They’re doing that to poke fun at the “energy drink can sized hail” news headline from the other day.
Energy drink can used for scale, yet fruit used as unit of measurement
Submitted 5 months ago by Doesntpostmuch@possumpat.io to [deleted]
https://possumpat.io/pictrs/image/5717c346-9153-4db1-82c5-0a01c0797a8a.png
Comments
mister_monster@monero.town 5 months ago
corus_kt@lemmy.world 5 months ago
First time I’ve seen AP news flexing their sense of humor, honestly. Unless the photographer just went ‘Nope, no other pictures’.
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The energy drink just happened to be on the ground where the hail landed
ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Because Americans will use practically anything before they use metric.
blackbelt352@lemmy.world 5 months ago
We do such a shit job at teaching our own actual measuring system that nobody has an intuition what a pound feels like, what an inch and a foot look like and how to scale those up. So we resort to objects and comparisons instead of actual measurements.
makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
I don’t blame anyone for falling to teach imperial. It’s surreal.
I grew up with both (gen x Australian), and when I lived through the transition, metric is a godsend.
Feet. Pound. Stone. All I see are objects. But they are easily objective to the imagination.
There are now only 2 countries left I believe, dragging their heels, and officially using metric.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Ehhhhh… measurements aren’t that hard to learn. They’re still measuring the same kinds of things. All measurements are still arbitrary to a human.
Basically the ONLY thing the metric system has over imperial is it matches our number system by being base-10. I know I know, it’s a BIG difference for a lot of calculations to not have to throw in non-matching unit conversions, and the metric system is ultimately based on absolute values pulled from the universe. At least by definition, as meaningless as that fact is to humans just looking at a length and going, “yup, that’s about 1 1/2 meters.”.
Anyone who failed to build an intuition simply didn’t use units enough. A lot of US carpenters like imperial units for a similar reason most like the metric system: The ratios match up to what they work with. Most people work with base-10 numbers A LOT more than base 8 or 16. Though for woodworkers, when boards come in feet, blades are clean fractions of inches in size, and buildings are sized 8’ tall, etc, etc, it all lines up nicely to reduce a worker’s mental load.
I still think metric is superior, but imperial very much is not “senseless”. The biggest reason we’ll never switch is because so many industries have their ratios set for imperial units or interact with other American construction based on those ratios. Not to mention maintenance on things already built. It’d be a huge headache of a transition for many industries.
Sabata11792@ani.social 5 months ago
Our measuring system is so shit I rather use hamburgers as a distance than miles.
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s true, all Americans jointly held the camera to take this picture then sat down together to write the headline
Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com 5 months ago
That’s right. We all got together and decided to write moronic headlines like this.
It definitely isn’t just a handful of editors in a few newsrooms making these decisions on their own.
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 5 months ago
As you prepare a cup of tea with a teaspoon of sugar…
pipows@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Sorry mate, but I prepare 350ml of tea with no sugar