I’m actually Canadian. I like that joke because I think a lot of units are useful for calculations but completely unintuitive. If I had instead said it was 9.3 megapascals and left it at that it wouldn’t have given most readers an intuition for how much pressure that really is. The pressure inside a steam engine boiler comparison, while not perfect, gives a bit better frame of reference because people have some intuition for how powerful steam engines are.
Oh and I like the unit ‘bar’ because it’s the customary unit for espresso machine pressure (and I’m an espresso nerd with my own machine at home). Espresso machines make espresso by forcing hot water through a puck of finely ground coffee at a pressure between 8 and 12 bar. If you’ve ever worked with an espresso machine, you’ll have an intuitive sense for how much pressure that is (a lot). Venus having 10 times that pressure is also impressive.
I like measurements that are immediate and visual. Your comparison to boiler pressure was a perfect example of that (I also immediately imagined the boiler blowing up :) )
Oh and I like the unit ‘bar’ because it’s the customary unit for espresso machine pressure (and I’m an espresso nerd with my own machine at home). Espresso machines make espresso by forcing hot water through a puck of finely ground coffee at a pressure between 8 and 12 bar. If you’ve ever worked with an espresso machine, you’ll have an intuitive sense for how much pressure that is (a lot). Venus having 10 times that pressure is also impressive.