• 0 Posts
  • 19 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 20th, 2023

help-circle

  • You may be thinking of Freydís Eiríksdóttir and her (alleged) experience in Vinland.

    As men fled during the confusion, Freydís, who was eight months pregnant, admonished them, saying: “Why run you away from such worthless creatures, stout men that ye are, when, as seems to me likely, you might slaughter them like so many cattle? Let me but have a weapon, I know I could fight better than any of you.”

    Ignored, Freydís picked up the sword of the fallen Thorbrand Snorrisson and engaged the attacking natives. Surrounded by enemies, she undid her garment and beat the sword upon her breast.










  • That’s probably what it is. I didn’t go to school in the US but my kids went to school in Ohio and my impression was that metric was not the primary system of units used in education, though it was taught.

    The argument I hear most often from people defending the US customary units is that the units are more intuitive. For example, an inch is about the size of a thumb, or 0 degrees is fucking cold and 100 is fucking hot.

    On the whole, people seem receptive to metric, but don’t want the hassle or cost to convert. They seem content to use metric where it’s important (science, military) and keep the old ways elsewhere.

    I currently with in healthcare research and almost everything not patient facing is done in metric, but there are still conversions going on everywhere, leading to data problems that are hard to correct later. People used to thinking in ounces putting those where grams were supposed to go, and so on.