• Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    8 months ago

    Britain hardly had a leg to stand on. They got stuck halfway through making the switch. Still use miles in their cars, feet for height, etc.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      It’s old people. They vote and don’t like change.

      Everyone in the UK under 40 never used imperial in their education, but everything is still imperial.

      Even stuff that’s not supposed to be. Milk is sold in pints but labelled in ml. Sometimes it’s litres because these are smaller. Timbre is all sold in a metric equivalent, but it isn’t consistent. You don’t know if the piece you’ve had delivered is 2.4m or 2.44m. Rulers have both metric and imperial, unless you pay extra for a single system - which makes them harder to use.

      The worst thing is recipes, many recipes are imperial online because of the USA. American imperial measurements aren’t the same as UK ones.

      It is all driven by ignorance. The royal family (TV show) summed this ignorance up best. They complained it took them longer to get to the destination because their sat nav was in kilometres and there’s more kilometres than miles so everything is further away.

      • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I’m European but I have a set of US cups in my kitchen because most recipes are in these stupid American measurements.

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Most American recipes; just look for something specific to your country.

          Those recipes are gross anyway. Homemade nanna secret cake calls for a box of your favourite cake mix from the supermarket.

          I found recipes for soups that list fucking tins of soups in the ingredients. Like you make soup using a can of already made soup?!

          I tend to add “grams” to my searches if I’m looking for something in English.

          • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Because it’s an annoying extra step I need to take. Also volumetric units are less accurate and don’t convert to well into metric.

        • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I avoid volumetric measurement whenever I can. I’ve found weight based measurement to be vastly superior, especially when you have a 0.1g digital scale. It’s much easier to weight 100g of water than check the line on 100ml.

      • Enk1@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        We use US Standard, not Imperial. Americans took Imperial and changed the measurements but kept the names, because “fuck you, Britain” but “fuck you even more, everyone else!”

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I fucking love the psychotic concept of using “stone” as a measurement, even though a real stone can weight anywhere from milligrams to … thousands of tonnes?

        It’s like saying you weigh 7 water.

    • p1mrx@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      It’s generally good to use feet for height. When I use butt for height I’m like a meter shorter.