• blackbelt352@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      We do such a shit job at teaching our own actual measuring system that nobody has an intuition what a pound feels like, what an inch and a foot look like and how to scale those up. So we resort to objects and comparisons instead of actual measurements.

      • makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t blame anyone for failing to teach imperial. It’s surreal.

        I grew up with both (gen x Australian), and when I lived through the transition, metric is a godsend.

        Feet. Pound. Stone. All I see are objects. But they are easily objective to the imagination.

        There are now only 2 countries left I believe, dragging their heels, and officially using Imperial

        • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s not that it’s hard to learn, it’s that we don’t have a strong intuition. It’s not that difficult to know there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard or that metric is entirely based around factos of 10. But its the intuition of what an inch looks like, what a pound feels like to hold in you hand. Most people wouldn’t be able to pick up an object and say, “that weighs about a pound” or look at an object and say “that’s about 3 feet long” but a lot of people do have an intuition what an energy drink can looks and feels like and can imagine getting hit by one, a lot of people have picked up a pineapple at the grocery story, people have the intuition of how big a football field is or how big a city bus is.

    • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s true, all Americans jointly held the camera to take this picture then sat down together to write the headline

      • Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s right. We all got together and decided to write moronic headlines like this.

        It definitely isn’t just a handful of editors in a few newsrooms making these decisions on their own.

  • mister_monster@monero.town
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    They’re doing that to poke fun at the “energy drink can sized hail” news headline from the other day.

    • corus_kt@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      First time I’ve seen AP news flexing their sense of humor, honestly. Unless the photographer just went ‘Nope, no other pictures’.