Yeah, as a Brit in the USA, I've pointed out on a couple of times to friends/colleagues that literally everywhere in the UK is north of literally everywhere in the contiguous 48 states - Alaska is a cheat-code!
This usually comes up when the conversation turns to why no-one in Europe (mainly the UK, since they know I'm a Brit) has air-conditioning... That's right; we don't have it because it's bloody cold there, a lot of the time. In fact our Summers are only temperate because of the Gulf Stream (Atlantic Conveyor, if you prefer). If that "turns off", the UK (and a fair amount of Europe) is in dire straits.
I wouldn't say that the reason people in the UK haven't got air conditioning is because it's "bloody cold". Rather, it's because it's simply never bloody hot. I would even argue that the UK in general is less cold than most of the US, for example the North East and Midwest.
However, I would go even further. The reason why no-one in Europe (for a loose definition of "no-one") has air conditioning is not so much the climate, but more heavily influenced by historical, cultural, and architectural reasons.
I'll bet that most current American homes were built after air conditioning was invented, their usual construction materials mean they are rarely well insulated, and single family homes are generally fully exposed to the Sun.
Compare that for instance with Spain, which one may assume would be hot enough to need air conditioning, with a climate comparable to that of California.
Some homes do have it of course, but it is never assumed by default. Firstly, most of the population lives in flats, which mean their homes are less exposed to the Sun (except attics), and construction materials are generally sturdier and better insulators by default. Secondly, old homes in villages have been there long before air conditioning was a glint in the ice cream man's eye, and thus have been designed over time to be better protected from the heat. Modern houses, even if they may be designed to accomodate potential air conditioning, are still more or less influenced by these ideas to an extent.
On the cultural aspect, as air conditioning has never been a given, people have learnt to adapt their lifestyles and expectations to living with the heat, and don't instinctively feel the need to have air conditioning blasting all the time. Of course people do like it and appreciate it when available, but it simply doesn't have the cultural expectation that it has in the US.
> I wouldn't say that the reason people in the UK haven't got air conditioning is because it's "bloody cold". Rather, it's because it's simply never bloody hot.
That used to be the case, but it went over 40°C this summer and four out of the top five hottest days on record happened in the last three years. A lot of the people I know in the UK wished their had air con this year.
This has been the hottest UK summer since 1976; but there have only been about three days on which I wished I had aircon. The rest of the time I didn't even bother with a fan.
Yes, I did consider adding a parenthetical disclaimer regarding this year's heatwave. In any case, I would say that the fact that as you say many people in the UK wished they had air conditioning makes in the exception that proves the rule.
Those temperatures that the UK suffered are within the range reached in areas of Spain during many summers, and yet they don't make people desperate for air conditioning as the Brits became. That's due to the factors I mentioned previously: the architecture is better suited for heat, people are better experienced at handling it, and cultural and social features have evolved for dealing with it (public & private swimming pools, open air terraces, more evening and night life, escaping the city in August, etc.). I do insist though, I'm not trying to say Spaniards don't want or enjoy air conditioning, they just aren't desperate for it.
> That's right; we don't have it because it's bloody cold there, a lot of the time. In fact our Summers are only temperate because of the Gulf Stream
I don't know where you've landed in the United States, but the notion that Europe is "bloody cold a lot of the time" suggests you don't actually know much about either cold, or continental interior temperatures. There isn't a single month of the year in which the average Low temperature is below freezing in most of Western Europe, outside of the Nordic countries. Contrast that to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the average daytime High temperature is below freezing for a quarter of the year. You have to go way East into the continental interior - Moscow or further - to find temperatures that are comparably cold.
The interior cities in North America that are at comparable latitudes to Europe - Winnipeg, and Edmonton, e.g., - now there you get some actual "bloody cold." The air at -40C (or F) has a special quality to it.
Europe does indeed have generally milder summers, due to its maritime exposure and the Gulf Stream, but also due to it's more Northern latitude, but "bloody cold" it is not.
I lived in Ochils in Scotland up by Stirling way, and we had 2 larders. One full of tins for when we were snowed in, and one for normal use. We used the snowed-in one most years.
