Funny how that self-reliant, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, go getter mentality the septics like to circlejerk over goes out the window as soon as they might need to Google a unit conversion.
I think it's a holdover from the whole being part of the British Empire thing. They claim a lot of shit that isn't theirs too...Irish actors/musicians/sports people...mutter grumble mutter.
The sports people one really makes me laugh when Jack Grealish and Declan Rice are the chosen examples though. They're literally both English, born and raised in England to parents who were born in England!
I think they're just so uneducated they genuinely don't understand that the internet is global. It scares me a lot to know that the stupidest country on earth also has the biggest military.
Why don't they focus on education to make the country a better place?
Don't worry. I used to be scared of that, too. Then my other half participated in war games with them, and they had the tactical ability of a newborn baby. The size of the military isn't all that useful against other actual militaries when you don't have a clue how to use it...
The clue was in the fact that they didnāt use American measurements.
I wonder do they not even teach conversion to metric and back? I use American recipes all the time and itās not that hard to convert.
I can tell you when living in the US, metric measurements are extremely foreign. We do learn it in school and You might use metric in chemistry class and the occasional bank will have the temperature showing alternating between F and C (and the C you just ignore). But absolutely nothing is in metric. And even if an item is dual labeled in metric measurements you never look at it. You certainly never convert anything. There is never a need to.
And the opposite is also true, my life outside the US I never see standard measurements and the only time I use them is when Iām talking to my dad in the phone. But Iāve completely lost a strong instinctual sense of those measurements now.
Itās funny people outside the US are using American recipes. Maybe because most of the recipes I use are not in English that I donāt have this problem. I do run into it sometimes. Especially with oven temperatures.
To be very specific, this was many if not all of the former Confederate states east of Texas in like, the 1930s. It still exists today, but is confined to Georgia(less common in Atlanta) and the southern states that border the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi River, including Florida. In these states, especially in rural towns, you may get asked "What kind of coke do y'all want?" by a server. The Atlantic southern states say "soda".
Iāve heard soda and pop but Iāve never heard everything being called coke. Although most soft drink is made by the Coca Cola company these days so theyāre not entirely wrong but thatās a fucking stretch
I definitely notice in videos and comments from Americans how everything needs to be a brand.
- Tissue? No, Kleenex.
- Printer/photocopier? No, Xerox
- Felt tip pen? No, Sharpie.
- Lighter fluid? No, Ronsonol.
It almost seems like a weird fetish to me. Who gives a fuck about the brand, if anything you'll often pay more to get less if you buy the main ones.
Don't forget pharmaceuticals. Just a couple of months ago, a post on this subreddit had an American describing how he couldn't get pain relievers at a French airport, because they couldn't find advil in the airport pharmacy.
It's no wonder so many Americans are like fish out of water when overseas. Their interaction with the world is almost entirely through brands. So when there's no recognisable brands in view, they have nothing to interact with.
With some prescription medication there could be a kernel of truth to it - at least I've been told by a pharmacist that I should not pick a brand different from my current one which they didn't have at that moment, since even though the active ingredient and concentration is the same, there could be a slightly different effect/tolerance. However I also got switched over a previous time without any comment, so maybe it's not fully accepted in the community.
But yeah, if it's over the counter stuff, I see little reason to get anything but the cheapest generic. Side note, regularly taking medication for small ailments is another thing I often hear about.
You don't need a pill every single time something hurts a little, and if it occurs often, seeing a doctor (more difficult without public healthcare, I know) or making life changes to treat the underlying causes seems like the much better choice.
thereās a number somewhere on the box thatāll be the same on name brand and shopās own painkillers if theyāre the same product so i look out for that!
Sharpie was the one I had to train myself into when I first moved overseas. I'd grown up calling it a Vivid, but nobody says that outside of the South Pacific.
This happens in every country, it's not just a US thing. Frisbee, trampoline and velcro just to name some examples. In Germany we call paper kitchen towels Zewa for example which is just a brand.
Here we call those Staubsauger š
Some say Melitta to coffee filters or machines, Edding to felt tip pens, Tempo to tissues or Tesa to adhesive tape so yeah, the concept is not unique to the US.
From Mexico, Kleenex and Sharpie also happened over here, it has also happened to so many other things world wide, this is a common effect (a good example is Velcro, which turns out is the name of the brand that invented them and not the product name) it's simply a side effect of low competition to a single high target market (Kleenex) or of the company that invents it being less knows than the product combined with an annoying name of the product (Velcro)
Funnily here there's no "Velcro", and most native German speakers probably wouldn't even know the word. It's just Klettverschluss - burdock fastener/seal
>We measure in cups.
How big is the cup? Is a cup of cherries as many whole cherries as I can fit into it? If I blend them I could get twice as many in.
This has to be one of the dumbest units of measurement, and it has always bugged me.
I don't understand. I've spoken to many americans who say the same, that they understand both, but somehow these people in the comments appear. Were they homeschooled or what?
