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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

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 mesi fa)

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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


@Kapteeni Hardo Toots
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

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 ⚡⚡

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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

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

Anthropy
Anthropy
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@xerge @venite there was a thread here somewhere about kwh/day and how recursive we could get with that
@Serge 🔻 @Annatifa
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 🔻 @Annatifa
in reply to John Carlos Baez

Annatifa
Annatifa
• •
@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 Annatifa

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 🔻 @Annatifa
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 @Annatifa
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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