this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
562 points (96.1% liked)

Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle

0 readers
1 users here now

A community dedicated to Strange Planet comics by Nathan W. Pyle.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 18 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Technically the metric system is "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" as per the Metric Conversion Act of 1975.

You're just also allowed to use lbs and feet and stuff and most people do.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 5 points 2 years ago

The versions of imperial measurements the US uses are even defined in terms of metric units, so they're less a completely separate measurement system these days and more just a weird facade on top of metric, even.

[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 years ago

Regan also never bothered to reinstate Imperial standards at the bureau of weights and measures (because it would have cost a small fortune). So our units are officially defined by the their metric counterpart. Legally speaking an inch is 2.54 centimeters.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Gleddified@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Base 12 is way more logical than base 10, I bet aliens would think we're stupid for counting in base 10 just because we have 10 fingers, my opinion on this is infallible fight me

[–] UnculturedSwine@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Base 12 is as arbitrary as base 10 and we don't know what aliens would think nor should we care. Base 16 makes more sense because it is 2x2x2x2 instead of 2x2x3

[–] Derproid@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

A base based on 2^x makes the most sense since it's easy to do conversions between bases that match that template. So base 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. The limit would just be how many symbols can be easily remembered and instantly recognizable (need 32 symbols for base 32).

[–] MetricIsRight@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago

I feel like this is my wheel house.

[–] anicius@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

There are so many baseless radixals in the comments.

[–] orphiebaby@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Every time anyone talks about this, I feel obligated to inform them: there's also a counting system that's not based on ten, and it's way superior. Do people know about it? Most don't. The Wikipedia page stupidly calls it the "ten-plus-two" system, and there have been heated arguments there with the dumbasses who refuse to change it to the logical name. That's how stupidly-biased people are towards the ten-based system.

You make a "metric" measurement system based on 12-based counting and then everyone wins. Everyone. It'll never happen of course.

[–] evulhotdog@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You’re not really helping your case by omitting the real name (but complaining about the Wikipedia name) and sharing why it’s superior.

I loosely tried to find it and didn’t find anything explicitly named 10+2 or “ten-plus-two”.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] RyeBread@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The only thing I still like Fahrenheit for is temperature. There's a wider range for the human livable temperature, so you get more persision. For everything else metric all the way.

And yes, it's 100% my American brain can't figure it out in Celcius no matter how hard I try lmao. 10's are chill, 20's are nice, 30's sind heiß. But in the end, I end up thinking Fahrenheit and going from there every time.

[–] lauha@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I am not familiar with fahrenheit, but celsius and kelvin allow for decimals. You can have as much precision as you like

[–] flucksy_bango@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm going to blow your mind, then.

Look up the human body temperature in Fahrenheit.

Turns out all ways of measuring temperature are linear and equally accurate. All of them have decimals.

[–] lauha@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I hoped ypu would have noted the sarcasm in the tone of my message. Of course every system has decimals.

[–] flucksy_bango@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Nope! Your fault for making a bad joke. Make it more obvious for idiots next time time.

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What makes you think Farenheit is more precise for "human liveable" temperatures?

The temperature is the same. Regardless of which unit you use to document it in.

[–] flucksy_bango@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Which is why I think any argument between Celsius and Fahrenheit is completely arbitrary.

Like, the temperature that water melts and boils is completely dependant on pressure. If I follow a recipe I'll use the temp they recommend. My computer's heart gauge uses Celsius. I don't need to know what it is in Fahrenheit to know if it's overheating.

[–] UnculturedSwine@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Gonna take a shit on this idea like a good American and say dealing with fractions is easier than irrational decimals. I do like the metric system tho and I wish we would switch at least some things like temp and road speed over.

[–] Hypersapien@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago

The only reason we do things in fractions of an inch are because we use inches.

[–] Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Irrational decimal? You mean multiplying and dividing by factors of ten?

[–] RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

I never understood how it's much easier to work with "three eights of an inch" than with one centimeter. Or how 6ft3 is easier to work with than 1.90m. The first one combines two measurement units and has very bad accuracy, the second one is straight forward dealing with fractions of itself and can be made even more precise if needed.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The problem isn't exactly fractions or decimals, you can present the SI system in fractions as well. The issue is unit conversion. If you want to go from centimeter to meter to kilometer it's very simple because all base unit conversion are a multiple of 10. But if you want to go from inch (the rough equivalent to centimeter) to feet (rough equivalent to meter) then that's a division by 12 and if you want to go from feet to mile (rough equivalent to kilometer) then that's a division by 5280 which is a fuck-all number that nobody is going to remember. So instead you have to remember feet to chain and then chain to furlong and then furlong to mile. And this is just one unit in one dimension. For derived unit conversions the imperial system can fuck right off because it's going to get needlessly complex.

[–] Chuckle_Puck@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I get your point but as an American I've never heard of converting feet to chains or furlongs? Lol sounds like pirate measurements to me

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

I agree that they probably don't see much use but they're there, along with some other pretty impressive units.

[–] DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago

That’s not what they’re saying.

They’re saying that the only way you can keep neat and easy conversions between same-dimension units is by maintaining a lot of those deprecated units such as furlongs or chains, because by removing them, now you end up with complete nonsense conversions.

[–] shrippen@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I doubt that very much. Just yesterday I checked out the product page of the new DJI Air 3 and compared it with the Air 2. One of the new features is a bigger sensor compared to the old one. So I wanted to see how much bigger it got. For some reason though DJI only lists their sensor sizes in fractions. The Air 3 has a sensor size of 1/1.3 Inch and the Air 2 1/2 Inch. To be honest. I thought shortly about that and then concluded I would have to do math to compare those two and did something else with my life. I know how to convert between different bases but honestly - why should I? This is weird! Why use random switching fractions for anything? Fractions are only useful to display numbers that would be hard to express in decimal. And that is mainly 1/3 and 2/3! Which to be honest I dont encounter that much in my life.

[–] UnculturedSwine@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I'm steel-manning the argument for sticking with US Standard. I think there is a lot more precision inherent in how the system functions that you don't really get in every day uses. Even so, I would rather deal with meters and liters because I hate having to convert between the two systems and metric seems to have won anyway.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] ScrivenerX@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Outside of school I don't think I've ever had to convert feet to miles or yards to miles.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] johnthedoe@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

When I find a wood working video on YouTube from the states it blows my mind how anyone can not just adopt metric “This is 5” 4/57 and we need to cut it to 5” 5/45 and a half” bzzzzzzz.

[–] dancing_umbra@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

There are some places that do use a base 12 number system.

Again, I wasn't defending it, just explaining it.

load more comments
view more: next ›