Citation Needed - Weird Measurements

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

An unusual unit of measurement is a unit of measurement that does not form part of a coherent system of measurement, especially because its exact quantity may not be well known or because it may be an inconvenient multiple or fraction of a base unit. Many of the unusual units of measurements listed here are colloquial measurements, units devised to compare a measurement to common and familiar objects.

Oh, hi, it's Zach Peter, your new favorite pop culture guru serving you the hottest tea three times a week from the latest news on the Real Housewives, deep dives into celebrity legal scandals, unfiltered combos with your favorite stars, and of course the latest from Vanderpumpland, I've got you covered, and new episodes of the podcast are now available in video on Spotify, and they don't just let anybody do video, but this platinum blonde has won them over. So if you want the latest news from the ultimate T-spilling professional,

tune in to No Filter with Zach Peter. That's No Filter with Zach Peter on your favorite podcast app now. I don't know what that means, dude, just get here. Hey, see, so where is everybody? No, thank goodness. So Eli texted everyone early this week that in honor of your essay about weird measurements,

we should all use them to get here. Oh, that's actually pretty fun, right? Like, so they can't, they're using nautical miles and stuff to get here. No, I wish. That's how her Tom was gonna be here in a New York second and Eli was a micro light year away. Oh, what about Heath?

He's on vacation till a farmer's work is done. That's what he said. Right. Got it. So we just hang out here and wait for him. I guess so. Okay, yeah, no worries. I mean, I know Eli's made a joke before that you and I have nothing to talk about, but that's not true.

Of course not. Because we do. Yeah, obviously. Jesus. Yeah. So, how is, uh, the season literally doing? Uh, going good. I made Dora Watt a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, wow. What is that? Oh, Watt a couple of weeks ago. Oh wow. What is that? Oh, it's a spicy Ethiopian stew. Yeah. I couldn't eat that. It's good. No, I'm sure it is. I should have my stomach wouldn't.

Sure. Sure. And Kat's good? Yep. Kat's are good. Yours? Yeah, they're good. good. Yep. Kat's are good, yours. Yep. Yeah, they're good. Good, yep.

Yep. You know, it's probably not very far. I'm going to check the parking lot and see if they're there. Yeah, I'm going to go look on the roof and then throw myself off it. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcasts where you choose to subject read a single article about a Wikipedia and pretend were experts because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Cecil, but I can't measure up.

It's only my fellow co-hosts, a half pint, two fifths, and a barrel, Noah, Tom, and Eli. Oh, okay, it's all the convenient drug-specific measurements. You go with a half pint. I'm taller than the other two guys. You just introduced Jesus Christ. That's true. It makes sense.

You always be a half-fight to me now. Oh. I'll see so two fifths is about how much I'm gonna need to drink to get through this topic. Are we sure there aren't any more new Coke we can talk about? Oh, the new Pepsi's there's a bunch of new Pepsi's. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right, well, that's right.

That's right. You didn't. That's right. That's right. You didn't. That's right. And Cecil, you didn't say barrel of laughs, but I heard of laughs. So thank you, Patrons. No, this week we were so hungry and he threw the short straw. He was delicious with a pork wine sauce. And if you'd like to prevent further diminishment of our crew, you can become a patron on a per episode basis. If you like the other head, join their strengths, be sure to stick around till the end of the show.

And with that all the way, tell us Eli, what person-place thing concept phenomenon or event will we be talking about today? We'll be talking about weird measurements. Okay, well, since it's no while, I'll fire up the buzz kilometer. Kilometer? Kilometer.

Nice. Anyway, why are we talking about weird measurements? Because we're Americans, damn it. And that is our whole thing, see? So we're the fucking measurements. Look, at this point, that the tabloid sources have obviously gotten a hold of the Americans will use anything but the metric system meme.

And they know that their, you know, meteor passes nearby stories are going to get way more widely shared if they define them as the size of 23 million avocados and a pregnant lemur or whatever. So, but, but, but the meme came from a very genuine place. Before we even double down, Americans were already measuring astronomical bodies and fractional giraffes and pug hundreds and shit. And look at this obvious flood our national character. You're left with two options One is to admit that ours is the dumbest of all the countries. Yeah Or you can embrace this as an endearing quirk of our culture

This essay is my attempt to do the ladder. That's fair and height and height. Okay. But when I try to do it with racism, Cecil cuts all my jokes. I don't understand what Patrick here, everybody. Or my personal favorite measurement, the good enough once you're emotionally invested. Oh, there you go.

