So…? 🤷‍♀️

There’s even a website that translates it for you: https://www.composerize.com/

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It was a joke ;)

There is no word for that.

(But to be fair, if there was, this one would kind of work)

Oh course there is, it’s:

Existenzerinnerungsverlust

What is reading

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That’s the same thing, the units are just proportional

Sure, if you put it like that. But I do have the feeling many US people treat imperial units like completely different things and have absolutely no mental concept of a relation between them, especially between length and volume.

I know, its just easier to say a foot than 30 centimeters.

That’s just a completely arbitrary thing. It’s easier to answer „how tall are you“ with „one eighty“ instead of „five foot eleven“ 🤷‍♀️

It doesn’t seem to be an issue for „metric people“ at all, nobody is missing the foot in Europe.

Because if it were convenient we would have that, the same way we have a ton, or a pound (500 g), which are in common use. You have the decimeter (10 cm), but nobody uses it. There used to be a unit called „Elle“, which is 50 cm, and it’s just the name for the stick, nobody says „give me 3 Ellen of canvas“.

I would use metric because the advantages of imperial are probably not applicable.

I still fail to see those advantages.

If I’m just estimating and it doesn’t matter much, I’ll probably use imperial

Yes, because you’re used doing so, not because it’s more practical or convenient. Metric people do estimate things as well.

The original idea behind imperial units is actually quite nice. They used 12 inches in a foot because you could divide it in so many ways without using decimals. You can take 1/2 of it, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/6 without ever needing decimals.

You can measure 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of a meter, why wouldn’t you? Also, seriously, those common fractions aren’t that hard in decimal. Everybody knows that 125 g is 1/8 kg.

That’s not the issue. The issue is that it’s not consistent between imperial units, you have a zoo of different subdivisions between units. You have 12 inches in a foot, three foot in a yard etc pp.

The issue is it gets really unwieldy in multiplication, 1 cubic ft is how many cubic inches… 1728, how convenient.

Tell me how much is 1/6 cubic ft in inches? How many cups are that? There goes your mental math.

(It is also a common misconception that imperial is „duodecimal“. It’s not. It’s counting to 12 in decimal. If you had a proper duodecimal system, „12“ * „12“ would make 100 not 144.)

We all still use 360° in a circle

And you also say 180°, 45°, 720°. Not 1/2, 1/8, 2.

It’s called an example. Want another one? How many laps do you need to run on a 400 m track to run a 10k? How many people can you serve with your 2.5 kg steak if everybody needs to get a 250 g steak? Need more?

but its more convenient to have smaller units depending on what you’re measuring.

See, that’s what apparently many people don’t understand: with metric you don’t have „larger or smaller units“. You have one unit and you scale it to your needs. It’s not like we have „the meter“ and „the centimeter“ and have no clue what’s in between. There’s absolutely nothing more convenient about having multiple units for the same physical property.

I find the size of a foot to be convenient for measuring things in casual situations where accuracy and precision aren’t priorities.

Again: There’s nothing more or less precise about metric or imperial. You have a mental image of a „foot“ the same way I have a mental image of a ruler or a sheet of paper, i.e. 30 cm.

I don’t really know what a litre is. I know what a beer bottle looks like, or a milk carton, the same way you know what a quart of milk looks like. Pour a quart on the floor and ask someone how much that is, they probably don’t know.

We don’t literally measure it with our feet, that’s just what its called.

Oh, I definitely had other people tell me imperial is „more human“ because a foot is the size of your foot and an inch is the size of the tip of your thumb.

Lol, that sounds very much “as a black man”

You mean the „engineer“? Well, what can I say, he was insisting his professor at uni taught him „a true engineer can work with every system“.

I mean yes, but the difference is one engineer is just happily pushing around decimals, the other one goes pale when you ask what 1/5th of a gallon in cubic inches is…

How many 39 ft rails do you need to build a 100 mile railroad?

Sigh, here we go again…

Yes YOU don’t do that. Because you can’t.

Everybody in Europe can and does so. There’s nothing arcane or mysterious about the metric system. I have no issues telling you how many litres of water go into a 50 x 50 x 200 cm aquarium, or a pool with a 3.5 m diameter and 80 cm height. Good luck doing that with your inches and feet and quarts and gallons.

There’s nothing „more useful“ about either a foot or a meter. Either you know how much it is or you don’t. Everybody knows what a meter is. For me it’s a large step. My arm from elbow to fingertips is 50 cm. Or 1/2 m… A sheet of paper is 30 cm (actually it’s 297 mm, but that’s another story), and so are rulers. Which, btw, is very close to a „foot“.

Your foot btw most likely is not as long as a „foot“, and a small woman’s size is easily 20% off. And no, that’s not „in the ballpark“.

There recently was a discussion on lemmy where several US citizens (one of them allegedly an engineer…) tried to explain to me that metric might be „more precise“ (? 😂) but the imperial system more practical, because „everybody knows what a foot is“. When I asked them to add feet to miles I got shouted at (in CAPS) that noone (ever) does that. 🤷‍♀️

They didn’t mimic existing units, an imperial ton is close to a metric ton, and the spelling tonne is just an alternative spelling of ton. In some parts ton means imperial ton, and tonne means metric ton, but it’s not standardized. In German, where the word originally comes from, it’s Tonne (btw the e is not silent, it’s [ɛ] as in let. Or in Porsche (no, it’s not pronounced porsh…).)

That’s because you only metricated 40y ago.