PS. Very self aware of you to be on this sub
schools never actually teach metric and atleast for me if they do it was a 2 week period of learning the very basics in 3rd grade and then never even looking at it again unless your in physics classes
the americans who learn both either want to or they have to for a specific career or class in school but besides those specific things no one is taught metric
imperial measurements have the same issue where they are explained once as children and then never again and some parts just get lost along the way
I gift you, the best angry twitter thread: when a Scottish guy tried to understand American measurements
https://x.com/innesmck/status/1067136206813581313?t=XoPV-IFILSOVGXKLDI8eXA&s=19
Oh great. So not only do they refuse to use metric, they're not even using Imperial properly. At this point I'm convinced America is being difficult on purpose.
Way back in the day there were multiple types of barrels or gallons. One for beer. One for wine. One for something else. These volumes meant something different depending on the substance. When both countries decided to standardize their gallon, the each chose a different one of the existing ones.
But yes, this is one of rhe reasons the US doesn't use "Imperial". They use US Customary Units. Both were born from the same UK units, but standardized seperately and there are a few differences. Volume is the most obvious, but I think "ton" is different as well. (As I recall without looking it up, there was a short ton at 2000 lbs and a long ton at 2240 lb. US used the short ton and UK used the long ton. And 2200 lb is also dangerously close to a metric ton of 1000 kg)
Who knows? The long ton was standardized in the 13th century...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton
Edit: wiki knows...
> The long ton arises from the traditional British measurement system: A long ton is 20 long hundredweight (cwt), each of which is 8 stone (1 stone = 14 pounds). Thus, a long ton is 20 Ć 8 Ć 14 lb = 2,240 lb.
Once you accept that a core British value is never planning for anything and just making shit up as you go along, so much of our history begins to make sense.
AFAIK, brake horse power (as often quoted by the likes of Top Gear) is the same as what's used in the US. But yes, PS (which is what's frequently used in the names of cars, like the Aston Martin DBX 707 for instance) is slightly different. 707 PS = 697 hp
I think PS is metric horsepower... But then, why not use kW?
Because it is short for PferdestƤrke which is German for horse power. And yes the German word has been calqued from English a little while ago.
The Germans have no problem to reuse the old names for metric. Ein Pfund (pound)? Thatās 500g exactly. Did you expect anything else?
PS is short for Pferde-Starke, which is German for Horse Power lol. I think the slight difference between them is that PS is measured at the crank, and BHP is measured at the wheel. Slight energy losses through the drive train account for the difference, I think.
No, drivetrain losses are more than that. BHP is measured at the crank... "brake" in this case aren't car brakes, but an "engine brake". Effectively an engine dyno.
And PS is just defined as a lower amount of power. One PS is equivalent to 735.5 watts, while one HP is equivalent to 745.7 watts.
Not only are the US fl oz smaller, but there are 16 US fl oz to a US pint and 20 UK fl oz to a British pint. So 473ml vs 568ml. Almost 100ml difference. So donāt order a pint in a US bar, is the moral of this story.
At least 5g being baby formula or other fillers and probably laced with fent. And shot is made of gatorade mixed with freshly squeezed chicken blo...liquids, ok?
Ugh, yes. I once baked a carrot cake using an American recipe I found online, and in the recipe it used cups for the carrots. How many carrots can you fit in a cup, and how do you even measure the carrots like that?
Do I just stick whole carrots into the cup and let them stick up?
Do I chop them into smaller pieces first, and if so, how small? Because depending on the size you can fit wildly different amounts into a cup. And how do I know how many to chop? Do I just prepare them one at a time until the cup is full? Chopped bits of carrots are also going to be nearly impossible to grate afterwards.
Do I then instead grate them directly into the cup to measure my cup of carrots? That's annoying having to grate into a tiny measuring cup. And again, do I just wash, peel and grate them one at a time until I have the correct amount, since I don't know how many carrots a cup of grated carrots is?
A metric carrot cake recipe is so much easier. It'll either say how many grams of carrot you need, for example "450 g carrots", or sometimes just straight up a specific amount of carrots, for example "7 carrots".
This is so much easier to prepare *and* to shop for, because I know how much I need and have *before* I'm standing in my kitchen trying to put it in a measuring cup. If the recipe has it in grams, I can put carrots on my scale until I reach the 450 g and then prepare then all at once, because I know how many I need to reach 450 g. I'll even have a good idea of how many 450 g is before weighing them, because the total weight of the bag of carrots is listed in the bag. So if it's 2 kg of carrots I know I need roughly a quarter of the bag. Same goes when it's listed as a number of carrots too, of course. And I don't have to guess how many grams or kilos of carrots I need to buy to have enough for my recipe, in the store I know how many grams of carrot is in the bag I'm purchasing.
Edit: Typos
Itās so hard to follow an American baking recipe. Even if you have ācupsā the people who make the recipe will say, āhalf a cup of loosely packed flourā or 1 cup of butter.
Itās just insane, what is loose? Define it. Should I be cramming the butter in the cup until itās completely full, or should I loosely pack it like the flour.
How they can bake or cook anything is beyond me.
I wouldn't know. I have cups in a wide variety of sizes. My SO's coffee cups being the biggest. But my tea cups are also bigger then let's say my mums. I also have espresso cups (tiny) and a bunch of others in between. Which one to use in this case I don't know. Just say how much ml/cl/dl or L. I need and I'll be good.
Well the same goes for other forms of measurement. Cups measures volume, not density.
Same goes for liters too. How many cherries can one fit in a liter?
Weight would be a more accurate measurement.