We all benefit from it. Like Americans. I should start out by pointing out that from an anthropological perspective, systems of measurement are actually a pretty modern thing. It's just that they're so innate in our lives now, it's easy to imagine that the earliest humans had to have some form of them, but in truth, you don't really need systems of measurements in a hunter-gatherer type of lifestyle, right? Seriously,, getting a lot of modern hunter gather societies, they don't even have words

for all the different numbers. Most of the time, one, two, and many are all you need to get by. It's not until you start relying pretty heavily on agriculture and you start having to like predict crop yields based on land usage that you really have to measure things to a degree more precise than tall or far, right?

And it isn't until statewide societies emerge and start instituting taxes that those measurements needed to be standardized to any degree. Plus, it makes exchanging body counts with a partner way less embarrassing, right? Right. Just a degree where it many.

I don't know. No, I think how far away are the lions is a question that definitely benefits from some specific. you know, this, well, just, you know, near can do the trick. I feel like not many enough. Yeah. Right. Now, I find this whole history fascinating.

And I'd love to talk more about how systems of measurement develop in the first place, but he doesn't hear. And he's the one I normally climb if Tom gets really mad, which makes sense because he is one he Paul and I'm only one Tom tall. So you're safe. Exactly. That's the math. So that's as much as I'm going to say on that subject, besides the first weird system of measurement that I want to talk about is the one that we currently use in the US when we're not measuring our cows and bicycles and our alligators in Ariana Grande's. And you don't have to segue too far out of the stone age to start talking about.

I always get the Ariana venti with my name wrong on the side. That's what I have. So of course this non-sensical scheme is known as the imperial system and it's about as justifiable and well suited to modern needs as all the other aspects of imperialism. It's also often called British Imperial or X-Checker standards, mostly by Americans eager to blame it on somebody else. And as hard as it is to believe looking at things now, it was originally implemented to simplify measurements.

But despite our eagerness to forego credit, the modern system does come from US trade as much as British, specifically the British Empire needed a standardized system that could be accepted in both British and American ports. And while it grew out of a system that dated back to the late 16th century, the system that we know today only took its modern form in the British Empire in 1826, that's important because that's more than 30 years

after the metric system was. What? Sorry, their measuring stuff in tens and hundreds. No, I'm going to fix this with 12s and 5,280s. Thank you. Yeah. It looks sometimes the best systems are the most complex. Just weeds out the riff raft. Yep.

And I will see myself out. Cool. That's it. So, okay. So let's start with Link. For our international listeners and Eli, I'll remind everybody that there are 12 inches in a foot and 5,280 feet in a mile. I'd be insulted, but I literally had to read ahead to write my last true video. But those are the length units that we generally use day to day. But they're nested in this delightful sea of insanity that we normally try not to talk about. See, the smallest unit of length in the imperial system is the twip.

That's now called an act. Noah. Okay. Basically. Yeah. No, it's not. No, it's, so a twip is one 17,280th of a foot. Shut up.

No, it is. It's just under 18 micro meters. A mill or a thow is 1,000th of an inch. That's 1.44t. A barley corn is a third of an inch. A hand is four inches. You get three of those together. You've got a foot. At three feet a hand is four inches. You get three of those together. You've got a foot at three feet. You have a yard, a chain is 22 yards. A furlong is 10 chains and

a mile is eight furlugs. Also a league is three miles. A hand is four inches. Man, Donald Trump is older than I thought. That influence goes back. No, obviously this is batshit insanity. I should be here that nobody ever sat out here and said like, all right, but yeah, but then what are we going to call 22 of the yards then or anything like that? Right? So most of these were efforts to take existing measurements that were independently developed and crammed them onto the same line.

The inch was originally about the breadth of the average man's thumb. The mile derived from a Roman measurement of around a thousand paces. Measurements like hand and foot, kind of betray their sources right up front in the name. But like, until the standardization, a mile was understood to be about 5,000 feet. And that makes way more sense than 5,280. It's just that 5,280 was the closest you could get to that 5,000 and still make an even number of fur longs. But sometimes the existing systems were basically irreconcilable or more often the people using them were unwilling to reconcile.

