Almost everything

a Bn size is the mean between An and An-1

The US doesn't "have to do things different" for the sake of doing things differently, as your words imply, nor is the sentence above about who uses what paper fully correct, either*.

The reason that the US (and Canada, most of Central America, Chile, and the Philippines) use different standard sizes* from Europe is probably pretty easy to figure out when you think about things like "there's a big fucking ocean between two of those places, but not between all of the countries in Europe."

The standard size of paper, according to the American Forest and Paper Association, comes from the days of manual paper-making, and their assertion that 44" is about the length of the average experienced vatsman's comfortable grasp. So a sheet is 1/4" that length. The US standardized its own paper according to what legacy equipment it had, and keeps those standards because even today, paper tends to not be shipped back and forth between Europe and the US unless it has to be, because paper and books are really fucking heavy, so why should either one of us change our standards? Doing so would require massive amounts of capital investment, and frankly, we like our paper sizes just fine. It's really not to our detriment at all. We don't really import a lot of paper, and in fact, we export a lot of it.

American paper sizes are also half of each previous size, it's just that our base is a rectangle, not a square, uses imperial measurements, and reaches back to measurements based on manual paper-making. Sure, we could spend billions of dollars changing our standards to meet that of countries that don't supply us with this good, creating a massive amount of industrial and consumer waste as everything from paper manufacturing mills and industrial printing presses to plastic binders and hole punches at schools all become garbage, but... why? We also use different standard sizes of snack food bags, based on how our industries developed, but there's no actual reason for those things to be standardized, so why, exactly, should they be? Because it bothers someone who doesn't use our machines and didn't know until today that it was different? That's not a real reason. That's just "haha the US sucks and is dumb and irrational."

No, it's actually super fucking rational when you remember that most European countries are smaller than US states, and we're standardized across the places where paper actually moves back and forth in massive bulk on a regular basis. You know: our own states, and Canada, and not Europe, on account of this being a huge fucking continent and paper being incredibly heavy and expensive to transport across oceans. That's why it's governed by the American National Standards Institute, which also governs or governed stuff like thread standards for nuts and bolts & exposure standards for film. The latter had the ANSI standard become the ISO standard, which is a great example of technology which was developed more recently and more specialized and thus not so deeply rooted and hard to change being much more possible to standardize.

tl;dr: all industrial standards like paper sizes have valid and long-argued reasons why they're like that, and unless you're coughing up the solution for changing something with hundreds of years of built-up infrastructure without breaking all of the industries that depend on that standard, the cash to do it, and the reason why all the old equipment that can't be converted should become garbage... fuck off, man, and leave us alone. There are real problems in the world, go solve those.

#you could use the same reasons to justify the us still using standard instead of metric #which is stupid and counterproductive as hell #I don't think anyone seriously believes the us just does things their own special way for it's own sake

#however they do double down on doing it their way even when there are other (arguably better) ways

#out of weird american exceptionalism #so I think that people getting frustrated and saying that America just insists on doing things in dumb ways #is a shorthand for all of that

THOSE ARE THE SAME! FUCKING!! REASONS!!! WE DON'T (FULLY, MANDATORILY) USE METRIC

Holy fucking shit. People could literally spend 30 seconds looking this up instead of repeating "bluh bluh bluh America dumb"

The US has actually used a hybrid of metric and Imperial for decades, with changeover occurring where it's both necessary and economically viable, and has not fully switched over because of the prohibitive cost and ingrained habits. Literally trillions of dollars worth of equipment, road signs, documentation, like... I genuinely think y'all don't have any concept of how fucking big this country is, or how much this shit costs to change.

Let's take one single easy thing. Ready? Speed limit signs. How much would it cost just to change the speed limit signs, very very approximately?

Okay. So. To keep ourselves from going fully insane, let's limit this question only to interstates. This is the network of federally-managed roads which, you know, goes from state to state. There are 48,890 miles (sorry! 78,680 km, but I'm still mostly calculating in miles, because it's easier to find numbers this way) of interstate roadway in the US.

There are between 1 and 4 speed limit signs per mile, depending on traffic density. For simplicity, let's say 2 per mile.

It costs about $400 per sign to replace a speed limit sign. This is just speed limit signs. We'll get to other signs in a minute.

