[ordu]

It is a thing of 220m diameter and 260m tall.

It is just sad, that nytimes is happy to convert meters into feets, football fields and Empire State Buildings, but doesn't want to show metric numbers in a footnote, so I wouldn't need to find a converter to make sense of those numbers.

[dghlsakjg]

The NYT is an American newspaper serving an audience that is mostly American. Hence the American cultural comparisons and measurements.

Should English language newspapers from countries that aren’t America have footnotes in feet so that Americans - a plurality of native English speakers - don’t have to do some basic math?

Probably just easier to remember that 3.3 ft. is a meter. Plenty of Americans do it everyday when they read articles that reference the metric system...

[ordu]

> Should English language newspapers from countries that aren’t America have footnotes in feet so that Americans - a plurality of native English speakers - don’t have to do some basic math?

Yes, I believe. They should. Why to force a lot of people to do math, when it is could be done in a jiffy on a server side? Isn't there a javascript library, which makes such footnotes all by itself? If not then why not to write one?

In French newspapers it is probably doesn't worth it, because the total majority of readers are familiar with the metric system. But English readers are divided on two camps, one is more familiar with the metric system, other with the imperial one. What on Earth prevent English writers from satisfying both camps?

> Probably just easier to remember that 3.3 ft. is a meter.

Yes, I mostly divide by three to convert. But it gives a conversion error in a second digit.

> Plenty of Americans do it everyday when they read articles that reference the metric system...

Do they enjoy it? Or may be they would be happy to have all references to the metric system converted?

It seems for me (as an onlooker from outside) that it is an ongoing war between imperial and metric systems, and each writer belongs to one of camps, and will do anything to win or at least to make life uncomfortable to an opposing camp. It seems stupid also.

[earleybird]

My first order estimate is multiply by 3 and add 10%

[ordu]

When converting meters into feet one needs to multiply. I have no troubles with meters, but feet are nonsense for me. So I need to do a reverse conversion. I just divide by 3, and if it was not enough, then I would ask duckduckgo: it have a nice converter now.

[kevinventullo]

I don’t know, the diagram of the turbine next to the Empire State Building made it much easier for me to picture standing near it. Awe-inspiring bordering on a kind of primal fear.