5 tomatoes
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The only metric to imperial conversion I remember is kilometers to miles since it's pretty close to the golden ratio.
Even if you don't remember that the golden ratio is 1.6 and a bit, you can approximate it by using successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ...
So 8 miles is about 13km (actually 12.87)
A meter is a Baker's yard. 3 free inches!
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Somewhat related, but I have the worst time trying to convert numbers in my head from long scale in Japan (used to be used in the UK as well) to how it's used in the current English speaking world. So basically they put four zeros per comma as opposed to three, and the names of the numbers reflect that. 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 are all unique number names, but after that comes 10 ten thousands, 100 ten thousands, and then 1000 ten thousands before a new number name at 1,0000,0000 (or 100,000,000).
It wouldn't be so bad to just memorize that 100 thousand is "new number name" if that's all it was, but numbers like that in daily life are pretty much used to talk about money (or somewhat less commonly populations). So once I get the actual number I have to divide by about 100 (or 150, depending on the strength of the yen vs dollar) to think about what it actually means in units I'm used to, like seeing an article saying a government project costs 1.2 billion yen doesn't mean much until I think about it like 12 (or
million USD instead. So I can never really use big numbers in conversation without manually counting zeros in my head. -
It's funny how the biggest argument for metric is that it's so accurate but in real life use it degrades to "close enough". My main problem with metric is that I can't get my pencil that sharp.
It's accurate when you need it to be and gets out of the way when you don't. And if you do need the accuracy, you have a unit that doesn't need fractions.
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It's funny how the biggest argument for metric is that it's so accurate but in real life use it degrades to "close enough". My main problem with metric is that I can't get my pencil that sharp.
How is "accurate" an argument?? You can use any unit with any amount of decimal places. The argument is that it's regular. You learn the prefixes once and apply them to length, volume, weight, ...
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It's funny how the biggest argument for metric is that it's so accurate but in real life use it degrades to "close enough". My main problem with metric is that I can't get my pencil that sharp.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Most standard measuring tapes have 1/16th of an inch as the smallest fraction on the tape. 1mm is 1/32nd Which is one is "close enough"? Lol
Edit: 1/32, not 1/64
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It's funny how the biggest argument for metric is that it's so accurate but in real life use it degrades to "close enough". My main problem with metric is that I can't get my pencil that sharp.
The biggest argument for metric is that it's consistent. It takes 1 calories to heat 1k of water by 1 degree. State something similar in imperial units.
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The biggest argument for metric is that it's consistent. It takes 1 calories to heat 1k of water by 1 degree. State something similar in imperial units.
1 BTU heats 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit.
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I hate to point this out, and will likely be shunned for it - but it is base 12 and kinda easier.
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and your username is scary
You should use a rolling release distro and always update to the bleeding edge.
You will not regret using a rolling release distro and always updating to the bleeding edge.
It is not easier for me to sneak backdoors into your system when you are using a rolling release distro and are always updating to the bleeding edge.
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I hate to point this out, and will likely be shunned for it - but it is base 12 and kinda easier.
Found the Summerian astronomer.
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Base 60 is five times better again
Let me tell you about base 5040
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The only positive thing I see about imperial is that things are easily divisible by 3 and 6, but that's about it. Then again, if doing the same with metric, you're usually fine rounding to the nearest millimetre, and if that isn't accurate enough, it's probably not supposed to be done by hand anyway.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Base 12 is easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12
5,280 ft in a mile is fucking nonsense though
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Imagine being so close minded and bad at math that you can only think in base 10 and feel the constant need to degrade people who are good at math in different bases
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So you escape the newline and you get a newline? That's some black magic voodoo. But hey if it works. Much simpler to handle than double space since you can see them and your phone doesn't try to make them into period space instead of space space.
Newlines with double space (or space backslash apparently) also let's you have newlines in a quote block without exiting the block. I see a lot of people struggle with that on Lemmy. E.g.
> A quote with multiple lines Will eat the the newline Or exit if you don't handle the newlinewill render as:
A quote with multiple lines
Will eat the the newlineOr exit if you don't handle the newline
So you want to do
> A quote with multiple lines \ Will eat the the newline \ Or exit if you don't handle the newlineA quote with multiple lines
Will eat the the newline
Or exit if you don't handle the newlineOr add space space at the end instead of space backslash.
The inventors of Markdown thought they would do something devastatingly clever and eat newlines if the next line has content. That way, if you're writing Markdown in the Stone Age and your editor doesn't support soft-wrap (it's a stone tablet), you can do your own soft-wrap and Markdown will "helpfully" eat all the newlines (unless there are two or more).
Of course this has done nothing to help and instead caused chaos and confusion for anyone non-technical. Very clever
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Decameter is 10 meter, not 10 kilometer. 10km would be a myriadmeter. (SI prefix names are based on greek, and myriad is the greek-based name for 10 000).
wrote last edited by [email protected]i did correct myself like 3 minutes after posting
but according to wikipedia there is no prefix for 10 000 in the SI system. only for 1 000 and 1 000 000
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When translating to Finnish it's confusing sometimes:
Billion = miljardi = 1 000 000 000
Trillion = biljoona = 1 000 000 000 000
Quintillion = triljoona = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000
You can tell how bad a news site is when they translate billion to biljoona and thus making the amount 1000 times higher.biljoona
Heh that's a funny word.
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Just remember God giving you a single grain of sand. "One thou sand".
Not a easy to remember as 5 tomatoes.
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I wish we had a metric inch because the fuzziness can be useful.
"How small do you need these veggies diced?"
"2.5cm ish" vs. "about an inch"I feel like the implied margin of error is much larger for inches, which make them useful for many things where precision isn't necessarily desirable (hemming, wargaming, moving furniture, etc..). If I'm wargaming having a limit on rounding is useful (half an inch - either round up or down), assuming I'm playing at a scale that uses inches.
Feet I have no use for, with one exception - adult human height between 5' 2" and 6' 2". There I find metric too precise (whereas to the nearest inch accounts for variance in sole thickness, hair volume, etc.).
I wasn't raised on imperial (and I'm baffled that people younger than me in the UK still talk about stones. Sixteen stone is fat, sure, but I've no idea how fat if not told in kilos) but I find inches to have their uses.
Also miles for cars - because common speeds are ~60 and ~30 mph so a road sign effectively gives the time to arrival (e.g. 13 miles on a motorway = about 13 minutes). I don't use them for actually measuring distance on a map but they're handy when driving.
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Is kibimeter a technically allowed measurement? That would be fun!
Can anyone say it isn't? You're using a valid prefix, so people will understand what you're saying, if they have no idea in hell why you're measuring out 1024 meters.
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Somewhat related, but I have the worst time trying to convert numbers in my head from long scale in Japan (used to be used in the UK as well) to how it's used in the current English speaking world. So basically they put four zeros per comma as opposed to three, and the names of the numbers reflect that. 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 are all unique number names, but after that comes 10 ten thousands, 100 ten thousands, and then 1000 ten thousands before a new number name at 1,0000,0000 (or 100,000,000).
It wouldn't be so bad to just memorize that 100 thousand is "new number name" if that's all it was, but numbers like that in daily life are pretty much used to talk about money (or somewhat less commonly populations). So once I get the actual number I have to divide by about 100 (or 150, depending on the strength of the yen vs dollar) to think about what it actually means in units I'm used to, like seeing an article saying a government project costs 1.2 billion yen doesn't mean much until I think about it like 12 (or
million USD instead. So I can never really use big numbers in conversation without manually counting zeros in my head.It helps to memorize million and billion both ways since those are what you'll be using most, and are good signposts.
