this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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You can use kilometres
Nah, that's too difficult for USAians. They can memorize fibonacci numbers much more easily.
To be fair, kilometers make a lot more sense to me, as an American. However, everything is written in miles, and everyone speaks in miles. Estimating distance for me is easier in metric, but it isn't really acceptable.
(I play milsims, which is why I'm more used to it. Most Americans have almost zero experience with metric.)
Be like us Brits and measure short distances in metric, long distances in Imperial, yet struggle to convert between them.
GPS navigation gets frustrating. It's either metric "turn left in 4km" when all road signs and speeds are in miles, or imperial "turn in 200ft" when you have no idea how long 200ft is.
Yeah, people talk shit about Americans using Imperial, but Brits are so fucked up. At least we consistently use one shitty system. Brits are constantly switching between the two, and sometimes even using outdated systems no one else uses. Like, why the fuck do you use stones for body weight, but pounds, ounces, and grams for different measurements of weight? Be consistent at least.
I never understood the use of yards for exits over there, but the hardest part was figuring out what my GP meant when he said I needed to lose a couple 'stones'... C'mon, you can't expect me to learn imperial, metric, and whatever the hell that is.
I'm already stuck having to be able to convert between elephants and F-250's because my homeland REFUSES the metric system, now I have to study geology just to figure out how unhealthy I am (actually was, I've lost 40lbs since then).
I think he might’ve been talking about an orchiectomy.
Stones are imperial. There are 14 pounds in a stone. Obviously it's the right unit for people's weight because who wouldn't want to share the weight of a human equally seven ways, eh?
My kidney stones are imperial too.
Hefty. That's gonna hurt.
The idea the average Joe even knows of them... (edit: was thinking of Fibonacci, but even km are in doubt these days)
Well i was taught about kilometers in school, though i can't speak to today's curriculum...
Hey I’m going to have to ask you to censor that word. There’s American children on this ap! We can’t have them going to the playground and repeating that kind of language.
Are there children on this app though? Seems like they’d rather be on TikTok or whatever. Unless they are some edgy ML tankie contrarian maybe. In which case, expose to the metric system and nsfw content is the least of their problems.
Unfortunately the us system has the word “imperial” so tankies can’t stand it lol
They might realise that the metric system is much better than the stupid Imperial system, and this could make them fell guilty that their forefathers were ignorant bozos. Republicans hate it when children learn about the errors of their forefathers.
Their forefathers were actually in favor of the metric system. The US is an original signatory to the treaty of the meter, it's the official unit of measure for the government and military, and we were on the brink of getting switched over when Republicans decided they didn't want to spend money on the final conversion and education, despite it being a popular enough notion that it was used for advertising. (The two liter bottle became popular when they used the popularity of metric to sell plastic pop bottles).
The fervent attachment to imperial is weirdly recent.
And are units are tied to metric system as well.
1 inch is defined as exactly 2.54. That’s what an inch “is” in America.
That’s why I liked my joke. We just hate the words themselves