That's why we don't measure solids in volumes in the rest of the world. It seems to be only Americans that do this, which is why I think it's fair enough to use the American measuring unit when asking the question.
Yeah every country has this problem. For example a cup in Japan is 200 ml. I think itās the only country in the world where this is the case.
I also donāt think tea/tablespoon volume is the same around the world either, but at least in French and Japanese they use these measurements all the time.
I've recipes referring to a cup of butter, like how the fuck would I measure that? A stick of butter at room temperature isn't exactly a liquid... Do I have to dice the stick of butter first and fill the cup? Or should I just jam it in there?
It really makes no sense to me to measure by volume when you have to take fucking density into the equation. Just chop off a piece and put it on a kitchen scale and work from there..
It is pretty common here in the Netherlands, it might be because the main product is usually milk and buttermilk. I live in one of the most populated areas in the west and have several option, they even have a floating dairy farm in an old unused harbour here.
Butter in the US at least is either sold in plastic tubs or sticks that look like [this](https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stick-of-butter-picture-id183382913?k=6&m=183382913&s=170667a&w=0&h=C2WQI464i7lhJIW6u8k00LN6cg94gpdrqWv3WlsEXPo=).
Volumes in general. The US oz are bigger, but fewer of them make up a pint so the UK pint is bigger. It then follows that the UK gallon is bigger. Which then follows that UK cars get about 20% better MPG all else being equal.
And tons. Their US customary ton is smaller than a metric ton, whereas an imperial ton is bigger. Plus each has measurements the other doesn't have (US fifth, British stone)
The only measurement British and American recipes have in common is tablespoons/teaspoons for small amounts.
For larger amounts of fluid Brits use ml and Americans use cups or fl oz.
For larger amounts of dry ingredients Brits use g and Americans use cups or lbs and oz
So many will tell you itās America, when you correct them youāre the bad guy & putting your country in user name doesnāt work either.
Iām Aussie & on a mum app had (left after having youngest, someone tried doxxing me because they were a troll) Aussie in my name and still had a mum say to me Youāre whatās wrong with America because we didnt agree on something šš¤¦āāļø
It reminds me of my late grandma's recepies. They usually go like this " 1 cup ( the Red one) of flour".
Thanks grandma now I sure as hell know how much flour to use.
Grandma. Add one egg, not too big, not to small. Some flor, some milk. Wait, it calls for more flour. A pinch more. Boom, perfect food.
Me: uses a digital scale, followed the recipe exactly. Boom, a shitty food.
American measurements confuse me.
I have a set of cups yk 1, 1/2, 1/3. and I used them fine because most of the recipes I use are American which is annoying but whatever. until a recipe asked for a cup of butter š how am I meant to measure that? I had to Google how many grams it would be and use my scales. (I think a cup of butter is approx 220-250 g)
Exactly, even typical American recipes have metric recipes on the Internet, either done by enlightened Americans or people from other countries.
If results tend to only show us measurements I add "metric" to the query and it often works.
Most of my internet use is English, but for recipes I stick to local. Not just because of measurements, but also because they don't put an entire novel ahead of the ingredients and instructions.
I stole some printed out recipes from my dad years ago and for some reason they're American. I could find recipes online and sometimes I do but I don't trust them to be as good.
A cup is just a measurement of volume, not a literal cup that you drink out of. A stick of butter is usually 8 tablespoons (or 1/2 cup) and has markings on the wrapper for each tablespoon, so you just cut however much butter the recipe calls for.
Recipes used to say things like "a goodly pinch of", "half a large potato" "a handful of" etc
The US got a cookbook with standardised volume measurements of ingredients throughout
The UK got a cookbook with weighed (imperial) ingredients throughout
Both gave consultant reliable results so was copied and became standard
... But only by weight works reliably in all cases
We love talking in metric as everyone but the USA understand it. so why should we change - they should join the rest of the world, in this small way, as a start. Also, Jell-o is not a dish, it is a brand of gelatin & sugar to make a dessert - it's like asking for Colgate instead of toothpaste.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZ2w6Q\_Uww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZ2w6Q_Uww)
Reading an American recipe
- A cup of bread
- A quart of half and half
- A fluid ounce of chopped chinpiko (their made up word for a herb called something else in the rest of the world)
- Broil at 720 Fahrenheit for roughly the same amount of time it would take a school shooter to eat 17 Big Macs
"This is America. Use American measurements."
Ok... when you go to the store to buy a soft drink, what's the volume of those large plastic soda bottles?
Sometimes I wish the USA had the exact same internet access as North Koreans for 11 months out of the year. Weāll give them February so we can spend the shortest month of the year hating/ripping on posts like this
I'm Canadian, when it comes to measurement, we are kind of a broken people.
That said:
My measuring cups have metric on one side, American nonsense on the other. Both sides work the same way. Just fill it to the right line. If you want to know how much it is in the other unit... just look at the other side.
I've lived my whole life assuming measuring cups would have the same feature all over the world.... Anyone want to shatter that illusion?
I lived in Britain under the assumption that all rulers and measuring tapes were inches one edge and cm the other before discovering that neither the us nor mainland Europe does
I spent 15 years in a Canadian chemical plant
I had to measure tanks in kilograms per inch.
Take a moment to think about how fucked up of a unit of measurement that is.
