People like to talk a lot of shit about how subjective the definitions for an inch or a mile are, but I never hear complaints about how a second or an hour are antiquated and based on things that only make sense from an Earth-centric point of view.

I just feel like someone be mad at Americans for still using hours (ugh, trivially decided on the amount of time it takes the Earth to rotate) and not something like the amount of time it takes for 1 kilogram of water to decay via natural radiation when under a vacuum.

By the way, before downvoting, this post is heavy with /s in case it wasn't obvious.

Edit: I just looked up the formal definition of a second and it is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom".

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's all so arbitrary is funny. People get so passionate, but then I'll bring up,"Why aren't we using Swatch Time?" Or, why don't we have 13 months of exactly 28 days (With a bonus vacation day or two)?

They'll usually fall back on what people are used to or tradition or something that just supports staying on imperial measurements. To be clear, I don't give a shit what measurement system is used. It's not like it takes a big brain to figure out what is going on when you travel.

[–] HKayn@dormi.zone 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This can go even further. Why aren't we using base 12 numbers, which can be divided much more conveniently?

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember watching the Numberphile video on base 12 a few years ago. I thought it was pretty interesting.

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[–] hglman@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Measures weren't standard before the french revolution, so picking something and getting buy-in was easy. Time keeping was well established, and the French moved to a metric calendar, and proposals for metric time were made, but all were eventually rejected.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, that explains perfectly why America will never likely switch to the metric system.

[–] hglman@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

It will happen because there is so much traction on metric, but it will be slow and both systems will be marked for a long time.