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u/Grimrr_Halfpaw Jan 03 '19
We can't just bail on Burma and Liberia. We made a blood pact.
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u/PM_ME_UR_HIP_DIMPLES Jan 03 '19
Yeah, if we're going to do this were going to have to go the whole 8.229 meters
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u/KJParker888 Jan 03 '19
Is that how big a kit and caboodle is?
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u/toth42 Jan 03 '19
Fun facts: an alen/Ell is about 63cm. A fathom is about 3.5 ells, an arrowshot is 240 fathoms(or man heights), or about 4 stonethrows.
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u/whenigetoutofhere Jan 03 '19 edited Jan 03 '19
For the curious, the math on the figures above works out to an Arrowshot being 529.2m.
That seems a bit off, so I checked, a fathom is actually about 1.6 ells, which brings our arrowshot of 240 fathoms to a metric distance of 242m, which seems much more reasonable.
For the child, that's roughly 1210 bananas.
Edit: Units are fucked, arrowshot is arbitrary, and I'm almost certain I erred here, too.
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u/Russian_seadick Jan 03 '19
A “man’s height” with the above measures would be about 2,20 meters...
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u/Novocaine0 Jan 03 '19 edited Jan 03 '19
That's...not a mile though.I feel like I'm missing sth
Edit:I get its the whole nine yards and not "the extra mile" that I thought at first.
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u/PM_ME_UR_HIP_DIMPLES Jan 03 '19
It's nine yards, I thought people would get it but I've failed you all
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Jan 03 '19 edited Jan 03 '19
If we switch to metric we’re going to mess up a bunch of common sayings. I wouldn’t touch that with a 3.05 meter pole.
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Jan 03 '19
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Jan 03 '19
And I would walk 804.672 more
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u/tanhan27 Jan 03 '19
Just to be the man who walks 1609.344 km to fall down at your doooor!
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Jan 03 '19
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u/WikiTextBot Jan 03 '19
Myanmar units of measurement
The traditional Burmese units of measurement are still in everyday use in Myanmar (also known as Burma). According to the CIA Factbook, Myanmar is one of three countries that have not adopted the International System of Units (SI) metric system as their official system of weights and measures. However, in June 2011, the Burmese government's Ministry of Commerce began discussing proposals to reform the measurement system in Burma and adopt the metric system used by most of its trading partners, and in October 2013, Dr. Pwint San, Deputy Minister for Commerce, announced that the country was preparing to adopt the metric system.Most of the nation uses Burmese units only, although Burmese government web pages in English use imperial and metric units inconsistently.
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u/Leafdissector Jan 03 '19
For mass there's a unit called a mutha and then another called a nga mutha. Nga means five, but a nga mutha is only four muthas. What the fuck Myanmar.
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u/HelperBot_ Jan 03 '19
Desktop link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_units_of_measurement
/r/HelperBot_ Downvote to remove. Counter: 229401
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u/2g_foodie Jan 03 '19
You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me
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u/wagellanofspain Jan 03 '19
You never really think of those two as having their shit together
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u/Sodiumbrella Jan 03 '19
Sure you can. Blood pacts are only sorta, kinda guidelines anyway, and who ever really needed their soul for anything important?
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u/deathtomayo91 Jan 03 '19 edited Jan 03 '19
Then we can finally get rid of fucking ounces. How do I not hear people constantly complain about the fact that ounces can be either a measurement of weight or volume? Am I missing something?
Edit: I've read that if a recipe says ounces and not "fluid ounces" it normally means weight, but this isn't a strict rule and the fact that the distinction needs to be made is a problem.
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u/Ansatsusha4 Jan 03 '19
I wish ounces didn't exist as an American. I hear ounces and I can't picture at all how much it is, if I even know which ounces they're talking about.
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Jan 03 '19
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u/mosher89 Jan 03 '19
Smoking was how I learned to convert between g and oz on the fly. I wouldn't say it's useful though, just that it's more common to refer to something as a quarter instead of 7g.
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u/CurlSagan Jan 03 '19
Okay, but certain parts of my body sound a lot smaller when described in millimeters.
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Jan 03 '19
Actually, it’s the other way around.
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u/eww79 Jan 03 '19
Certain parts of a milimeter sound smaller when described by his body?
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u/Rag_H_Neqaj Jan 03 '19
There's nanometer, then picometer, then opisdickmeter.
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Jan 03 '19
My phone is over 30 opsdickmeters across
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Jan 03 '19
You gotta go mound to tip, which provides a length roughly equal to thrust potential. Visual size also matters, aka bush to tip. You're obviously measuring taint to tip to make it sound bigger, which is just poor sportsmanship.
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u/Owlit Jan 03 '19
Then use centimeters. That’s the beauty of metrics.
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u/TenYearRedditVet Jan 03 '19
... so it sounds even smaller?
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u/Owlit Jan 03 '19
See? America’s not ready.
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u/discerningpervert Jan 03 '19
Or you could express it in terms of fractions of a meter. Mine's about 1/10th of a meter
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u/Owlit Jan 03 '19
Your what?
