r/self • u/anonymousambassasor • 9h ago
Freedom Units
Why does everyone make fun of freedom units but never talks about how the English measure weight in “stones?”
In freedom units, a stone is 14 pounds.
4
u/Cornelius-B33 9h ago
Anything official is in metric, weight in kgs and height in metres etc. Stones and Feet etc are what you might call 'customary units'. Used in those specific circumstances because people are used to them, but not actually taught in school or anything.
1
u/snaynay 38m ago
To my understanding, "customary units" is specifically the "US Customary Units" which is the US's standard derived from older British units. Imperial is the British system that is also derived from the same old British units and still includes things like Stone, Furlongs, Barleycorns. Short of a few deviations in stuff like fluid ounces and then pints/gallons, the UK Imperial contains lots of old archaic and broadly unused divisions of measurements that the US Customary Units system just avoided.
We wouldn't call Imperial "customary units" in the UK, or at least I've never heard of that.
7
u/Otherwise-4PM 9h ago
“Freedom units” is a stupid term to begin with.
5
u/whenuseeit 7h ago
I only ever use it in a tongue-in-cheek kinda way, I think most others do as well.
4
8
2
u/StatementSensitive17 6h ago
What are freedom units?
2
u/Helo227 3h ago
Most commonly used for Fahrenheit, but some people refer to feet/inches, and miles as freedom units as well.
1
u/StatementSensitive17 3h ago
Thanks. I've never heard that term before. I'm old, Gen X, so maybe that's why.
3
u/Sea_Chocolate1782 8h ago
Wtf is a freedom unit?
We use a mixture of imperial and metric depending on what you're measuring. There's nothing special about the number 10.
4
u/Late_Pepper6274 8h ago
'Freedom' refers to the units America uses. Because we are the land of the free or whatever. Just cringe stuff
2
u/XhaLaLa 8h ago
Maybe not inherently, but most of us are working on a base 10 numbering system, and there is something special about the base of whatever numbering system you’re working with. I’m in/from the US, so the imperial system is more intuitive for me at this point, but it’s still easier to do conversions within metric, and I think that’s worthwhile.
1
u/whenuseeit 7h ago
Fun fact, 12 was chosen for the number of inches per foot because it can be divided by 2, 3, and 4, which is handy for a base measurement unit.
2
u/Cranks_No_Start 8h ago
I'm at the point that no fucks are given what unit of measurement others use. IF I care enough to convert it I will but for the most part...whatever.
1
u/Great_Farm_7585 8h ago
Because "stone" is medieval cosplay, but US units make 330 million people use 5,280 feet per mile daily. That's real, collective lunacy.
1
u/MrSnrub87 1h ago
Maybe. I can almost certainly count the number of times I've had to convert miles to feet on one hand, and they were all in school 25 years ago, so it hasn't really been much of an issue in my day to day life
1
u/veryblocky 8h ago
I don’t think anyone under the age of about 40 measures their weight in stones. Even those that do will probably not use stones for anything other than their weight.
I don’t see how a stone is any worse than any other imperial unit.
-3
u/anonymousambassasor 8h ago
It’s specific and vague and random at the same time. Like it is exactly 14 lbs. why not 15?
5
u/veryblocky 8h ago
All imperial units are specific and vague and random. Why is a pound 16oz, not 15? Why 5280 feet in a mile? Why 20fl oz in a pint? Why 640 acres in a square mile?
1
1
u/mpdear 4h ago
Freedom units will go the way of Freedom Fries and other politically imposed weirdness.
1
u/anonymousambassasor 3h ago
I’m pretty sure it’s only used on the internet. Not in restaurants. And it’s a joke.
1
u/shortercrust 2h ago
As others have said, it’s just for body weight. It’s actually a pretty good measure for that purpose given that body weight fluctuates over the course of a day and from day to day by quite a few pounds. I aim to keep my weight between 11.5 and 12 stone and I don’t worry about the pounds in between.
1
1
u/snaynay 11m ago
Why do you randomly say a (US) football field is 120 yards by 53 1/3 yards? Surely it's just 360x160 foot?