So we also have shit like, you know, completely separate maritime measurements where a phantom is 2.0266666 repeating yards. A cable is a hundred bathrooms rather than an onical mile is 10 cables. And in case this wasn't insane enough, there are also links which are 66, 100ths of a foot and rods which are 25 links. 25 links is also a bearish pregame in Italian sausage. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe if you're not inviting friends. Okay. Right. You're right. Per person. No, yeah, right. No, you're trying to make sure that you have a heart attack before you have to watch and play.

Um, that because I knew they were bad too. So yeah, but so things get even dumber when we start talking about volume. And this is at least partially because we have separate measurements for liquid and dry storage sometimes, but sometimes it's just elective. So like liquidly speaking, the smallest measurement of volume is a gill, which is the equivalent of a quarter pint of dry storage. Half pint is the same liquid or dry as is a pint and a quart, but a gallon of liquid could be a half pack of dry storage, but it could also be a gallon. But above that, they split.

Liquid goes on to be counted in gallons and eventually barrels or whatever, but eight gallons liquid is a bushel in dry volume and eight of those is a quarter. Why is this happening? Not a quarter of anything mind you, just a quarter. So, two bushels is whether we're ready to deal with it or not, a quarter, quarter. Are you guys following this? I think no one might be having a stroke. I mean, that's what's happening.

Eli, if he's not, I'm calling dibs. So, here again, some folks refuse to adjust their system. And in this case, it was apothecaries. Getting precise measurements out of apothecaries really fucking matters. They were allowed to keep their volume measurements, which included one minimum, which is one 96th hundredth of a pint, and a fluid scruple, which I fucking love, that's 20 minutes, and then there's a fluid dram, which was three scruples. Are they also at a pint, eight of which made a gallon,

except theirs were ever so slightly different than the standard gallons? Yeah, they spoke in a French accent. Exactly, right, yeah. By comparison, our units of mass are simple. Only by that comparison, if you compare them to anything other than our other measurement systems, they're fucking ridiculous.

We started at one grain, which is a little under 65 milligrams or 1 7000th of a pound, then you've got a drain, which is completely irreconcilable. It's 27.34375 grains. Sure, no fucking idea. The more familiar ounce of 16 grams, the pound is 16 ounces, the stone is 14 pounds, as you can fuck yourself. Then you have a quarter, not that quarter, a different quarter, which is 28 pounds,

and that is one quarter of a hundred weight, which is 112 pounds. What? As you can go fuck yourself 112 pounds. Okay, yeah. And then of course, we have the ton, than 12 pounds. What? Because you can go fuck yourself 112 pounds. Okay. Yeah. And then of course, we have the ton, the silliest of all our measurements in my opinion, the ton which is 2,240 pounds, a measurement so stupid, not even Americans will use it.

So we use what's called a short ton or 2,000 pounds, neither of which is to be confused with a ton with an E or a metric ton, which is 2,204.62 pounds. The stolen probably started out as 10 pounds, but people, the people in charge kept raising it so they could keep the same weight on their license. Like, I'm in all my heart. Sure. Yeah.

That makes sense. Short ton is my favorite because it's so clearly someone who messed up the math and had to be like, it didn't come out to be 2000. Well, I guess if you want like, it didn't come out to be 2000. Well, I guess if you want 2000, it would be a short pun. All right, sure, sure, sure. We haven't established the shit ton versus the metric shit. So you're the fuck ton. All of which are more than I care about any of these numbers.

I'll have to do a sequel. I say I agree. Tom, I should also mention the only remotely defensible imperial unit here though I'm sure I'm going to stoke the iron of many of European just by suggesting it's such a thing as a defensible imperial unit could exist. But when it comes to measuring temperature, I would argue that the average freezing and boiling points of water at sea level are at least as arbitrary as a question, as 32 and 212 are as answers to those questions, right? So like the fact is that most of the time when the average person's talking about temperature,

they're talking about air temperature. They're talking about how hot or cold it is outside. And the Fahrenheit scale where zero is super fucking cold and 100 is super fucking hot is a pretty good intuitive system as far as that. Yeah, I like that they're wrong about one too. It keeps them humble like Brexit. Yeah, exactly.

Of course, that being said, Celsius has plenty of advantages. Not the least of which is that all the metric units are connected so you can actually plug Celsius into equations. A hell of a lot easier. It's also more useful for pretty much everything other than describing the outside temperature. And to be honest, I'd be willing to switch based on how much easier it is to spell alone. Still, it's the only imperial unit that isn't obviously inferior in every possible way, so I thought it was worth at least mentioning.

