this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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The US usually consistently uses imperial, which sucks but it's consistent. England switches between the two constantly. They're crazy people, and they use measures like "stone" for weight sometimes too. Metric is obviously the better system, but consistency is better than randomly deciding which to use when.
True, metric is far superior. Really weird how inconsistent they are
Consistently. Like the 500mL bottle of water I'm currently drinking in coastal Alabama?
Like the 2 and 3L sodas sold in stores all across the USA as far back as I can remember? I'm about a month and a half away from 50 years old btw.
Or maybe like how all our drugs medicines, over the counter, and yes, even the illegal ones, are all in milligrams or grams?
Or our military using kilometers to measure distance across land, although calling it a klick because it's faster to say than kilometer?
Or how most of our weapons are measured in millimeters?
That sort of consistency?
The fact that you call kilometers "klicks" does my head in since the rest of the English speaking world shortens it to "kays"
Canada here, we use klicks all the time.
Some of those are because international standards (the military and ammo, although the US military uses yards more than kilometers, but they do use both, probably because of international influence). Some are because science is run on metric (pharmacists).
Litres though, yeah, idk. I'm assuming it's because it's easier to make a bottle in Litres and sell it around the world? Litres predate metric too, so it could be because of that? I never see poured liquids measured in Litres though, only bottles. Usually it's pints or fluid ounces.
I do have to congratulate illegal drugs for teaching metric to Americans probably better than our schools though. It's an interesting dynamic.
The war on drugs is over, the drugs won
Could also be a hold over from WW1 or WW2 that caused the weird drunk litres thing, would not put it past some dude in logistics getting bitched at by the French and that situation spiraling into litre measurements being standardized for drinks.
Our smallest unit of weight is the ounce, which is 28g, and as much as Americans hate metric, we hate fractions more.
Some Canadian stoners in the mid 2000s still hadn't managed to work out fractions smaller than 1/4, apparently. "I'm picking up a half quarter," they'd say, to announce their procurement of an eighth ounce of cannabis.
11/16 of an inch
Unless it's drugs.
All my favorite drugs come in fractions. Specifically 1/8ths and 1/4ths.
Under an eighth you switch to grams. But in my experience the professionalization of cannabis seems to be metricating it.
The US is slowly, item by item, learning metric. We know how much a liter is from soda. We're learning how much a gram is from drugs, and before too long something will teach us what a meter is.
In the ultimate American way of learning metric, from a young age I could estimate 9 milimeters from holding ammunition, and estimate 10-50 meters from learning to shoot. God Bless the USA 🫡
A meter is about the length of a yardstick.
Yeah, but that's a really bad comparison. It's useful for rough estimates when needed, but it's not something we interact with often enough for it to be practical. It's when everyday products are being sold in metric length that it will start to click. Stuff like 20cm diameter pizzas, wooden boards by the meter, a 1.8m TV, and square meterage of an apartment.
Your pop is in metric?? That's cool, I had no idea.
Specifically we have 2L jugs of it and individual bottles are marketed as 16.9oz (they're 500mL). Cans are still in US customary at 12 oz (355mL). But yeah, basically every American knows how much 2L is.
In fact, I strongly suspect you could market most liquids in metric volume here (not fuel) as long as people can see them. We're so used to 500mL and 2L. Hell just changing the standard can and the tall boy (16oz) to metric (make them 375mL and 500mL) would go a long way.
That all said, full metrication will screw with recipes, but it'll internationalize them.
That's really neat. Kinda conversely, I live in Okinawa, which you might know as the Japanese islands that was under US occupation after the war. Here our milk carton is not 1000ml like the rest of the country. We sell them in 946ml cartons because we used to package them according to American standards—1/4 gallon.
3.5, 7, easy