Category: Europe

Heat is to South Florida as air conditioning is to Europe

by philg

Europeans object to being mocked for their lack of air conditioning on the grounds that, pre-Climate Change, there were at most a few weeks per year when they would have wanted to use it. Note that this is partly due to European tolerance for a wider range of indoor temps than we spoiled Americans. They probably wouldn’t turn on A/C until their interiors were 8-10 degrees warmer than what would motivate an American to open up the WiFi thermostat app on his/her/zir/their phone.

Because of American profligacy with fossil fuels, Europe now has brutal heat waves (example from 1911; one that afflicted Paris in 1757) that make their decision to reject A/C appear stupid, but in reality they are the smart/wise ones.

Maybe, however, there is an analogous situation here in the U.S.: should a house in South Florida be equipped with heat? Outdoor temps drop below a comfortable room temperature for only a few weeks per year, analogous to outdoor temps being higher than room temp in Europe for only a few weeks per year. Houses are well insulated in South Florida because they’re almost all new. There is no historical weather that could reduce the indoor temp of a modern South Florida house to a dangerously cold level. Just as Europeans say that they can deal with typical heat by closing shutters, opening windows, jumping in the local canal, etc., a South Floridian without heat during a severe cold weather event could dig through the closet for a sweater and long pants, use an electric blanket or mattress pad at night, etc. Here’s one of the most extreme cold events that ChatGPT managed to find for Miami, which included a low of 28 degrees:

Running heat in South Florida is incredibly wasteful because (1) it is usually a resistive “heat strip” inside the air handler (the latest houses have fully insulated refrigerant lines in both directions and, therefore, heat pump heating capability), and (2) whatever heat is added to the house will eventually have to be pumped back out using electricity for cooling.

What is the observed behavior? Every house, by code, is built with heat capability. People turn on the heat as soon as they feel uncomfortable. As noted above, the latest houses even have heat pumps, maybe due to federal government tax incentives that encourage this super-wasteful-in-south-florida investment ($thousands extra in capital that lasts 15 years to save a couple of $hundred in electricity every few years).

If Climate Change were to cause South Florida to be subjected to a Maskachusetts-style December, Floridians wouldn’t die like the stoic Europeans. Nor would they get into a brawl at Walmart over space heaters. Houses here are already equipped to handle a multi-day freeze. The damage would be limited to higher FP&L bills (still, probably much lower than in MA, though, because rates here in FL are about one-third per kWh of what my friends who’ve remained Righteous are paying!).

As noted above, we could also explain the apparent difference in preparedness as due to a difference in tolerance for discomfort, with Americans being the wimps!

Related:

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Posters to show solidarity with our baked brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Europe

by philg

No more performative empty words for me while Europe suffers through temps over 100 degrees (in the units that God prefers). There IS a sacrifice that we Americans can make and be part of a global solution. With the help of graphic artist N. Vidia, I prepared posters and distributed them around our neighborhood:

Gemini (“you can help” makes this consistent with #climatechange and exhortations to recycle plastic), ChatGPT, Grok, Claude (“small but meaningful act” is a nice touch).

Because I am a terrible human being, I posted the above in various places on X. Most of those who responded did not process these are satire. Empty words and useless gestures have become so common among the righteous that it seems entirely believable that a group of American progressives would organize a campaign like the above.

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Why don’t the Islamic European countries install A/C for their black burqa-clad lifestyle?

by philg

The forecast high for today is 104 in Paris, part of the predominantly Muslim region of Europe (measured by hours spent in religious observance).

It is supposed to hit 106 in Berlin on Sunday using the temperature units that God prefers:

The most popular outfit for women in these Islamic cities is a black burqa or at least a full covering that includes a hijab (not for a majority of females, of course, but the burqa/near-burqa would have a plurality; France is apparently jammed with haters and bans face coverings, but an uncovered face won’t provide a lot of cooling). This is not an ideal match for the prevailing hot sunny weather. Previously, Europeans said that they didn’t need A/C because they would just tough out the two-month heatwaves, like the one that hit the pre-Islamic UK in 1911 (temps up to 100). But now that these countries want to be welcoming toward their new citizens, many of whom do not have the option to strip down to a bikini (haram), why not fully air-condition apartment buildings and public spaces?

What’s it like over there? I’ve been talking to rich friends in Europe. All live in single-family houses that cost over $1 million. All are being subject to outside temperatures of 97-103 degrees F. None have air conditioning. Answer from a $15,000/month small house in Switzerland: “AC? We are Europoors.” When the heat began, he said that he was “surviving on the eight sleep, which actually does a decent job of cooling the bed”. (This seems to be a 400W Peltier cooler and, thus, will make the room hotter.) Today, though, “Last night was the most painful. 8sleep couldn’t keep up. [Slender Spanish-born] Wife, who is always cold and considers AC the Antichrist, even asked to chill her side of the bed. Still have no temp gauge to measure, but felt like sleeping in a sauna.” A reader in the Paris suburbs has the luxury of basement access, presumably denied to apartment-dwellers. It’s an inferno above-ground in the house (about 86F on the ground floor and much hotter upstairs), but the basement has stayed at 70 and the family is sleeping there.