So that's $39.11 million dollars just for the speed limit signs. But hold on! You can't even get to replacing exit signs until you replace mile marker signs! Those are approximately every 1/10th to 2/10 of a mile, again on average, bc you don't want someone to have to walk very far to look for a mile marker if they've been in an accident. Let's go with every 2/10 of a mile. It costs $200 to remove a sign and $550 to place a new one, bc you have to get surveyors out to measure them and place them properly.

So let's see, that's 244,450 signs removed... $48.89 million... and then let's say we're placing kilometer markers every half kilometer just to make it nice and even, okay? 157,360 new half-kilometer markers at $550 each. $86.5 million.

So we're already spending about $174.5 million dollars, about $15 million more — on just replacing those two kinds of road signs just on interstates, which are a tiny fraction of the actual number of miles of state or federally-managed roads — than it costs the Federal Housing Authority to oversee the processing of every mortgage in the US for a year, just to pull a random line item out of the 2026 budget. We haven't touched any of the other signs on those or any other roads, let alone literally anything else.

And for what, exactly? Why? Because it fucking bugs people who don't live here? What is the purpose of spending a bunch of fucking money to change our shit up and just confuse people who think in miles?

Also: from a Canadian, fuck you all very much. Stop pissing on the USA because when you do that you also piss on Canada AND Mexico.

« What?? But I thought Canada and Mexico uses metric???? » we trade so much fucking industrial stuff with the USA that we have to use a mix, okay?!

“Spent Juneteenth rereading ads taken out by formerly enslaved ppl looking for their family. Freedom was accompanied by so much grief.” Attached to the tweet are five photos of newspaper ads:

1. “Information wanted of my husband and son. We parted at Richmond, Va., in 1860. My son’s name was Jas. Monroe Holmes; my husband’s name was Frank Holmes. My son was sold in Richmond, Va. I don’t know where they carried him to. My husband was not sold; I left him in Richmond, Va. and I and five children, Henry, Gabriel, Charles, Dortha, and Jacob were sold to a trader who lived in Texas. I am now old, and don’t think that I shall be here long and would like to see them before I die. Any information concerning them will be thankfully received by Eliza Holmes, Flatonia, Fayette Co., Texas.”

2. “Information wanted. I would like to know the where abouts of my mother, who went by the name of Mary Jackson. She was owned by a man whose name was Allen Tyler, who lived three miles east of Brunestown[,] and was sold down south in 1846. The last time I heard of her, she was in New Orleans. Any information will be thankfully received by Matilda Harrison, Jeffersntown [sic], Jefferson Co., Kentucky.”

3. “Information wanted of my people—Jenny Moses, Mela Fields, Selia Fields, James Fields and Felix Fields. The first three are my sisters, the fourth is my brother and the last. ismy step-father. They all belonged to Charles Baren. My sister Jenny and myself were sold to Jack Felder. My sister Jenny was sold again to Buchanan. Any information concerning them or their children will be prayerfully received by me. Minder Latson, Postoffice, Brenham Washington Co., Tex. Rev. J. S. W. McLay.”

4. “Information wanted— Of my mother Rachel Embry. My name was Henrietta Embry when I was taken from home. I left my mother in Baltimore, Md., and came to Texas with Rutineth Baerafe, My name is Henrietta Anderson. Any one who can tell me where my mother is, I will reward them. Address me, care Rev. W. H. Anderson, San Angelo, Green Co., Tex.”

5. “Information wanted—Of my mother Mrs. Louisa Hacket. She was the wife of Lloyd Hacket. They lived in Prince George County, Maryland near Laurel Mills. There were two brothers, George and Greenberry, and sisters Annie, Carol, and Emily Hacket; have not seen them for nearly 44 years. Any information from these people will be gladly received by me. Address Mrs. Fanny Robinson, No. 1227 Bainbridge street, Philidelphia, Pa.”

Clint Smith’s thread continues: “As we commemorate Juneteenth, we should be sure to remember the enormous toll that 250 yrs of enslavement took on millions of families.” (7 comments, 650 retweets, 1,432 likes)

“Even after the Emancipation Proclamation & the end of the Civil War, most enslaved ppl who had been separated never saw their families again.” (42 comments, 913 retweets, 1,870 likes)

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable