It seems like a weird point to bring up. How often do y’all convert your measurements? It’s not even a daily thing. If I’m measuring something, I either do it in inches, or feet, rarely yards. I’ve never once had to convert feet into miles, and I can’t imagine I’m unique in this. When I have needed to, it’s usually converting down (I.e. 1/3 of a foot), which imperial does handle better in more cases.

Like. I don’t care if we switch, I do mostly use metric personally, it just seems like a weird point to be the most common pro-metric argument when it’s also the one I’m least convinced by due to how metric is based off of base 10 numbering, which has so many problems with it.

Edit: After reading/responding a lot in the comments, it does seem like there’s a fundamental difference in how distance is viewed in metric/imperial countries. I can’t quite put my finger on how, but it seems the difference is bigger than 1 mile = 1.6km

  • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lolOP
    11·
    22 hours ago

    These aren’t nicknames, these are the standard names of US currency. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars (not super common though)

    Also if someone pulled out 26 coins to pay for a meal they’d also have a very annoyed cashier at minimum

    The point of this was more “Coins are a pain in the ass regardless of whether we’re dealing with 100 or 240 as the base”

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 hours ago

      These aren’t nicknames, these are the standard names of US currency. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars (not super common though)

      They’re nicknames for those (Similar to how people refer to bills by whatever president is printed on it), they might be very popular nicknames which grants them the “common name” descriptor, but the official names are the boring “<amount> cents coin”. People outside of your country have no obligation to know how you nickname your coins.

      Also if someone pulled out 26 coins to pay for a meal they’d also have a very annoyed cashier at minimum

      Well, that might be true now because most counties only have 5 different coins, but pre-decinalized currency in the UK had 11 coins, it only got to 26 coins in my example because I included 7 of those (Sorry for farthing, pennies and Guinea fans out there), most of which in small numbers that someone might be carrying around in their pocket individually. And my point was precisely that, it’s such a complex system that you end up with dozens of coins with random values trying to mix and match them to get to the amount you want.

      The point of this was more “Coins are a pain in the ass regardless of whether we’re dealing with 100 or 240 as the base”

      But they’re not, like you realized with 26 coins of 7 different values you didn’t even get to a whole pound, with a decimal system the closest you can get is 1 50¢, 1 25¢, 1 10¢, 2 5¢, 4 1¢ which is 9 coins, and like you can see the vast majority is a single coin because 2 of them would get you to the next coin already.