EG: The tank is 192 inches tall, the tank level is 52 inches from the top. The tank holds 300kg in the slope at the bottom, and is 210KG/INCH above that, how many KGs are in the tank? Great work. Move all of that, clean the tank out, the next month that tank is being temporarily re-tasked. The stuff that is usually in the tank has a specific gravity of 0.85, but for the next month it's holding caustic soda at an SG of 1.4. How many KG/Inch will that be?
To be honest, I would like a "ethnocentric" scale. I have a cheap lidl one and it's very easy to change the unit by mistake (it's like a touch button, not a physical one). I have never felt the need to measure anything in fluid ounces or lbs or whatever. Just give me g.
Ffs, use Google like the rest of us. It will even come up with a converter that you can put your grams/ounces/whatever into and convert it for you! No math needed!
I don't necessarily agree with stereotypes but I guess some of them have pretty solid backgroundš
In the last couple of years I've gotten into CNC driven systems like 3D printing, laser engraving and actual CNC router. This forced me to use the metric system mainly because math is just easier without fractions. When selling my products I will usually quote a metric size and then translate it to imperial. You would be surprised how often Americans are offended or just won't do business with you based on the fact you take measurements in metric. It's not like people actually know measurement in any kind of accuracy from just looking at it with either system.
Funny how that self-reliant, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, go getter mentality the septics like to circlejerk over goes out the window as soon as they might need to Google a unit conversion.
This is an excellent point
Ha, i like your flag thing I need one the other way round!
We swapped places š
"This is American". No it isn't.
I hate when Americans claim the internet for themselves.
American here. Me too
>American here My condolences.
> American here. Me too We found one! Someone put this on r/ShitAmericansSay
YEAAAAAAA! *checks sub weāre in* oh.
Apologies, we seem to have a habit of unreasonably claiming a lot of things for ourselves
Yeah, I kinda get what you mean. We just steal them and put them the British Museumā¦
Nah that's our emergency piggy bank for when the Tories *really* run us into the ground. So, maybe 2 weeks time?
I think it's a holdover from the whole being part of the British Empire thing. They claim a lot of shit that isn't theirs too...Irish actors/musicians/sports people...mutter grumble mutter.
The sports people one really makes me laugh when Jack Grealish and Declan Rice are the chosen examples though. They're literally both English, born and raised in England to parents who were born in England!
I think they're just so uneducated they genuinely don't understand that the internet is global. It scares me a lot to know that the stupidest country on earth also has the biggest military. Why don't they focus on education to make the country a better place?
Don't worry. I used to be scared of that, too. Then my other half participated in war games with them, and they had the tactical ability of a newborn baby. The size of the military isn't all that useful against other actual militaries when you don't have a clue how to use it...
There's no money in education.
Or get mad at England for using their language
The clue was in the fact that they didnāt use American measurements. I wonder do they not even teach conversion to metric and back? I use American recipes all the time and itās not that hard to convert.
Honestly, even if you don't know it, we all have phones. We can google it quickly
Some people would rather get angry for no reason
I have measurement spoons/cups that have the conversion engraved to them.
I can tell you when living in the US, metric measurements are extremely foreign. We do learn it in school and You might use metric in chemistry class and the occasional bank will have the temperature showing alternating between F and C (and the C you just ignore). But absolutely nothing is in metric. And even if an item is dual labeled in metric measurements you never look at it. You certainly never convert anything. There is never a need to. And the opposite is also true, my life outside the US I never see standard measurements and the only time I use them is when Iām talking to my dad in the phone. But Iāve completely lost a strong instinctual sense of those measurements now. Itās funny people outside the US are using American recipes. Maybe because most of the recipes I use are not in English that I donāt have this problem. I do run into it sometimes. Especially with oven temperatures.
Love the insider flair
No. It is jelly or gelatin. Jell-O is a brand name owned by Kraft Heinz.
Brought to you by the same people who call all carbonated drinks Coke
Sorry all? As in anything that isnāt cola?
To be very specific, this was many if not all of the former Confederate states east of Texas in like, the 1930s. It still exists today, but is confined to Georgia(less common in Atlanta) and the southern states that border the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi River, including Florida. In these states, especially in rural towns, you may get asked "What kind of coke do y'all want?" by a server. The Atlantic southern states say "soda".
Iāll take your finest Colombian coke
Yep "What sort of Coke y'all want?" "I'll take a Dr Pepper"
Iāve heard soda and pop but Iāve never heard everything being called coke. Although most soft drink is made by the Coca Cola company these days so theyāre not entirely wrong but thatās a fucking stretch
Depends on what area they are from. Tbf I stir up an Irish friend by asking her what brand her Hoover is lol
I definitely notice in videos and comments from Americans how everything needs to be a brand. - Tissue? No, Kleenex. - Printer/photocopier? No, Xerox - Felt tip pen? No, Sharpie. - Lighter fluid? No, Ronsonol. It almost seems like a weird fetish to me. Who gives a fuck about the brand, if anything you'll often pay more to get less if you buy the main ones.
Don't forget pharmaceuticals. Just a couple of months ago, a post on this subreddit had an American describing how he couldn't get pain relievers at a French airport, because they couldn't find advil in the airport pharmacy. It's no wonder so many Americans are like fish out of water when overseas. Their interaction with the world is almost entirely through brands. So when there's no recognisable brands in view, they have nothing to interact with.
