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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • It has nothing to do with disliking learning. Trying to learn and use a system of measurement without being immersed in it is really hard. For years, I’ve set all my temperature measurements on my phone and thermometers to Celsius, but because I’m surrounded by people and systems that don’t use metric, I have to convert back and forth between the two. It’s a lot of mental effort for basically no gain.

    Every day, customary speed and distance units and my intuitive understanding of them are reinforced when driving and seeing street signs. I know how long a kilometer is, but if you say “My brother lives 45 kilometers away”, I’d have a difficult time truly understanding that. I wouldn’t be able to estimate how long it would take to drive there, for example.

    Another issue is cost. In my job, it would take weeks or months to update all of the documentation and code to metric. Then customers would have to approve of all those changes. A whole bunch of machinery still uses customary units too, so they would have to be replaced or updated.

    I say all of this as a metric lover and evangelist. It’s not trivial to convert an entire massive country to metric. Countries that have converted already should be hugely proud of themselves for accomplishing a difficult task.






  • The last outbreak was not contained. Prior to 2022, there was no sustained transmission outside of central Africa. The 2022 outbreak saw significant transmission all over the world. There were 30,000 confirmed cases and 42 deaths in the US alone.

    Just because something isn’t extremely contagious right now doesn’t mean it can’t become a pandemic. A virus can will mutate, it can go unnoticed, etc. As it stands, mpox can be transmitted by respiratory droplets.

    Smallpox was a related virus. It too was transmissible through close contact with other people. It killed 300 million people in the 20th century. While vaccination is likely going to prevent mpox from becoming anywhere close to that deadly, I’d rather not play with fire. Don’t ignore a nasty virus.