Well, if we don't count any of the shitty measurements, we're winning. So let's back in our victory while we take a short break. 5,278? 5,279? 5,280. Again, you have to be kidding me. I don't know what to tell you, Remus. This is the third time. Oh, is it? Romulus? Yeah, I hadn't noticed that we'd done this three fucking times already, because it flew by, because the time just flew by. If you want a count, I'll step! No! No! I will not do this a fourth fucking time! I will lick the sponge at the communal toilet before I do this again!

Fine, fine, fine. Jesus, there has to be something wrong here. Who did the original steps? I don't know, I think it was Heathicus. Heath of kiss? That dude is so tall. No wonder it came up so much shorter with us. He is pretty tall.

And so I said to her, hey, I think going to the vomitorium with your sister is a bad idea. Ooh, how did that go? Not well. Tomacus, Elias, did you guys finish your imperial measurements? Mm-hmm, Yep. All done What how?

Let me see those Guys these these are all just nonsense Nothing out there measurements. They they make no sense. They don't divide evenly the names are weird We're gonna be the laughing stock of the fucking world here. Don't, don't sweat it. There's no way anyone is gonna notice if we did this wrong. How is it even remotely possible? Because I've seen what the calendar guys are doing. They named the 10th month October. Seriously? Seriously? Okay, no, I do, I do feel a little better.

Thanks. What we left off, Noah was the first person in 340 episodes to talk about the actual topic in the first half of the show, which is one of 340th of a good podcast or a citation needed. What other weird measurements he got for us now. All right, so now that I've filled plenty of the essay with admissions that Americans have no business calling anybody else's systems of measurement weird, I'm going to call other people's systems of measurement weird. I'm going to call other people's systems of measurement weird. So there are a couple of different ways that a measurement can be weird, right?

It can make weird comparisons, it can measure weird things, or it can be derived in weird ways. No, it's just bitter because he, no, it's just bitter since he introduced the butthole to tip method of dick measuring. He has so much more tape to work with. It's not fair. He does. All right. So once so much more tape to work with. It's not fair. He does. All right. So once again, let's start with length. OK.

Or maybe we're funny and attentive and have other good qualities, Noah. We don't have. Absolutely. All right. So there are a lot of measurements that are derived from certain people's heights. This is usually to make fun of shortmen.

So I'm going to leave those out, except I want to mention the smoot, which is five feet seven inches or the height of Oliver R. Smooth in 1958. No kidding. Yeah. So the story is that when he was pledging for his fraternity at MIT, he was physically used as a ruler to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge, which turned out to be 364.4 smooths long.

Sure. Okay, bend about in half for the last one. which turned out to be 364.4 smutes long. Okay, bend about in half for the lab. Right, right. Somebody get these guys a six pack. Yes. Now, apparently for a lot of reasons, this measure is so beloved by computer nerds that it is an option on Google Earth and Google calculator. You can directly translate the smutes.

And it's so beloved by the people of Cambridge that when the walkway was rebuilt, the sections of the sidewalk were divided into smooths instead of the standard six foot. Correct. The opposite of that is when five foot seven people say they're six foot and that's called a tender. There are also a bunch of great measurements for very small lengths. The German Muggles Segel doesn't have an exact measurements that I know of, but the fact that it translates to Housefly's scrotum gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of length we're talking about. I couldn't actually definitively track down the origin, but the same basic concept is

covered by the term Natscock or in Australia, Bees Dick. And also, as in, like, just move that a Natscock to the left, that can apparently be further subdivided into the even smaller Natscock hair, while there is no officially recognized conversion here. As near as I can tell with a quick Google, a Natscock is about 0.6 millimeters long. I don't think they have pubes though, so that was just fucking nonsense.

That's a story. Okay, I got to be honest. If there was any nation, I was going to trust to have standardized a house fly scrotum, it would be the Germans. So consider me disappointed, no illusions, disappointed. Now, so my favorite of the infinitesimal measurements, though, is the reverse end of the lightyear spectrum. While that one measures the distance that light travels in a year for very, very short distances, you can use the beard second to find is the average length of beard grows in one second. Now, in Eli and Cecil's case, that's equivalent to like an inch and a half or whatever, but according to Google or the Google calculator, it's equivalent to five nanometers.

My body is like a Play-Doh Fun Factory for hair, man. That's true. I hugged him at Tom's wedding, and when I pulled away, he looked like Cousinette. It was so sweet. No, you didn't do that to him, man. Yeah. Like a party popper.

