#measurements

I am so incredibly fed up with these ‘loving’ people that fight for ‘freedom’ and organize huge events against covid-19 measurements. Why can’t they see it’s super egocentric what they’re doing? They’re the ones that can afford to stay at home. Why are they now suddenly critical of freedom and privacy being invaded? Oh, because for the first time, it affects them personally. Do they advocate for general freedom of movement? Of course not, it only bothers them that they cannot go on holidays. Seems they couldn’t care less about people being detained for not having papers and/or fleeing war and poverty. If someone asking you to wear a mask and keep some distance to protect others is ‘oppression’, you are swimming in privilege.
I don’t care about someone not being ‘scared’ of covid-19 personally; I only care about them not infecting others to whom it’s more likely to be deadly or destroying their quality of life. Yes, mental health is important, and we need to battle isolation. But a shitload of yuppies coming together to ‘fight for freedom’ without being critical of borders, systemic oppression due to racism or the deadly consequences of capitalism isn’t going to help anyone but themselves. In contrary, it’s going to cost lives of people that didn’t have the possibility of making a choice. And I see more and more individuals around me being sucked into all kinds of conspiracy theories; often linked to right-wing propaganda. If only they could work in the hospital for one week to experience what it’s like to be around people that are fighting for their lives, who are being cared for by people that are completely exhausted…

prismatic-bell:

join-me-in-the-bog:

jupitermelichios:

deanhugchester:

woodzbfgf:

rhube:

duckbunny:

tiktoksthataregood-ish:

absolutely delighted that this simplifies the situation

Having grown up here I do regard this as batshit, and yet also at the same time obvious and correct.

I’m pretty sure this is why it’s totally normal for even the most official sources to measure everything in comparisons - things on the news are always the size of football pitches, busses end to end, and areas the size of Wales. There’s no guarantee the audience will all understand the same measurements, because different generations use different combinations of measuring systems.

The systems also intersect more than this suggests - all greengrocers sell in lbs but price in kgs for example. Car efficiency is measured in miles per gallon but fuel is sold in litres. It’s totally normal for the same thing to be measured using two different methods depending on context.

Also if you’re buying alcohol commercially some people still use hogsheads which are fun because the volume of a hogshead is different for every alcohol because it’s based on medieval tax law rather than an actual measuring system. A beer hogshead is way more litres than a wine hogshead is more than a sherry hogshead. Also land is acres and hectares, but buildings are square feet unless they’re offices in which case they’re Square meters. Hope that’s totally clear and not confusing at all!

@your-dearest-antego a very simple explanation of how we do it anty

A US equivalent, for our friends across the pond:

….my takeaway here is that we use our measurements more consistently than people in the UK, but neither of us can get our shit together regarding volume and we’re both really weird about alcohol and milk. (Literally I started thinking about how to explain US alcohol sizes and I think my head exploded.)

Also the “soda comes in liters” thing is a relic of a very brief time when we almost ended up on the metric system and then didn’t. It stuck, even though kilometers didn’t.