Yes, it's from a book called "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" and that book was resting on a closed toilet seat in a nation that only kind of uses the metric system in certain situations... however, you'd be surprised how much you can learn after a single visit to any local fast-food joint!

Love me some Uncle John’s. I’d recognize that page number decorator anywhere!

I mean yeah, Metric scales.

Facts to remember the next time some French guy on the internet makes fun of Freedom Units™. The Metric system is basically arbitrarily defined as well, since the thing they meant to base it on was incorrect.

Edit: I forgot the /sarcasm tag and pissed off some French guys on the internet.

I think you need to look up what arbitrary means. This is by definition not random

Uncle John knows the correct way to mount toilet paper.

I’m sorry, for clarity which system are you considering Freedom Units?

Whatever USA decides to use to measure something, whether its inches & feet, bananas, football fields, or other randomly decided units of measurement.

I think this snippet misrepresents the accuracy of the former definition of the metre. Sure, it's no longer the distance from the equator to the pole (the modern definition uses the speed of light and the period of transition for a particular atom), but the difference is quite small. The circumference of the Earth around the poles (so 4 times the distance from equator to pole) is 40007.863 km. In Napoleonic times scientists had a pretty good idea what the shape of the Earth was.

I have two bathrooms and do both.

The real question is; which do I use for my personal lou or WC or wash closet or bathroom or powder room or shitter?

Hey it's me some French guy on the internet. I think the main argument for the metric system is how they all connect together in a simple way. 1km is 1000m, one cube meter of water is 1000L, etc. We don't really care what the base unit is.

If you don't want to offend anyone, just leave the spool sitting upright on the lid

Or an apology note and a bucket full of water

Or three seashells

Everything can be scaled. 1 can be two halves & 3 can be 12 .025's. or we can all just agree that everything is based on various systems of measurement invented by humans who can hardly agree on their own origins and the purpose of their existence, or even the right to exist.

Sacré bleu!!!

"Freedom units" is a satirical term implying a system of measurement used by Americans

Trump uses buildings as a system of measurement, having ass-hattedly used the empire state building to measure the horizontal length of the freedom pool, a desecrated monument of freedom which is now more or less a peeling swimming pool in front of the once beloved and now gilded in tacky gold flake/ grifted trophies; "white house"

The other fun thing is with the new calendar, they literslly reset the count to year 1. The coins for the first few years literally said "l'an 7" or "l'an 11".

"We decide when history starts" is a hell of a sentiment.

otherwise known as "arbitrary nonsense units"

This sounds like something a sassy person might say whilst pushing up their glasses to view a document which is rolled up tightly into a scroll and shoved into their own anus after they realize the room is watching them try to read the outside of a butthole scroll.

Americans could at least have the decency to spell "metre" correctly, but no, they have to go and change the spelling of a measurement system they don't even use.

I'm willing to give them the spelling if they just adopt the fucking metric system.

We still do it, we just celebrated new year 235

https://calendrier.dera.page/

It's called "meter" in lots of metric countries though (I know because I live in one).

Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates. Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of "time" to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.

I like that sentiment if it starts with us having the knowledge to be better than before

Or my favourite ratio, 1l of water is 1kg and it's close to that for most food grade liquids.

"Arbitrary Nonsense Units, Silly"

That spells ANUS.. m o o n

Well...at least most of them pronounce data as DAY-TUH because of Star Trek.

The other pronunciation is horrendous.

Speaking of which, aluminum is pronounced fwaganah-schreple.

I'm on the phone with them.

They said they'll do it after France or Canada does first. Not sure if they got the memo, or if they are just being silly again.

Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates.

Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.

Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of “time” to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.

This reads like an unfortunate confluence of psychosis, psychoactive substances and LLMs.

To agree on a unified measurement system for things like engineering, science and commerce across nations and cultures is a question of practicability though, not pseudophilosophical ramblings.

So we only know a kilogram of water weighs a kilogram because of an arbitrary decision by the French? How much does it really weigh?

While I can't speak for my chemical imbalances, I can certainly assure you I am %100 not a fucking algorithm or some lame ass excuse for manufactured digital intelligence....

I say we measure everything with how angry it makes the French.

Ever since that dude translated the Rosetta stone they've been up their own asses.

I don't think anyone can in good conscience say that inches scale to small measurements. Sure, you can use them, but subtracting 8/1000 out of something that is 1 5/8 and noting the final length is just unwieldy.

You don't need to get super existential about it, imperial was invented before we invented 0 and the decimal system and it shows. Sure the difference in basic units is irrelevant, no one cares what the meter or inch is defined as, the "superior" one is just what you're used to and have an intuition for. But having units that relate to each other in round ways and can be easilt rescaled to the precision/range required can be nothing but a benefit

Dimensional analysis is really neat

So you just learned it exists or what?

Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.

Thanks for explaining that a fucking ball is easier to squeeze at it's widest part, genius.

It is great when cooking, your kitchen scale (which you should own!) works as an easy way to measure liquids as well. Need 500ml of water? Just measure 500g and you are done.

While technically it is only true for very specific water and temperatures at sea level, for everday cooking it is close enough with almost any liquid.

Also, unlike the imperialist system it is not utter horseshite.

Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates.

Don't we all, Earth, don't we all...

I'm still sad decimal time didn't catch on.

What are you talking about? That isn't what they said, and a ball doesn't have a widest point. That's more or less the definition of a ball.

The distance between the two poles is smaller than the distance from one side to the other following the equator. The earth isn't quite a ball, it's a bit squashed because of way it spins

Measurement works because it's accepted on it's own terms.

If I were to believe that 1 is 2, it would be very difficult to explain that 2 is indeed double the normal amount of 1.

The same goes for some alien species that has too many or not enough fingers and doesn't use prime numbers because of this.

I don't personally believe that math is truly universal. But maybe I'm being existential ;)

Did you just learn about insults? Because I'm your Mum and you should know better than to speak to me like this.

Okay, a ball is equally wide but sometimes it gets squeezed and becomes tallish

Maybe you should learn a bit more about them because that was a terrible attempt.

If you'd like a better insult, I recommend you go into a dark room and think about why I would bother even responding.