"and then crushes it with a pressure equivalent to an adult Arabian horse standing on a quarter", what a bizarre comparison, this seems like an incomprehensible reference point for most people (myself included)
What is the metric equivalent of this statement? (from TFA)
To answer your question, "moving" would have been a perfectly acceptable substitute. You could also use "crawling", "creeping", "worming", or "wriggling".
The one that I specifically described as a meme comment? You're saying it's technically inaccurate? Thanks, criticism noted.
Here's another example: what's the metric equivalent of "footing" the bill? The verb "to foot", in this example, has the exact same etymology as the noun "foot", but it isn't used as a measurement.
It's like asking what the imperial equivalent is for "the poem's meter". The question is nonsensical, unlike the comment you were replying to.
Sure, the comment was whimsical and flippant, but it was based on a legitimate objection: why express the pressure in an incredibly obscure way? The objection has sense, and the joke is related to it. Your knee-jerk reaction to the joke, however, conflates disparate categories.
They don’t have centimeter worms in the metric world I guess?
If we had a machine to convert that horse into energy we could power Britain for about 20 years. (Britain uses a few quadrillion BTUs annually).
(reference: https://old.reddit.com/r/Metric/comments/cpbi2g/americans_wi... )