The army uses metric almost exclusively. It’s where I learned it.
Except in electronics. Everything is still .1 inch headers. We invented too many electronics and it’s stuck now.
Yep. One “klick” is one km.
I think the main problem US people have with metric is their aversion to anything that has more than two syllables.
Far worse: It’s laziness.
I was teaching a friend how to make ravioli (yes, really) from the class I took while over in Italy. I bring my scale to measure the dough and the first thing she does is use the scale to get the right measurements and then, scrapes the contents into an imperial measuring cup. Worse, she was totally pissed when the semolina was not a perfect match to the 00 flour (mass and all that).
She is a tried and true American. She just wants to whip out her 1 cup without measuring weight and can’t fathom why the dough just “wasn’t like I taught her”.
By the way, the super secret Italian recipe is this: Ingredients per 2 people (spaghetti or tagliatelle) 100 grams total of: 50% white superfine flour 50% semolina Add 1 egg per 100 grams of flour
For ravioli, you want more superfine (00) flour so the pasta sticks together better. So like above, 100 grams total of: 60% superfine flour 40% semolina
Add 1 egg per 100 grams of flour.
What most people miss about weight vs volumetric measurement when cooking is that it’s all about ratios. And if you had been paying attention in math class, you would know that ratios are unit less. Which means as long as you keep the proper ratio between the ingredients, it matters not one whit on how you measure them. You can weight, you can use cups or spoons or handfuls and pinches to achieve the correct ratio. You even demonstrate this by stating that the ratio of flour to semolina is 1:1 or 3:2 depending on the end use. And one extra large egg, (about 55 grams or 2oz), should make for a decent conversion.
But before you change units of measure, you need to be sure that the changes still hold to with the tolerances of the recipe. Something most people can’t do very well - much like your friend.
And never forget - the true masters of fresh pasta making at home are all those little old Italian Grandmothers. And they are probably just eyballing it all anyway.
Which means as long as you keep the proper ratio between the ingredients, it matters not one whit on how you measure them. You can weight, you can use cups or spoons or handfuls and pinches to achieve the correct ratio.
The problem with converting a 1:1 ratio of ingredients measured by weight and a 1:1 ratio of ingredients measured by volume is density. Two different kinds of flour may pack differently and thus have different densities enough to effect the consistency of the dough. And with something like flour, a cup of sifted flour is less wheat and more air than a cup of scooped flour.
It’s all about the ratio. The density does not matter as much as you seem to think. Plus there is a tolerance built in. Just think, you so carefully measure everything out with weight (did you get the weight exact?). Then you randomly toss a bunch of bench flour down when you kneed the dough. You have literally no clue as to how much weight of flour/semolina the dough picked up. So it really doesn’t matter as much as you might think. Now your scale does make it easier for you. And that’s fine, I have a kitchen scale and use it regularly myself. But I understand it doesn’t matter as much as you seem to feel it does.
And again, those Italian Grandmothers are just eyeballin’ everything anyway.
But I want it to be one cup of egg!
Go for it
Medium or large eggs, (the most common size) is about 5 eggs per cup, 4 per cup of extra large. - YMMV slightly depending the exact eggs your have.
Of course there’s a cup measurement for eggs.
What was I thinking.
To be fair you sound like Data from TNG Season 1 if you say something like “Give them a centimeter, soon they have a meter.”
fucking go to space
There was that one time where a NASA mission was ruined because they used the wrong units
Mars climate orbiter.
There was that one time QC failed you mean.
The Apollo Guidance Computer did all computations in metric and then converted them to display in Standard units for the benefit of the astronauts.
I use a mix
Like many strains, weed is a hybrid situation
In the UK, weed is measured in authentic receding British imperial units where an ounce is weighs one less gram every year.
Bicycle parts entered the chat
Oh fuck the bicycle world for that, as much as I like working on my bike, it’s a fucking pain to figure out the size of parts!
At least in this case it’s not America’s but Britain’s fault. I primarily blame the small arms industry in Birmingham! :)
The entirety of the American scientific research community, which happens to be the most productive research community in the world, slides in with a wink 😉
I thought, you were saying that the USA is still researching how to build one of these “bicycles”. 🙃
The instruction manuals got banned.
Europeans literally see no irony in throwing shade at Americans for hanging onto their traditional measurement system, while also speaking 27 different languages in the span of a few hundred miles.
Maybe come down off your high horse until you get that situation sorted, eh? >.>
Being colonised be the English does that to your native languages
Source: am Irish
Whenever I post something on the internet, I do so in English, since that’s a language most people on this world speak. I’d love it if Americans did the same with measurements when writing down recipes on the internet. I’m sorry for this offensive opinion.
–
Als ge liever wilt, kan ik het ook in het Nederlands doen. Op het internet spreek ik over het algemeen Engels, aangezien dat een taal is die nagenoeg iedereen spreekt. Ik zou het vree tof vinden als Amerikanen dat ook zouden doen met maten en gewichten in hun recepten. Sorry om zo kort van antwoord te zijn.
well, language is culture, and we all know how cultured the states are.
Don’t forget the most important US measurements of them all: 5.56, 7.62, 9, etc.
