Europeans, what is something that Americans have/do that makes no sense to you?

Like A Duck@programming.dev to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 236 points –
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Flounces are the best part of US Customary units. It's all base 2/8/16, which is a hell of a lot more sensible than base 10 units.

It’s all base 2/8/16, which is a hell of a lot more sensible than base 10 units.

Debatable. I probably shouldn't restart the whole imperial vs metric debate, but I might just say that people who grow up with metric think exactly the opposite.

I'll convert to metric once we convert to a dozenal number system. Ten is a terrible number to base our counting system on.

Ten is a terrible number to base our counting system on.

Maybe when you are counting apples, but not when you are dealing with arbitrary amounts. Why else is our number system base 10?

2x2x3. You can divide 12 so many ways, its nice.

Imperial sucks, and metric is better, but still +1 for dozenal. Anybody who isn't for it is either confused about the very concept of different bases (I've talked to plenty of those), or biased.

I don't know why you dozenal advocates are being downvoted.

You're serious? Why? I've genuinely never heard this stance before.

Is it because they're powers of two and are therefore easier to halve, quarter, etc. for baking and cooking purposes?

Yeah this is why most old measurement systems used 4 8 12. 4 fingers to a palm, you don't count the thumb as a finger. Then 4 palms to arm, for a total of 16 fingers. At 12 arms into a bigger unit so you can count the joints on your hand

I can't tell if you're kidding. How do you keep track of four palms per arm?

That actually how the Egyptians made their cubits. Tuck your Thumb under you hand and place all four finger at your elbow. You have about 4 palms before you get to your wrist.

Interesting. Learned something new today, thanks!

Maybe before we had the scientific ability it measure micro-measurements. It makes no sense today.