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While we are at it, let’s all (as in the entire planet) switch to 24hour UTC and the YYYY.MM.DD date format.
ISO8601 gang
Some ISO8601 formats are good, but some are unreadable (like 20240607T054831Z for date and time).
The ones without separators tend to be for server/client exchange though.
I mean I like this one without the separations
Americans use 9 millimeters at school all the time.
How many football fields is that
About 82 nanofields
What’s the ratio of nanofields to millimeters?
As a mechanical design engineer in America having dual systems creates unnecessary complexity and frustration and cost for me all day every day. I full force embrace switching to metric
I’ll preface this by saying that this isn’t an argument in favor of the imperial system, nor is it an argument intending to detract from the usefulness of the metric system. But I have wondered if there is some merit to having a simple, colloquial, “human friendly” system of measurement — something that’s shown to be the best system for people to grok, and is the most convenient to use in day-to-day life. If you need precision, and well defined standards, then certainly use the metric system, but is the metric system easy for people to grok? Say you ask someone to estimate a length. Would they be more likely to accurately estimate the length using the metric system, the imperial system, or some other system? Likewise for telling someone a length and asking them to physically reproduce it. Would they be more likely to do so with the metric system, the imperial system, or some other? It’s an interesting problem, imo, and it doesn’t seem to get much attention.
It could very well be that people can, indeed, grok measurements the best when using the metric system, but I currently am unaware of any research that has been done to show that. If anyone is aware of any research that has looked into this, then please let me know! I’d be very interested to read it.
That’s a feature supporters of imperial thinks it has. Even if imperial/some special third option is better for guessing, the difference has to be big enough that it’s worth the hassle of having multiple systems or converting everyone again. If it’s not worth having two systems but it is worth converting everything , then you still have to keep or prove that it’s worth losing the conveniences of metric like 1 km = 1000 m , 1 L of water weighing 1 kg , water freezing and boiling at 0 and 100 °C
I am once again asking for yyyy-mm-dd
I’ll take metric gladly, but I can’t go that direction sir.
So dd-mm-yyyy?
yyyy-dd-mm 😀
INFIDELS
Metric yes please. Also for fucks sake use the 24 hour clock. Some of us learned it from the military but it’s just earth time and way easier than adding letters to a number
Why no base10 clock?
base12 has the advantage of being divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while base10 is only divisible by 2 and 5.
the 24 hour clock
I switched to it in my later teens when I realised how many cases it would be better in.
Conversion during conversation might be an extra step, but I’ll be pushing for the next generation to have this by default.Also, much better when using for file names.
Also, YYYY-MM-DD. There’s a reason why it is the ISO
The conversion is pretty much the only hurdle I ever hear about, but that’s easy enough. How many songs/films talk about “if I could rewind the last 12+12 hours”…it’s just a matter of making it fit in context people can understand when they know a day is 24 but are used to 12.
ISO and while we’re at it, the NATO phonetic alphabet for English speakers. “A as in apple B as in boy” means fuck all when you’re grasping for any word that starts with that letter, and if English isn’t your first language fuckin forget about it.
ISO and while we’re at it, the NATO phonetic alphabet for English speakers. “A as in apple B as in boy” means fuck all when you’re grasping for any word that starts with that letter, and if English isn’t your first language fuckin forget about it.
err… didn’t get what you’re trying to say
We standardized an alphabet among all countries for clear communication.
Here is an example of it going wrong.
I’m pretty sure that’s an example of why you should use the chosen ones instead of going “mancy/nancy” all over the place.
Also, didn’t they just make a standard for themselves and other just took it because it was probably easier than making one for their own language (oh right, NATO… but let’s be honest here, NATO is just a forum for America to flaunt its power while PR-ing peaceful, so it makes sense they use English, which is also easier to be a second language than most other ones).
Though I feel like China might have made their own.
The radio words were chosen to be distinct, such that for people who trained in them, it would be easier to distinguish letters being spoken over low quality radio.
Not very relevant in the era of 2G HD audio, and now VoLTE.
But when there’s a bad signal and you have to tell someone a callsign, it makes sense.
I like ISO, because in whatever cases I have interacted with it, it has made programming easier for me.
I like YYYY-MM-DD, because when files lose their metadata, if they are named using this, I can still sort by name and get results by date.
Dammit people, we need to stay focused. First abolish DST THEN institute the metric system! We have to have our priorities in order and stay organized or we will never accomplish anything!
Why do you want the sun to set early?
I’d rather have an extra hour of sun after work than an hour of sun before work
I think most people enjoy DST. Most complain when it’s dark at 5 pm.
You think that because it’s how you feel or you have different stats on opinions taken from large samples in an unbiased fashion that lead you to believe this?
If it’s the former please see https://paylesspower.com/blog/beyond-the-clock-exploring-the-nations-pulse-on-daylight-saving-time/
If the latter, please consider sharing your data.
Ahh, yes, 1002 people is a large sample size, like .003% of the population.
Your article is also about switching. Doesn’t say anything about if people would prefer to stay on DST or standard time.
The way statistical sampling works, 1000 people in a population of 300,000,000 is actually good enough for most things. You can play around with numbers here to convince yourself, but at 95% confidence 1000 people will give an answer to within 3% of the true answer for the 300,000,000 population.
If the 300m people lived in the same area and you got a true random sample.
Sunsets at 9:09 today in Michigan
Sunsets at 8:04 today in California
Sunsets at 8:34 today in North Carolina
Sunsets at 7:57 today in Alabama
Sunsets at 7:38 today in Arizona (They are on standard time)
Sunsets at 7:13 today in Hawaii
Sunsets at 11:36 today in Alaska
Someone in Arizona might want the sun to set at 7:38. It’s blazing hot all day.
Someone in Michigan might be fine with sunsetting at 8:08 with standard time.
Someone in Alabama might not want the sun to set at 6:57.
Someone in Hawaii probably doesn’t want the sun to set at 6:13.
Even if you split up the 1000 people to equally represent all states, that’s only 20 people per state.
I mean, yeah, 1000 people is enough assuming there’s no sampling bias. But if you’ve got sampling bias, increasing the sampling size won’t actually help you. The issue you’re talking about is unrelated to how many people you talk to.
Your own suggestion of splitting up the respondents by state would itself introduce sampling bias, way over sampling low population states and way under sampling high population states. The survey was interested in the opinions of the nation as a whole, so arbitrary binning by states would be a big mistake. You want your sampling procedure to have equal change of returning a response from any random person in the nation. With a sample size of 1000, you’re not going to have much random-induced bias for one location or another, aside from population density, which is fine because the survey is about USA people and not people in sub-USA locations.
You could always use the metric system, that was always allowed. Most food (I’ve seen) has both imperial and metric measurements. Most digital measuring devices and lots of analog ones will have options for both. Speedometers generally have both.
Really, the only one stopping you from using the metric system in your daily life is you. Unless of course you’re saying you want other people to use it. Which is a distinctly different proposition.
I think we were the first with metric money? We still pay for things in centidollars.
Why do Americans call the decimal system “metric”?
Because that’s it’s name
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system
But if you wanna get all specific about it we can call it SI
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units
It’s certainly not the Decimal system
There’s no such thing as metric money. What are you talking about?
My Megadollar says otherwise.
I’m not, but I’m old as shit, and don’t really give a fuck.
Old people using inches: https://youtu.be/EUpwa0je6_Y
Nah, let’s stick to Freedom Units! 🗽
