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Comic strip of a ghost and a person with the American flag pasted on the head. The ghost repeats “Boo!” in the first three panels without getting any reaction, but when it in the fourth panel says “kg, cm, km, °C” the American gets scared and screams “AHHHH!!!”.

Edit: fixed alt text

    • twei@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      You forgot that only a good guy with a gun-safe filled with AR-15s can stop a bad guy with a glock

            • intrepid@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Least important it may be. But it is the most significant. This scheme follows the conventional scheme we follow while writing numbers - the most significant digit to the left and significance reducing as we move right.

              The advantage of YYYY-MM-DD becomes when you add time to it in ISO-8601 or RFC 3339 format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss. All the digits are uniformly decreasing in significance from left to right.

              This becomes even more apparent if you are trying to sort by time - say, a stack of files, or datetime in a computer. Try doing this with any other scheme.

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      As much as I vehemently dislike US customary units, MM/DD/YYYY is the USA’s greatest notation crime.

    • RushingSquirrel@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This one wouldn’t make sense as they say dates as month day, year.
      To me, dates should always be written in international format: YYYY-MM-DD

      • neumast@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        $ 50

        Do you call this fifty dollars, or dollar fifty?

        Lots of stuff is written differently, than it is spoken. In case of the date it is weird, not to go from biggest to smallest or vice versa. I guess you are used to it now, but for me it would be the same as putting seconds before minutes or inches before feet.

      • happyhippo@feddit.it
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        1 year ago

        Depends on context, IMO did/mm/yyyy is the most natural when writing some text, but partial ISO yyyy-mm-dd is ideal for when naming files and directories, makes lexicographical ordering follow chronological order.

      • _TheThunderWolf_@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I personally prefer dd-mm-yyyy because cutting stuff of the end to get dd-mm or dd is better imho. Just an opinion tho, use what you like.

  • CommanderCloon
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    1 year ago

    The only properly measured thing Americans bring to their schools is 9mm’s 😔

    • MxM111@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Length, volume and mass specifically (and derivatives, like PSI). Temperature is ok.

      • Omgarm@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As a celsius user I have absolutely no need for fahrenheit. It needs more numbers when there is no need for more precision. Half a degree C is barely even noticable.

        • KrankyKong
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          1 year ago

          It’s one of those things that truly and honestly just doesn’t matter. Celsius makes more sense if you think about water freezing at 0 and boiling at 100, but beyond that it really doesn’t make a big difference.

          • Mauwuro
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            1 year ago

            what happens at 0 F?

            I mean 0 C is when the water change its state, but then what happens at 0 F?

            • KrankyKong
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              1 year ago

              Nothing in particular, it’s an arbitrary starting point. But that’s really not a good reason to knock it.

              Does water actually freeze at 0 celsius? It depends on the air pressure, right? I guess 0 celsius is the freezing point of water at sea level, but air pressure’s not consistent at all. I guess maybe it’s the temperature water freezes at the average air pressure at sea level? I assume that’s the case.

              The point I’m trying to make is the Celsius isn’t super rock solid either, and it really doesn’t affect anything if water freezes at 0 or 32 degrees. The best argument for celsius is that it’s standard, but that doesn’t make necessarily make it better.

              If we really cared about having a rock-solid starting point, we’d use Kelvin because you literally cannot go below 0.

              • Mauwuro
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                1 year ago

                yeah I was looking for something like “at 0 F something happens” as in Centigrades you can be sure that at 0C and with 1atm the water will freeze, instead of something arbitrary, so you can compare calibrate instruments

                • KrankyKong
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                  1 year ago

                  Well it doesn’t really matter what you were looking for lol. I promise you Fahrenheit thermometers are calibrated same as Celsius ones.

            • Dudewitbow
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              1 year ago

              The lower point of Fahrenheight is near the freezing point of brine (salt water) which freezes at -6 F (-21 C).

              It was designed around what the coldest day at the time of its invention could get and the 100F was marked around how hot the hottest day of the year at the timr would get. Hence its choice to scale 0-100 to local weather vs celcius’ choice to use kelvin and offset it to standardize it to pure water.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            We live in a world rich in water. When the overnight temperature is below zero, we have frost, for example

            • KrankyKong
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              1 year ago

              Yeah, same here. When the temperature dips below 32 we get frost

        • MxM111@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I use both equally well. Since both of them are base 10, no difference whatsoever. You just know the feeling of 70F or 21C.

