• bit/byte/bytes

Wish it had worked out lol


spiders
@spiders

i do think the idea that the metric system is somehow more rational and sensible than the u.s. customary system is very funny. like, buddy, its only "normal" by consensus; there is nothing normal about basing everything around how far light travels in exactly 1/299792458 seconds, or picking a very undivisible number the basis for your whole way of doing math, or relying on a digital scale to tell you how much sugar to add to your cookies. it is every bit as arbitrary and weird as u.s. customary, you just don't think about it, because it's everywhere.


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in reply to @spiders's post:

The base units are arbitrary but all base units are arbitrary, you just have to choose something. Before it was defined by the speed of light the meter was a metal bar in Paris. I can't remember if they've finished the objective definition of the kilogram yet, but ideas included "a precisely measured ball of monocrystaline silicon" and "the precise amount of electrical current needed for an electromagnet to hold a kilogram against gravity." Metrology is obsessively arbitrary.

The relying on a scale thing bugs me quite a lot. This is like that annoying pedantic person saying “it’s technically [annoying singsong voice] more accurate” well yes but measuring by volume is way easier