• SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The US doesn’t use imperial units, though. The US customary units share names with imperial units, but they are significantly different.

    • Skates@feddit.nl
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      10 months ago

      Of course they are. I expect the number of furlongs in a whatsit has changed at least every week. Who could even pretend to remember the actual values?

      • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Furlongs is a different measuring system all together. Same with miles and inches. We don’t convert between those measurements because it’s not necessary.

      • lunarul@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        That’s why you see units like “US cup” instead of just “cup” when doing conversions in a lot of places.

    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      To add to that, US customary is a collection of measurement systems with different purposes. Most of the jokes about the US measurements are about the “silly” units like furlongs and acres and whatnot but those are either not at all part of the US customary system or are used to measure different things and are not converted between. Like, there is no reason to measure distance in inches when miles do fine. Anything using precision use a different system altogether or a variation on us customary that is often favored over metric for precision. Not that US customary is better than any other system, just it’s not really as bad as people make it out to be. It’s perfectly serviceable and changing away from it is not really the top of the priority list for this country.