this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
885 points (98.0% liked)

Funny

15972 readers
643 users here now

General rules:

Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 69 points 4 days ago (7 children)

What’s more ‘Murican than not understanding the metric system?

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 30 points 4 days ago (3 children)

They don't understand imperial either though.

[–] Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No it's simple see 16oz is 1.2 flasks which is easy to remember because it's based on King Ralph's favourite cup and Ralph famously died tripping over a cocksnake (unfortunate name but I won't censor history) and what do you trip with? That's right, your feet. And how many feet do you have? Exactly, 2. Hence 1.2 flasks to 1 16oz can.

[–] prime_number_314159@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

That's a ridiculous mischaracterization. The word "Ounce" derives from a word meaning "one twelfth", so just like the inch to the foot, an ounce is either one sixteenth of a queen Anne pound of wine (which is itself based on the Queen Anne gallon of wine, or 231 cubic inches of wine), or one twentieth of an imperial pint, which is an eighth of an imperial gallon, which is ten water pounds.

Flasks are a unit of mercury weight, obviously.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] M137@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They don't understand insert basically anything either though.

[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

Understanding things is COMMUNIST! We have the FREEDUMB to be completely illiterate!

[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Tbf does anybody? It's a pretty stupid system.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Tonnes of engineering white papers showing how much imperial measure errors cost US industry.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago

And what size are those white papers, that's right US letter standard

[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Don’t you mean kilograms of white papers? :P

[–] ignominous_wombat@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Metric ton (1000 kg), not imperial/long ton (2240 lbs) or US/short ton (2000 lbs).

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Metric 1000kg is a tonne. There is no metric "ton".

[–] ignominous_wombat@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Both spellings are correct as far as I'm aware. Like how we call it the metric system and not système international d'unités, you can translate terms into your native language if desired.

If you want to be pedantic, do it elsewhere, because I honestly do not give a single shit.

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 6 points 3 days ago (16 children)

I mean, one would hope that a nation would know at least one system. If they tell me one more time "it just makes more sense" about stupid fahrenheit it will be too much.

The freezing and boiling points of MALT does not a good system make!

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You're just jealous you're not made of malt

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oh then we both have terrible news today....

uh oh. you tell me mine. im pretty stupid

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 points 3 days ago (4 children)

It's a better system for weather, but that's about it. 0 is very cold, and 100 is very hot. No decimals needed.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

THAT’S WHAT IT’S BASED ON?

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

One of my pet peeves is people thinking units of the past or people in the past were stupid, as opposed to just prioritizing different things.

The low end was based on the stabilizing temperature of a solution of water, ice and salt in a proportion lost to time. The benefit was that a water/ice/salt solution will stabilize it's temperature naturally until the ice melts, making it useful for calibrating something like a thermometer: "ice" can be below the freezing point, but you can use the solution to set a steady baseline: the liquid will be 0°F.
The next steady baseline was body temperature, available to anyone measuring.
The scale was then set so that the freezing and boiling points of water were 180° apart. This was useful because it put them on opposite sides of a dial.
It was before we decided that ten was the ultimate number that couldn't be beat, so people still played with circular symmetry, thirds and so one.

This meant you could calibrate your thermometer by setting 0 to bring, 100 to your body, and then pushing steam through it and adjusting the offset so that the intervals were right and you correct body temperature variance. Some specific numbers have changed over the years as we adjust the scale to be based on metric.

Not stupid or arbitrary, just prioritizing things we don't care about so much any more.

Celsius and the other are both based on absolute zero and a very specific change in energy levels in the medium, so it's ultimately moot. Neither is technically based on what they originally were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_revision_of_the_SI

[–] argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 5 points 3 days ago

Oh sure, it just so happens to line up just so and comes from a time where malt (max saturation of salt in water) was common.

Fun thing though is that due to this its the one thing f is good at. No point salting a road at or below zero f. Yeap that's it, wooooo

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] kamen@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (9 children)

It's not even about the units - a fraction is unitless. 1/3 of something is more than 1/4 of the same something.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As funny as it is, someone could just as accurately say to you "What's more Lemmy than commenting without understanding?"

This is a marketing statement against the smaller cans of other energy drinks on American shelves next to it. They are well under 500ml, usually closer to 250ml.

Nobody should buy this garbage anyway, but that's just my opinion.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Nooo they can't mean the most famous energy drink in the world with its uniquely small can that shares a shelf with it! They MUST mean the European Monster cans that exist on the other side of the planet!

[–] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Not understanding anything at all

load more comments (2 replies)