And now you know everything you need about the reasoning behind traditional units! 
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The Masons obviously.
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Also, the step length of a seraph is different than that of an archangel. I can never remember which one is shorter, though.
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Just whatever you do don’t ask how many can dance on the head of a pin
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Who am I, Isaac Newton?
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… a manuscript, an eighteenth-century handwritten British household cookbook … Among recipes … was one for [a powder meant to treat epileptic fits], which included serving sizes: “as much as will lie upon a shilling,” for an adult; “as much as will lie upon a sixpence,” for a child.
From The New Yorker
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In the forty-eight years that she’s lived in the West Village, the owner of the iconic cookbook shop has never ordered delivery.
Is that some sort of achievement? I have never ordered delivery in my life either (except as part of bigger groups where the group ordered a pizza). And she’s in her 70s. I bet most of her age group haven’t.
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Having lived in NYC, I can tell you:
- Kitchens in most apartments are small, even to the point of being virtually nonexistent;
- There are almost always at least a half-dozen restaurants within sight of the front door, and many dozens within 3-4 blocks of the building;
- Delivery is (or at least used to be) free;
- Actual grocery stores are not much larger than bodegas and thus have limited available ingredients, especially for ‘ethnic’ food options.
End result: it is usually cheaper and more varied to order delivery rather that go to multiple stores to buy ingredients and then try to cook them in a tiny kitchen.
So yes, someone living for 48 years in the West Village who has never ordered delivery really is a unicorn.
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Best part wasn’t even the VW-Bus sized piece of space junk. It was the “it’ll burn up…we hope” at the end!
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reminds me of the bumper sticker on my old vw bus:
This, Too, Shall Pass
just not on any kind of incline! that would definitely burn up!
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Lots of weird comparisons in this thread, but not so often they actually bring back ancient Greek units of measurement.
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