.308
Oh wait…
pls explain 🙂
.308 is caliber in inches thus not metric.
why do they use decimal for imperial units?
I have a 77/250 rifle at home because I’m a real American.
🫡🇺🇲
It means the round fired by the gun is .308 inches in diameter, or 7.62mm. Gun caliber is measured in inches for Imperial.
Because they couldn’t rationalize using fractions.
Because even people who worked in imperial recognized that dealing with stupid fractions is stupid.
Machining is often done in thousandths of an inch.
so why don’t they write 1/1000 in then?
Because, unlike internet pendants, machinists have shit to do.
.308 is 7.62, civilian measurement vs military (there’s actually implications related to pressures, sidewall thicknesses, machining tolerances, but yeah same same)
Yeah, it’s generally safe to shoot 7.62 from a 308-chambered gun, but not the other way around.
Same for 5.56 and .223.
Last panel should be the entire US Customary System, which is literally just a rescaling of the SI (“metric” system) units. US Customary is derived directly from SI.
I think most people are aware
You forgot measuring bullets.
Bullets are a weird, dumb one. Yes, kind of. But also: .308, .303, .30-06, .50 BMG .30-30, .45-70, .38, .32, .44, .45, .50AE. Then nonsensically basically all “30 calibre” are the same diameter, which is exactly not quite .3 of an inch. Most of those are calibrated by the metric system (as many imperial measurements are today), but the terminology exists in the imperial system.
And then there’s fuckin gauges for shotguns smh.
Everyone uses guage descriptor for shotgun bores. It’s been around longer than the metric system. And it’s doubtful it will ever change.
Except .410 for some reason. I guess 67 gauge is starting to sound a bit crazy.
But yeah I know. I just think it’s silly.
While it’s pretty much traditional at this point, there was a very good reason for a long time to do it that way. Gauge for muskets/Fowlers is related to the number of round balls of bore diameter that weights 1 pound, (remember this predates the metric system by about 100+ years). And if you owned a firearm, you had to own the proper mold and cast your own lead balls to shoot over an open campfire. You just couldn’t pop down the the sporting goods store and buy some ready made round balls to shoot. Knowing how many round balls per pound lasted into the 1800’s. Because if you were a Longhunter or mountain man fur trapper, it was important to know that your .45 caliber Pennsylvania rifle shot 47 to the pound and a .50 caliber Hawken’s rifle shot about 35 round ball to the pound. so you could easily know how much lead you needed to bring with over the next year in the lonely mountains.
So if you owned a .72 caliber/12gauge musket you knew you would get 12 round balls per pound of lead. If you had a .69 caliber/14gauge, you would have 14 balls. A 20gauge/.62 caliber will give you 20 round balls.
But yes, the era of the metallic cartridges sent things off the rails in naming cartridges. And post WW1, everyone just completely lost the thread. We have .38 Short, Long, Special, and .357 - all the same bullet diameters. And a seemingly infinite number of .22 caliber cartridges that not even god himself can keep track of.
Some of us are comfortable going both ways.
But don’t tell anybody because I live in Texas.
- talking to my european friends
- talking to my african friends
- talking to my asian friends
- talking to my south american friends
- talking to my north american friends (exceptions apply)
- talking to my oceanian friends
- talking to my antarctican friends
- talking to my north american friends (exceptions apply)
As a Canadian, boy do they ever
pool
talking to my antarctican friends
Gotta go to !linuxmemes@lemmy.world for that.
Quote from article(translated)
Few years ago I’ve seen post on Pikabu, which was recruitement of sysadmins and penguins flippers.
Alright friend-haver, no need to flex that hard on us
bro measured stuff with his friends
what’s better than hanging out with boys, measuring your things?
Americans will use anything to measure, except the metric system.
How many friends to a furlong?
hypothetically
Are you sure about Antarctica? I wouldn’t be surprised if emperor penguins measured distance in feet and flippers.
as an European, MPH seens better.
Ok, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Why?
What are you talking about with the weed? It’s sold in pounds, ounces, quarter ounces and “half quarters” which is as ridiculously un-metric as it gets.
Gosh, I wonder how many grams there are in a quarter ounce?
We used to just call that an eighth.
Yes, but a metric eighth.
Should have bullet measurements instead
Sold in grams for small amounts, then back to Imperial for larger amounts.
I don’t think I’ve seen a gram for sale since legalization. I see pre-rolls and half-quarters. Weighed in grams but packaged in imperial.
1g prerolls are actually the only round-number metric sale I see.
Right. I haven’t seen a 1g bag sold ever.
Yes, the very metric package sizes using multiples of 7.
It doesn’t matter what the multiple is. It could be 28.35g exactly, it’s still metric because of the unit.
Their point was that while it’s using metric, all the available sizes are based on imperial amounts.
And all Imperial amounts are based on the SI system (the official name for metric). That’s basically the point of having a standard.
I’m really not sure what the big deal is that the packaging uses the metric equivalent of the unit used in the US, which is one of the main countries that many businesses worldwide serve. That’s also the case with butter (1 lb to 454g), cream cheese (8 oz to 250g), etc.
My theory on this is we use the imperial weights when describing the size in relation to the jail time associated with getting caught with it and then switch to metric for personal use.
