Can pop science writers, documentarians, and science show makers PLEASE stop using "the bomb at Hiroshima" as a unit of measure? It's just unsettling and, at worst, sounds like the worst kind of jingoism (if the show is US-made), at best it sounds insensitive and dismissive.

Use an Mt. St. Helen or Tunguska, or "tons of TNT" -- just anything else please...

The worst is when it's treated like a plural noun. "200 Hiroshimas!" If could never hear that again it would be awesome.

@futurebird And even atomic tests are not good examples. Done on Indigenous land, Pacific Islands, and Asian countries without their permission, or with coerced consent
@futurebird
Good luck convincing Americans not to measure things in weird ways to compensate for a deeply unintuitive measurement system >_<
@futurebird I guess what they want to say with that is β€œ200 times as big as something that could destroy a city” but in that case they could just say that
@futurebird Hailstones the size of...hailstones
@futurebird I think one reason people may use this "measure" is that they think it gives people a better handle on magnitude than those others do. That is almost certainly an illusion. However, it IS true that those others really don't do the job either.
@futurebird I've thought the same. I watch a lot of documentaries and always found that a problematic unit of measure.