5mo ago

August 30th 2024. America adopts the metric system. Never forget.

147 comments

Bullshit. ISO 8601 IS THE SUPERIOR DATE STANDARD
Tomorrow is 2024-08-30. DEAL WITH IT.
- Stardate, 2024-08-30T06:34:17.993Z
  
  Hilariously, Star treks "stardates" are not uniform. The format shifts season to season and show to show.
  
  1725020287 is the true time as of right now
- Metric is about measurements, not formatting. The date measurement is in days, months, and years for both ISO 8601 and what's shown.
- I always prefer it without the dashes. And just add on HHMMSS while we're at it!
- This is the ideal file date format for sure.

America officially switched to the metric system decades ago. We just don't use it on a daily basis, but officially the US is metric.
In 1988 Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, which made the metric system the preferred system of weights and measures for U.S. trade and commerce.
In 1991 President Bush issued Executive Order 12770, which mandated the transition to metric measurement for all federal agencies.
- I remember learning all metric in elementary school in the early to mid 80s much to my mother’s chagrin (any thing I learned that was different than what/how she learned in Catholic school was bad, including a second language). Then having to relearn standard in middle school. I still have to count all of the lines on a tape measure.
  
  As a metric-raised guy I find extremely difficult following the tutorials of woodworkers that start putting 2feet 3 inches and 9/16 in the measurements that converts to 700,0875mm wich i guess is an approximation of 70cms
  
  I was taught the metric system in US Schools in the late 80s and 90s.
  Sure we don’t use it daily but I still know it.
  I know that I need to convert to it and how to convert to it if necessary.
  For anything that’s not interacting with a human I’d use the metric system, for anything interacting with a human I’d display both.
- I want a 473ml of beer, please and thank you.
  
  @No1
  That's called a can. Can I have a can of beer.

While you're at it, switch over to DD/MM/YYYY for the date format. The only 2 configurations that make sense is that or YYYY/MM/DD. Either go general to specific or specific to general, MM/DD/YYYY makes no sense.
- No, switch to ISO8601
  
  Bonus benefit - files starting with ISO dates sort alphabetically 🧠
  
  Overly strict for anything day to day, overly permissive for anything important.
  RFC 3339 is where it's at.
- DD/MM/YYYY is absolutely crazy. There is only one format that makes sense.
  
  Just draw the triangle the other way for DD/MM/YYYY. It makes sense that people want to know the day first, that is the most important part tbh
- Months are the craziest, weirdest, stupidest measure humanity has used for this long. ISO8601 week dates make more sense, or even the French Revolutionary Calendar. Humans organize all of society by weeks, not by months. Compare last January to next January, or last February to next February for metrics. Do they have the same number of weekdays vs weekend days? Even if they do, do they happen at the same point in the month so you can compare the flow of the month? Now compare two weeks, and that's apples to apples. Group by weeks instead of months and your irregular, bumpy graph smooths right out. We only hang on to Gregorian months out of inertia.
  
  Months are one of the best ways for a low-tech/pre-tech culture to keep track of dates (using the Zodiac for something it can actually do—act as a calendar you can see no matter where you are in the world).
  Keeping them around is a sensible fail-safe in case some nuclear power sets us back into the dark ages.
- It makes sense because of the way we say the date - eg today is November 21st, 1999. We don't usually say it's the 21st of November in conversation.
  Eta: I wasn't giving any value statement for the date order lol. Just explaining the rationale for why the date is written in that order - that's how people talk. If linguistics as a concept bothers you, well... that's on you.
  
  Here in the UK we would say "I will visit you on the 19th of September" for example. I have never heard anyone say the month first. It's just different custom. We also drive on the other side of the road..! At the beginning it would have been helpful if the world would have agreed on a standard either way. Then it would stop confusion. (And less car accidents from people on holiday/vacation on the wrong side of the road! 😅
  
  I love that Lemmy dinguses are downvoting you for being completely rational and normal.
  
  Try this...
  "What date is it today? "
  "Today is the 31st"
  "31st of what?"
  "The 31st of August"
  "...?"
  "Today is Saturday the 31st of August, 2024"
  Etc.
  See. It works even more so

I wish.
- Just start being that pedantic asshole that people hate, and insist on using it. When someone asks what the temperature is, give it to em in c and make them do the conversion.
  I set all my stuff to metric years ago and use it pretty much exclusively. I don't actually make other people convert, I do it for em. But still.
  
  I use metric temperature when I talk to my kids. Now they give me a hard time when I give them a Fahrenheit value! Keeps me honest I guess. I've also got my oldest using a 24 hour clock.
  
  Cook in metric and use a scale!
  
  Also state your height in cm.
  
  I’ve been doing that. I’m noticing it working. People around me may not like it, but they’ve figured out about how much a meter is

But still write dates wrong
- Year-Month-Day is the only way. It's chronological!
  
  And rhymes
  
  day should be first because it's the one that changes the most often and we read left to right.

August 30 would be 30.08.2024.
- Nope, 2024-08-30
  
  This is the only rational order, descending in order of magnitude.
  
