And let’s not forget the classic American aide-mémoire “A pint is a pound, the world around.”
Which it isn’t, because American pints only contain 16 fluid ounces.
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Is a US fluid ounce the same as an imperial one?
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“Excuse me, I just have to create a pantheon to open this door.”
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No. An American 16 oz pint is 16 2/3 weird fluid ounces. (29.6 ml / fl oz versus 28.4 ml/ ukian fl oz).
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I was actually looking this up earlier, because I couldn’t understand how measurements could be different. The measurement is the same (despite the stupid units), they just change their mind where zero is when you’re British/American/Female/a child.
Everything either being 10s or 100s makes some weird jumps. Like for height, a difference of 10cm isn’t much, whereas 100cm is crazy. A difference of a foot is significant, but manageable.
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Amusingly, when I stepped on the scale at the gym today, it gave me my weight, in kg. I had no idea what it meant. I mean, I know roughly what it meant, but not whether it was a higher or lower value than the last time I used that scale. I did some calculating before I pressed the button to give me a useful number.
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“It’s 11pm. It’s not going to get any darker than this.”
(We were 62⁰ north at the time.)
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3 hours into last night’s D&D one-shot:
Me: “… and I’ll give Grace bardic inspiration.”
DM: “You’re a bard??”
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Excuse me it was
“pee-pee”
We have children.
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My older brother: “I’m gonna light a firework with this car battery.”
(He did actually light a firework with the car battery…)
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As a merican I’m of course imperial. But I’m divided on what everything should be.
I like Fahrenheit, a centigrade degree is too big and measuring the world from -10 to +40 is less intuitive than 10-110. I’m not a cup of water, I’m a body.
Very much for meters. Inches and miles are too long for most human needs, so you end up dividing them. And dividing inches into 16ths or 32nds is madness.
Grams seem too small and kilograms too big. A pound seems like a good measure. Same with litres - I love mL for small amounts but I need a “metric gallon” for many uses and, lacking one, I reject metric for anything larger than a litre. Pints have too much history to forsake.
I love the symmetry of a dozen, and how you can divide it almost any way you want. I wish we had base 12 instead of base 10. That’s probably the crazy talking.
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Many cups of water!
(Plus some other stuff. But more water than anything else :).
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I still get too hot before I sublimate at 100 C 
Must be all that other stuff.
(ugly bags of mostly water, anyone??)
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Just a question with regards to temperature. For us C people, you have fever the minute you hit over 37C, and more often than not, you will be between 36 and 37C as long as you have hypothermia or are heavily exercising (which normally one doesn’t tend to stop to measure their temperature half through a workout, you tend to do those when you feel healthy). 40C is scary temperature (like needing cool baths) while 39C is considered high fever.
How many more degrees of status than that do you need with Fahrenheit?
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“When it comes down to it, we’re all leaky sacks of disgusting fluids.”
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I think we should go with base 8 instead.
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I note they conveniently ignore division in that explanation…
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There’s a lot to be said for odd-numbered bases; then you can have digit values e.g. -4 to +4 which makes arithmetic much easier.
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Based on my handle, I think you can guess where my base preferences lie.
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For very peculiar definitions of easier.
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