What the fuck is "half a pickup truck" for a measure
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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Americans will use anything other than the metric system.
As an american, I am 100% onboard on switching entirely to measuring things in terms of pickup trucks.
- Preheat oven to 1 pickup truck
- Bake for 1 pickup truck
Since most automobiles are water-cooled, the pickup truck temp is probably about 110 f / 43 c, so you'd want to preheat to 3 1/2 pickup trucks.
Similarly, since the mean life of trucks is probably 20 years, we'd measure casual time in a subdivisions of 175,320 hours / 10,519,200 minutes. One picotruck would be 1/10th of a minute, so you want to bake for 300 pico-trucks
We will of course maintain this system once trucks become 50-year lived semi-autonomous drones that never get over 35 c, because the one constant in defining units is that rejiggijng definitions is preferred to technical precison.
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F-350°F for F-150 minutes.
I think this could be an untapped cookbook market. Make it look like a shop manual and I’m in.
This is what it's like for Europeans to follow American recipes!
1 cup of any liquid... no problem, that's 240ml.
1 cup of raisins... who fucking knows.
This pickup truck can accelerate to thirty thousand pickup trucks per hour, and fuel efficiency is one quarter quarter quarter toy pickup truck per pickup truck.
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This is a Canadian publication.
EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Narwhal
The Narwhal is a Canadian investigative online magazine that focuses on environmental issues.[1][2]
Unfortunately, a lot of Americanisms have infected Canada due to our historically extremely close trade and cultural relationship with them. Measurement ignorance is one example. Some Americanisms actually become arguably worse in Canada, because we are effectively rudderless, pulled in all different directions by both our own laws and customs and American laws and customs at the same time, resulting in an even less well-defined choice of units. Another example is dates. The US uses mm/dd/yy which is already stupid on its own, but Canada uses BOTH mm/dd/yy and dd/mm/yy seemingly without rhyme or reason, which results in complete ambiguity of many dates, or trying to figure out based on context, looking for other dates that might use a day number >12 to identify which one actually is the day vs the month.
It's awful. I am happy we are distancing ourselves from the US right now, but I'm not sure it will ever be enough to totally escape their shadow.
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Two of them is roughly the size of a pickup truck...
Like, it's volume, they could say X gallons, but it would be hard for people to visualize. So people use an example most readers would be familiar with.
Have you honestly never wondered why journalists use random things? Or has no one taken the time to answer before?
It's been common literally for centuries before either of us were born, but most likely all of human existence. Just with animals like buffalo instead of pickup trucks.
I think the issue is half of a regular truck or a 'Murica' truck. I got loaned one of the latter last I had some work done on my regular vehicle, it wouldn't fit in the garage and I had to actually use the steps/handles to get in. As a 6 foot plus person that's kinda abnormal.
And which 'Murica pickup truck? 
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About 0.000000281 Saarländer
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falling from the the sky and burning is a good thing, bigger concern is them staying up there for too long
falling from the the sky and burning is a good thing
Jury is still out on this one.
“We’re really changing the composition of the stratosphere into a state that we’ve never seen before,” said John Dykema, an applied physicist at SEAS, who warns that scientists today poorly understand many of the impacts.
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falling from the sky onto things is a problem tho
communication satellites are low earth orbit to reduce latency, that means +25000 km/h velocity to sustain orbit, and would also have a very shallow entry angle, that combination means total vaporization
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As was always the plan for these satellites.
The article raises a vague concern about Kessler syndrome. This is exactly why these satellites are designed to deorbit once their useful lifespan is finished. I don't see what the point of this article is at all.
They probably burn up also
Yeah, they actually design them with reentry in mind to maximize the burn-up and ensure no pieces hit the ground. I recall they had a bit of difficulty when they first introduced laser data links to the design because the lenses the satellites used were large pieces of glass that would make it to the ground on reentry, they had to redesign them to fragment more easily.
Then read the article. They found debris from starlink satellites on the ground, which is horrifying if you consider they want to increase the number of satellites by a factor of 100x and make them much bigger to build datacenters in space.
That plan would lead to one re-entry every three minutes, depositing insane amounts of plastics and metals in the atmosphere even if they would burn up completely.
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How awesome would it be for Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, Dana White, and Elon Musk himself to get smashed by a Musk satellite during a photo op in the octagon at the White House UFC fight.
If that happened, you could not convince me that we aren’t all extras in Idiocracy 2.
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I love how this is simultaneously a great and horrible photoshop. Like the splice is obvious in the foreground but I can't see it in the background at all. Like I have no idea how this was done.
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I don't understand what kind of capitalist pig you need to be to allow private companies access to low orbit.
just some random capitalist here
It's impossible to regulate space. Even if your government put restrictions on putting things in orbit, the company could just launch under the flag of somewhere else. Blanket banning of commercial space programs would require a universal treaty or would lead to an act of war. Im not saying the US shouldn't try and do something about space trash, but it's not as simple as "just ban corporations from space"
There is like 10 launch site in the world. The fuck we can't regulate that ?!
We simply don't want to.
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Watch out, It's the trickle down economics ^tm^
Once again, Americans will use anything except the metric system to measure things.
I yearn for the day Kessler Syndrome finally locks us on this rock with the billionaires that have ruined this planet for personal gains.
Their hastily built escape rockets coming face to face with chunks of debris travelling at orbital velocity, would truly be poetic justice.
Heralding the beginning of an actual civilised society, one without the people that spend their lives manipulating world governments and public opinion through lobbying and mass media.
The syndrome is kind of already in effect it's just in very early cycles. It was a few months ago the ISS made emergency maneuvers to avoid debris and a few weeks ago some telecom satellite lost comms and they assume from debris. Won't be long as more debris multiplies that it becomes unmanageable and untraceable so bad that your scenario starts happening.
Although realistically with the strides we've made in orbital liftoff weights they'll probably start armoring shit.
Depending on trajectory, space debris in orbit can hit you with up to 10x the velocity of an armor-piercing sabot round (which is just a metal dart). So even tanks on earth aren't armored nearly enough to survive space debris.
Given that they left the shuttle booster unpainted to save on weight, I doubt we'll be able to launch anything with armour that can stop anything but the smallest shards from doing damage, we also already amrour everything to protect against the constant bombardment of space debris, where even a spec of dust can create a 2mm hole
https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/Hypervelocity_impacts_and_protecting_spacecraft
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