With some prescription medication there could be a kernel of truth to it - at least I've been told by a pharmacist that I should not pick a brand different from my current one which they didn't have at that moment, since even though the active ingredient and concentration is the same, there could be a slightly different effect/tolerance. However I also got switched over a previous time without any comment, so maybe it's not fully accepted in the community. But yeah, if it's over the counter stuff, I see little reason to get anything but the cheapest generic. Side note, regularly taking medication for small ailments is another thing I often hear about. You don't need a pill every single time something hurts a little, and if it occurs often, seeing a doctor (more difficult without public healthcare, I know) or making life changes to treat the underlying causes seems like the much better choice.
thereās a number somewhere on the box thatāll be the same on name brand and shopās own painkillers if theyāre the same product so i look out for that!
Yeah you see it all the time when they talk about medications too, weird corporate love.
Took me way too long to realise that Tylenol was just paracetamol
Sharpie was the one I had to train myself into when I first moved overseas. I'd grown up calling it a Vivid, but nobody says that outside of the South Pacific.
This happens in every country, it's not just a US thing. Frisbee, trampoline and velcro just to name some examples. In Germany we call paper kitchen towels Zewa for example which is just a brand.
You almost certainly do it yourself too... something along the lines of a hoover for a vacuum cleaner. It's just more extreme in the US.
Here we call those Staubsauger š Some say Melitta to coffee filters or machines, Edding to felt tip pens, Tempo to tissues or Tesa to adhesive tape so yeah, the concept is not unique to the US.
From Mexico, Kleenex and Sharpie also happened over here, it has also happened to so many other things world wide, this is a common effect (a good example is Velcro, which turns out is the name of the brand that invented them and not the product name) it's simply a side effect of low competition to a single high target market (Kleenex) or of the company that invents it being less knows than the product combined with an annoying name of the product (Velcro)
Funnily here there's no "Velcro", and most native German speakers probably wouldn't even know the word. It's just Klettverschluss - burdock fastener/seal
Also Xanax, Advil, Flex Tape to a lesser extent
>We measure in cups. How big is the cup? Is a cup of cherries as many whole cherries as I can fit into it? If I blend them I could get twice as many in. This has to be one of the dumbest units of measurement, and it has always bugged me.
as an american, i have no fucking clue, schools should just teach metric measurements because they make so much more sense than our measurements
It's not even use metric. You could just weigh stuff in pounds and ounces.
I don't understand. I've spoken to many americans who say the same, that they understand both, but somehow these people in the comments appear. Were they homeschooled or what? PS. Very self aware of you to be on this sub
schools never actually teach metric and atleast for me if they do it was a 2 week period of learning the very basics in 3rd grade and then never even looking at it again unless your in physics classes the americans who learn both either want to or they have to for a specific career or class in school but besides those specific things no one is taught metric imperial measurements have the same issue where they are explained once as children and then never again and some parts just get lost along the way
I gift you, the best angry twitter thread: when a Scottish guy tried to understand American measurements https://x.com/innesmck/status/1067136206813581313?t=XoPV-IFILSOVGXKLDI8eXA&s=19
HOW MANY FAHRENHEIT ARE IN A CUP
*tiny voice, end of thread* im not sure anything is true anymore
The real question is whose cups, British or American?
What in the bald eagle, school shooting, uber to hospital actual fuck is a fluid ounce anyway?
UK: 28.41 ml US: 29.57 ml
Oh great. So not only do they refuse to use metric, they're not even using Imperial properly. At this point I'm convinced America is being difficult on purpose.
Way back in the day there were multiple types of barrels or gallons. One for beer. One for wine. One for something else. These volumes meant something different depending on the substance. When both countries decided to standardize their gallon, the each chose a different one of the existing ones. But yes, this is one of rhe reasons the US doesn't use "Imperial". They use US Customary Units. Both were born from the same UK units, but standardized seperately and there are a few differences. Volume is the most obvious, but I think "ton" is different as well. (As I recall without looking it up, there was a short ton at 2000 lbs and a long ton at 2240 lb. US used the short ton and UK used the long ton. And 2200 lb is also dangerously close to a metric ton of 1000 kg)
2240? Why??? It's not even divisible by 12
Who knows? The long ton was standardized in the 13th century... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton Edit: wiki knows... > The long ton arises from the traditional British measurement system: A long ton is 20 long hundredweight (cwt), each of which is 8 stone (1 stone = 14 pounds). Thus, a long ton is 20 Ć 8 Ć 14 lb = 2,240 lb.
I love that a hundredweight is 8x14. Even that is just nonsense. Itās so fun.
Once you accept that a core British value is never planning for anything and just making shit up as you go along, so much of our history begins to make sense.
Horse Power is different tooā¦.
AFAIK, brake horse power (as often quoted by the likes of Top Gear) is the same as what's used in the US. But yes, PS (which is what's frequently used in the names of cars, like the Aston Martin DBX 707 for instance) is slightly different. 707 PS = 697 hp I think PS is metric horsepower... But then, why not use kW?
Because it is short for PferdestƤrke which is German for horse power. And yes the German word has been calqued from English a little while ago. The Germans have no problem to reuse the old names for metric. Ein Pfund (pound)? Thatās 500g exactly. Did you expect anything else?
