• keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
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          4 days ago

          Today I learn that Americans do not even use the nautical miles. You are not happy to have an imperial ton of non divisible units you also need to have fucking homonyms?

            • keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
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              4 days ago

              Imagine using nautical kilometers, road kilometers, space kilometers, imperial kilometers, protestant kilometers…

              Now please tell me there are no nautical feet, yards, inches and furlongs

              • leftascenter@jlai.lu
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                4 days ago

                The nautical mile comes from the measure of 1 second of arc (°,mn,s) of longitude over the earth. Hence British nautical and French nautical mile conversion were slightly different as they were not defined at the same latitude.

                • keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
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                  3 days ago

                  I did not know their origin, that’s hilarious.

                  That explains why the people who designed the meter found it logical for it to represent a portion of Earth’s circumference (1/10 000 000 of the equator-pole distance)

              • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
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                4 days ago

                I think the most insane combination of units can be found in aviation. They use feet for altitude but nautical miles for distance, then they use knots (nautical miles per hour) for horizontal velocity, but for vertical velocity they use feet per minute.