Apple calculator:
390mm --> 1 foot 3 3/8 inches
150mm --> 5.91 inches
240mm --> 0.79 feet

What are you doing Apple? You're drunk. 0.79 FEET? People don't even measure like that in the US.

14 inches --> 1 foot 2 inches

That's Obviously what I wanted 🤦‍♂️

For people who don't get any of this, Americans use:

* Inches and fractions for "small" things: 7½ inches, 15¾
* Feet and inches for "large" things (like more than 2 feet): 6 feet 2 inches, 30 feet 7¼.
* Thousandths of an inch for tiny things: 38 thousandths, off by a 'thou.

* 1 foot 3 3/8 inches is valid but uncommon, people typically just say 15 and 3/8ths
* 5.91 inches is weird, converting from millimeters (not hundredths of a mm) you probably best round to 5 and 15/16ths which at least is on a tape measure
* 0.79 feet is just malarkey

@cjd

In England we measure speed with furlongs per fortnight.

@kravietz

In England we measure speed with furlongs per fortnight.

Just for the dragons or for everything?

@cjd

@epic @cjd

It's a rather bizarre mix of units here - the transportation systems interchangeably uses kilometers and miles, some shop owners by principle refuse to use kilograms and insist on "pounds" (without realising a "pound" is defined in law using grams and that there was like a dozen of "pounds"), fuel efficiency is measures in miles per gallon, but it's a different gallon from the one used in the US. In general, the whole units situation is nothing but a confusing dick contest.,,

@kravietz

You just blew what I knew about English measurement out of the water. I know people there fought the change to metric, but had no idea they still were.

It sounds as though it is an the illusion only the USA and Myanmar accept the 'backwards' measurements Caleb is talking about, the reality is people are still people. Thank goodness they are. Individuality is better for countries as well as people.

I prefer feet and inches like I think Caleb does (as well as the right answer from his Apple), but I prefer pounds, shillings, and pence to that insipid EU metric system. At least when a mechanic is asking for a toolset here in America (like sockets/wrenches), the question is still, "English or metric?" The same as there's no American language, there's no American measurement system. We're doing fine without either, England and America are inexorably linked, even if England tends to wander off the trail a bit.

@cjd

@epic @cjd

So at the end of the day, while some people in the UK do use imperial units just as some of them use separate taps for cold and hot water, and come with various more or less consistent excuses for that, they rarely realize the "traditional" units is also a result of one king's decision to scrap all previously used "traditional" units and declare a single "standard" one..

@kravietz

My little post got divided into five responses from you. I’m not sure if that’s just your preference to keep your comments short or they automatically got split (I don’t know how long-format and short-format servers communicate yet).

My reader only indents or draws outlines one level to indicate threads. It’s obvious they are a sequence but I can’t be completely sure of the order because when I clicked on them to see if they follow each other they all seemed to be attached to my post, not each other. Times didn’t help.

I’m only sniveling because I hope I read them right. Plus, if one becomes five, five responses would become 25, 25 responses would be, like, more than 75 pretty much I think.

@cjd

@epic @cjd

It's only because Mastodon doesn't allow me to post more than 500 characters.

> isolated environment though

I didn't mean the US, I meant specific sectors of economy such as plumbing or car mechanics...

> Tell a carpenter

...or carpentry.

I don't do wood work, but I do 3D cases or PCB occasionally and can't imagine doing that in fractional inches.

> 3/16” and 11/16”

Then maybe it's optimised for human memory operations.

@kravietz @cjd

Thanks for letting me know aobut the 500 characters, kravietz.

If messages are too long for Mastadon's prototcol, do you know if they get truncated or if they just don't show up?

@epic @cjd

You just can't type more than 500 characters in Mastodon... I'm looking at all these posts from Diaspora with envy :)