It's hard to say it wasn't bloody cold when the snow is 8' up the walls and you can't get out the door.
I wouldn't say Scotland's climate is representative. European countries can have vastly different local weather conditions and just because there's so much rain in the north western part (Great Britain, Netherlands, ...) it's mostly because of their more oceanic climate, which isn't comparable to e.g. central europe (Germany, Austria, ...).
I won't argue with your experience at that location, but even in Scotland, for most of the population there is no month when the average low temperature is below freezing. Edinburgh, e.g., is barely colder in January than Memphis Tennessee, in the US.
To the point about air conditioning, however, Summer is a whole different matter. Memphis in July is easily 15C, and maybe more, warmer than Edinburgh.
What you say is likely to be true now, but only because of the huge climate warming that has occurred during the last 50 years, which seems to be more obvious in Europe than in other places.
When I was a child in Europe, around the 45 degrees latitude, there was permanent snow cover during 3 to 4 months of each year, and in almost all days the temperature at noon was below freezing. Sometimes there was a week or two with day temperatures down to minus 20 Celsius degrees, or even less.
In the same place now, the winters are mostly without any snow. Even when it happens to snow, one or two days per winter, it melts the next day, because the day temperature is above freezing.
Nevertheless, this is a very recent phenomenon, and not how the climate was until the last century.
I flew Houston>Bogota>New York, and my head nearly exploded when I realized the the flights are basically the same distance..which is when I had spend some time with map and realize how far east South America is
A significant number of my US friends and colleagues were surprised about how far apart things in Asia were. They were quite surprised to learn that Singapore is about as far from Tokyo as London is from New York; for example.
Till I visited Dakar in Senegal, I did not realize that it lies further West than UK and Ireland. Wordle[0] has been a great game to set right some of these notions.
I find it kind of funny that the article says that Europe is "Not really a physical continent, but rather a cultural geographic construct" and then immediately goes on to demonstrate this by showing a map of Europe that includes Ukraine but excludes Russia - a choice that I think is likely to have been influenced by politics, since I am much more used to seeing Europe defined as extending east to the Ural mountains and there is no geographic reason to draw the border of Europe along the Ukraine-Russia border.
> showing a map of Europe that includes Ukraine but excludes Russia - a choice that I think is likely to have been influenced by politics, since I am much more used to seeing Europe defined as extending east to the Ural mountains and there is no geographic reason to draw the border of Europe along the Ukraine-Russia border.
The politics might be milder than you're thinking; some people find it awkward for a country to be partly in one continent and partly in another. Russia obviously can't be included in a map of Europe - only the European part of Russia would make sense. (As, indeed, you advocate.) If you're making your map by including countries, as opposed to regions, you'll have no choice but to leave Russia out.
A similar issue of confusing continental boundaries, political boundaries, and ethnic boundaries can be seen in the various claims that e.g. Cleopatra was black. The logic goes that Africa is populated by blacks, Egypt is in Africa, and Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt. (You see the same thing about various Berbers who were active in the Roman Empire.) It never bothers these people that the words "Africa" and "Africa" in those three correct claims do not mean the same thing, or that Cleopatra was not an Egyptian. She was notable in her day for being the first (and last) member of her dynasty who was able to speak the Egyptian language.
There are complexities there too; she was an offshoot of the Ptolemaic dynasty established by one of Alexander the Great's generals. One of the diplomatic triumphs of Philip II (Alexander's father) was getting the rest of Greece to allow Macedon to participate in the "panhellenic" ["all Greece"] Olympic games. So roughly 400 years before Cleopatra's time, the more southern Greeks would have turned up their noses at her claim to be Greek. (Though in that case, the Macedonian language was quite obviously a variety of Greek, whereas the Greek and Egyptian languages were completely unrelated.)
Strikes me that it's only in the last decade or so that everyone reckons Ukraine is in Europe. Eastern Europe used to be that region between the West German border and the border of the Soviet Union. I've never considered Russia to be part of Europe.
So Brazil and Argentina would be in Europe, by that "Christianity" measure. Maybe Albania would be in the Middle East. And most of what used to be Byzantium is now Turkey, which isn't Christian.
>On the phone it's exhausting to scroll for every sentence.
