whats fucking weird to me is that we use millimeters and inches on the same fucking rulers.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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And the only time they use the proper date format is their national holiday.
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This is why i use the amertric system
It 318 kft not 60 mi or 100 km. That avalanche was 1 decaempire State building in volume. 1 mi is actually 2.28 kft.
And by "Americans" you mean the companies that manufacture the firearms, right? Or whatever body, if any, that controls what size ammunition cartridges are measured by?
Both are used. If you see caliber after the number it's in 100 of an inch. If you see mm it's metric. (Though caliber refers to barrel diameter and can be expressed in imperial or metric). So a 45 caliber is 0.45 inches or about 11.5mm.
NATO has standardised on a few round types so they can share supplies between countries. The NATO 7.62×51mm round is very similar to the .308 and they can usually be interchanged.
And when not, kablammo?!
You can fire .223 in a firearm rated for 5.56mm pressure
.308 is the opposite. It has more pressure than 7.62mm
Most any new barrel is going to be rated for both pressures now a days, but always good to doublecheck!
Hey, we also measure our large soda bottles that way!
And street drugs
We all use metric. We need to just rip the bandaid off.
Ignore all the rest of the US rounds like .30-06, .30-30, .357, etc.
And let's not get started on .338 lapua magnum.
A bastard child of both American and British measurements, ending up being made by a metric manufacturer.
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The imperial system makes you a worse shot. Everybody in American stories misses by inches. In European stories, they miss by millimeters. It's quite the difference: 25 times worse.
It's not a real fish tale if people are measuring in standard units instead of "c-hairs" or "gnat bollocks" anyway.
Longtime woodworker here (American). Fractions of an inch have always been a pain. Finished lumber like 2x4s and 1x12s have never in my lifetime been the size they're known as, but that's a matter of subtracting halves and quarters of an inch and everybody was used to it. Then maybe 20 years ago (no need to correct me, it really doesn't matter) companies decided that instead of making plywood the thickness they said it was, they would subtract 1/32th of an inch, because hey less wood means more profits! So for example a sheet of so-called 3/4" plywood is only 23/32" thick. Similarly with half-inch, etc. This means a slot cut with a 3/4" router bit, which used to fit a 3/4" thick shelf, is just slightly loose now, and if you are stacking multiple thicknesses the slight inaccuracies compound themselves. What the Actual Fuck. I have a metric tape measure, which makes some figuring easier, but inches and fractions of inches don't convert to exact mm. The imperial system is a shit show.
I recently bought a house that was built in 1942 and I've been renovating it. I tore down one of the interior walls and reused the studs (which incidentally were completely straight and free of knots, unlike any modern 2x4 I've ever seen) to build a new wall. When I put the wall in place it didn't quite fit and when I measured I realized it was 1/2" too tall. I don't normally make measurement errors of that magnitude and it took me a while to figure out that the studs I was reusing were not 3.5"x1.5" like modern 2x4s but were actually 3.75"x1.75" (so the base plate and head plate being thicker than I thought was producing the problem). Apparently the transition from real 2x4 to BS 2x4 dimensions was gradual, who knew.
One other weird thing was how the interior walls and ceilings were covered. I've worked on a lot of 19th century houses with lathe and plaster and of course I've worked with modern sheet rock. This 1942 house was in a transitional phase that used 16"x16" blocks of 1" thick rough plaster that were nailed to the studs, and then finish plasterers came in and put a smooth plaster coat over these rough blocks. I've never seen anything like that before, and removing these rough plaster blocks was a monstrous bitch - each one weighs as much as a solid rock of those dimensions and I have no idea how a few nails were holding them up on the ceiling joists.
Also found a hat in the attic from 1942. I like to imagine some young worker wondering for the rest of his life where he put his favorite hat.
That's fascinating, I never heard of those small plaster panels - could they be a type of Sackett Board? According to Wikipedia they were made in 36" panels, maybe there were also smaller ones - although 1942 would be kind of late for them.
Finding that hat is awesome! Was it a "slouch hat" workers commonly wore? The coolest thing I've found in my 1910 house was a WWII draft card inside a wall - I think it fell through a very thin gap between the windowsill boards. Always wondered if the guy put it there intentionally or what.
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use cabinet grade instead of construction grade for your plywood. The good shit will actually be what it says it is.
I didn't know that. But at this point I can barely afford sanded shop plywood from Home Depot.
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Well you know, first things first.