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People like to shit on the imperial measurements for its inconsistensies, but why is it we have a similarly dogshit one for measuring time? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For example,

60 seconds = 1 minute

60 minutes = 1 hour

24 hours = 1 day

7 day = 1 week

29-31 days = Month (approx.)

365/366 days = year

It's like for the imperial measurement of distance, where 1 mile = 5280 feet...

Edit: just to clarify, I'm more or less keen towards any consistent, decimal-based measurement systems like base-10 or base-12.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Brazilian here. You're just used to it because objects around you are imperial sizes. I live in a metric country so objects around me are metric sized. So I can easily eyeball metric units.

0.5 cm is the width of a pencil
2 cm is the size of a small coin (the American penny is roughly 2cm wide, BTW)
1 meter is roughly a long step
1 km is the distance you walk in roughly 20 minutes
1 liter is easy because in any metric country it's the volume of a standard soda bottle
1 kg is the weight of a small bean, rice or sugar bag, or the weight of a soda bottle, or the weight of a good sized cabbage.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Haha yeah in case it wasn't clear from my other comments, I don't actually think imperial is a better system. I just don't think it's as bad as everyone says it is. Like you said, you understand the size of these units relative to things irl and can just intuit them.

Converting between units doesn't come up often because like, when are you gonna need to know distances in coins? I mean it's cool that you can easily do that in metric but I couldn't care less that I can't switch between feet and miles.

P.S. do beans weigh as much as cabbages in Brazil? :0

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hahahhahaj, you were victim of my bad English. I meant a bag of beans! Hahahaha.

I was just giving an example of how you could have an intuitive idea of metric units by the using objects around you if you eventually need it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Haha no problem, your English is waaay better than my Portuguese! I understood what you meant and that's the point I was trying to make too. I don't need to do any conversions to figure out what a mile, gallon, etc. is because I already know, just like you already know what a kilometer and liter are.