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.

  • Dearche@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    That’s just ridiculous. The pint is a measurement unit in itself. The fact that the bartender didn’t seem to be aware of that fact is a failure of the imperial system in itself, though not really a surprise since the system relies entirely on memorizing arbitrary values that have no connection with other units.

    Though admittedly, the US pint is smaller than the British pint, so there is justification of pointing that out.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      A pint in the U.S. is 16oz. What’s a British pint?

      For us it is 2 cups in a pint 2 pints in a quart 4 quarts in a gallon. (People seem to struggle with remembering that until you tell them quart as in quarter, or 4 in a dollar etc)

      Weights are fucked, but I usually just remember 16oz is a pound. Only drug users and chemists remember 28 grams in an ounce. So an 8 ball (1/8th is 3.5 grams). And depending on where you are ranges from 110-240 dollars. So you go to the store and buy a bottle of liquor (sold in metric units, and the store owner will stupidly call it a half gallon) but it’s 1.75L, 1L or 750ml for $20-30. And you’ll pass out 2 days later super dehydrated upset you wasted all your money.

      • Dearche@lemmy.ca
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        16 hours ago

        Dunno in oz, but a US pint is 473mL, and a British pint is 568mL. Quite the difference TBH, and a bunch of bars in Vancouver got fined a few years ago due to shorting customers not providing a full pint when selling them. Some of them were even forced to buy new glasses because they weren’t big enough to fit a full pint.

        This is a reoccurring problem with the imperial system, since the units just turns into words and no longer hold their meaning as measurements because they’re so arbitrary in the first place and are next to impossible to convert on the fly. Like a span is the width of a hand, but that’s useless when the difference in size is easily 50% to double just comparing between women and men. Or how you need to specify fluid or dry ounces, yet people often don’t bother and just confuse each other by not specifying. Or how complicated conversions and comparisons are to the degree that most people don’t do them in imperial and just force themselves to memorize what each arbitrary unit is in a vacuum.

      • windlas@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        28g to an ounce is a good thing for homebrewers to know, too! I measure hops in grams, and recipes are often given in ounces.