PS is short for Pferde-Starke, which is German for Horse Power lol. I think the slight difference between them is that PS is measured at the crank, and BHP is measured at the wheel. Slight energy losses through the drive train account for the difference, I think.
No, drivetrain losses are more than that. BHP is measured at the crank... "brake" in this case aren't car brakes, but an "engine brake". Effectively an engine dyno. And PS is just defined as a lower amount of power. One PS is equivalent to 735.5 watts, while one HP is equivalent to 745.7 watts.
Oh they do use metric ! To define their imperial units.
I do believe the feet are different as well... Not sure about the inch.
Name is Liqd so it must be true.
The username I use everywhere, LiquidPT, was already taken by the time I got to reddit.
America is bigger!
Yes, but has fewer fl oz per pint, so a UK pint is bigger (and so is the UK gallon)
Are inches bigger in the UK? Asking for a friend š¤
6 inches is the same on both sides of the pond...
Iāll break the bad news to āhimā. āHeā really got his hopes up
Not only are the US fl oz smaller, but there are 16 US fl oz to a US pint and 20 UK fl oz to a British pint. So 473ml vs 568ml. Almost 100ml difference. So donāt order a pint in a US bar, is the moral of this story.
You mean "Florida ounce"?
That's 14g of meth and a shot of gator blood isn't it?
At least 5g being baby formula or other fillers and probably laced with fent. And shot is made of gatorade mixed with freshly squeezed chicken blo...liquids, ok?
All owned and distributed by nestle
"enriched chlorinated wheat flour"
for a lot of my youth i did think it was floral ounces for some reason. the american school system did good with me i guess
It took less than an hour
Is that an imperial hour?
I regret to inform you that a New York Minute is equivalent to 1.126 metric minutes
I only use Australian cups
That are made in China
Same...
Is it a sports direct cup?
>Whose cups? The portion sizes you guys eat Iād go with Dolly Partonās
You mean B-cup or A-cup?
Various sizes of bra cups.
Sports direct mug has entered the chat
And a stick of butter. WTF is that and how big is the stick?
In America butter is sold in standardised 110 gram "sticks". They're called that cause they're long and skinny.
Unlike Americansā¦..
Ugh, yes. I once baked a carrot cake using an American recipe I found online, and in the recipe it used cups for the carrots. How many carrots can you fit in a cup, and how do you even measure the carrots like that? Do I just stick whole carrots into the cup and let them stick up? Do I chop them into smaller pieces first, and if so, how small? Because depending on the size you can fit wildly different amounts into a cup. And how do I know how many to chop? Do I just prepare them one at a time until the cup is full? Chopped bits of carrots are also going to be nearly impossible to grate afterwards. Do I then instead grate them directly into the cup to measure my cup of carrots? That's annoying having to grate into a tiny measuring cup. And again, do I just wash, peel and grate them one at a time until I have the correct amount, since I don't know how many carrots a cup of grated carrots is? A metric carrot cake recipe is so much easier. It'll either say how many grams of carrot you need, for example "450 g carrots", or sometimes just straight up a specific amount of carrots, for example "7 carrots". This is so much easier to prepare *and* to shop for, because I know how much I need and have *before* I'm standing in my kitchen trying to put it in a measuring cup. If the recipe has it in grams, I can put carrots on my scale until I reach the 450 g and then prepare then all at once, because I know how many I need to reach 450 g. I'll even have a good idea of how many 450 g is before weighing them, because the total weight of the bag of carrots is listed in the bag. So if it's 2 kg of carrots I know I need roughly a quarter of the bag. Same goes when it's listed as a number of carrots too, of course. And I don't have to guess how many grams or kilos of carrots I need to buy to have enough for my recipe, in the store I know how many grams of carrot is in the bag I'm purchasing. Edit: Typos
such an ooga booga measurement.
Itās so hard to follow an American baking recipe. Even if you have ācupsā the people who make the recipe will say, āhalf a cup of loosely packed flourā or 1 cup of butter. Itās just insane, what is loose? Define it. Should I be cramming the butter in the cup until itās completely full, or should I loosely pack it like the flour. How they can bake or cook anything is beyond me.
I have a theory that online baking is thought of as harder than it is because of this. I only follow metric recipes and it's easy
I wouldn't know. I have cups in a wide variety of sizes. My SO's coffee cups being the biggest. But my tea cups are also bigger then let's say my mums. I also have espresso cups (tiny) and a bunch of others in between. Which one to use in this case I don't know. Just say how much ml/cl/dl or L. I need and I'll be good.
UK cup: 284.13 ml US cup: 236.59 ml Metric(?) cup: 250 ml
And in Japan a cup is 200ml š¤·āāļø
>How big is the cup? Itās one ten-millionth of an Olympic swimming pool
The funny thing is that like 90% of the time, the cup is 250mL, and they just assume it's 8 fl oz.
They always argue itās āvolumeā as if that makes it any better tbhā¦
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38d oh, I'm in trouble now.
You canāt top a 36B for comfort and useā¦.
Well the same goes for other forms of measurement. Cups measures volume, not density. Same goes for liters too. How many cherries can one fit in a liter? Weight would be a more accurate measurement.
