[gilgoomesh]

No, the nautical mile is hated by proponents of the metric system. As with all customary units, it favors a specific use-case at the cost of errors and conversions, has limited accuracy and doesn't handle orders of magnitude.

[athenot]

Yes. This is the most annoying side-effect: industry-specific systems of measuring.

As I'm typing this, I'm looking at the power extension cord for my computer, which has a thickness 1.10 Micro Nautical Mile, ie. AWG 12, ie. 2.05mm…

[throw0101a]

> As with all customary units, it favors a specific use-case at the cost of errors and conversions, has limited accuracy and doesn't handle orders of magnitude.

The nautical mile was not 'customary', but based on mathematical properties. Specifically, it was defined as one arc-minute (1/60 of degree) of latitude. Degrees of latitude are measure from the centre of the Earth and not the surface.

This is no more arbitrary than how the metre was defined:

> The metre was originally defined as 1⁄10,000,000 of the meridian arc from the North pole to the equator passing through Dunkirk.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautical_mile

It is now been translated in relation to the metric system as 1852m.

[scooble]

What conversions do you typically do to/from NM? As far as I'm aware, it is only used for navigation, where all related info, such as speed, position etc. relate directly to it.