this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 136 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

Claims to be in the American wilderness

uses Metric

[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

South Americans.

Every red white and blue blooded American uses the foot!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well you gotta use both feet if you're going hiking

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

JUST ONE FOOT YOU COMMIE

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Perhaps lost some.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Unlike with longer distances and temperature, Americans don't strictly use imperial for shorter distances (m, cm, mm). It's on all of the signs and stuff, but we learn metric in school as well as how to convert to and from. In university-level physics classes, they almost solely use metric. So as an American myself, I didn't bat an eye at him using meters. But if they said that it was 30C outside...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

It helps that meters and yards are very similar in size. Of course they drift as the distances get larger but in my mind 300m is a pretty reasonable thing to visualize. Just a tad larger than 300yd—about 3 football fields (Inb4 stereotype)

Km though? I still struggle to compare it to a mile. When someone says "50km" my mind has a hard time imperializing it. What's that, like 35 miles?

Maybe memorizing how the km lines up with the mi on my car speedometer would help.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

think fibonacci sequence and you're in good shape

34 comes before 55, then 3 comes before 5, so 50 km is (55-5) km = (34-3) mi = 31. It works shockingly well

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

This is so incredibly much complicated to me than just multiplying or dividing by 1.6.

And also 55 km is 34 miles, not 31. I had to run it through a converter tool just to be sure.

Edit: I reread your comment. The goal was 50 kilometers. Then the math checks out. Sorry!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

just multiplying or dividing by 1.6 is about as accurate as my strategy in the other direction - the real value is almost exactly between them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I guess as long as it works it works. I don't have to do much of those conversions though. Here in Norway we are metric in almost all of our measurements. Except for some specialist measures like a carton of eggs is a dozen. We often say things happened a fortnight or so ago, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

50km is about 30 miles. An easy way to remember if you're into fast cars is 0-60mph =~ 0-100kph

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Personally know several metric nuts who insist on using metric in their day-to-day life.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago

Well, a metric nut would be screwed trying to go imperial...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"Metric nut" sounds like there's a measurement to their insanity in the metric system

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

For the Americans: that's 0.00005965 furlongs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

also called M12-nut

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

I find metric nuts and bolts are much easier to acquire cheaply

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

How many inches is that?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A big chunk (a majority?) of the North American wilderness is in countries that use metric.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No Canadian would go into the wilderness and say they went into the American wilderness…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Maybe they went to Detroit?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

They can use the word “American” when they join us.