I'm on my phone, too. I think the graphics were intended for a desktop.
My approach: I savor what is in front of me. The author's humor. The appearance of color or dotted lines. This is informational - but it is also art. I appreciate the art.
very odd, indeed. I know its awkward to draw part of a country only, but the west part of russia belongs in europe - culturally. source: lived there a few months
Another common geographic mental misplacement is the degree to which the east coast of the United States runs northeast/southwest. The closest US state to Africa is Maine.
Same with the Californian coast, but going northwest/southeast. A reliable way to blow most Californians' minds is to point out that Reno, Nevada is further west than Los Angeles.
British people often miss how far to the west most of Scotland is. Edinburgh is in line with Cardiff, for example. Also, if you're not from "The North" of England, it can be pretty surprising how much further north England actually extends: going from London, Sheffield marks only a half-way point to the top of England.
I'm european and I've always been surprised at how far east Vienna is compared to where I imagine it to be. I mentioned this to many people and quite a few very surprised that Vienna is considerably further east than Prague (if you go straight down from Vienna you'll reach Zagreb)
People routinely place Vienna to the south of Munich, when in reality it is almost exactly due east.
I think this is because the generally somewhat valid heuristic - Austria lies to the south of Germany - does not apply to the special case of these two well known cities in Germany and Austria.
I jokingly refer to people from Vienna as Slavs who happen to speak German.
As an Eastern European myself Vienna is one of the few “Western” cities where I still feel relatively at home/familiar with, was one of the few cities to which I thought about emigrating when that was still on the menu for me. Their tram network is one of the best in Europe, I can’t see myself living in a city without a decent tram network.
It's more intuitive when you remember that Austria-Hungary was an empire spanning much of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and that Vienna was more central to it than it is today to Austria, but I make that mistake of placing it to much in the West regularly too.
More historical cue is that the western parts of modern-day Austria, most notably Salzburg and Tyrol, were not part of the historical (arch) duchy of Austria. With that in mind the location of Vienna is bit easier to picture.
A fun fact I came across recently is that the northernmost tip of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to southernmost tip of Brazil. Incredibly counterintuitive,
> The story is based on an excerpt from a publication by Burton Nelson, Robert Aron, and Mark Francek of Central Michigan University: Clarification of Selected Misconceptions in Physical Geography.
This scrollytelling tool looks really nice, but pricing send to be hidden behind a contact us form. Does anyone have any suggestions for some alternatives? Ideally open source, but reasonably cheap SaaS alternatives are good too.
Somewhat related: a direct flight from, say, Stockholm to Seattle is shorter than from Stockholm to Miami, a fact belied by most 2D projections that lie both about relative distances and what "straight lines" in fact look like.
In Singapore a lot of people think Switzerland and Sweden are the same country, like US and America are synonyms.
In part it's because Europe is simply too far away, but another reason is that the names sound similar when pronounced with Chinese patterns of speech: Swiss-len and Swidd-en.
For Africa one thing that enforces the mental misplacement is Sahara desert; it looks like it should sit on the equator, being neat east-west aligned zone spanning the continent. But in reality it's few thousand kms north of equator.
> While Africa does straddle the equator, many are surprised to learn how far north it extends.
> This northiness is apparent when seen in the context of the Equator.
I like the presentation, but this bit feels somewhat misleading. The northernmost tip of Africa is almost the same distance from the equator as the southernmost tip.
I thought equator was the middle between the North Pole and the South Pole. But Earth is tilted 2x degree towards the Sun. If we measure the closet point towards the Sun and Draw a line ( Is there a name for this already ? ) then the weather makes a little more sense between Europe and US? ( Other than the Gulf Stream )
i.e Shouldn't we measure it from the perspective of the Sun rather than the North and South Pole?
Wouldn't the equator then move relative to the surface of the Earth over the course of a year as the Earth circles the Sun? That would make it much less useful as a reference for maps or other things which rely on a static reference.
Also, how would it make more sense from a weather perspective?
Why would it move any more than all the other tiny astronomically irregularities we commonly ignore outside of detailed science and annual corrections?
