Actual poster from 1917 that made me laugh. A lot.

Also, those motherfuckers are measuring the weight of those balls in kilograms, aren’t they?

  • snooggums@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    3 months ago

    Imperial is intermixed woth metric in constructionnand a ton of engineering projects as materials are still manufactured in imperial measurements. Farming is still stuck in imperial too.

    Both are still around because an entire industry changing fundamental measurements is a lot of effort.

    My second favorite example of the two living in harmony for the average US citizen is the liquir store. Beer comes in ounces but hard liquir and wine comes in metric.

    My favorite is soda, which comes in 20 oz and 2 liter bottles on the same shelf. People opposed to the metric system tend to ignore the fact that they are already using it somewhere in their lives and just don’t notice.

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      3 months ago

      Mine is that the most rabidly anti metric folks stateside are likely to be weapons enthusiasts who measure ammo calibur in metric.

    • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 months ago

      My favorite weird imperial/metric oddity in the US is 16.9 ounce bottles. People refer to them as “sixteen point 9 ounce” bottles. They’re 500ml. It’d be so much easier just to say “500 em ell”

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      Nope, beer is measured in Fluid Ounces which is a measure of volume and is entirely unrelated to ounces except for having the same name. Oh also a fluid ounce is a different amount of volume depending on the context. It’s a greeeeaaaaat system.

      • snooggums@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        That is an interesting clarification, not a correction, because nobody calls them “12 fluid ounce cans.”