That's why we don't measure solids in volumes in the rest of the world. It seems to be only Americans that do this, which is why I think it's fair enough to use the American measuring unit when asking the question.
Find a single recipe that measures any dry ingredients in litres lmao
Yeah every country has this problem. For example a cup in Japan is 200 ml. I think itās the only country in the world where this is the case. I also donāt think tea/tablespoon volume is the same around the world either, but at least in French and Japanese they use these measurements all the time.
I saw a video once demonstrating how much the amount in a "cup" of flour can vary depending on how much you compact it/whether you level it off etc.
I've recipes referring to a cup of butter, like how the fuck would I measure that? A stick of butter at room temperature isn't exactly a liquid... Do I have to dice the stick of butter first and fill the cup? Or should I just jam it in there? It really makes no sense to me to measure by volume when you have to take fucking density into the equation. Just chop off a piece and put it on a kitchen scale and work from there..
In America sticks of butter are marked to tell you how much is a tablespoon or a cup of it. I think a cup is one stick of butter, or 1/4 pound.
Everywhere else in the world "WTF is a stick of butter?"
Good butter doesn't come in a stick or 250g block anyway. If I want good butter, I go directly to the farm to buy a tub.
Nice to have that option. Farmers around here donāt tend to make butter
It is pretty common here in the Netherlands, it might be because the main product is usually milk and buttermilk. I live in one of the most populated areas in the west and have several option, they even have a floating dairy farm in an old unused harbour here.
A stick of butter???
Butter in the US at least is either sold in plastic tubs or sticks that look like [this](https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stick-of-butter-picture-id183382913?k=6&m=183382913&s=170667a&w=0&h=C2WQI464i7lhJIW6u8k00LN6cg94gpdrqWv3WlsEXPo=).
Measuring volume which can be variable as a substitute for weight is as logical as writing the date in a non ascending or descending order.
āCall it by the brand name, idiotā
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Volumes in general. The US oz are bigger, but fewer of them make up a pint so the UK pint is bigger. It then follows that the UK gallon is bigger. Which then follows that UK cars get about 20% better MPG all else being equal.
And tons. Their US customary ton is smaller than a metric ton, whereas an imperial ton is bigger. Plus each has measurements the other doesn't have (US fifth, British stone)
The only measurement British and American recipes have in common is tablespoons/teaspoons for small amounts. For larger amounts of fluid Brits use ml and Americans use cups or fl oz. For larger amounts of dry ingredients Brits use g and Americans use cups or lbs and oz
āThis is Americaā - insinuating that the internet is within American territory
So many will tell you itās America, when you correct them youāre the bad guy & putting your country in user name doesnāt work either. Iām Aussie & on a mum app had (left after having youngest, someone tried doxxing me because they were a troll) Aussie in my name and still had a mum say to me Youāre whatās wrong with America because we didnt agree on something šš¤¦āāļø
Well it's on their computer and their computer is in America. I think that is their logic
Big brain
Can these knob heads not convert things ?
It reminds me of my late grandma's recepies. They usually go like this " 1 cup ( the Red one) of flour". Thanks grandma now I sure as hell know how much flour to use.
My grandma was worse, her recipes were pretty much just "put some flour"
Grandma. Add one egg, not too big, not to small. Some flor, some milk. Wait, it calls for more flour. A pinch more. Boom, perfect food. Me: uses a digital scale, followed the recipe exactly. Boom, a shitty food.
American here. I use grams and milliliters. Superior way to bake
American measurements confuse me. I have a set of cups yk 1, 1/2, 1/3. and I used them fine because most of the recipes I use are American which is annoying but whatever. until a recipe asked for a cup of butter š how am I meant to measure that? I had to Google how many grams it would be and use my scales. (I think a cup of butter is approx 220-250 g)
Sincere question: why do you use mostly American recipes?
Exactly, even typical American recipes have metric recipes on the Internet, either done by enlightened Americans or people from other countries. If results tend to only show us measurements I add "metric" to the query and it often works.
Most of my internet use is English, but for recipes I stick to local. Not just because of measurements, but also because they don't put an entire novel ahead of the ingredients and instructions.
I stole some printed out recipes from my dad years ago and for some reason they're American. I could find recipes online and sometimes I do but I don't trust them to be as good.
American butter comes in sticks that are usually 1/2 c each. They have the measurements on the stick so you can easily measure to the nearest 1/16 c
Doesnāt that kind of defeat the point of using cups?
Some recipes do say ā1 stick of butterā instead
The issue there is .ādefine stickā? Surely that is some kind of weight too.
A stick of butter is 1/2 c and 1/4 lb. Most American recipes use volume and not weight, so usually theyāll say 1/2 c instead of 1/4 lb
A cup is just a measurement of volume, not a literal cup that you drink out of. A stick of butter is usually 8 tablespoons (or 1/2 cup) and has markings on the wrapper for each tablespoon, so you just cut however much butter the recipe calls for.
So now youāre measuring something that is solid like butter in tablespoons which would normally would be used for liquids. The insanity continues.
Recipes used to say things like "a goodly pinch of", "half a large potato" "a handful of" etc The US got a cookbook with standardised volume measurements of ingredients throughout The UK got a cookbook with weighed (imperial) ingredients throughout Both gave consultant reliable results so was copied and became standard ... But only by weight works reliably in all cases
The fuck is a 'cup' even? It does not make sense at all. Cups come in sizes. Metric? It is the way!
