America officially switched to the metric system decades ago. We just don't use it on a daily basis, but officially the US is metric.
In 1988 Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, which made the metric system the preferred system of weights and measures for U.S. trade and commerce.
In 1991 President Bush issued Executive Order 12770, which mandated the transition to metric measurement for all federal agencies.
I remember learning all metric in elementary school in the early to mid 80s much to my mother’s chagrin (any thing I learned that was different than what/how she learned in Catholic school was bad, including a second language). Then having to relearn standard in middle school. I still have to count all of the lines on a tape measure.
As a metric-raised guy I find extremely difficult following the tutorials of woodworkers that start putting 2feet 3 inches and 9/16 in the measurements that converts to 700,0875mm wich i guess is an approximation of 70cms
While you're at it, switch over to DD/MM/YYYY for the date format. The only 2 configurations that make sense is that or YYYY/MM/DD. Either go general to specific or specific to general, MM/DD/YYYY makes no sense.
Months are the craziest, weirdest, stupidest measure humanity has used for this long. ISO8601 week dates make more sense, or even the French Revolutionary Calendar. Humans organize all of society by weeks, not by months. Compare last January to next January, or last February to next February for metrics. Do they have the same number of weekdays vs weekend days? Even if they do, do they happen at the same point in the month so you can compare the flow of the month? Now compare two weeks, and that's apples to apples. Group by weeks instead of months and your irregular, bumpy graph smooths right out. We only hang on to Gregorian months out of inertia.
Months are one of the best ways for a low-tech/pre-tech culture to keep track of dates (using the Zodiac for something it can actually do—act as a calendar you can see no matter where you are in the world).
Keeping them around is a sensible fail-safe in case some nuclear power sets us back into the dark ages.
It makes sense because of the way we say the date - eg today is November 21st, 1999. We don't usually say it's the 21st of November in conversation.
Eta: I wasn't giving any value statement for the date order lol. Just explaining the rationale for why the date is written in that order - that's how people talk. If linguistics as a concept bothers you, well... that's on you.
Here in the UK we would say "I will visit you on the 19th of September" for example. I have never heard anyone say the month first. It's just different custom. We also drive on the other side of the road..! At the beginning it would have been helpful if the world would have agreed on a standard either way. Then it would stop confusion. (And less car accidents from people on holiday/vacation on the wrong side of the road! 😅
Just start being that pedantic asshole that people hate, and insist on using it. When someone asks what the temperature is, give it to em in c and make them do the conversion.
I set all my stuff to metric years ago and use it pretty much exclusively. I don't actually make other people convert, I do it for em. But still.
I use metric temperature when I talk to my kids. Now they give me a hard time when I give them a Fahrenheit value! Keeps me honest I guess. I've also got my oldest using a 24 hour clock.
This was something I found strange in the new Alien: Romulus film, why were the temperature readings in a science vessel for a space faring civilisation in Fahrenheit!?
I'm with the whole 'metric is better crowd', I mean base 10, c'mon that makes shit easy. On the other hand, I prefer Fahrenheit for temp 100%, Celsius is just not good for it (personal preference I guess). A lot of that is probably due to growing up in the USA, but having lived in a few other countries I just prefer Fahrenheit.
Edit: dang ya'll, didn't mean to cause all the drama, I'll calm down now... I guess personal preferences get taken as personal attacks sometimes lol
40+ - most Canadians stop eating food and hope for a quick death
35 - you might just be able to live with this if you do nothing at all
28 - right about the place where comfort gives way to a general sense of warmth, something that makes any Canadian uncomfortable
23 - room temperature, and why "room temperature IQ" is an insult only Americans could have come up with because their scale was made by a madman
15 - If it's Autumn you are wearing a light jacket, if it's Spring you are sweating
5 - sweater time
0 to -10 - that stereotypical TV winter experience, where everyone is skating and sipping hot chocolate? Yeah that's like half the year here. You better like hot chocolate.
-15 - We enjoy the fresh air, others will probably find it painful to breathe directly; put on a scarf! Do not brush your teeth immediately before going outside unless you want to experience mint-flavoured pain.
-20 - Canadians put their boots on by now. Exposed skin on a windy day can get frostbite in as little as 10 minutes.
-30 - We will debate putting a coat on to put the garbage out at this temperature, usually erring on the side of caution in case your kids lock you outside again. Seriously invest in good winter gear for this, this temperature can kill surprisingly fast and it only gets increasingly unpleasant from here.
-40 - turns out you can't form snowballs in hell because the snow is too crispy
Is anyone here planning to watch the episodes over the time they're supposed to occur? I'm thinking of watching part 1 tomorrow due to it being the date on the calendar onscreen, and part 2 the next day.
I don't know the episode, but unless that's some extremely official time piece controlled by the government or something, it could just be someone like me. I live in the US, and several of the temp gauges in the house are celcius, including the one I keep at my desk and my in room A/C (set at 25 atm).
I also used to keep my car on km/h instead of mph just for fun and confusing anyone who rode with me why I was going 80 on local roads or 130 on the highway.
I think our whole timeline spans from some Romulan plot about something involving handing a compilation of Federation history to some weird guy... What was his name? Gene Roddenberry?
Hate to point this out, but the fact there is a "C" on the sign kinda shows that no America did not adopt the metric system. If the US did there would be no reason to have "F" or "C" by the degrees as they are the last hold out.
No, even if you only had one unit for a physical quantity, you would still need to specify that unit to know which physical quantity you are describing. E.g. "That object over there is 15" vs "That object over there is 15 kg".
The symbol for temperature, measured in Celsius, is "°C". It's atomic and can't be separated, since that would result in °, which represents the angle of something, not the temperature, and C, which is the symbol for Coulomb, which measures electric charge.
In the reference picture of this clock the degree symbol does that. This is something you can see outside of the US on almost all temp readings, my phone for example does not have F or C next to it. (It is still in Celsius since I am not a monster)
Thank God! As a non United-stasian, I believe this will make things better. The imperial system looks broken as hell to me, if you see a chart comparing both, you will see what I mean.
/not joking, not in the mood of hearing sacarsm.