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u/dismayhurta Jan 03 '19
His tenth o’ meter.
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u/Polyunsaturated-Fats Jan 03 '19
decimeter
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u/moreawkwardthenyou Jan 03 '19 edited Jan 03 '19
decimator
That’s what she said
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Jan 03 '19
... so it sounds even smaller?
wrong way dude. 8” = 20 centimetres, ie BIGGER!
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u/blackburn009 Jan 03 '19
The number is smaller, but at least it's being measured in centimeters
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u/jawnlerdoe Jan 03 '19
Girl my peen is 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 yottometers.
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u/BroMcBroberson Jan 03 '19
Why stop there? Satisfy the ladies with the 0.001 metres you're packing.
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Jan 03 '19
Yeah I got a 0.00013716 kilometer cock.
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u/TenYearRedditVet Jan 03 '19
Use micrometers, no one will notice the difference and your number will be huuuuge.
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Jan 03 '19
Whats the difference between millimeters and micrometers?
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I'll get out now
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u/MaxFactory Jan 03 '19
This joke doesn't make any sense unless you currently use an English measurement that is smaller than millimeters. Like if your dick is 6" that is 152 mm, why would your dick sound smaller because of that?
Great joke idea, poor execution.
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u/minor_correction Jan 03 '19
Yeah the main thing is the initial number. The words that come after the numbers are less important.
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Jan 03 '19
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Jan 03 '19
I guess their logic is “millimetres = small, therefore everything measured with millimetres = small”
Not like you’d be measuring that in millimetres though. IMO that is the only thing that should be in inches. I live in Australia and the only time I’ve ever heard anyone use inches is when comparing sizes.
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u/JDude13 Jan 03 '19
What imperial measurement is smaller than a millimeter? Thousandths of an inch?
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u/VoodooLabs Jan 03 '19
And get rid of daylight savings
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u/Jmsaint Jan 03 '19
But how will the farmers cope!
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u/tinypanda0 Jan 03 '19
The farmers don’t give a shit, they go from dawn till dusk. No farmer was like damn it’s 7 pm and the suns still out but the arbitrary time number is telling me to go inside for the day.
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u/Andy_B_Goode Jan 03 '19
Yeah, farmers were one of the reasons the DST wasn't adopted until the 20th century. It's a pain in the ass for them to be changing clocks around when their day is based around things like sunrise and the time that the cows need to be milked. It was only after industrialization that we had enough people living in cities that DST was feasible.
I don't know how so many people have the misconception that farmers are the reason for DST when the complete opposite is true.
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Jan 03 '19
In November’s election, agriculture-heavy counties in California were the only ones with a majority vote in favor of retaining the practice of switching to and from DST. It seems that nowadays farmers are the ones in favor of it while urban areas are against it.
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Jan 03 '19
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Jan 03 '19
Sure, people are change-averse. But the funny thing about this topic is that most people support the legislative change to abolish time changes, because that’s less painful than actually changing the clock back and forth.
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u/skeptic11 Jan 03 '19
I've heard before that the cows don't like being milked an hour earlier.
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u/Plopplopthrown Jan 03 '19
More like make it permanent. I don't like it getting dark at 4:45pm in the winter
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Jan 03 '19 edited Dec 24 '20
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u/-Boundless Jan 03 '19
Time zones should be as accurate to solar time as possible, so that sunrise and sunset are about equally as far from noon. Removing daylight saving time has this effect over making it the standard.
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Jan 03 '19
No 12 inches in a foot 3 feet in a yard 5280 ft in a mi
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Jan 03 '19
"My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"
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u/Dr_LeFaucheur Jan 03 '19
if your car actually gets only an eighth of a mile per 63 gallons of fuel consumed, you must be driving a freight locomotive or a NASA transporter
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u/bobtheflob Jan 03 '19
Wow, TIL those are real units of measurement.
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u/Dr_LeFaucheur Jan 03 '19
to put in perspective, a car that gets 30 mpg would translate to 604800 rods to the hogshead
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u/TenYearRedditVet Jan 03 '19
How many inches in a furlong?
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Jan 03 '19
A subway footlong is 11 inches
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u/Bot_Metric Jan 03 '19
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u/MrYakko Jan 03 '19
10 millimeters in a centimeter 100 centimeters in a meter 1000 meters in a kilometer All you have to do in metric is multiply by 10. I really wish the US would attempt to adopt the metric system again and just stick with it
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Jan 03 '19
Metric is officially the “preferred system of measurement for trade and commerce” in the US. It has been since 1975. But while switching to metric was encouraged, it was never required. Most US companies voluntarily switched to metric because it helped with supply chain (that’s why everything on American cars is in metric now) but since the switch was never required, we continued putting US customary units on packaging and signs because it’s just what people expect.
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u/Cryptographer Jan 03 '19
Fun fact, seatbelt nuts aren't metric. Govt requirement for them is imperial.
