this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
472 points (99.4% liked)

Canada

9223 readers
1797 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories


πŸ™οΈ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


πŸ’» Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


πŸ’΅ Finance, Shopping, Sales


πŸ—£οΈ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 99 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I'm 178cm and 65kg

Fuck you trump

[–] over_clox@lemmy.world 30 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Fun fact, you are exactly 10 bananas tall...

http://bananaforscale.info/#!/convert/length/10/bananas/centimeters

Coming from the USA, yeah fuck the orange shitstain and his oligarch cronies.

[–] SmackemWittadic@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

After using bananas as a form of measurement, I don't think you need to clarify that you're from the USA.

You guys have used football fields, washing machines, and bicycles as units of measurement haha

[–] over_clox@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (8 children)

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?

[–] SmackemWittadic@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

That's the imperial system for ya. Imagine using a dude's feet as a form of measurement. That's weirder than having it be your fetish

[–] HonoredMule@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 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 3 points 4 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.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yup, let’s drop imperial for absolutely everything!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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

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

[–] nik282000@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

What? BMI > 30 is the literal definition of obesity.

It's a tool, and it serves a purpose.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] grey_maniac@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago

Very slim, I'm 178cm and 100kg. About 24% bodyfat.

[–] glibg@lemmy.ca 62 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Let's finally move to the ISO 216 standard for paper!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 12 points 5 days ago

Oh please, yes!

When I moved to Mexico I was always annoyed with the weird ass paper formats, then when I moved to Canada I had hoped that over here they would have sane formats but alas...

Seriously, the entire world got upgrade after upgrade everywhere and the US constantly was like "nope, we will keep our feet and miles and inches because those "make sense" keeping a large part of developed nations in the dark ages

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 8 points 5 days ago
[–] mister_newbie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But, hear me out.... PC LOAD A4 just doesn't have the same ring to it.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 30 points 5 days ago (3 children)

When someone asks your height, you answer in centimeters.

I mean, I can without hesitating. We all should be able to.

[–] TiredCoffee@lemmy.ca 8 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Howabout meters? 180cm = 1.8m

[–] AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Centimetres are more commonly used to measure height (e.g., on official government issued IDs)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yes, obsessing over centimetres is unhealthy.

I know what you're getting at πŸ˜†

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca 28 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Can we also double down on getting information only from Canadian Owned and Operated media?

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The linked article is from the CBC...

[–] AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The post title is: "Time to double down on the metric system".

At the same time, I also think it's a good idea to:

double down on getting information only from Canadian Owned and Operated media

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] nihilist_hippie@lemmy.ca 19 points 5 days ago (14 children)

I went to the states a couple years back. Went to a tavern and was deciding on a beer. Bartender overhears I'm Canadian and tells me the size of the pints in decilitres πŸ™„

For what it's worth, I'm pretty comfortable with FL oz from reading soda cans and stuff. I just find it crazy how unintuitive metric is to some.

I appreciated his effort, I just thought it was funny

[–] observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Decilitre is actually the common unit for drinks in Hungary (and possibly in other countries). Hungarians also use dekagramm, which is 10 grams. But the cool thing about metric is that to convert, you just move the decimal around!

[–] BreadOven@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A lot of my European beer glasses have dL on them. Offhand I can think of duchesse (Belgium), and Delirium Tremens (also Belgium). Okay, maybe it's just beers from Belgium, I'd have to take a look.

[–] WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"I'd have to take a look."

Sounds like you have booked a special evening in the pub: "Can I try the next beer please?"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] hydration9806@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago

The cool thing is, it's still an easy conversion to bring it back to a familiar unit!

[–] socialjusticewizard@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The states has this funny thing where when they do use metric, like in medicine, they often still use weird-ass nonstandard metric options, like decilitres. I imagine if they eventually switch their unit of weight is going to be something like "well, one fornoy is exactly how much a litre of crude oil weighs"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago

To be fair, pints in the US are 95 mL smaller than pints in Canada, so it's at least a good reminder.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I hate fucking fl.oz. I understand cups, teaspoons and tablespoons, but then there's the odd recipe that uses 'fl.oz.' and I always have to go look it up.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, what the hell is a florida ounce anyway?

An ounce of fentanyl

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Loki66@lemmy.world 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Metric system is meant for clever people.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not really, the system itself is clever but it's made for everyone, very simple to use.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] endeavor@sopuli.xyz 8 points 4 days ago

The system is made for those who create and those who don't know which way to hold an hammer. and it works, that's the beauty of it.

Imperial is just made for peasants in 870s and people who are on still on that level of education.

[–] jlow@beehaw.org 11 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Can we get the UK on board with this as well? (Maybe when they rejoin the EU? And let's drive on the same site of the road as 98% of the planet while we're on it).

[–] Pipster@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 4 days ago

Other than miles most of our stuff is metric anyway, at least legally. Like yeah, we use stones and feet for 'human' measurements in speech etc but if you go to the doctors it would be in kilos and metres. There are a few oddities like milk bottles being in pints and beer in pubs but even then you find things like plant milks and bottles/canned beer in litres. The one that really makes no sense is car fuel efficiency. We sell fuel by the litre but measure it in miles per (imperial) gallon - so it doesnt even tie up with American figures.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next β€Ί