In the spirit of rapprochement with Europe and reorientation away from the United States, it’s time to complete the Metrication process in Canada that was stopped prematurely by the Mulroney government.

        • over_clox@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I find the whole imperial/metric thing funny.

          Like hell, even here in the USA, it’s always the 10 millimeter socket (or in my case the 15 millimeter socket) that somehow disappears.

          A pendulum of one meter length swings at a rate of once per second.

          Where things get weird in the USA is one mile = 5280 feet. Like, who the fuck pulled that number out of their ass?

          • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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            3 days ago

            Where things get weird in the USA is one mile = 5280 feet. Like, who the fuck pulled that number out of their ass?

            The romans divided the mile into 5,000 feet. But the British perfered using ‘furlong’, thus the mile became 8 furlongs, and a furlong is 660 feet.

            • HonoredMule@lemmy.ca
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              3 days ago

              It wasn’t so weird back when people lived in relative isolation without any kind of standards, and had to come up with some sort of reference that was widely familiar and commonly available.

              You know, back in the Neolithic Age.

              It even makes sense why that familiar set of references would get standardized and then survive up until the beginning of the Industrial Age. Beyond that point it’s all driven by American exceptionalism, a.k.a. willful ignorance. What I don’t understand is what happened to the cubit. Feet make sense for distance, but as a craftsman I don’t want to be foot-fondling my work pieces.

            • merc@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              Even weirder when that foot was defined based on the body of a former king of England. But, centuries later, the country that formed in a rebellion against England still keeps using that measurement, whereas England has made a lot more progress going metric.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Huh, that’s interesting. Of all things to choose metric, why sockets?

            I think the only thing where imperial is common here in (continental) Europe is screen sizes, which you always see in inches, and it’s weird because people have absolutely no feel for how long 55" or whatever is. The other is pipes, though in plumbing is usual to have the equivalent in mm.

            • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              The auto industry, mostly. Asian and European cars are metric, and imported into America in large numbers, and even domestic manufacturers have been going to metric fasteners in a lot of cases. The oil drain plug on my S10 is 14mm, for example.

              I bet if you took a look at common lumber sizes you’d see they’re given in millimeters, but weird millimeters. Like why 19mm instead of 20? Because 19mm is very close to 3/4".

              I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but automotive wheel and tire sizes in the US are my second favorite mixed measurement. A tire’s size is given in rim width in millimeters bead to bead, sidewall height as a percentage of said width, and rim diameter in inches. A 275/75R-15 fits a 275mm wide, 15 inch diameter wheel and is 206.25mm tall bead to tread.

            • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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              3 days ago

              Here in the us, sockets come in both imperial and metric. Foreign products are made with metric bolts, but some domestic made or designed stuff will use imperial. Working on things like cars is real fun because both standards are used on the same vehicle.

              • over_clox@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                Yep, pretty much.

                When I’m working on vehicles or bicycles, it’s almost always metric wrenches and sockets, until that one random bolt or nut that’s for whatever dumb reason in imperial, like the random 1/2", or the fairly universal 5/8" spark plug socket.

                Why? Hell if I know, but some of those things probably track all the way back to Henry Ford, and possibly even before him.

                • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 days ago

                  In many cases like that, where an otherwise metric apparatus has an inexplicable SAE component, it’s because that component became a commodity part in Britain or America before the rest of the world industrialized.

                  Give an example made in Austria: Rotax 9-series aircraft engines are metric, they’re held together with metric fasteners, cylinder bores are given in millimeters, etc. It was designed in metric. The prop flange is designed to take three different bolt patterns, 75mm, 80mm, and 4 inch. Because a lot of Rotax engines were going to be sold in America, the land of McCauley, Sensenich and Hartzel. We’ve been tooled up for 4 inch prop flanges for a century now.

    • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Congrats on the healthy BMI, and on using the correct scale!

      By my book, you’re now an EU citizen.

      • Nik282000@lemmy.ca
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        3 days ago

        BMI was made by an statistician who never intended it to be used as a means of medical assessment.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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            2 days ago

            Basically just because it’s easier to measure. In reality, visceral fat is the thing they worry about, but you can’t run everyone through an MRI just for that.

            That being said, having a really high BMI is definitely bad. Saying that you’re healthy at 50 is taking a mile kilometer when given a centimeter.

            • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              The articles first line starts with:

              Body mass index (BMI) is an anthropometric index that is commonly used in the medical setting and is a factor in assessing various disease risks

              If it’s good enough for doctors, it’s good enough for me. Wake me up when something else takes its place.

              • Nik282000@lemmy.ca
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                7 hours ago

                Body mass index (BMI) is an anthropometric index that is commonly used in the medical setting and is a factor in assessing various disease risks but its origins are unknown by many. More importantly, BMI does not properly assess body fat percentage and muscle mass or distinguish abdominal fat from gluteofemoral fat, which is important to note because abdominal fat is associated with insulin resistance, metabolic disease, and cardiovascular complications. Using a less accurate index to assess the relationship between weight and disease risk is conceptually invalid because the use of BMI ultimately trickles into patient treatment, preventive medicine, and overall health outcomes.

                Completing the quote we find that there is a more important aspect to BMI than its common use.

      • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        Japan is almost entirely metric (with a couple old units used in parallel). We buy TVs, monitors, and bicycle tires in inches (which, while fine for me, is just gibberish to japanese). I’d love for that to stop