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[–] 169 points 4 months ago (38 children)

Americans will use anything other than the metric system.

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  • [–] 46 points 4 months ago (15 children)

    As an american, I am 100% onboard on switching entirely to measuring things in terms of pickup trucks.

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  • [–] 57 points 4 months ago (8 children)
    1. Preheat oven to 1 pickup truck
    2. Bake for 1 pickup truck
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  • [–] 24 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Since most automobiles are water-cooled, the pickup truck temp is probably about 110 f / 43 c, so you'd want to preheat to 3 1/2 pickup trucks.

    Similarly, since the mean life of trucks is probably 20 years, we'd measure casual time in a subdivisions of 175,320 hours / 10,519,200 minutes. One picotruck would be 1/10th of a minute, so you want to bake for 300 pico-trucks

    We will of course maintain this system once trucks become 50-year lived semi-autonomous drones that never get over 35 c, because the one constant in defining units is that rejiggijng definitions is preferred to technical precison.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago* (14 children)

    This is a Canadian publication.

    EDIT:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Narwhal

    The Narwhal is a Canadian investigative online magazine that focuses on environmental issues.[1][2]

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Unfortunately, a lot of Americanisms have infected Canada due to our historically extremely close trade and cultural relationship with them. Measurement ignorance is one example. Some Americanisms actually become arguably worse in Canada, because we are effectively rudderless, pulled in all different directions by both our own laws and customs and American laws and customs at the same time, resulting in an even less well-defined choice of units. Another example is dates. The US uses mm/dd/yy which is already stupid on its own, but Canada uses BOTH mm/dd/yy and dd/mm/yy seemingly without rhyme or reason, which results in complete ambiguity of many dates, or trying to figure out based on context, looking for other dates that might use a day number >12 to identify which one actually is the day vs the month.

    It's awful. I am happy we are distancing ourselves from the US right now, but I'm not sure it will ever be enough to totally escape their shadow.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

    The US uses mm/dd/yy which is already stupid on its own, but Canada uses BOTH mm/dd/yy and dd/mm/yy seemingly without rhyme or reason

    Maintains our cognitive health. Can't just look at a date and know what it is without doing math and logic (method of exclusion)!

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    and when it's 2/3 which is it?

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    yeah, we have fucking idiots who have no idea what a kilogram is.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Maybe if we tricked them into saying, like, "as heavy as a three hundred kilogram box of bricks"

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    is that an old fashioned pickup truck or an electric pickup truck

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)