A couple more length measurements worth noting. The first is the Mickey, which is a measure of quality for a computer mouse. A Mickey is the smallest, resolvable unit of distance that your mouse can pick up. Right, so like the typical mouse is like 500 Mickey's the smallest, resolvable unit of distance that your mouse can pick up. Right, so like the typical mouse is like 500 Mickey's an inch, but you can get damn precise ones that go all the way up to 16,000 Mickey's an inch,

which seems like the kind of weird ass brag that would convince Eli to spend $14,000 on the Apple mouse or whatever. Okay, where's the ball? It's called the iMouse, no, and you can hardly notice the battery pack you have to wear while you're using it. It's very, where's the ball? It's called the eye mouse. No, and you can hardly notice the battery pack you have to wear while you're using it. It's very, it's a backpack, it's very compact. So, as a Douglas Adams fan talking to a lot

of Douglas Adams fans, I also have to mention the Chevy, which is the equivalent to seven eighths of a mile or 1.4 kilometers, and is defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque. That measurement comes from Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's book, The Meaning of Liff, a book where they created new meanings for meaningless British place names. And as silly as all the examples I'm giving here are, I should note that a measurement being weird doesn't mean it isn't practical.

Like for example, marine biologists often refer to lengths and whiffles to find us the size of a standard whiffle ball and that's a 3.5 inch spear. And the reason they use that is because you can just pop one down on or near coroller whatever you take a photo and you can accurately measure shit against it because it's a spear, it's on the directional and because whiffle balls are perforated, they aren't crushed by water pressure. So they maintain their size at pretty much any depth. They're also dirt fucking cheap and the best alternative

is a laser measurement that's very expensive, prone to break, and less accurate. The next titan subguy, busily cutting whiffles into the side of his submersible. If he doesn't, the sea will. That's... That's... That's... And the first guy actually tried to take a banana down for scale, If he doesn't the sea will.

And the first guy actually tried to take a banana down for scale, but the sea monkeys kept eating them. It was up until now. We haven't talked about measurements of time. And if Tom was off, I could probably do a whole assay on the weird ass 60 based or sex or gisimals system that we inherited for the Babylonians for basic time units. Not what you're here. I promise. And I wouldn't come back. But setting that aside there are definitely a few weird time units that deserve a spot in this episode. Like, for example, the freedman, a period of

about six months, which got its name after the billionth time that columnists and bush war enthusiast Thomas Friedman said that the picture in Iraq would be cleared about six months. Yeah, great measurement mission to come. Exactly. There is also, of course, the familiar New York second, which is officially defined as the space between the light turning green and the New Yorker behind you honking at you to go. Now, this has been called the shortest measurable length of time.

Uh, but in my experience, that's a bunch of fucking bullshit. The lights, Ben Green, you just didn't notice until I honked you were playing fucking Sudoku on your phone like Eli. And you need to be impolitely reminded of fucking go. In New York, second is actually how someone with taste ranks pizza too. I, you know what? I prefer destroyed style too, see? So I'm also being fed of the

scaramucci or the mooch as a unit of time measure. It's either 10 or 11 days, depending on who you ask. This is what, of course, got its name from the tenure of Trump Whitehouse Communications Director, Anthony Scaremucci, who spent his first day on the job calling a reporter and bitching about all the people in the White House calling reporters and bitching. I look still the absolute best communications director we have ever had. It was like listening to a mobsters bratty kid yelling at the neighbors. I'm not a lot of weird units that are crafted by dialing back astronomical measures or combining huge and microscopic units to create useful ones.

Like for example, a micro-century, 1 1,000th of a century or 52 minutes, 35.7 seconds. Apparently legendary mathematician John Van Neumann coined that term to denote the longest acceptable length for a lecture. In computing, apparently this has been further reduced to the nano century, which is a billionth of a century or 3.156 seconds. Yeah, we're a TikTok. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And while it doesn't come with a specific time, I also wanted to mention the unit, the O-No second, which Wikipedia defines as quote, the second after one makes a terrible mistake such as deleting the wrong file or sending a text message to a wrong person, where the person in question can do nothing, but say, oh no, end quote. Yeah, over at Puzzle on a Thunderstorm, we call that the Noah got to the listener

feedback before Tim did second. We do, we do go like that. And shifting away from time units and back to useful ones, I also wanna mention my favorite measure of radioactivity, I don't know where I do go with that. And shifting away from time units and back to useful ones, I also want to mention my favorite measure of radioactivity, which is the banana equivalent dose, or the amount of radiation one gets from eating one banana.

