While I agree with your sentiment, this one is a bad example.
I grew up with the metric system, as did the vast majority of the world. I have an intuition for "meter", "kilograms", "seconds", and so on.
I need to convert to cumbersome stuff like "miles", "inches" or "pounds" only when reading articles written by, you know, inhabitants of that strange, large country over there.
IBTD. This is mostly an educational issue. Here in Germany the metric system was introduced in 1872 [1], and compared to other European countries we were already late to the party. That's plenty of time for transition. The last generation who didn't work with the metric system is dead for a very, very long time.
[1] The history is actually more complicated, but let's not get into that.
The metric system has been taught in US schools for decades. Still no one uses it, because no one else uses it. Breaking out of network effect traps requires coordination only a government can provide.
> A furlong is the distance one can sprint before running out of breath
That doesn't seem very logical at all, that's entirely subjective. I'm fairly certain a top sprinter would easily be able to sprint much further than my (admittedly) unfit self before running out of breath.
One, furlong actually comes from "furrow length" which how long an ox could plow before tiring.
The point isn't that the measurement is precise, the point is that it's useful. The unit has an intuitive and tangible meaning in the real world that let's people ballpark. This doesn't mean we should start doing precision work in furlongs but demanding that everyone switch away from measures that are still useful is silly. As long as the measurements are standardized using metric units who cares that you have a funny name for 201.168m?
Which is why nobody really uses furlongs anymore but there are plenty of other units that are still in use. One example I think we're all familiar is the 'Rack Unit' for servers (i.e 1U, 2U) where 1U is 44.45mm. I don't think there would be any additional clarity gained by saying, "I bought a few 88.9mm servers".
But that's a context specific unit, not intended for general use.
Metric is great for general use simply because of it's multipliers:
(...) 1G = 1,000M = 1,000,000K = 1,000,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000m (...)
And also the simple way many units are related as well, like 1L of water having 1kg of mass (yes, with a certain temperature, pressure, yada yada yada)
I think the best situation is when you use sensible units for general situations, and when the funny units remain domain-specific.
Another example of a funny name is two-by-four, which - for some typically American reason - is understood not to actually be two inches by four inches...
While I agree with your sentiment, this one is a bad example.
I grew up with the metric system, as did the vast majority of the world. I have an intuition for "meter", "kilograms", "seconds", and so on.
I need to convert to cumbersome stuff like "miles", "inches" or "pounds" only when reading articles written by, you know, inhabitants of that strange, large country over there.