A Dutch academic: “I have a PhD graduation today here. It’s a big affair where I need to put on a black suit and, over that, the toga and hat. There’s no AC in the building.” (He’s in a 4-story townhouse with no AC and also no screens on the windows. There aren’t that many mosquitoes in Holland and the Dutch apparently don’t mind sharing their houses with flies.)

New York Times, regarding the peasants in their stacked boxes:

Mr. Dewison’s apartment, like most in London, has no air-conditioning, and he said the temperature there had reached 45 degrees Celsius, or 113 Fahrenheit. He said he was worried about future heat waves and their effects on nature. “This is a bit mad,” he said.

Here’s how the Europeans are supposed to manage (source):

(Note that this means spending the entire day in the dark.)

Here’s an odd twist: the subset of Europeans rich enough to afford a trip to Miami or Houston for World Cup games ended up being far cooler than their (often Islamically covered) neighbors who stayed home. Both Miami and Houston have lower high temps than Paris or Berlin, for example. The stadium in Houston is fully air-conditioned. Any hotel where a spectator might stay is, of course, fully air-conditioned. So “the Germans went to Houston to cool off” is an accurate statement!

Circling back to the main question: Why won’t the Europeans, at least those who’ve received maximum enrichment from Syria, Afghanistan, and other conservative Muslim societies, go all-in on A/C as part of their transformation into places where fully covered Muslim women can feel at home, welcome, and comfortable?

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The Swiss vote to bulk up on humans just in time for the Age of AI and Robotics.

by philg

Projects show that about 55 percent of Swiss voters have rejected a proposed population cap of 10 million for a mountainous territory that currently has 5X the population density of the U.S. Lower 48.

The population of Switzerland has doubled within the lifetimes of its older citizens:

Only about 5 percent of Switzerland is reasonably flat buildable land. The Swiss are already crammed in like rats by U.S. standards, about 500 square feet per person vs. 750 here. There is a term in medicine for growth without regard to available resources: “cancer”.

(ChatGPT says an American who has wisely chosen to refrain from work and lives in taxpayer-funded public housing may have a higher material standard of living than a median Swiss as measured by (a) square footage per person, (b) air conditioning (only 5% of Swiss have it), and (c) car ownership. While the American who hasn’t worked for four generations cruises around in his/her/zir/their air-conditioned Nissan Altima, the working Swiss is provisioned with a public transit bus that may not have A/C or that has only feeble A/C. ChatGPT and Grok agree that Switzerland has 1/10th the murder rate of the U.S., though that advantage falls when Switzerland is compared to the “more racially homogeneous (often White) areas” U.S. states, such as New Hampshire and Maine. Grok specifically wrote “more racially homogeneous (often White) areas tend to have lower crime than heterogeneous ones” so I asked “Does that mean diversity is not our strength?” and the answer was “No”. ChatGPT agrees that the correlation between racial homogeneity and crime is accurate and that, similarly, we cannot abandon the axiom “diversity is our strength”.)

It will be interesting if we can get some demographics on those who voted yes vs. no to the cap. U.S. immigration is mostly low-skill and benefits the elite at the expense of the American working class (Harvard study), hence the tendency of the working class to vote for politicians, such as Donald Trump, who promise to limit immigration. Switzerland has a much higher percentage of high-skill immigrants, with at least 60 percent holding at least a bachelor’s degree (compare to 36 percent of U.S. immigrants). So a Swiss with a white collar job could cast a self-interested vote against mass importation of humans.

Here’s ChatGPT’s summary of where each country gets its foreign residents (in the U.S., nearly all are “immigrants”, entitled to stay here forever; in Switzerland, nearly all are expected to go home eventually). Switzerland pulls its foreigners primarily from fully developed European countries, such as Italy, Germany, Portugal, and France.. The U.S. has chosen to bring in foreigners primarily from Mexico, India, China, Philippines, Cuba, etc.

In the coming Age of AI and Robotics, what’s the scenario in which existing Swiss citizens become better off because someone who isn’t in the top 10% of human intelligence/skill has immigrated?

Separately, it’s interesting that the Wall Street Journal, published in a country with 1/5th the current population density of Switzerland, describes the idea of limiting population density as “radical” (source):

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Multiple perspectives on Paris

by philg

Some recent video from Paris:

The New York Times perspective: the above events either didn’t happen or weren’t newsworthy:

BBC perspective: “Hundreds arrested and dozens of police injured after Champions League riots in France”.

A total of 219 people have been injured in clashes between football fans and police across France after Paris St-Germain (PSG) won the Champions League final against Arsenal.

