Comment on What has he done to deserve this?

• dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  want to fix an american car–hope you have both metric and “standard” wrenches

  I will point out that with the singular and shining exception of lugnuts, at least this one has not been the case since at least the 1970’s. All fasteners on current(ish) American cars are metric nowadays and have been for quite some time. I’ve never seen a single one that isn’t on any car that’s not old enough to qualify for historic plates.

  This used to piss off the oldheads to no end back when I managed a hardware store because they would absolutely insist, sometimes literally screaming in my face about it, that their dang old good old boy red blooded American Ford that they just bought didn’t have no Jap pinko metric bolts in it anywhere not nohow, and 100% of the time they were wrong. (This annoyed me only slightly less than the people who showed up needing a bolt, didn’t know what it was, didn’t bring the old one with them, and the only information they had was “I took it off with a 9/16 wrench.” Hombre, the head size tells me absolutely nothing about the diameter, thread pitch, or length. Then they would claim that it’s just a “standard” bolt, as if there’s any such thing. Also, a 9/16" wrench will usually fairly easily remove a bolt with a 14mm head, so that really tells me nothing. Or 5/8" on 16mm. Etc.)

  Harleys, however, take it as some kind of point of pride that they actually do use fractional inch fasteners everywhere.

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  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    didn’t know what it was, didn’t bring the old one with them, and the only information they had was

    LOL the library equivalent is “i’m looking for a book but don’t remember the title or author, but it was about a woman who fell in love, and it had a red cover!” which describes a not-insignificant percentage of all books in existence

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    • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      That, and different editions and prints of different books can and will have different covers.

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      • Enkrod@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Might even have different names:

        Image

        Image

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  • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The differential bolts on my ford 8.8" are 1/2". Also the lower intake manifold bolts on a gm 3.8l were 3/8" even though everything else was metric. I’m sure there’s also oil drain plugs that are not metric.

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• deranger@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  See also: the 9mm and 5 grams in my pockets

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  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    LOL i’m sure the multiple units of measurement for ammo is worldwide-- thanks USA! but yea, drugs are always metric

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    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Except for an O

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      • deranger@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Dealers always know the approximate grams to ounces conversion, which coincidentally works out in their favor an extra ~1%.

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• sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  We are used to 2 liter bottles, so we still use them. We run 5ks because its been a standard distance to run for a long time. Other countries also do similar things, old habits die hard.

  We use metric for science and medicine because the benefits of metric are much more pronounced for those use cases.

  Honestly, using both really isnt that hard. Its only really an inconvenience if you aren’t already used to it. We aren’t changing it because we’re getting along just fine the way things are, and there are much bigger problems to be solved.

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  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    for one thing, there will always be “bigger problems to solve,” just like with getting rid of DST, which also needs to fucking die a horrible death already

    for another thing, thank you for providing a perfect example of my last sentence

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    • sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      American are willing to change things, we just pick what to change, and we aren’t being inconvenienced by this nearly enough to change it.

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      • USSMojave@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        it did ruin a mission to Mars once though

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      • solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        thank you, again, for illustrating my point. care to say the same thing a third time? for the people who just aren’t getting it?

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