Someone pointed out I was using Fahrenheit the other day.
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@wjmaggos they tried, during the French revolution.
@fatsam Don't tell the french that the Brits developed the metric system lol
@fatsam I am VERY tempted to write a Ruritanian-flavoured novel where all the measurements are in historical (pre-1925) Russian units. Eg. (per wiki) 80 vershoks = 20 pyads = 5 arshins = 140 English inches (355.60 cm): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Russian_units_of_measurement
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A few years ago, there was a news report from the US about an asteroid fly-by.
The asteroid was said to be the size of half a giraffe.
The news report did not say if the asteroid was the size of the top half, bottom half, left side, right side, or some sort of diagonal.
Measuring is hard.
@fatsam French gal: "what do you mean 'WE developed'?"
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@temptoetiam
Yes, thought the same. 🙂
@temptoetiam @fatsam The British were very late to adopt the metric system. People there still weigh themselves in stones (1 stone = 14 pounds) and distances are still measured in miles (which at least was originally decimal because it was derived from the distance a Roman legionnaire covered in 1000 paces: “mile” is from mille passus).
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@bodhipaksa
Interesting! And somehow ironic; didn’t know that: “miles … were originally decimal … derived from the distance a Roman legionnaire covered in 1000 paces: “mile” is from mille passus”. 😀🙏🏻
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I realized this when I was in the habit of taking my 10,000 daily steps, and realized that it was almost exactly 5 miles every time. I wondered if that was by design, and in looking up the etymology I discovered it was.
(If that makes it sound like a mile is 2,000 paces, it''s because a military pace was one left-right — i.e. two steps.)
It kind of blows my mind that a mile is a unit of length that's been in use for more than two millennia!
@temptoetiam @fatsam a consequence of the famous British Revolution of 1789 that established the First British Republic. Or something like that.
@fatsam
we need metric time.