I'm a fan of light nanosecond, which works out to roughly 30 cm.
Comment on 5 tomatoes
hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I’m always disappointed that megameter isn’t a common word. People will say “one thousand kilometers” instead of just “one megameter”.
Klear@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
markz@suppo.fi 2 weeks ago
Infinitely cooler than a “foot”
Berengaria_of_Navarre@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Which is also approximately 30 cm
markz@suppo.fi 2 weeks ago
Exactly, but those foot fetishists with their stinky units seem to think otherwise.
exu@feditown.com 3 weeks ago
Is kibimeter a technically allowed measurement? That would be fun!
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Yes, the same way that kiloinches is technically allowed.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Engineers use milliinches all the time! They call it thous but it’s the same thing.
Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How about kilo-klick?
warm@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
I'm more disappointed the world renamed one thousand million from milliard to billion.
chellomere@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“the world”?
If you came over to the other side of the pond, you’d find that most of Europe is still using milliard, billiard, trilliard etc.
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Anglocentrism strikes again!
CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I think that’s one thing that’s actually fine about the English language though. Constantly switching between something ending with “ion” to “iard” instead of just counting up doesn’t make much sense to me personally.
Million (1A), Milliard (1B), Billion (2A), Billiard (2B) seems odd compared to Million (1), Billion (2), Trillion (3), Quadrillion (4)
I suppose the upside is that you don’t have to learn as many prefixes, but it’ll take another few years of inflation and wealth centralization (at least with currencies like the Euro, Dollar, or Pound) until Quadrillion is relevant in the financial sector and Mathematicians generally use letters. I suppose it makes other natural sciences a tiny bit easier, but there it’s usually written in scientific notation anyways.
Hoimo@ani.social 2 weeks ago
The million-milliard system means a billion has double the zeroes compared to million, trillion has triple the zeroes, etc. In the English system, a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, so 4 times 3 plus 3? A quadrillion should have 4*6=24 zeroes.
warm@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
Crazy assumption.
chellomere@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Crazy assumption. Yes, it’s true for the English speaking world, but it’s much more nuanced outside of it. Here’s a map from Wikipedia:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#/me…
Keep in mind that your link to wiktionary only covers languages where it is spelled exactly “milliard”.
TeNppa@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
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.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You probably want double new lines in your posts. Or two spaces at the end of your paragraphs but that’s usually a bit annoying to do.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Or just \ at the end, like so
Texty text text \ Text
Becomes
Like thisTeNppa@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Thanks! Forgot to do that. Now edited.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
You can tell how bad a news site is when they translate billion to biljoona and thus making the amount 1000 times higher.
Looks like we have something in common! Hämmästyttävä!
guy@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
The long system with milliard and billiard increases with every potens which makes sense. The short system on the other hand 🤷
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
biljoona
Heh that’s a funny word.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
[deleted]Rothe@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Again, anglocentrism strikes. Your feeling is strictly based on your personal experience with your own words. It is like when Americans claim fahrenheit is more for humans than celsius, because they are unable to fathom things they have no experience with.
markz@suppo.fi 2 weeks ago
I think that’s just not being used to it.
Johanno@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Megameter gigameter,
Next thing is one astronomical unit.
And then we are using light years.
Not very linear those last two.
And I am sure that gigameters would still be better than light years.
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
well neither astronomical unit nor light years use meters as a reference. and one of those isnt even accurate (AU)
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think AUs are just meant to mean “far away (like much further away than the pub)”.
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
In Scandinavia we have “mil” which everyone uses, 1 mil, or Scandinavian mile as it is known in English, is 10km. Cuts down ln zeroes. I love this but no one else(outside of Scandinavia) uses it.I typically get a lot of pushback mentioning it to my international peers.
ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sweden and Norway only. Few people in Denmark know what a mil is. And virtually no one here uses it.
Yeah-yeah; something something Denmark. I know…
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu 2 weeks ago
It’s never too late to change the path you are going down, friend.
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
but there is already decameter
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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).
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
i did correct myself like 3 minutes after posting
python@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People will say “one thousand kilometers”
Will they though? I don’t talk about distances that large anywhere near often enough to really need a shorthand for it, personally. Had to even look up what things are approximately 1000km apart to even know what to imagine it as (it’s about the distance between Paris and Berlin).
hperrin@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Yes, every time I’ve ever heard someone use metric to describe distances of >999km, they keep using kilometers.
guy@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Sweden is quite long, so talking about traveling>1 000 km is not uncommon, but here we have mil, which is equal to 10 km. So on my vacation I traveled 120 mil is more useful and common
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Oh no, over here a mil is 1/1000 of an inch, haha
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Comes up a literal metric ass load (8 bushels) when your talking about travel in the USA.
We big
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Car mileage (or kilometerage, is that a word?)
People don’t say the car has 200 megameter on the odometer, but 200 000 km. Or 200k km?..
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu 2 weeks ago
In Sweden we say 20 000 mil. I always have to stop for a second to convert when people use km.
logi@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
You should consider adopting metric and avoid these conversion steps.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
Especially with several thousand kilometres.
“Eleven mega metre” rolls off the tongue much better than “eleven thousands kilo metre” IMO.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ll never forgive the French for going from grave to gram to kg as the base unit of mass.
All my other base units don’t have a prefix :(
Such a pity.
BRING BACK THE GRAVE
Tyr_Raidho_Othala@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Make it a gigameter for my 1000 megameter needs
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
The only bad thing about metric is that billionaires technically do have giga dollars.