  Nope, it's 30 \ 24 / 08
- 2024-08-30, but yes. Is that a German notation? Boo! ISO8601/RFC3339 or DEAAAAATH!
  https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/

This was something I found strange in the new Alien: Romulus film, why were the temperature readings in a science vessel for a space faring civilisation in Fahrenheit!?
- They all keep dying in Alien films though, so it tracks with the level of incompetence shown elsewhere.
- I'm with the whole 'metric is better crowd', I mean base 10, c'mon that makes shit easy. On the other hand, I prefer Fahrenheit for temp 100%, Celsius is just not good for it (personal preference I guess). A lot of that is probably due to growing up in the USA, but having lived in a few other countries I just prefer Fahrenheit.
  Edit: dang ya'll, didn't mean to cause all the drama, I'll calm down now... I guess personal preferences get taken as personal attacks sometimes lol
  
  Quick Celsius breakdown from a Canadian:
  40+ - most Canadians stop eating food and hope for a quick death
  35 - you might just be able to live with this if you do nothing at all
  28 - right about the place where comfort gives way to a general sense of warmth, something that makes any Canadian uncomfortable
  23 - room temperature, and why "room temperature IQ" is an insult only Americans could have come up with because their scale was made by a madman
  15 - If it's Autumn you are wearing a light jacket, if it's Spring you are sweating
  5 - sweater time
  0 to -10 - that stereotypical TV winter experience, where everyone is skating and sipping hot chocolate? Yeah that's like half the year here. You better like hot chocolate.
  -15 - We enjoy the fresh air, others will probably find it painful to breathe directly; put on a scarf! Do not brush your teeth immediately before going outside unless you want to experience mint-flavoured pain.
  -20 - Canadians put their boots on by now. Exposed skin on a windy day can get frostbite in as little as 10 minutes.
  -30 - We will debate putting a coat on to put the garbage out at this temperature, usually erring on the side of caution in case your kids lock you outside again. Seriously invest in good winter gear for this, this temperature can kill surprisingly fast and it only gets increasingly unpleasant from here.
  -40 - turns out you can't form snowballs in hell because the snow is too crispy
  
  The increased measurement in the Fahrenheit scale allows for more precise representation of the temperature between humans.
  Whole numbers and a larger scale for human ranges.
  That said, the same thing can be done with metric by using the magical decimal, though idk if I’ve ever seen a temperature in C related that way.

Oh shit are the bell riots happening rn? I gotta get prepped
- They start this Sunday.
  
  But today is Friday

Laughs in 8th day of the 30th month.
- Some beautiful Trigintember weather we are having.
- Year 24

Hey, did anybody remember to turn off skynet yesterday before 2:13 AM?
- Well I'm still breathing, so I guess so.

Watching that episode now
- Is that a laser disc?
  
  Yes sir, and it actually has better quality picture than the DVDs, although it is way more impractical and expensive.
- Were you the one sharing some laserdisc screenshots in /c/startrek a while back? I remember being really impressed with the quality.

That would probably kick off riots
- Hmm, that certainly does have a certain ring to it.
- Delay it until January, kill two birds with one stone.

Is anyone here planning to watch the episodes over the time they're supposed to occur? I'm thinking of watching part 1 tomorrow due to it being the date on the calendar onscreen, and part 2 the next day.
- if you were going to do that it would make sense to watch part one tomorrow and part two on Sept 3rd.
  
  True, that would be better. I was just going to watch them two nights in a row, but I might do that instead!

I don't know the episode, but unless that's some extremely official time piece controlled by the government or something, it could just be someone like me. I live in the US, and several of the temp gauges in the house are celcius, including the one I keep at my desk and my in room A/C (set at 25 atm).
I also used to keep my car on km/h instead of mph just for fun and confusing anyone who rode with me why I was going 80 on local roads or 130 on the highway.
- 25? You must be freezing!
  (25°F is below freezing point, -3.9°C, but 25°C is a comfortable room temperature, 77°F)

Far more likely that whoever installed the clock just forgot to change the units.

This is what "Past Tense" was really warning us about.

That's crap. Kelvin is the only true metric temperature measurement.

Turns out it was just someone who didn’t know how to change the setting.

Star Trek really was overly optimistic.
Star Trek future now!

I think our whole timeline spans from some Romulan plot about something involving handing a compilation of Federation history to some weird guy... What was his name? Gene Roddenberry?

This is the most unrealistic thing about the episode.

Hate to point this out, but the fact there is a "C" on the sign kinda shows that no America did not adopt the metric system. If the US did there would be no reason to have "F" or "C" by the degrees as they are the last hold out.
- No, even if you only had one unit for a physical quantity, you would still need to specify that unit to know which physical quantity you are describing. E.g. "That object over there is 15" vs "That object over there is 15 kg".
  The symbol for temperature, measured in Celsius, is "°C". It's atomic and can't be separated, since that would result in °, which represents the angle of something, not the temperature, and C, which is the symbol for Coulomb, which measures electric charge.
  
  In the reference picture of this clock the degree symbol does that. This is something you can see outside of the US on almost all temp readings, my phone for example does not have F or C next to it. (It is still in Celsius since I am not a monster)

Thank God! As a non United-stasian, I believe this will make things better. The imperial system looks broken as hell to me, if you see a chart comparing both, you will see what I mean.
/not joking, not in the mood of hearing sacarsm.

15c better be the temp inside the building, because it sure as shit is hotter anywhere else.
- Holy shit looked up the temps in San Francisco and yes it's 15C
- They could be in New Zealand or Chile, if they hadn't referenced The US..... Maybe they are in Nome, AK

Is this real? I can't tell. /g

Maybe they were attending number 15 ^o C at that processing center.

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