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proper_ikea_boy t1_j0iqrkr wrote

Reply to comment by doomer_irl in NASA's DART asteroid smash flung 2 million pounds of rock into space by shellystarzz

space.com is read by an international audience and US as well as NASA is on metric internally anyways. The people involved in the imperial standardization process say it's stupid as well, it's just being held up cuz educating all the US hillbillies on how to use metric would be too expensive for the government.

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smithsp86 t1_j0jfj0m wrote

It's not our fault that the rest of the world didn't develop interchangeable parts until after their adoption of metric. The U.S. will not switch because there's close to 200 years of industrial development riding on our customary units.

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Candelent t1_j0k2e4x wrote

Why are Europeans so whiny about U.S. customary units? Seriously, whining about what a U.S. writer writes for a U.S. website shared on a U.S. social media platform regarding a U.S. funded space agency has got to take the cake for utter arrogance.

And why do they completely ignore the fact that Canadians and Brits use both customary units and metric? Does that make them hillbillies, too?

Europeans on Reddit can be so insufferable.

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doomer_irl t1_j0j4b72 wrote

I’m not against metric, I’m against the hostility. “Millions of pounds” is hardly cold science. A pound and a kilo are separated by a factor of about 2. “Millions of pounds” is very probably the same sort of statement here as “millions of kilos”. And even if it weren’t, it’s perfectly valid for someone to use a unit of measurement that they’re familiar with when writing. He probably didn’t even think about it.

The original comment is the equivalent of an American going to a foreign country and demanding people speak English.

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