I think it might have been a misinterpretation on my part - I took the original comment to mean the equator would be at the latitude corresponding to the closest point to the sun, which doesn't really make sense now that I look back at it. My apologies for the mistake.
It's really hard to find that axis. Finding magnetic north (a good approximation for rotational north) requires a piece of magnetic metal dangling from a piece of string. A tiny piece of each suffices. Finding orbital (revolutionary) north requires some sort of astronomical measuring equipment like a sundial, and waiting for the earth to move enough so you can compute extrapolations to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
That subsolar point moves as the earth rotates (of course) but also as the earth revolves around the sun - in January the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun; in July it’s the northern hemisphere (this is why seasons happen and why they’re opposed in the northern and southern hemispheres).
The point itself is not marked on maps because it’s constantly moving, but the northernmost and southernmost limits are - that’s what the tropics are.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadThis usually comes up when the conversation turns to why no-one in Europe (mainly the UK, since they know I'm a Brit) has air-conditioning... That's right; we don't have it because it's bloody cold there, a lot of the time. In fact our Summers are only temperate because of the Gulf Stream (Atlantic Conveyor, if you prefer). If that "turns off", the UK (and a fair amount of Europe) is in dire straits.
However, I would go even further. The reason why no-one in Europe (for a loose definition of "no-one") has air conditioning is not so much the climate, but more heavily influenced by historical, cultural, and architectural reasons.
I'll bet that most current American homes were built after air conditioning was invented, their usual construction materials mean they are rarely well insulated, and single family homes are generally fully exposed to the Sun.
Compare that for instance with Spain, which one may assume would be hot enough to need air conditioning, with a climate comparable to that of California.
Some homes do have it of course, but it is never assumed by default. Firstly, most of the population lives in flats, which mean their homes are less exposed to the Sun (except attics), and construction materials are generally sturdier and better insulators by default. Secondly, old homes in villages have been there long before air conditioning was a glint in the ice cream man's eye, and thus have been designed over time to be better protected from the heat. Modern houses, even if they may be designed to accomodate potential air conditioning, are still more or less influenced by these ideas to an extent.
On the cultural aspect, as air conditioning has never been a given, people have learnt to adapt their lifestyles and expectations to living with the heat, and don't instinctively feel the need to have air conditioning blasting all the time. Of course people do like it and appreciate it when available, but it simply doesn't have the cultural expectation that it has in the US.
That used to be the case, but it went over 40°C this summer and four out of the top five hottest days on record happened in the last three years. A lot of the people I know in the UK wished their had air con this year.
Those temperatures that the UK suffered are within the range reached in areas of Spain during many summers, and yet they don't make people desperate for air conditioning as the Brits became. That's due to the factors I mentioned previously: the architecture is better suited for heat, people are better experienced at handling it, and cultural and social features have evolved for dealing with it (public & private swimming pools, open air terraces, more evening and night life, escaping the city in August, etc.). I do insist though, I'm not trying to say Spaniards don't want or enjoy air conditioning, they just aren't desperate for it.
I don't know where you've landed in the United States, but the notion that Europe is "bloody cold a lot of the time" suggests you don't actually know much about either cold, or continental interior temperatures. There isn't a single month of the year in which the average Low temperature is below freezing in most of Western Europe, outside of the Nordic countries. Contrast that to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the average daytime High temperature is below freezing for a quarter of the year. You have to go way East into the continental interior - Moscow or further - to find temperatures that are comparably cold.
The interior cities in North America that are at comparable latitudes to Europe - Winnipeg, and Edmonton, e.g., - now there you get some actual "bloody cold." The air at -40C (or F) has a special quality to it.
Europe does indeed have generally milder summers, due to its maritime exposure and the Gulf Stream, but also due to it's more Northern latitude, but "bloody cold" it is not.
It's hard to say it wasn't bloody cold when the snow is 8' up the walls and you can't get out the door.
To the point about air conditioning, however, Summer is a whole different matter. Memphis in July is easily 15C, and maybe more, warmer than Edinburgh.
When I was a child in Europe, around the 45 degrees latitude, there was permanent snow cover during 3 to 4 months of each year, and in almost all days the temperature at noon was below freezing. Sometimes there was a week or two with day temperatures down to minus 20 Celsius degrees, or even less.
