this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Americans pick up weird habits and then insist that it's the right way. How is August 9th any better than 9th of August when the 9th is a subunit of August and not the other way around?

Another good example is the use of the imperial system. I've heard Americans often declare that it's a better system for manual use compared to the metric system. But the metric system has prefixes that differ consistently by 3 orders of magnitude, whereas the imperial system has rather arbitrary jumps between each successive unit. The metric system needs much less cognitive effort even for manual use.

I can understand that it's a matter of habit for Americans. But it's the lack of acceptance that there is a problem that leads to other problems like crashing a spacecraft onto Mars.