Original measurements were "cobbled together" by actual craftspeople over thousands of years of making actual, practical objects. They are based on lengths, weights and volumes that are useful to real people in real situations.
The metric system was invented by bourgeois Frenchmen who had never crafted anything in their lives, and based on absolutely nothing. Only later did some asshole come along and post-hoc justify it by saying "uh actually a meter is the distance that light travels in 1/1534864156374864153th of a second"
The whole system was literally designed to make it slightly easier to teach standard weights and measures to schoolchildren because multiplying and dividing by ten looks prettier on paper, but once you start measuring actual things in metric you start getting all kinds of awkward decimals and god help you if you have to divide something other than 2 or 5 parts because then you have to figure out how to measure a repeating decimal. Metric is out of touch bullshit invented by the bazinga brains of its day and forced on the rest of the world by European colonialism.
Don't give me any of that "used by actual craftspeople" bullshit, you gonna justify measuring in spans because it was used as a standard unit of distance prior to the invention of unified measures?
Metric wasn't adopted by working people almost everywhere in the world because of French colonialism but because of ease of calculations. The irony of you claiming that adopting the fucking imperial system is anti-colonialism is palpable.
This is a false equivocation. Unified measures are a good, internationalist project. It is the metric system itself that is an expression of class warfare, the bourgeois enforcing what's easiest for them onto people who naturally tend to a different system.
And it is an expression of European colonialism. Who do you think brought meters and liters to Africa and South America? They weren't adopted by grassroots movements but enforced by colonial and postcolonial managers who were exploiting the locals to produce treats for the imperial core.
Lastly, calling standard measurements the "imperial" system is an op to tie traditional measurements to the British Empire, which at the time was the main competitor to other European countries' imperial projects. Literally propaganda to hide the imperialist origins of their own preferred system of weights and measures.
What fleeting practicality measuring in feet and inches has exists only on a limited scale, and when you're dealing with anything larger than a mile or smaller than an inch you're back to that base 10 you so loathe.
What I was trying to say is that calling imperial measurements "standard measurements" is absurd considering that there's only a couple of countries that use it as a system.
Okay fair nuff, which is why I've also called them "traditional measurements" and clarified elsewhere that calling them "imperial" is bullshit invented by neoliberals to tie older systems to the British Empire.
Clearly it was only adopted by a socialist country facing capitalist encirclement in order to better facilitate international trade, which was necessary to build up Soviet productive forces.
Or, hear me out now, a scale that fluctuates between base 10 and base 12 is a pain in the arse to work with when you're working on large scale engineering projects.
Ok nerd, you keep your fucking caveman measures. Cobbled together ass system.
"Ugg measure weight in stones!" Go play with your rocks.
Lookmy car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I LIKE IT
Original measurements were "cobbled together" by actual craftspeople over thousands of years of making actual, practical objects. They are based on lengths, weights and volumes that are useful to real people in real situations.
The metric system was invented by bourgeois Frenchmen who had never crafted anything in their lives, and based on absolutely nothing. Only later did some asshole come along and post-hoc justify it by saying "uh actually a meter is the distance that light travels in 1/1534864156374864153th of a second"
The whole system was literally designed to make it slightly easier to teach standard weights and measures to schoolchildren because multiplying and dividing by ten looks prettier on paper, but once you start measuring actual things in metric you start getting all kinds of awkward decimals and god help you if you have to divide something other than 2 or 5 parts because then you have to figure out how to measure a repeating decimal. Metric is out of touch bullshit invented by the bazinga brains of its day and forced on the rest of the world by European colonialism.
Don't give me any of that "used by actual craftspeople" bullshit, you gonna justify measuring in spans because it was used as a standard unit of distance prior to the invention of unified measures?
Metric wasn't adopted by working people almost everywhere in the world because of French colonialism but because of ease of calculations. The irony of you claiming that adopting the fucking imperial system is anti-colonialism is palpable.
This is a false equivocation. Unified measures are a good, internationalist project. It is the metric system itself that is an expression of class warfare, the bourgeois enforcing what's easiest for them onto people who naturally tend to a different system.
And it is an expression of European colonialism. Who do you think brought meters and liters to Africa and South America? They weren't adopted by grassroots movements but enforced by colonial and postcolonial managers who were exploiting the locals to produce treats for the imperial core.
Lastly, calling standard measurements the "imperial" system is an op to tie traditional measurements to the British Empire, which at the time was the main competitor to other European countries' imperial projects. Literally propaganda to hide the imperialist origins of their own preferred system of weights and measures.
:amerikkka-clap:
What fleeting practicality measuring in feet and inches has exists only on a limited scale, and when you're dealing with anything larger than a mile or smaller than an inch you're back to that base 10 you so loathe.
This proves how terrible our political beliefs are. :very-intelligent:
I believe you've missed my point somewhat.
What I was trying to say is that calling imperial measurements "standard measurements" is absurd considering that there's only a couple of countries that use it as a system.
Okay fair nuff, which is why I've also called them "traditional measurements" and clarified elsewhere that calling them "imperial" is bullshit invented by neoliberals to tie older systems to the British Empire.
Okay, so what neoliberal was responsible for the USSR's adoption of metric?
Clearly it was only adopted by a socialist country facing capitalist encirclement in order to better facilitate international trade, which was necessary to build up Soviet productive forces.
Or, hear me out now, a scale that fluctuates between base 10 and base 12 is a pain in the arse to work with when you're working on large scale engineering projects.
So you agree that it makes far more sense for insulated pencil pushers than it does for proletarian workers?