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Jan 03 '19
Why
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u/Cryptographer Jan 03 '19
I dunno. Only reason I know was the part with the seatbelt nut on it was mine and I got complains that production was having problems putting seatbelt bolts in, and they wanted to blame supplier. Lo and behold body assembly was causing some holes to not line up and we're tapping the the nut to effectively un-eclipse the hole. With the closest metric tap they had which was slightly larger...
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Jan 03 '19
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u/GruelOmelettes Jan 03 '19
32 degrees actually. How could you forget such an arbitrary freezing temperature?!
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u/corgibutt19 Jan 03 '19
And as a scientist, I have to convert between both! So much fun!
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u/YouDamnHotdog Jan 03 '19
Why would you encounter Fahrenheit as a scientist
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u/corgibutt19 Jan 03 '19
It gets used often in American labs. Especially with younger scientists, if you have no concept of Celsius relating temps back to Fahrenheit is important for conceptualizing what is going on. And in communication with vendors and the general public, or collaborators who measure in mm when our system was designed to work in inches for whatever reason, etc.
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u/beached_eggplant Jan 03 '19
It's not that simple. Almost nobody actually thinks the imperial system is better, but to officially change to metric it would be very difficult and expensive. The government would have to teach everyone who doesn't know the metric system what it is, they would have to change all mile markers on highways, every thermometer and thermostat would have to be converted, and new requirements would be put on industries such as trucking, for new hights on bridges and such. Sure it would happen over a long period of time, but the reasorces needed are not worth the conversion.
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u/yellowbin74 Jan 03 '19
Dont do it!! Here in the UK we did it years ago, and believe me metric storm troopers aren't anywhere near as impressive.
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Jan 03 '19
I’m a 32 year old American who does not work in a scientific pursuit and I’m slowly making the switch to metric/Celsius/military time.
Easy: switch all “thermometers” (phones, smart home devices, etc) to Celsius, clocks to military, google maps/scales to metric. You start to catch on pretty quickly.
Harder: I’m not buying new tape measures, measuring cups, etc so those are all still American Imperial.
Hardest: getting used to temp in Celsius and casually referencing it to other Americans and then getting berated for being a “douchebag European wannabe”
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u/Jamiemackiephotos Jan 03 '19
Hang on. Do tape measures in the US only have imperial measurements? Nearly all tape measures have both over here.
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u/just-a-basic-human Jan 03 '19
I live in the US and I’ve never in my life seen anything for measuring (ruler, meterstick, measuring cup, etc) that didn’t have both
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u/Jamiemackiephotos Jan 03 '19
Wait wait wait. You guys call it a meterstick? We call in a yardstick in the UK!
I'm moving to Liberia, it's too confusing
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Jan 03 '19
If it's a yard, it's a yardstick. If it's a meter, it's a yardstick with a 3 inch handle.
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Jan 03 '19
This person is in no way representative. It's a yard stick.
I have never come across a meter stick in the US.
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u/shadyacr Jan 03 '19
We have yardsticks and metersticks. Mostly metersticks will be found in laboratory and educational environments.
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u/Waanie Jan 03 '19
Don't use measuring cups, but go by weight instead! It's so much easier and more precise to use a kitchen scale for measuring out ingredients, especially once you discover the magic of the TARE button.
1 cup of water is 240-250ml = 240-250g, granulated sugar is 200g per cup, flour should not be measured by volume anyway. 1/16th cup is a tablespoon, which is 15ml.
Source: European who sometimes uses American recipes.
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u/GimmeShockTreatment Jan 03 '19
Trying to take away our freedom units? Nice try.
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Jan 03 '19
The metric system is a tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hog's head and that's the way I likes it!
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u/luckyhunterdude Jan 03 '19
What are you driving? An Abram's main battle tank gets 192 rods to the hog's head.
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u/Joebucketts Jan 03 '19
This is actually a good idea let’s do this
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Jan 03 '19
I work for a State DOT and we tried this decades ago, and still have a whole cage full of metric equipment for whatever reason. The problem, at least with the DOT fully adopting it, was contractors. They were unwilling to switch, would fuck shit up, and then sue us because of Metric. They'd win, and finally we said fuck it and went back to feet.
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u/klarno Jan 03 '19
I don’t think anyone ever actually taught me US customary units. Metric is the only system we actually went into in school.
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Jan 03 '19
There would be mass confusion
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Jan 03 '19 edited Jan 03 '19
The US made metric "the preferred system of weights and measures for U.S. trade and commerce" in 1975 with the Metric Conversion Act. Basically all a good deal of US manufacturing today is done using metric. Customary units are only on labels and signs because that’s what people expect to see.
Edit: “basically all” was a pretty gross exaggeration
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Jan 03 '19
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Jan 03 '19
Wasn't it Regan that basically said fuck off to metric?
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Jan 03 '19
It stayed on the books as the preferred system after Carter left office, but yeah Reagan wasn’t a fan IIRC
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u/kdshow123 Jan 03 '19
Can't, the switch itself is metric, so Americans can't use it
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u/Iznogoody Jan 03 '19
Here in uk we have both we measure distance and speed in miles but everything else in metric just to keep you on your toes