1007
translated in american
(thelemmy.club)
Centimeters are on the American ruler...
We also put inches on ours, yet not a single soul has ever used that side. I think it's only to constantly remind us we are superior ;)
Screens are measured in inches
Is Zoll and Inch the same thing?
Yes.
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Yeah Stormy said it was only a centimeter
The only thing on a real American ruler is red white and blue .
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I wonder, when they get a grown-up president again, will they finally also begin to move to the 21st century?
You’re being way too optimistic
Again???
Why don't they just round that guy's votes up to 60?
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As an American mechanical engineer, i do more unit conversions between metric and standard/ uscs than many people do in a lifetime
Hell just today I designed a custom spring in both as i need it asap and have to settle for the inch
We occasionally get engineering diagrams from clients in the US and they're always going on about screws that are 2/3 of an inch long. It's not just that you're not using metric you're using a weird fraction and not a decimal.
It's super confusing when you get into high precision stuff because then they start going on about 128th of an inch. Just tell me how big you want it, stop telling me what fraction of a different measurement it is. Surely there is something below inch that you could use. I still wouldn't know what you were talking about, but at least it would look less stupid when you wrote it down.
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Canadian engineer here. Although we use the metric system in principle, in reality we use feet and inches for everything. There are lots of benefits to using base 12 for measurements.
The number 12 has six factors, which are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. It is the smallest number to have six factors, the largest number to have at least half of the numbers below it as divisors, and is only slightly larger than 10. (The numbers 18 and 20 also have six factors but are much larger.) Ten, in contrast, only has four factors, which are 1, 2, 5, and 10.
I get the Europeans hate it though because only the people who live near Chernobyl can count to 12 on their fingers.
The thing is, we just use whole numbers. If you get under 1, then you move down by one SI prefix et voilà, you have whole numbers again
I've never thought of counting on fingers as a good reason for using it for units. But since our numeric system is base 10 (likely because of having 10 fingers indeed), it's easier to have our unit systems as base 10 too. If we all learned to think in base 12 from ground up, having base 12 units would make a lot more sense too
Btw you can count to 12 on your fingers with one hand. Starting from the end of the index finger tap each segment of the "remaining" four fingers with your thumb.
I heard someone claim that's how Babylonians invented and used the base 12 system in the first place.
The thing is that outside of North America people aren't terrified to death of decimals. We actually use them and find the process simple. So those factors of yours are completely irrelevant to us.
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I know it'll never happen but I'm still camp duodecimal, all the way.
There are lots of benefits to using base 12 for measurements.
12 is better than 10, I'll give you that. But 100 is better than 144, and 1000 is way better than 1728.
And that doesn't even get to 0.1 versus 1/12, or 0.01 versus 1/144.
So 12 might be a better standalone number, but it's a terrible base to work in.
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A system of measurement in which something like 15/16 of an inch is seen as a sensible way to measure a small distance. Not much else to say.
I love love love that we use ounces for both weight and volume 🤩 I love love love that we use volume for measuring things like sour cream in recipes but weight in the store! America number 1!!! 🇨🇱
I use the metric system for almost all of my projects. I've never seen a 3d printer that used the english system and after a decade of use I really hate the english system.
5 cm is 1.9685 inches, which is about weeee big…. 🤏
Or one LLAP 🖖
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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
1007 points (98.8% liked)
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