Now this is a real measurement, but given the way that people tend to like, react to any hint of radioactivity with panic, I think it's an important one to emphasize just how little exposure we're talking about when we're talking about low risk radiation. That being said, the moment somebody starts talking in like, kill a bananas or whatever I will withdraw my support for this unit. Oh, man, I really wish that was the standard for radio activity so that internoble, they

had to be like 84 million bananas with a straight face, you know, and really tell it. Yeah, I actually, Eli, I would watch the hell out of a 10s 80s nuclear scare movie with those units. Sir, we're approaching the red zone. Roger that. Sanders, give me a reading. We're an 84 million bananas, sir, and climbing. That's too many bananas, sir.

You've got to get out of there and let the russkeys win Not gonna happen private. I'll take them. I'll take all the bananas. I'll take every last banana Damn commies can throw at me, and I'll take some Sir sir He's gone Brave crazy bastard. He was always bananas Can I do a sketch I was in I do a sketch I'm in I don't want to I can do it for you

Couple more fun ones here. You have the Miller Blatt as a measure of odor. And Stephen Levy's influential book Hacker, he described computer pioneer and hacker Godfather Richard Greenblatt as being less than consistent in his habits of personal hygiene, so much so that his co-workers point the term Blatt as a measure of insufferable body odor. Although, they generally spoke in Miller Blatt as an entire Blatt was a measure of insufferable body odor. Although they generally spoke in Mila Blatt's, as an entire Blatt was so powerful as to be in Levy's words, quote, just about inconceivable end quote. There's four Blatt's in a larp, Noah.

I'll have you. Yeah. Ah. In space exploration, there's a similar measure for nausea called the Garn. It's named after astronaut Jake Garn, who spent so much of his astronaut time vomiting that they all but named vomiting after him,

which is an awesome legacy. He was also a Republican Senator from Utah for a long time. So I feel like there were plenty of reasons to name your measure of vomit after that, right? He's just like, oh, I'm sorry. Am I vomiting too much during the G force testing? Susan, why don't you strap into the machine you nerd? No, you want to do some more math? Okay. One small step for man. One hurled lunch for mankind.

I'm also a big fan of a unit created by Swedish video game magazine Sega force back in 1994. This was a measure of irritation expressed in G K B or Graham's Nacka broad. Apparently this meant equivalent to X grams of bread crumbs per square centimeter of the bed you just laid down. Interesting. Yeah. So like the notoriously buggy Sega game T2 the movie had an irritation level of 8.6 GKB And while I'm not a big fan of objectifying beauty, I feel like I should at least mention the Helen here

This one is of course named after Helen of Troy whose legendary beauty is described in the Iliad is the face that launched a thousand ships Uh, thus a millahellen would be a face beautiful enough to launch one ship. Right? Now, this can also be extended to the negative end of the spectrum where a negative Millahellen would be a face with the power to beach one ship. Not to be confused with the Brittany, which is a face beautiful enough to get you a conservator ship. There are actually three different measurements that I'm aware of for coolness. There's the mega Fonzie, which was invented by Professor Farron's Worth in an episode of Future Rama, and of course refers to the amount of coolness, one million times greater than the inherent coolness of Fonzie from Happy Days. Very

high. There's also the Wheaton. That's a measure of online influence compared to Wil Wheaton's Twitter followers, although that seems antiquated now even by American standards. My favorite though is the Warhol, which is derived from Warhol's famous dictum that everyone is going to get their 15 minutes of fame. So like a kilowatt warhol would be 15,000 minutes of fame or like a 10 day wonder kind of person. And then like a mega warhol would be 15 million minutes of fame like 30 years of where the career there. One second, I'm Googling how long my Skittles post date viral. I want to see what I get here. Oh, and related. No, what's the unit for how long Eli can

cry in a single Jack? That's it. You know, we've also got the unit that governs Eli's life. This is the micro mort. That's fantastic. You know, we've also got the unit that governs Eli's life. This is the micro mort. That's a measure of how dangerous shit is, right? So mort here refers to mortality. So a micro mort is one in a million chance of dying, right? So like your baseline, at least as an American, is 22 micro mortes just for waking up in the morning.