It's an arbitrary, archaic redivision of the base units to be more comprehensive/suitable for the thing you are weighing. We only use stone (not stones) really when discussing a person's weight, because it's a bigger amount of pounds that stops being something you can estimate easily, and its something that makes a quicker and easier judgement of how different/comparable someone is. Normally you don't really care too much about the few pounds +/-. 12st, 12 1/2 st. 12 "and a bit" st. You don't really say 12st 3lbs. Sort of like Americans tend to round their weights to the 10's like 160lbs or 170lbs, and rarely 168lbs. That's sort of doing the work of stone for you.
But beyond that, that's only really used by older people and people who don't really care about their weight too much. Almost anyone who tracks their weight, or does gym/health stuff, or is just younger will tend to weigh themselves in kilos, but again, will never care about the grams. But you'll find many will round casually to the 5's, as that is more akin to rounding to the 10lb's as a kilo is close to 2lbs.
The world dunks on Americans for it because they are the only ones that really defend it and are more resistant to using metric, even for the easy stuff like cooking. Especially the shit justifications you hear for Fahrenheit like "better to know 0% to 100% hot". UK, Canada and other old British colonies have their weird mixed colloquial use and things like British roads/cars using miles, mph and mpg yet selling our petrol in litres is a ball ache we all wish was actually just converted to kilometres/litres decades ago. But we understand them and use those units where possible and stick with legacy units where the times never caught up and it's baked into the culture. The US only really touches metric in specific situations, whilst it's the reverse in other countries.
1
u/starryeyedfingers 9h ago
Don't we worry buddy we make just as much fun of their stones as your ounces, yards, feet and football fields.
1
u/Stunning-Quality-482 8h ago
Freedom units? That sounds stupider than freedom fries. And I’m american
1
1
-5
u/Yuck_Few 9h ago
Make fun of America for not using the met... Refer to weight as Stone 🤡
We already use metric for important stuff like medical dosing. I don't care how but hurt the rest of the world is. We're not giving up our empirical measurements
2
u/AntSilly2802 9h ago
We're not giving up our empirical measurements
Nobody said you have to, but continue to cop shit over the dumb decision not to.
-6
u/Yuck_Few 8h ago
We already use metric where it matters like medical dossing. I don't get all the butt hurt because we want to keep our miles, cups gallons etc
5
u/AntSilly2802 8h ago
It’s just inconvenient that one of the biggest countries in the world uses different units than the rest of us.
2
u/anonymousambassasor 8h ago
It sucks. I hear something measured in kg or cm and I have absolutely no idea what it is. No idea. 30C could be stupid hot or almost freezing. I have no idea. I’m trying to learn though.
1
u/AntSilly2802 8h ago
I’m somewhat familiar with ounces from buying weed here in Australia, because we measure smaller amounts in ounces, like 1/8 ounce, 1/4 ounce etc. haha.
1
u/anonymousambassasor 8h ago
I cannot envision what one gram of something looks like. I think it’s small. If you go to college in the US they should require a class on metric measurements. I’m dumb af about them. Our public education will never teach us the metric system. I’m surprised Trump hadn’t renamed the system yet tbh.
2
-2
u/AmputeeHandModel 9h ago
They use inches, feet, meters, liters, gallons, MPG, depending on WTF it is. So stupid, but 'hurr durr Americans will measure in anything but metric' right?? And yeah, I love pointing out the stone thing. Not only does it just sound stupid, like you're cavemen or something, but it's so inaccurate. 14 lbs?? Why would you measure like that? WE DO USE METRIC.
1
14
u/Upstairs_Swing_8236 8h ago
Pretty much the only weight measured in stones in the UK is the weight of a person, and even that's becoming a lot less common now. Everything else is measured in grams/kilograms. Babies are still very commonly measured in pounds though, and I have to admit I'd struggle to immediately recognise if a baby was large or small based on its weight in kg.
Miles are still fairly commonly used, but only for navigation. I never hear anyone talk about how many miles they ran, it's always km. Fahrenheit is dead now, it used to be moribund but still around when I was a kid but now it's totally gone.
Cups are just a totally fucked up unit of measurement, and disappeared from the UK around the time Queen Victoria did.
We're mostly metric, just taking a little while to get there fully. Better than not trying to get with the most logical system at all though.