My understanding of that is that it's using "square" as in aspect ratio like how screens are 16:9 or whatever, while "square" in units is more commonly used as

My understanding of that is that it's using "square" as in aspect ratio like how screens are 16:9 or whatever, while "square" in units is more commonly used as in `exp(n, 2)`. And that terminology mismatch is why it often doesn't seem to make sense.