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0 pointst-32mo ago0 comments

Honestly, I don't think anyone would raise much of a fuss over changing distance measurements to metric. Both centimeters and inches are easy enough to eyeball or rule-of-thumb, meters and yards are basically the same, and larger units are only relevant for speed limits and travel planning. Metric lacks a good "foot", but I guess people would get used to eyeballing things in ~50cm increments instead.

Weights are even easier as pretty much everyone uses grams as the smallest daily unit and most people can convert to and from metric on the fly for ounces, lbs, kgs. Liters aren't uncommon, and ml<->gram equivalence for water is well-known. Traditional kitchen volumes probably wouldn't be displaced because metric has no answer for those in first place.

Temperature is where metric will fail to gain adoption because Celsius totally sucks unless your daily life consists only of boiling or freezing water at sea level. No advantages over Fahrenheit except maybe arguably for science, because it's Kelvin with an offset.

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kakacik2mo ago

Now sure what sucks on Celsius, water freezing and boiling have been some of the most important scientific and just plain existence facts of mankind since we evolved. We humans have 10 fingers so its split by decimal system.

Since we humans operate 99% of our existence in a narrow band between 0 and 100 degrees celzius, I'd say its more important than starting from absolute 0 and dealing constantly with big offsets.

0 or 100 or -100 or 10 Fahrenheit is what? From Gemini: "0°F was the lowest temperature achievable with a mixture of ice, water, and salt (brine), while 96°F was set as the approximate temperature of the human body (blood heat), chosen because 96 is easily divisible by many numbers, allowing for finer divisions" - rather insignificant things.

t-3OP2mo ago

In Celsius, my daily life uses values from ~ -20 to +30 for the weather, but from ~0 - 90F. For cooking both are equally arbitrary, as the only place I set or read a temperature when cooking is candymaking, setting the oven, or cooking large amounts of meat.

shoxidizer2mo ago

> Metric lacks a good "foot", but I guess people would get used to eyeballing things in ~50cm increments instead.

Perhaps as a compromise we could adopt the meter but divide it by halves, quarters, and so on. Binary fractions are so much more universal than arbitrary base ten ;)

ungovernableCat2mo ago

In a country where every single facet of life is being increasingly politicised, you think this wouldn't cause a fuss?

Oddly enough if any government could just push and shove this through it might be Trump. I bet 20 years later you'd have a sizeable constituency who could be convinced that the change from imperial to foreign units was the beginning of the fall and decline and that everything could be fixed if you went back.

ebiester2mo ago

Oh, you bet they would. Nothing causes old white people to riot like mild inconvenience.

That's only mildly sarcastic. For many people, it's become a part of being American, especially on the conservative side of the isle. Now, I personally live in celsius and work comfortably in kilometers, liters, and grams. However, it has become a weird point of pride for some Americans.

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