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[-] certified_expert@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

US seems to pick the most idiotic ways of measuring anything:

  • inches, yards, "mills"...
  • gallons, fluid oz, fucking cups!
  • "letter", "legal" paper sizes!
  • the fucking arbitrary "numbers" of bolts and screwdriver heads (#0, #00, #000... what the fuck!)
  • the audacity of calling their stupid system"standard"
  • and in a miriad of other domains (feel free to denounce more madness as comments)
  • fucking "K"alories which are actually 1000 calories. Or calories themselves!

Whoever defends it is either retarded or absolutely brainwashed.

[-] angband@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

All of those have historical roots. Screws use the ought gauge because they were made from wire which came in those sizes. Not because it is arbitrary, because there was no metric standard, and your screws and bits had sizes based on wire sizes.

All these measures are slowly being forced out or realigned with metric. We no longer get a pint of soda, we get some number of millimeters and a strange fraction of ozs.

Definitely one of those odd useless hills to die on.

this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2026
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