[cupofjoakim]

The US being stuck in imperial is such a meme nowadays with "freedum units" and the like. It's yet another odd thing that makes it easy for the rest of the world to laugh at the US. In these isolationist times I doubt this will change soon though, but it'd definitely help international collaboration.

[yurishimo]

Everyone who wants to collaborate internationally is already doing it. Science in the US is entirely metric. Construction and domestic measurements are the two biggest holdouts and honestly they’re both negligible. Given the proliferation of global manufacturing, most businesses are converting at the end before retail for US customers.

If the government was competent, they could rip off the bandaid and everyone would adapt within a year or two, but we need to wait at least 3 years for that to even begin to become a possibility again.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The US has gone almost fully metric on plywood thickness due to globalization.

[t-3]

Honestly, I don't think anyone would raise much of a fuss over changing distance measurements to metric. Both centimeters and inches are easy enough to eyeball or rule-of-thumb, meters and yards are basically the same, and larger units are only relevant for speed limits and travel planning. Metric lacks a good "foot", but I guess people would get used to eyeballing things in ~50cm increments instead.

Weights are even easier as pretty much everyone uses grams as the smallest daily unit and most people can convert to and from metric on the fly for ounces, lbs, kgs. Liters aren't uncommon, and ml<->gram equivalence for water is well-known. Traditional kitchen volumes probably wouldn't be displaced because metric has no answer for those in first place.

Temperature is where metric will fail to gain adoption because Celsius totally sucks unless your daily life consists only of boiling or freezing water at sea level. No advantages over Fahrenheit except maybe arguably for science, because it's Kelvin with an offset.

[walthamstow]

re construction, we use 8x4ft sheets of timber in Britain still, same as before, we just call them twelve-twenty-by-two-four-forty now.

[cucumber3732842]

The unit itself doesn't actually matter. Even industries with the least precision set their stuff up with so much precision that the unit you use basically doesn't matter.

Your machine may spit out widgets that are plus or minus an inch. But when you set up the machine you set it up to the 1/16 regardless. Swapping all that to metric doesn't actually change anything other than the number the guy setting it up dials it in to.

[mgoetzke]

The fact that canadian lumber companies seem to be switching their machinery to metric is funny though. https://woodcentral.com.au/canadas-sawmills-weigh-metric-swi...

[FridayoLeary]

They got rid of the penny. Just suggest that the Imperial system is some leftist conspiracy and they'll have moved over by the end of the month.

[neutronicus]

Construction is negligible?

I guess you imagine we’ll all be calling half inch pipe twelve seven after this year adjustment period?

I guess people do it with bullet calibers.

[deadbabe]

Most likely the current administration will pass executive orders banning the use of metric system, and then force other countries to switch to imperial or face heavy tariffs.

[zahlman]

Jokes of this form were tired by about November 5, 2024.