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The Many Times The US Tried To Go Metric
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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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The US has no issue with the metric system, and most engineering and scientific people switched decades ago. The military is mostly all metric too. The general public of the US is a harder nut to crack, asking a population of stubborn freedom lovers to change something they've known their whole life is damn near impossible.
I switch my stuff to metric all the time, and the usual response isn't "oh that's interesting", it's nearly always, "the fuck is wrong with you, why would you want that weird shit?!". If the government suddenly made all weather reports metric, the T-Shirt sellers would all become millionaires overnight from selling anti-metric slogans.
Americans: go pick up the closest consumer packaged good within reach. You will find it is labeled with metric.
It would be nice to get highway signs in both units, though with Google maps obeying whatever’s selected in your settings, that matters less than ever. Some woodworking stuff is just too far gone down the imperial hole and will never come back. But other than such odd niches, you can live a metric life in the US without much trouble.
Yes, but that's likely because they want to sell it in Canada without changing the packaging design, isn't it? Even if they have to put French on the other side for Canada, it's cheaper in terms of development to have a single English design for both the U.S. and Canada, so it will be labeled in both Imperial and metric.
I thought it was because of China, but hell, all manufacturing probably occurs in metric.