i drink at least 3 liters of liquid a day, if not 4, but i drink it 1 quart beverage receptacle at a time, odd how that fits!

is it really so hard to have a ruler with both measurements? I have a ruler that lets you convert from font point to two other measurement units to inches, for page layout.

I'm american, from the '80s, and we never used metric day-to-day.

the US will be US customary units basically forever. because we're an absolutely massive geography, and there's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of mile markers, speed limit signs, "distance to" signs, speed warning signs, gas stations, etc.

So 2026 is the year where i finally say: Please, please, shut up about this. No one cares.


Replies

aleph_minus_onetoday at 12:32 AM

> is it really so hard to have a ruler with both measurements? I have a ruler that lets you convert from font point to two other measurement units to inches, for page layout.

The problem with the imperial unit system rather is that it does not form something "to build more complicated units out of".

For example: if you want inch (in) as a unit, why not have "in^2" as a corresponding small area unit and "in^3" as corresponding volume unit?

Additionally, there should be constant/regular conversion factors between the various subunits of a measure, i.e.

  10^-3 km = 1 m = 10 dm = 100 cm = 1000 mm = 10^6 µm = 10^9 nm = ...
vs

  1 lea = 3 mi = 24 fur = 240 ch = 5280 yd = 15840 ft = ...
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soopypoosyesterday at 11:25 PM

I can't take seriously anyone who measures butter by volume

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