      • slackassassin@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Same, Fahrenheit rules.

        Edit: Fahrenheit kicks ass, I just love it.

        Edit: Sorry, still like it a lot.

        Edit: I just love the scale.

        Edit: Random thought, Fahrenheit is really great. I enjoy it and will continue to use it alongside metic units.

  • MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    What really grinds my gears - literally - is having to have two sets of sockets because America. It’s really gets annoying when you lose your 10mm socket and the other one isn’t quite right, but you can’t work out is 18/32s is close enough and then you bust a nut.

    • Polar@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I just hate the fact if 10mm is too big, I can get 9mm, but if 15/16 is too big, fuck me, I guess. Bringing the full toolbox over because what random fucking bullshit number comes before it?

      Like I’m here to fix shit, not do math to figure out which socket is one size smaller.

    • twei@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I just read that as “socks”, which made the last sentence really weird

    • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      American cars have been using both metric and SAE fasteners since at least the 1980’s. I wish they would just gone all metric so I wouldn’t have to drag out two socket sets anytime I need to do anything.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You know what pissed me off earlier this year? We took a trip from the U.S. to Canada and my Prius didn’t even have the option to show kmph instead of mph on the dashboard. We looked through the manual, we looked online. My specific model doesn’t allow it. Why?!

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Or gun control. Or free healthcare. Or abortion. Or a free online automated tax return system.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        or public transport, ending the war on drugs, LGBTQ+ rights, fixing climate change, eating less meat, funding education, non-predatory student loans, living wage, affordable homes, ending slavery in prisons, ending corporations as people, ending super PACs and lobbying, and establishing ranked choice voting or even basic democratic concepts as one-man-one-vote.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, everyone shits on the US for this but we do science in metric, and also everyone seems to ignore that the UK is all kinds of fucked up as well-- weight in stone, etc. I’d also argue that outside science F is a better scale for talking about weather. Sure 0 makes for a better freezing point, but most temps on inhabited earth are about 0~100 F or -25~40 C. If you knew nothing about F or C and someone asked if a scale from 0 to 100 or -25 to 40 made more sense, which one do you think most people would pick?

      • UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        -25 to 40 is very useful for weather. Especially in a northern country. The only reason they don’t switch is “best country in the world” delusions they’ve been fed to believe is true since birth.

        • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The actual reason the us hasn’t switched is the many billions of dollars it would cost for basically no tangible benefit. There are probably better uses of that money if we actually got to spend it on what we wanted, like social programs.

        • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          My point was any numbers are useful for weather if you’re used to them, but if you proposed a new scale without any baggage attached to it 0 to 100 makes way more sense than starting at neg something and going to 40 instead of a rounder number like 50 or 100

            • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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              1 year ago

              Below 0 C? Freezing doesn’t mean dangerous (obviously it’s dangerous if you’re homeless or don’t have regular access to heat). I live somewhere now that it hovers around freezing all winter and I literally can’t wear my old thick coats from where I grew up (northern US). I have to wear a fall coat pretty much all winter or I overheat. Below 0 F is a much better indication of dangerous weather than the freezing point.

              • Balthazar@sopuli.xyz
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                1 year ago

                How about just slipperyness? The fact that you can’t farm and thus have no reliable food source? The fact your water souce disappears?

                I’ll admit, no method of measurement is perfect as biomes changes too drastically. This doesn’t mean Fahrenheit is better though. It’s not more intuitive, it’s not better at actual measurements, and it’s not as accepted by society ('cause people way smarter than me did find Fahrenheit worse than Celcius (see any above high school science/engineering))

                • Balthazar@sopuli.xyz
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                  1 year ago

                  To explain the more intuitive, I am literally incapable of using Fahrenheit, and it means fuck all to me. Thus my intuition is incapable of using it, and thus Fahrenheit isn’t naturally understandable. Granted, Celcius isn’t either.

    • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      We mostly don’t, neither do you.

      Caliber is decimalized inches

      Gauge is 1.67 over the cube root of the diameter in inches. Technically it’s derived from lbs since the number refers to the number of lead balls the width of the barrel you’d need to equal 1 lb. Eg, a 12 gauge is the width of a 1/12th lb ball of lead.

  • SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Arma players are more at home with km than miles because they never leave the basement to use it irl

    (jk I am that guy)