Units like these seem exotic or fantastical to us now, artefacts of a time when the world thrummed with variety and there were truly authentic ways to be. But these sorts of ad hoc estimations have never gone away. Still today we gauge distance through contextual measures of time and activity. We explain to a friend that the next pub is just a five-minute bike ride away, or that the beach is just an hour’s drive. We improvise new units, too, estimating our walk to work in podcasts, or telling ourselves that a flight is only three movies long. Such measurements are useful because they transfer
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