I agree that imperial units are silly and we should probably run on metric for lots of practical reason. But you gotta admit that they're a fun discussion prompt for trivia; everybody thinks there's an internal logic but it's just all weird history! For example nobody's gonna believe that it's just a weird coincidence that a Zacharia is slightly *less* than half of a Scaramucci
Oct 16, 2026, 8:40 PM@glyph Imperial units as in the fall of the Roman empire.
Oct 16, 2026, 8:50 PM
@glyph It is unfortunate that it's called "pulling my leg" and not "pulling my foot" otherwise there's be a metric ton of jokes there
@glyph few people know the realm of the lesser imperial units
Oct 16, 2026, 8:48 PM@glyph Getting rid of ounces - the _worst unit in the universe_ - is worth it.
@moira what's wrong with fluid ounces? (snare hit)
Oct 16, 2026, 9:00 PM@dragonfrog @glyph _fucking_ queen anne barrel [RAGE]
Oct 16, 2026, 11:12 PM@dragonfrog @glyph @moira surely you mean "flow Zed"
@glyph and 1/7 of a Lettuce
@glyph what is a Scaramucci in metric? Is it more or less than a Truss?
@glyph the proper term is "former international associate Chinese lawyer" Bambi Zacharia
@glyph There's also the UK political measurement 1 Truss < 1 lettuce
Us Americans really will do anything to avoid using the metric system.
@glyph I blame the Queen for doing the Fandango.
@glyph Do people in the US also automatically hear low register brass instruments whenever imperial units are mentioned or does that only happen to people who grew up with metric?
@glyph I think a Scaramucci is just under half a Truss? That's a neo-imperial unit that Britain introduced after leaving the regulatory stranglehold of the EU.
@glyph my favourite bit of relevant trivia is that the Chinese weight unit jin was only ever properly standardised after grams were invented so they standardised it to 500 grams.
@glyph Many a mickle makes a muckle , you can take that with a smidgen o salt . 🥂
@glyph my hobby: making up stories about "imperial units".
Like, how the story you usually hear about the dimensions of a "2x4" are wrong. yes yes, fresh vs aged wood, but that only accounts for about 28% of the actual size difference.
See, it's actually about the difference between the wine gallon and the ale gallon.
The gallon is BOTH defined as a certain weight of its constitutent liquid; wine and ale have different densities due to different alcohol content, so their gallons are of different weights.
But the gallon is also defined as 3×7×11 inches (nobody knows why! Usually imperial units like to divide into 2s, 3s, and sometimes 5s. 7s and 11s are really uncommon!)
How is this possible? Because there are wine-inches and ale-inches.
Most US lumber is actually from Canada, and in Canada they use a system based on wine-inches, while the US uses the larger ale inch.
