this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 158 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Britain hardly had a leg to stand on. They got stuck halfway through making the switch. Still use miles in their cars, feet for height, etc.

[–] ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world 77 points 10 months ago (5 children)

It's old people. They vote and don't like change.

Everyone in the UK under 40 never used imperial in their education, but everything is still imperial.

Even stuff that's not supposed to be. Milk is sold in pints but labelled in ml. Sometimes it's litres because these are smaller. Timbre is all sold in a metric equivalent, but it isn't consistent. You don't know if the piece you've had delivered is 2.4m or 2.44m. Rulers have both metric and imperial, unless you pay extra for a single system - which makes them harder to use.

The worst thing is recipes, many recipes are imperial online because of the USA. American imperial measurements aren't the same as UK ones.

It is all driven by ignorance. The royal family (TV show) summed this ignorance up best. They complained it took them longer to get to the destination because their sat nav was in kilometres and there's more kilometres than miles so everything is further away.

[–] Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I'm European but I have a set of US cups in my kitchen because most recipes are in these stupid American measurements.

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[–] hactar42@lemmy.ml 47 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget about stones for body weight

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[–] Texas_Hangover@lemm.ee 64 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Dont the British weigh things with rocks or some dumb shit?

[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 48 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They're actually finely calibrated stones. For instance, my weight is 13 stones and a packet of gravel.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I lost twelve gravel and a teaspoon of sand this week.

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[–] activ8r@sh.itjust.works 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The British have a perfectly logical system that results in us buying fuel by the litre, measuring speed in miles per hour, and measuring fuel economy in miles per gallon. We are doing just fine thank you very much.

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[–] Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 57 points 10 months ago (14 children)
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[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 48 points 10 months ago (1 children)

FYI: The US doesn't use Imperial, they use US Customary. Volumes are different. Troy weights are usually called Troy (ounces).

[–] platypus_plumba@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Is that supposed to be better?

[–] ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world 39 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No it's worse, because they use the same names for different volumes and weights.

[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We needed extra room for all the freedom.

[–] Sabin10@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago (2 children)

But your pints are smaller

[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml 42 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Making fun for STILL using it. If our navy would navigate by the stars at night, it would be laughed at, right? And rightly so. ;)

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 25 points 10 months ago (9 children)

GPS can be jammed, try jamming stars.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago

Who would win:

  • A billion, billion unfathomably massive fusion reactions
  • Some steamy bois ☁️🌥
[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Urban areas with huge light pollution: "and I took that personally"

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 18 points 10 months ago

Land navies hate this.

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[–] FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 38 points 10 months ago (13 children)

Nah, the brits have it even worse, I don't think even they know what system they use. Like the US just uses the imperial system but brits use like every system randomly plus some stuff that no one else uses, like boulders or some caveman shit like that.

Also brits got like nothing left to make fun of at this point: They fucked their healthcare system bad enough they may as well be in the US, they got 2 viable parties that are even more the same than the US and they left the one thing that kept the country economically relevant to name a few things.

[–] Skipper_the_Eyechild@lemmings.world 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Depends what you mean by fucked up. Long waits for some NHS treatments, but if I get any kind of serious injury like cuts or broken bones, it'll be seen in A&E (Accident & Emergency) at the hospital, they obviously treat the more serious injuries first, but I've never waited longer than 4 hours - and that was on a Saturday night about ten years ago, with a minor cut than only needed 5 stitches or so...

As a kid, my broken arm and the few times I needed stitches, it was sorted pretty much straight away or with an hour or two wait. That's probably doubled or tripled nowadays.

Mental health turnaround is not great, as that's through my doctor (the NHS). Although I got treatment for depression a couple of years back, meds (Sertaline) and referral to therapy, after a week or so waiting for an appointment and answering a few waves of questionnaires. A couple of months later, after a lengthy conversation with a medical health triage nurse (which was just a random follow up call - that lasted an hour!), I went on an 18 month waiting list for the ADHD test, and about the same for ASD(Autism Spectrum Disorder) as well.

Not great, but they're understandably swamped with the spike of mental illness, or people becoming aware of it anyway, after covid and the lockdowns.

Still waiting on the NHS for the ASD diagnosis, but I actually ended up going private for my ADHD, that was ~£800, was seen in a week, and the meds for that was £100 a month for Elvanse(Vyvanse in the US). I was able to transfer back to my GP after a few months though, so it's just the standard prescription price of £9.65 / month, which is much better.

Other than that last paragraph, everything else was entirely free... so, nah, I don't reckon our health care system is as fucked as yours and we certainly don't have it "even worse"!

Edit: typo's and explaining a few acronyms!

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[–] Piogre314@lemmy.world 34 points 10 months ago

Wait til you find out who taught America the word "soccer".

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago (11 children)

The US doesn't use imperial units, though. The US customary units share names with imperial units, but they are significantly different.

[–] maryjayjay@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Any excuse to take the piss out of the Yanks is fine by me.

[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Any excuse to take the piss out of the Yanks is fine by me.

So I take it that you approve of catheters then? /s

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[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Truly the long game on that joke! Well done, ya got us.

[–] thepiguy@lemmy.ml 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But the UK still uses imperial. I remember playing euro truck sim and being annoyed that the road signs don't match the speed limit shown in the GPS. I first thought this was a bug. Then I remembered that I was in UK and not the Netherlands where I picked up the delivery.

[–] HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

UK is a conplete chaos between the two. You buy liters of milk but gallons of gas. Speeds are in miles per hour. Close distances are in meters, longer ones in miles. I have seen weight both in grams and in pounds. And then the currency is even called pound.

"How many pounds does one pound of apples cost, sir?"

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[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 10 months ago (3 children)

its this EXACT same thing but with soccer and football, granted there is actual history there, im going to ignore it because it's funnier that way.

europe created the term soccer, and then got rid of it, and then took up football, so the US started using soccer, because it had already used football, for well, football. Shocker i know. And so now we still use soccer, but they use football.

[–] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 19 points 10 months ago (4 children)

This is true only in the vaguest sense.

  1. "Europe" didn't invent the term soccer. A specific group of people in England did.
  2. Those people were upper class posh boys, the same ones who call rugby "rugger". They are not the people who support football today or made football what it is around the world.
  3. If you can't tell, it's an obvious nickname for something. The equivalent of one nation deciding to exclusively call basketball "shootin' hoops".
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[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago
[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Doesn't change the fact that football makes more sense and that while the British did come up with soccer literally every country uses something like football.

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[–] bouh@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Are they actually using metric though? Last time I was in London airport I wasn't so sure.

[–] trafficnab@lemmy.ca 46 points 10 months ago (1 children)

When you ask a British person how much they weigh and they start talking about rocks

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Is that an imperial rock or a metric rock?

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[–] Sorgan71@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago (3 children)

At least americans dont use stone, or fucking hands, for measurement

[–] ThunderclapSasquatch@startrek.website 22 points 10 months ago (4 children)

We still use hands for exactly one measurement, the height of a horse

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[–] hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago (26 children)

Literally no reason not to use metric, idc who or where you are

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[–] xX_fnord_Xx@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago

retains a currency called pounds

[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

Iirc a ship was carrying the metric standards to the US in like 1790 and sank and they just said fuck it

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