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Comic strip of a ghost and a person with the American flag pasted on the head. The ghost repeats “Boo!” in the first three panels without getting any reaction, but when it in the fourth panel says “kg, cm, km, °C” the American gets scared and screams “AHHHH!!!”.
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Except in drug deals (kg), foot races (5km), and science (°C).
And school supplies (9mm)
Yeah, everyone shits on the US for this but we do science in metric, and also everyone seems to ignore that the UK is all kinds of fucked up as well-- weight in stone, etc. I’d also argue that outside science F is a better scale for talking about weather. Sure 0 makes for a better freezing point, but most temps on inhabited earth are about 0~100 F or -25~40 C. If you knew nothing about F or C and someone asked if a scale from 0 to 100 or -25 to 40 made more sense, which one do you think most people would pick?
-25 to 40 is very useful for weather. Especially in a northern country. The only reason they don’t switch is “best country in the world” delusions they’ve been fed to believe is true since birth.
The actual reason the us hasn’t switched is the many billions of dollars it would cost for basically no tangible benefit. There are probably better uses of that money if we actually got to spend it on what we wanted, like social programs.