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Comment by iamben | Hacker News Reader

I mean the UK still does roads/cars in MPH rather than KPH. Lots of people will still give their (body)weight/ask for (body)weight in stone and height in feet and inches, although I think that's slowly changing to KG and CM.

It's a strange one though, isn't it? I was watching an exercise/nutrition video on YouTube earlier and the presenter was saying "to work out how much protein a day you need, multiple your bodyweight in lbs by X and that will give you the protein number in grams." It seemed so bizarre to combine the systems.

Edit: Just to add - in the UK we're taught entirely in metric in school, the bits mentioned above are just hangups / how it's done.

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In Australia, we're taught metric exclusively, and use KPH over MPH. But it is common to report your height height in feet and inches, and less commonly, bodyweight in stone.

Similar in NZ, but there are still imperial measurements in places, e.g. PSI for tyres, or inches when talking about TV dimensions, DPI for screen resolutions, a quarter acre section for a house. You might hear people talk about a "pound" of butter when it's actually 500g, or ask the mileage of a car, but expect the response in km.

Bodyweight in stone would be _very_ uncommon I think. Still occasionally hear baby weights reported in pounds, but that's usually only by the grandparents.

6 feet and over is tall, 5 feet and under is short is such a handy rule of thumb, which I think is its longevity for height - although any official form will ask for metric (centimetres usually).

Well that attitude allowed the UK to convert whilst keeping people largely on side. It shows it's possible.

You also use "stone" and "furlong" in certain contexts and drive on the left side of the road. I think it's awesome and makes the UK unique in some regards. It's what culture and customs are all about.

Yeah, I mentioned stone! My loose experience is that a good percentage of people who do something relating to fitness end up talking about their bodyweight in kilos (the scales in the gym are usually in kg, for instance). But most people when talking about bodyweight would say "I'm X stone X."

In the 40+ years I've lived here I've only ever heard furlong used in the context of horse racing and the actor that played John Conner in Terminator 2...

Re the driving - about 35% of the world are on the left!

I agree, now reintroduce the archaic old currency system to replace the metric pound division you have now. That would really add a certain quirky touch to your financial institutions, foreign trade and tourists will surely love it!

There is more than one way to lead your country back into the late neolithic, just go on.

Driving on the left is not unique. About one third of the world does that.

About 1/3 of the countries drive on the left but if you look at population, it is a lot less than 1/3 and likely less than 1/4.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic

The civilized world drives on the right so as to not enable road rage for right handed swordsmen.

whiteworth threads :)))) totally unique to UK 55 degrees ????? WHY

sorry whitworth

Canada is very much like this too. Can't really escape the US influence, so you see things like apples from Washington state in $ per pound.

Not too big a deal once you get a few basic conversions down.

take a look on how tires are measured, https://www.bridgestoneamericas.com/en/company/safety/choosi... , it's like a xkcd joke

I'd really love a reason for why they went with aspect ratio versus just sidewall height in inches. To me it just seems like more pain to try and understand the size of a tire, but I do imagine there was some good reason why it was measured that way.

The reasoning I've always understood is that the width of the tire is the primary thing that determines how it fits onto the wheel (assuming it's the correct diameter), and that different tires due to different tread block designs have subtly different heights, but in a way that is negligible, so aspect ratio allows you to have a standardized understanding of height without being so exact as to be confusing. E.g. a consumer knows that they need either a 245/40 or a 255/40 for their 9" wide wheel, and that in either case their speedometer would be correct (which is based on total height), but brand A and brand B at 245/40 have a .3" difference in height.

It does make things difficult for folks that slam their cars though when they don't want to rub, because there's less margin for error so they really need to measure the height of the tire.

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