5 ms·

Americans do not do metric. Americans can’t even balance a checkbook. Hence the small dog reference for mental “clarity”. We’re dumb. Just look at the news…

dist-epoch 1y ago
Europeans don't even know what it means to "balance a checkbook", so they must be dumber.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Yeah but ya’ll have estates…
mrtksn 1y ago
Sure but don't they have a mental image for 80 feet for example? Why articles will almost always include something like "that like 50 chairs put next to each other" when length is mentioned.
- reactordev 1y ago
  If you were to say 100 yards, we could. That’s a football field (American football played with your… hands). Because people in the south don’t even know the imperial system… it’s bad. They say things like “Take the road there yonder and when you see the white church, turn right, go a ways until you get to the dirt road…” Anything outside of what they have with them, they don’t have a clue or can’t imagine it accurately. Small dog reference, there’s millions of Americans with a small dog so most just looked to their pooch when this came up. Same as if you were to say something like 50 cars. They would look outside to their Toyota Corolla and imagine 50 of them. It’s like talking to grown toddlers sometimes but that have full grown emotional states not under control. Not everyone is like this but a good 50-60% of Americans are. Just look for the Lululemon.
- AngryData 1y ago
  I would say most American's sense of feet gets fuzzy after about 30, there are very few things that are standardized that size or bigger or that they have ever personally measured out. Yards might be more useful up to maybe 200 or 300 because they have all seen football fields though. After that for most people they go to miles or minutes of travel. Some farmers might throw in a reference to an acre length that is referencing the 660 foot length of a standard acre (660 feet x 66 feet, or 1 furlong x 1 chain), which is just another way to say 1/8th of a mile.
xandrius 1y ago
I don't think it's fair to insult all US citizens because of your personal shortcomings.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Statistics my man, statistics. I’m not saying there aren’t smart Americans that can grok a 10kg bag, but that the vast majority can not.
  - itsoktocry 1y ago
    I'm Canadian. I don't know what 10kg feels like until I convert it to pounds.
- thelastgallon 1y ago
  I think it may be fair? This guy[1] explains how surplus of corporate profits are a mirror image of household/govt debt. Which is a direct transfer of wealth from everyone to the super-super-rich (not the 1%, but the 0.1 - 0.01%) [1] The chart below shows how this works. The blue line at the top shows the “surplus” of corporations: corporate income minus expenses and net investment. We know this as corporate “free cash flow.” The red line shows combined “surplus” of other sectors: government, households, and foreign trading partners – in excess of their consumption and net investment. It’s negative, so in aggregate, they’re running a deficit. That deficit is the mirror image of the corporate surplus. This isn’t an accident. It’s just accounting (I’ve excluded a few tiny items for clarity): https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc251028/ https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc251028/
- dicknuckle 1y ago
  Do you not have personal experience with people under 40 in America? I would bet $20 over 95% of them don't know how to balance a check book.
  - CivBase 1y ago
    I would bet $20 over 95% of them have never needed to balance a check book, and probably never will.
SoftTalker 1y ago
I know that 1kg is about 2.2lbs but that still doesn't give me the "mental clarity" of what 20kg is unless I do the conversion. At the gym I use the pound plates and not the kilo ones. I intuitively know what the difference between 135 and 225 lbs feels like, and I don't have that same intution for kg. All that said, I don't find the "small dog" types of analogies for weight very useful. Why not just use the same number of characters (or less) to give the weight in the other popular unit?

dist-epoch 1y ago

Europeans don't even know what it means to "balance a checkbook", so they must be dumber.

reactordev 1y ago
Yeah but ya’ll have estates…

mrtksn 1y ago

Sure but don't they have a mental image for 80 feet for example? Why articles will almost always include something like "that like 50 chairs put next to each other" when length is mentioned.

reactordev 1y ago
If you were to say 100 yards, we could. That’s a football field (American football played with your… hands). Because people in the south don’t even know the imperial system… it’s bad. They say things like “Take the road there yonder and when you see the white church, turn right, go a ways until you get to the dirt road…” Anything outside of what they have with them, they don’t have a clue or can’t imagine it accurately. Small dog reference, there’s millions of Americans with a small dog so most just looked to their pooch when this came up. Same as if you were to say something like 50 cars. They would look outside to their Toyota Corolla and imagine 50 of them. It’s like talking to grown toddlers sometimes but that have full grown emotional states not under control. Not everyone is like this but a good 50-60% of Americans are. Just look for the Lululemon.
AngryData 1y ago
I would say most American's sense of feet gets fuzzy after about 30, there are very few things that are standardized that size or bigger or that they have ever personally measured out. Yards might be more useful up to maybe 200 or 300 because they have all seen football fields though. After that for most people they go to miles or minutes of travel. Some farmers might throw in a reference to an acre length that is referencing the 660 foot length of a standard acre (660 feet x 66 feet, or 1 furlong x 1 chain), which is just another way to say 1/8th of a mile.

xandrius 1y ago

I don't think it's fair to insult all US citizens because of your personal shortcomings.

reactordev 1y ago
Statistics my man, statistics. I’m not saying there aren’t smart Americans that can grok a 10kg bag, but that the vast majority can not.
- itsoktocry 1y ago
  I'm Canadian. I don't know what 10kg feels like until I convert it to pounds.
thelastgallon 1y ago
I think it may be fair? This guy[1] explains how surplus of corporate profits are a mirror image of household/govt debt. Which is a direct transfer of wealth from everyone to the super-super-rich (not the 1%, but the 0.1 - 0.01%) [1] The chart below shows how this works. The blue line at the top shows the “surplus” of corporations: corporate income minus expenses and net investment. We know this as corporate “free cash flow.” The red line shows combined “surplus” of other sectors: government, households, and foreign trading partners – in excess of their consumption and net investment. It’s negative, so in aggregate, they’re running a deficit. That deficit is the mirror image of the corporate surplus. This isn’t an accident. It’s just accounting (I’ve excluded a few tiny items for clarity): https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc251028/ https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc251028/
dicknuckle 1y ago
Do you not have personal experience with people under 40 in America? I would bet $20 over 95% of them don't know how to balance a check book.
- CivBase 1y ago
  I would bet $20 over 95% of them have never needed to balance a check book, and probably never will.

SoftTalker 1y ago

I know that 1kg is about 2.2lbs but that still doesn't give me the "mental clarity" of what 20kg is unless I do the conversion. At the gym I use the pound plates and not the kilo ones. I intuitively know what the difference between 135 and 225 lbs feels like, and I don't have that same intution for kg. All that said, I don't find the "small dog" types of analogies for weight very useful. Why not just use the same number of characters (or less) to give the weight in the other popular unit?