Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@social.cleverlibre.org
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
Utter selfishness and untrammelled greed; otherwise known as the 'great American dream'
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Starbucks fired 150 pro-union baristas and closed a dozen unionized shops.
Chipotle shuttered a store in Maine when workers petitioned for a union.
Amazon spent millions to beat back union organizing campaigns at its warehouses.
Common theme: they're terrified of worker power.
Some years back, when I lived in France, after a well-watered dinner with friends, I had a party piece that never failed to have my audience practically crying with laughter.
All I had to do to induce these paroxysms of hysterical laughter was simply explain to them the intricacies of the imperial system of weights and measures.
You have to bear in mind that our dinner guests were invariably of French nationality and had been brought up in France. Obviously complete nonsense like the imperial system of weights and measures is not taught in French schools so they have no knowledge whatsoever of that criminally deranged system!
Compared to the elegantly simple metric system where, for example, 1cc of water equals one 1ml of water and weighs 1g, the imperial system of weights and measures along with the customary system used in the United States is phenomenally complex (the imperial measures used in the UK and the customary US units are not the same in all cases).
I always prefaced my explanation with “Every word I am about say is the truth – I’m not making this up”. They wondered and asked incredulously if I was kidding, at the rationale behind 1 yard = 3 feet, and 1 foot = 12 inches. They were even more astonished when I mentioned that there are 22 yards in a chain and that there are 5½ yards in a rod, perch or pole (the choice of term is yours). There are 40 rods (or perches or poles) to the furlong and 8 furlongs to the mile! By this time, their credulity was stretched to the absolute limit and they often began suggesting that I should see a shrink for what was clearly, to them, psychotic ideation! Having once again sworn I was telling them the truth; most people were moved to remark:
“No country could be so utterly, completely stupid as to use a shit system like that by choice, surely?”
I could but agree!
Then I’d start on the system of volume measurements where they would learn that there are 20 minims to the fluid scruple, 3 fluid scruples to the fluid drachm, 8 fluid drachms to the fluid ounce, 5 fluid ounces to the gill, 4 gills to the pint, 2 pints to the quart and 4 quarts to the gallon. (I know, I know American measures in this case are not the same as UK ones). Moving on to larger quantities. There are 4 gallons to the peck and 4 pecks to the bushel. There are 8 bushels to the quarter and we’ll leave measures of volume there but there is more!
Finally, to weights:
There 16 drams (or drachms) to the ounce, 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone (I don’t care whether Americans use stones – in the UK we do!), 2 stones to the quarter, 4 quarters to the hundredweight and 20 hundredweight to the (long) ton (the US ton is different).
Finally, I would mention that the system of standard weights used in the UK is known as the ‘system avoirdupois” which is old French for and pronounced exactly as “Avoir du poids” or in English “to have weight”. By this time, everyone was laughing so much at the overwhelming stupidity of the Americans and the British, that they were practically wetting themselves!
One of the things I love about Brother laser printers is that they appear to supply them with full toner cartridges from new whereas most laser printer manufacturers supply them with 'starter' toner cartridges that are about 1/3 full, meaning you have lash out on new toner only a few months after buying the damned things, at massive expense! The original black toner supplied with the Brother printer from new lasted 2 years and the colour toners lasted longer still!
Yes, the inability to be satisfied with enough and to reject further acquisition is probably a very severe form of mental illness, but one that society has become distorted enough to laud!
The novelist Joseph Heller (of Catch-22) was once at a party hosted by some zillionaire. A fellow party guest asked him, “Mr. Heller, aren’t you ma...
Holy shit - I think I may be rather an outlier, in that case!
Is this in or out of holy wedlock? 🙄😆😇 --- RT @YouGov Among Britons who have had sex, the median number of sexual partners is 4 This figure is hig...
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Interesting - correlation is not equal to causation BUT this definitely merits further investigation
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
@firehorsemia @QasimRashid @kcarruthers
The practice of medicating women who live in horrific conditions continues to this day.
The FLDS, a fundamentalist Mormon cult, keeps most of its women on tranquilizers to prevent them from objecting when their sons are abandoned out of town & daughters are "married" off to men older than their grandfathers. Human trafficking is pervasive in this cult.
There is no such thing as a purely 'imperial' system
All the countries that use customary measures like the US, also use metric measures. All pharmaceutical doses are metric and most other medicine is likewise conducted in metric units.
Electricity and electronics have pretty much always been metric.
So far as the UK is concerned, professionals tend to use the metric system - the ordinary man in the street is the user of the old units!
Not food - you are obliged by law to price and sell that in metric units in the UK - for milk likewise it may be a UK pint, but the the labelling has to be in millilitres. To me what the US does is utter insanity but thankfully it doesn't really impact me!
One of Britain's largest industries is the construction industry and that is 100% metricated (I would know - it's the industry I used to work in before I retrained as a software engineer).
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
The upward redistribution of wealth over the past 40 years has shifted $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans.
The greatest trick of all is trickle-down economics.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
"Hello," Thomas said. He then paused and his face turned a dirty fiery red. "Wait, you're that prick who tried to fix his party and ended up breaking the UK." And Cuntamity Cameron never worked on the island of sodor ever again.
I was brought up in the UK but I have spent much of my adult life in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
When I was 13 (so in 1963) we were told by our physics master that we would be the last intake of students that would have to study Imperial weights and measures alongside the metric system. In future, he said, only metric units would be included in the course material. Bearing in mind that this was before electronic calculators, it was a real pain in the arse to convert between the two; something we wasted an awful lot of time doing back then!
I no longer have a use for British weights and measures as I have lived in metricated Europe full time since 1999. No one over here would understand a reference to any non-metric quantity and it seems like my brain has abandoned them too. I can no longer relate to my weight or anyone else's other than in kilos. Lengths have to be in centimetres, metres or kilometres for me to be able to visualize them. Fuel consumption has to be expressed in litres/100 Km otherwise it means nothing to me.
However, in all professional contexts (except perhaps estate agents) Britain is completely metricated but for a few minor exceptions. (the use of inch sized galvanised steel barrel with its associated inch thread sizes is one). Oddly enough, even here in Luxembourg where I have lived since 2004, although absolutely everything in life is metric and has been for centuries, they still sell galvanised steel barrel in UK inch sizes with its associated inch sized 'British Standard Pipe' threads!
I have a Brother laser printer and, aside from needing an updated driver when I first bought it, it has performed absolutely faultlessly for the past 4 years!
In manufacturing, the UK has been completely metricated for donkey's years; the construction industry, likewise.
Aside from the use of miles on road signs (judged to be far too expensive to change), the use of MPG for fuel consumption (but not compatible with US MPG as the US gallon is much smaller than the UK gallon), the use of pint measures in pubs (but millilitres for spirit measures) and the continuing use of square feet and acres by estate agents, just about everything in the UK is fully metricated. However, in the personal field, I think most people still talk of their weight in stones and lbs but doctors use Kilos. Likewise with height, the public tend to use ft & inches but medicine uses centimetres.
Talking of metrication - when were you last prescribed a medicine in grains, scruples or fractions of an ounce? Even in prehistoric America, the pharmaceutical industry has been metricated for a very, very long time!
I don't think the News of the World journalist who lived there (or rather whose widow lived there) quite fits your stereotype. He was the (in)famous Norman 'Jock' Rae of the News of the World
I love the stereotyping!
There is a close of mock Tudor, half-timbered houses constructed circa 1930, in my hometown of Eastbourne that fits your stereotype absolutely perfectly.
The two people that I know who lived there were the young divorced wife of the owner of the local car auction and a rather famous crime reporter for the News of the World (or was it the People)
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