There is a 22 in a million chance that any American will die on any given day. It's obviously entire if you're in Chicago, but but then you add like 0.7 micromorch if you go skiing that day or five micromorch if you go scuba diving. You add a micromor every time you travel 230 miles by car, a thousand miles by airplane, or six fucking miles on a motor. Jesus. Or one block in a car with Eli driving?

Yeah, exactly right. You could be idea. I just wish my micro mort counter wouldn't go up every time I take a bite during dinner. That feels targeted. And one of the more familiar ones that I just can't leave out of this discussion because it's so fucking dumb. And this is the scoval scale, which measures the heat of chili peppers. This unit was developed by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoval and was derived by basically

eating a pepper and then writing down how much he regretted it. Right? Like, seriously, it's called the scoval organileptic test or whatever to make it sound scientific, but other than ask a bunch of people and average out their answers, there's no objectivity to this test at all, which makes it a really fucking weird thing that it's the generally accepted measurement for pepper-pungency, even when actual scientific measures of things like, tapsace in content exist

and would objectively tell you the same fucking thing. Yeah, it's the Electoral College of Spiciness, if you will. Right, right, right, exactly. Righty Light, you know a system is objectively bad when suddenly Pennsylvania matters. But I saved my favorite for last. Entomologist Justin O. Schmidt used a similar approach to Scoville and wanted a system of measurement named after him

way too bad for it to be healthy. So he invented the Schmidt sting pain index, which is a classification of the pain level from various insect stings. And yes, he derived these measures subjectively. As in, he just let shit sting him and then he went, wow, fuck that hurts. I get a 3.6. Jesus. No. Yeah. So this scale ranges from a type one, which includes stuff like the average B or fire

ant, all the way up to type four. Okay. Everybody just be a pervert. Okay. Yeah. Right. A paper just be a pervert who likes that. Eli, maybe he just wants some of that sweet PhD.

That's it. So now when she first published this work, only the bullet ant was Eli, maybe he just wants some of that sweet PhD. So now when Schmidt first publishes work, only the bullet ant was classified as type four. Schmidt described their sting as quote, pure intense brilliant pain, like walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch nail embedded in your heel and quote, he's a, he has a measurement of how long the nail would be, right? Like, definitely at two. Anyway, um, over the years, he spent revising it. He added three more offenders to that type four list, including the tarantula hawk, which

is a type of wasp, despite the name and the warrior wasp. He described the last one, sting as quote, torture. You are chained in the flow of an active volcano, adding the question on everyone's mind, quote, why did I start this list? For reasons that I don't think I need to explain, the warrior wasp would be the last sting that was added to his scale. For his work, Schmidt was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize. If you had to sum up, as you learned in one sentence,

what would it be? Sometimes just being forgotten is fine, Justin. Jesus, sometimes we all just go, man. Ready for the quiz? That I am. All right, no, or sorry. Let's see if I measure up. That's much better.

All right, there you go. All right, Noah, it's obvious by virtue of doing this episode that we all deserve our own unit of measurement, which of the following should be put into use first? A, the illusions or how dependent your company is on the survival of one member. P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P See the curry a measurement of dehydration while on a road bike or D the N-right a measurement of how many weeks a host can miss a podcast until they're technically a special guest. All right, well, I'll go I will go with the

the guy who's not here to defend himself the answer is D the N-right. That is correct. All right, no, you left out an important unit of measure for our American political system. What one was it? $130,000 or one stormy night. Be 150 feet away from an elementary school or a gates. See, A finger, which is how long Lauren Bobert spends in the theater. All right, well, can't be D because I think it was more than A. I think that's a good answer. I think it is secret answer E answers A through C. Correct. You are correct.

All right, finally, Noah, Measuring stuff is hard work. Hey, just give me a minute. Ha ha. Me, maybe if you stop looking. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. See, when are you measuring it wrong? D, I'm also a really good cook. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I think the answer is E, it's a good size and that does, that's all that matters.

That's true. Thank you. All right, no, you're the winner. You must have a good idea for you to do that. All right, well, so based on our new fund, camaraderie, I think that the next week's essay is should be Tom. All right. Well, for Tom, Noah and Eli, I'm Cecil next week's SES should be Tom. Or you can like to get in touch with us and check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com.

And so he says to me, don't worry about it, we'll fix the days with a leap year. The fuck is a leap year? Well that's what I said, Tomicus. Man, some people do not have their head in the game. Ha, okay, Mr. Short pun you are it's the math is We don't have calculators