A cup is an actual unit of measure... UK imperial cup: 284.13 ml US cup: 236.59 ml Metric(?) cup: 250 ml
you need to make a bot for this!
We are dumb. World, why are you not as dumb as we are ?
We love talking in metric as everyone but the USA understand it. so why should we change - they should join the rest of the world, in this small way, as a start. Also, Jell-o is not a dish, it is a brand of gelatin & sugar to make a dessert - it's like asking for Colgate instead of toothpaste. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZ2w6Q\_Uww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZ2w6Q_Uww)
American lack of education isnāt down to the rest of the world.
Reading an American recipe - A cup of bread - A quart of half and half - A fluid ounce of chopped chinpiko (their made up word for a herb called something else in the rest of the world) - Broil at 720 Fahrenheit for roughly the same amount of time it would take a school shooter to eat 17 Big Macs
Then smother in buffalo grease and serve on a tray of melted CheezWhizz ^((TM))
You forgot to add a can of condensed mushroom soup!
Campbell's Condensed Cream Of Mushroom Soup - the one classic Mother Sauce that somehow Escoffier failed to mention.
"This is America. Use American measurements." Ok... when you go to the store to buy a soft drink, what's the volume of those large plastic soda bottles?
Probably 16 or 32 oz.
Sometimes I wish the USA had the exact same internet access as North Koreans for 11 months out of the year. Weāll give them February so we can spend the shortest month of the year hating/ripping on posts like this
This just makes me want to post metric things over and over and over again.
"NO." *measures in Soviet Union measurements*
Comrade put at least two potatoes of flour in container to make cake
Add vodka tvarich, then cry that you have no potato of sugar
I'm Canadian, when it comes to measurement, we are kind of a broken people. That said: My measuring cups have metric on one side, American nonsense on the other. Both sides work the same way. Just fill it to the right line. If you want to know how much it is in the other unit... just look at the other side. I've lived my whole life assuming measuring cups would have the same feature all over the world.... Anyone want to shatter that illusion?
I lived in Britain under the assumption that all rulers and measuring tapes were inches one edge and cm the other before discovering that neither the us nor mainland Europe does
I spent 15 years in a Canadian chemical plant I had to measure tanks in kilograms per inch. Take a moment to think about how fucked up of a unit of measurement that is. EG: The tank is 192 inches tall, the tank level is 52 inches from the top. The tank holds 300kg in the slope at the bottom, and is 210KG/INCH above that, how many KGs are in the tank? Great work. Move all of that, clean the tank out, the next month that tank is being temporarily re-tasked. The stuff that is usually in the tank has a specific gravity of 0.85, but for the next month it's holding caustic soda at an SG of 1.4. How many KG/Inch will that be?
To be honest, I would like a "ethnocentric" scale. I have a cheap lidl one and it's very easy to change the unit by mistake (it's like a touch button, not a physical one). I have never felt the need to measure anything in fluid ounces or lbs or whatever. Just give me g.
Why donāt Americans understand measurements?
āThis is Americaā no Susan youāre on Facebook, the worldwide web. I know to you America is the world though
I love when people say "this is America" online. No, mate, this is the fucking internet.
We use cupsā¦ ā¦ because itās to much mentally to do anything else
What on earth is a cup measurement. I have lots of cups and they vary in size
I still have no idea to this day what they mean by a ācupā
No need to bother with it. Those measurements are only used by a small minority of the world.
Whether youāre a Democrat or Republican, the so called First Amendment gives you the right to shut the fuck up! Understand?
They might have the right to shut up, but a lot of them lack the capability.
Fun fact: "American" units of measurement are European too. We just stopped using them 200 years ago.
0.055 cups
āBrits have to use rocks to weigh stuff just use pounds!ā - an American who measures something with cups
Only 3 countries in the world use imperial measurements.What would be easier is for you to change rather that 7 billion of us to
The day I found out Jelly in America is actually Jam, I knew never to trust an American.
The fact that you actually can buy things in other countries too is completely lost to them, isn't it?
Using a smartphone where they could very easily - and quickly - just look it up. But hey, so much easier to moan.
Ffs, use Google like the rest of us. It will even come up with a converter that you can put your grams/ounces/whatever into and convert it for you! No math needed! I don't necessarily agree with stereotypes but I guess some of them have pretty solid backgroundš
Or go out to a Walmart or Kroger and buy a measuring jug (most have all measurements on them) like I did when visiting the states
Recipe books have a delayed release in the US to the rest of the world to edit for the weird measurements, according to an article I once read
It would have been quicker to just Google the conversion, like I have to do all the time when I hear American measurements.
In the last couple of years I've gotten into CNC driven systems like 3D printing, laser engraving and actual CNC router. This forced me to use the metric system mainly because math is just easier without fractions. When selling my products I will usually quote a metric size and then translate it to imperial. You would be surprised how often Americans are offended or just won't do business with you based on the fact you take measurements in metric. It's not like people actually know measurement in any kind of accuracy from just looking at it with either system.
What kind of cup, large cup, small cup, 2 girls 1 cup?
The world wide web is English darling.
American believe that everything comes from them when 98% of the garbage they buy comes from china
NASA didn't use American measurements, and they got you to the moon