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I propose replacing calories with watt-hours.

- Almost same value (1 kilocalorie / Calorie is ~1.1 watt-hours)
- more intuitive for people who use electricity
- never the confusion between calories (science), Calories (food, which is technically kilocalories), kilocalories, and 'kilo Calories' (which is technically megacalories)
- you get to feel more like a robot with your 2.5kwh power consumption a day which may feel like validation to some creatures on this fediverse
- become powered by cake

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in reply to Anthropy

Turpakosketus etsii soittajia
Turpakosketus etsii soittajia
• •

or, if you want more accuracy, just use joules, as 1 joule = 1 watt-second.

joules are regularly marked in food packaging at least in the eu

in reply to Turpakosketus etsii soittajia

Anthropy
Anthropy
• •

@Stoori mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/115…

Anthropy

2025-08-19 18:57:56


to the people posting "but joules!": mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/115…

As much as you're right, it's also less intuitive in daily life. Knowing an egg or slice of bread is about 80-90Wh means I can go 'omg a big laptop battery worth power', 324kJoules is very arbitrary there if you don't use it much.

This is also a half-joking post, like, I'm not going to argue to replace anything currently used in science because as far as I can tell most sane scientists use the correct SI units for research papers


@Turpakosketus etsii soittajia
in reply to Anthropy

Turpakosketus etsii soittajia
Turpakosketus etsii soittajia
• •
of course depends on what's intuitive and what's not. if you've seen joules in food packages your whole life, there's nothing particularly unintuitive in them in comparison to calories.
in reply to Anthropy

Anthropy
Anthropy
• •

A Snickers is about 570Wh, which is like eating a very sizable ebike battery's entire charge in one go.

A Big Mac slightly tops that with about 650Wh. A slice of pizza is about half that with 340Wh.

Meanwhile, fruits like apples/bananas are in the ~100-130 watt-hour oversized twice laptop battery ballpark, and a cup of greek yogurt is about the same, so a big cup of fruit-filled yogurt is still less calories than a big mac or snickers!

A full english breakfast can be over 1kWh! Quickcharge ⚡⚡

reshared this

in reply to Anthropy

Anthropy
Anthropy
• •

to the people posting "but joules!": mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/115…

As much as you're right, it's also less intuitive in daily life. Knowing an egg or slice of bread is about 80-90Wh means I can go 'omg a big laptop battery worth power', 324kJoules is very arbitrary there if you don't use it much.

This is also a half-joking post, like, I'm not going to argue to replace anything currently used in science because as far as I can tell most sane scientists use the correct SI units for research papers

Anthropy

2025-08-19 17:23:25


@cinebox maybe, but I unironically can relate more to an egg or slice of bread being about a large laptop battery worth energy (90wh), than whatever '78kcal' is :laughcry:

in reply to Anthropy

Andrew
Andrew
• •
only if we start rating batteries in calories
in reply to Andrew

Anthropy
Anthropy
• •
@cinebox maybe, but I unironically can relate more to an egg or slice of bread being about a large laptop battery worth energy (90wh), than whatever '78kcal' is :laughcry:
@Andrew
in reply to Anthropy

Serge
Serge
• •
@venite so many cursed units in one post. A trigger warning would have been nice.
@Anna
in reply to Serge

Anthropy
Anthropy
• •
@xerge @venite there was a thread here somewhere about kwh/day and how recursive we could get with that
@Serge @Anna
in reply to Anthropy

John Carlos Baez
John Carlos Baez
• •
@xerge @venite - I like this post but I hate measuring energy in units of 3600 joules... it's like the revenge of the Babylonians... and then, yes, people talk about gigawatt-hours per year. 😒
@Serge @Anna
in reply to John Carlos Baez

Anna
Anna
• •
@johncarlosbaez @xerge I’ve been feeling a bit fractious. Might be remedied by going around the neighbourhood putting up stickers saying THE BABYLONIANS WERE RIGHT.
@Serge @John Carlos Baez
in reply to Anna

John Carlos Baez
John Carlos Baez
• •
@venite @xerge - as long as one *knows* one is being pro-Babylonian I don't mind. Base 60 is better in some ways than base 10.
@Serge @Anna
in reply to John Carlos Baez

Anthropy
Anthropy
• •

@johncarlosbaez @venite @xerge yea exactly, as mentioned in mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/115… I'd say generally speaking scientists are perfectly capable of picking the appropriate meaningful SI units for their papers and daily usages.

Watt-hours is just practical when you want to visualize how long an electrical device would run on a certain amount of energy, even if that of course is very different energy than burning fuel/food. The fact it's almost the same as calories makes it easy to draw analogies✨

Anthropy

2025-08-19 18:57:56


to the people posting "but joules!": mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/115…

As much as you're right, it's also less intuitive in daily life. Knowing an egg or slice of bread is about 80-90Wh means I can go 'omg a big laptop battery worth power', 324kJoules is very arbitrary there if you don't use it much.

This is also a half-joking post, like, I'm not going to argue to replace anything currently used in science because as far as I can tell most sane scientists use the correct SI units for research papers


@Serge @John Carlos Baez @Anna
in reply to Anthropy

John Carlos Baez
John Carlos Baez
• •
- yes, being a scientist I'm perfectly capable of choosing the units I want, and thus have spent a lot of time converting publicly available power data in gigawatt-hours / year into SI units. It's tiresome, so it's nice to have a chance to complain about it, but it's no big deal in the grand scheme of things.
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