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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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And Brits aren’t “too poor” to afford air conditioning, it just hasn’t been hot enough for more than 10-15 years in the summer to warrant it.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't just a non-American thing, either. I grew up in the South, where air conditioning is a precondition of living a tolerable life, and you would have to be desperately poor not to have central air. When I later moved to a college town in the Upper Midwest, it took me a while to figure out that window mounted air conditioning units wasn't a sign of dire poverty where I had moved to; rather, the summers were mild enough that people often would only want air conditioning for a few weeks every year, and if they lived in older, well-built houses, the pain and cost of upgrading to central air wasn't mostly worth the trouble for them, and a few window mounted units were fine. This was all counterbalanced by the much more drastic (and expensive in time and attention) measures they would have to take to mitigate absolutely brutal winters, of course.

Central air conditioning is a rarety in India, and I haven't seen any but the very upper class opt for it in their homes. We usually just air-condition the rooms we spend the most time with and grit through the rest.

Of course, in actually cold areas, you don’t need to take punitive special measures to keep the houses warm, since all housing is constructed to keep the warmth in as a matter of course.

in actually cold areas

Here's Finland compared to Wisconsin (where I lived): https://www.crownscience.org/places/finland/wisconsin-us

And Finland compared to Minnesota: https://www.crownscience.org/places/finland/minnesota-us

And Finland compared to North Dakota: https://www.crownscience.org/places/finland/north-dakota-us

In general, the Upper Midwest is physically far from any large bodies of water (i.e. oceans) that would moderate its temperature, and the plains up north through Canada don't have any significant mountains to dampen artic winds. It's a legitimately cold part of the world, at least for how populated it is (Minneapolis metro area is something like 3.7 million people).

There's a reason that historically Wisconsin and Minnesota had a disproportionate amount of early immigration from Sweden and Norway.

OK, I stand corrected.

How did you not know that the midwest is next to... Canada.

Because it's still to the south of Canada. Finland is on the same latitude as Alaska, and even knowing the Gulf Stream warming effect etc., my automatic assumption for all of the 48 states (and Hawaii, of course) is that they're automatically warmer than Finland.

I always used to think the Mid West had to be the geographical center of America. I mean, that's what the name most suggests to me, before I first checked a map.

Large parts of the upper Midwest get actually brutally cold in the winter- the dakotas in particular.

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