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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • gammasfor@sh.itjust.workstoMemes@sopuli.xyzI get it now
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    1 year ago

    Though there is an extra exception on the weighing people thing. If it’s a scientific or medical setting then the measurement is in kg (because official organisations are meant to use metric (though some of the weirder elements of our current government are trying to undo that for reasons)).

    For those confused on the outside as to why we do this to ourselves there is sound reasoning. We switched to metric quite late having mostly done it to align with the EU. This means our largest demographic (boomers because of course) were brought up on an imperial measurement education. That means colloquially people use imperial as that’s what they know. Officially most things are done in metric now but imperial measurements are included with items on sale to help the metric challenged generation. Metric is what is taught in schools with imperial only taught as a “if you encounter an imperial measurement this is what it is in metric”. Though obviously there is a bit of a drag effect because when everyone else is using Imperial for measuring a particular thing, of course the kids are going to use that measure as well.

    Road and speed signs stuck with imperial as the cost of replacing literally everything is greater than the value it would bring (especially given the demographic knowledge issue). And alcohol is measured in pints as the concept of a British pint is a cultural heritage (plus the extra 68ml compared to our European brethren is a bonus).

    The aim was the eventually phase out imperial entirely as the people who weren’t educated in metric gradually die out, though there as I said there are a bunch of government who decided for some reason to try and push officially switching back to Imperial for the sole reason of “let’s diverge from the EU for the sole reason of being able to say brexit actually had a point to our boomer voters”.