In the same place now, the winters are mostly without any snow. Even when it happens to snow, one or two days per winter, it melts the next day, because the day temperature is above freezing.
Nevertheless, this is a very recent phenomenon, and not how the climate was until the last century.
Would be a decent jeopardy clue
Buffalo is East of Miami
Cheyenne is South of Cleveland
DC is North of San Francisco
Atlanta is West of Detroit
[0] https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/
The politics might be milder than you're thinking; some people find it awkward for a country to be partly in one continent and partly in another. Russia obviously can't be included in a map of Europe - only the European part of Russia would make sense. (As, indeed, you advocate.) If you're making your map by including countries, as opposed to regions, you'll have no choice but to leave Russia out.
A similar issue of confusing continental boundaries, political boundaries, and ethnic boundaries can be seen in the various claims that e.g. Cleopatra was black. The logic goes that Africa is populated by blacks, Egypt is in Africa, and Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt. (You see the same thing about various Berbers who were active in the Roman Empire.) It never bothers these people that the words "Africa" and "Africa" in those three correct claims do not mean the same thing, or that Cleopatra was not an Egyptian. She was notable in her day for being the first (and last) member of her dynasty who was able to speak the Egyptian language.
There are complexities there too; she was an offshoot of the Ptolemaic dynasty established by one of Alexander the Great's generals. One of the diplomatic triumphs of Philip II (Alexander's father) was getting the rest of Greece to allow Macedon to participate in the "panhellenic" ["all Greece"] Olympic games. So roughly 400 years before Cleopatra's time, the more southern Greeks would have turned up their noses at her claim to be Greek. (Though in that case, the Macedonian language was quite obviously a variety of Greek, whereas the Greek and Egyptian languages were completely unrelated.)
As someone who works with lots of Latin American engineers, I can attest that the time zones threw me off at first.
I'm on my phone, too. I think the graphics were intended for a desktop.
My approach: I savor what is in front of me. The author's humor. The appearance of color or dotted lines. This is informational - but it is also art. I appreciate the art.
People think Greenland is BIG whereas it is really small compared to Africa.
Look at https://mortenjonassen.dk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/greenla... from https://mortenjonassen.dk/maps/greenland-vs-africa-size-comp...
Vancouver is in the Eastern half of British Columbia
Point Peelee Ontario is south of parts of Northen California
I think this is because the generally somewhat valid heuristic - Austria lies to the south of Germany - does not apply to the special case of these two well known cities in Germany and Austria.
As an Eastern European myself Vienna is one of the few “Western” cities where I still feel relatively at home/familiar with, was one of the few cities to which I thought about emigrating when that was still on the menu for me. Their tram network is one of the best in Europe, I can’t see myself living in a city without a decent tram network.
A fun fact I came across recently is that the northernmost tip of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to southernmost tip of Brazil. Incredibly counterintuitive,
Yes, almost all pages that hijack scrolling are terrible, but this worked well.
Only just! https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTM5OTEwNjA.NjU1NzU...
Link to that paper: https://people.wou.edu/~girodm/middle/Nelson.pdf
In part it's because Europe is simply too far away, but another reason is that the names sound similar when pronounced with Chinese patterns of speech: Swiss-len and Swidd-en.
> This northiness is apparent when seen in the context of the Equator.
I like the presentation, but this bit feels somewhat misleading. The northernmost tip of Africa is almost the same distance from the equator as the southernmost tip.
(assuming 1 deg of lat ~= 111km, then the difference is just 297km: 3868km to the south and 4160km to the north, based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_points_of_Africa)
I thought equator was the middle between the North Pole and the South Pole. But Earth is tilted 2x degree towards the Sun. If we measure the closet point towards the Sun and Draw a line ( Is there a name for this already ? ) then the weather makes a little more sense between Europe and US? ( Other than the Gulf Stream )
i.e Shouldn't we measure it from the perspective of the Sun rather than the North and South Pole?
Also, how would it make more sense from a weather perspective?
The point itself is not marked on maps because it’s constantly moving, but the northernmost and southernmost limits are - that’s what the tropics are.
All of Sardinia is below Rome.