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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Right but if basing things on our hands makes them intuitive, it’s hard to beat “hands” and “feet” for human scale relatability.
As a craftsman, I live milimeters for precision. Very useful and easy to work with. I hate not having anything between centimeters and meters though. I know decimeters exist but nothing’s ever listed that way and so it isn’t something I’ve developed any intuitive sense of.
When I sent some measurements to my uncle to make a bed, I sent it in 200cm x 160cm. Not 2m or 20 dm. You know those exchanges because it's obvious but since people are used to cm for height, it's useful to compare stuff with yourself and that's why cm is the most used measurement for craft.
If whatever you are building fits in a hand, measurements will probably come in mm, because idk why but people enjoy 3 digit measurements.
Me, my wife, my child all have differently sized feet and hands.
Tbh, as an european I kinda absorbed a lot of imperial by just living on the anglophone internet, and honestly have nothing good to say about it.
I can intuitively guesstimate what a mile, yard, foot and inch are in metric, and I do, because it's useful in my particular corner of the Internet, not because it's a good system.
I have no idea what a gallon, stone, lbs or oz are. Volume of itself is kinda unintuitive, same with weight. Can't be bothered.