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For anyone who cares, the author in question is Carol Berg. I'd just read an excerpt from one of her novels after Zhe told me that he borrowed a book of hers from the library. The following conversation ensued.


me
: there was far too much exposition in it though, and i really hate it when authors come up with arbitrary units of measurement to make hteir world feel more foreign

17:38 Zhe:
i would prefer if authors used metric units of measurement
 Zhe: like
17:39 he wielded a huge sword of 95 cm
 me: actually i lie, the excerpt i read before was also in first person
  lol i don't mind imperial that much
17:40 at least we're somewhat familiar with both imperial and metric
 Zhe: that's true
 me: whereas i don't have any idea what a quant is and it just makes one more thing you need to explain to me before i can start appreciating the parts of the story that i care about
17:41 Zhe: u sure it's not a real unit of measurement?
 me: considering that she defined it immediately afterwards, almost certainly not
  apparently its the length of a knucklebone
  or somesuch
 Zhe: to make it extra difficult, they should use a logrithmic unit if measurement for lengths and weights
17:42 me: or obsolete ones like links and chains..
  haha
 Zhe: or to the power of some irrational number
  like e
 me: his sword was 3 times the golden ratio phi in units
17:43 or the new way they like to measure metric, in terms of vibration of caesium atoms or whatnot
  or the amount of time it takes light to travel X distance
 Zhe: or in terms of mythical creatures that they themselves invented
17:44 like "it would have taken a gobberwookie three seconds of the fourth moon's lunar time to travel it's breadth
 me: heh i think you're onto something
17:45 i had to wait thrice the fourth moons orbit before meeting her
17:48 Zhe: i had to wait thrice the eclipse of the third and seventh moon, whereby the third moon has an orbital frequency 1/pi of the second second moon, and the seventh moon had an orbital frequency of 1/e of the fourth moon, and the second and fourth moon eclipses when the jabberwokkie migrates across the great plains of elih
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