It might have been the police who started the violence, in other words, and the only thing that we know about the non-police combatants is that they were “football fans”.

X perspective: the rioters were Muslims and/or “North African”.

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Does the Greenland controversy prove that Donald Trump is a genius?

by philg

Here’s the front page of the Guardian:

All of the folks previously focused on helping Hamas and harming Israel (“Queers for Palestine”) have now turned their attention to an issue that hardly anyone prior to 2017 had ever considered, i.e., whether Denmark should continue to rule Greenland, whether Greenland should be independent, or whether Greenland should become a U.S. territory.

Could it be that Donald Trump is actually a genius?

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Small-town life in the Islamic Republic of Germany

by philg

From a reader who emigrated to Germany for work:

In my little [German] town of 32,000 people the change can be seen on the streets. In 2012 when I arrived, I did not see a single foreigner besides other EU citizens and a handful of Turks who came during 1960s. Now in the last 3 years I see Africans, Arabs, and Afghani refugees everywhere I go. I don’t see any working in jobs but lots are loitering in the town center. At work there has been a huge influx of Indians to work the IT jobs at the [multinational] company – at least they are productive tax payers. It will be interesting to see how easily they assimilate into German society. I increasingly see advertisement targeted to Indians on investing and buying real estate in Germany. Interestingly I don’t see many Chinese moving to Germany like I see in the USA. On MS teams the majority of scientists based in the USA branch of my company are mainland Chinese (e.g., recent call to data sciences team had 95% Chinese colleagues, first generation).

Home prices have shot up as well as rentals. Since 2019 both have increased by 30%, and when a rental is listed, long lines form during the open house, something you’d only see in the past in big cities like Berlin and Munich. The refugees have taken up all the low-income social housing. Even small government buildings in my residential neighborhood such as the forest registry office have been converted into housing to meet the demand.

Lines at the immigration office are also longer. Interestingly when the war broke out between Ukraine and Russia, there was a special line made just for Ukrainian refugees, to fast-track them. I didn’t remember seeing a fast track line made for the Syrians. It would be nice to see a fast-track line for employed immigrants just trying to renew their residence permit. Maybe something I should bring up the next time I go.

How about celebrating Jesus’s birthday with one’s Muslim neighbors?

Christmas market had the security blocks put in place. Two years ago that never happened.

Here’s a photo from 27 years ago of Munich’s English garden that shows a decidedly un-Islamic outfit for a female in public:

(Source: Siemens was using our open-source online community toolkit and I went over there with another software developer. They took us to a medieval-themed restaurant where forks were not provided. Any man who didn’t drink beer, e.g., me, was forced by the waitresses to wear a maid’s cap. The Siemens executives and managers thought it would be fun to see weak Americans get drunk, but my colleague was himself a heavy drinker and fairly beefy so he drank them under the table. I had a bit of mead.)

Here are a couple of crowd photos from that late 1990s trip. I don’t see anyone in a burqa or even hijab.

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10-year anniversary of the Paris theater attack

by philg

Today is the 10th anniversary of the November 13, 2015 Paris jihad, which killed 130 civilians, including 23-year-old American student Nohemi Gonzalez.

What’s happened since then? Are nearly all of the jihadis and their supporters out of prison by now? “Most of the Paris attackers were French and Belgian born citizens of Moroccan and Algerian backgrounds…” Salah Abdeslam, a Belgian man who chickened out and did not detonate his suicide vest, was sentenced to “life in prison”, but “life” doesn’t necessarily mean “life” in progressive societies.

How’s Europe doing now compared to then? Did a few years of meekly complying with lockdowns and mask orders calm Europeans down, including the jihadis? The Wikipedia page “Islamic terrorism in Europe” doesn’t seem to list attacks after 2021.

Politico says that the attacks substantially boosted government power:

The attacks forever changed the country and its politics, tipping the balance of protecting civil liberties versus ensuring public safety in favor of the latter.

Since 2015, France has passed a slew of laws meant to ensure such an event could never happen again. Members of parliament have expanded the state’s surveillance powers and its ability to impose restrictive measures without prior judicial approval. They’ve also reshaped France’s immigration policy and oversight of religious — particularly Muslim — organizations.

The French loss of liberty seems to be evidence for my theory that immigration from disparate cultures is inconsistent with liberty. If residents of a country don’t share a common language, culture, or religion, the only way for the rulers of that country to ensure safety is by taking away their subjects’ rights, e.g., the right to privacy or the right to own a gun.

Related:

  • Gonzalez v. Google LLC, a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 regarding the extent to which YouTube could be held responsible for showing jihad-related content to European Muslims who would otherwise have been entirely peaceful or at least mostly peaceful
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Why do the French celebrate by burning cars?

by philg

“Paris Erupts in Celebrations, Riots After PSG Wins Champions League” (WSJ):

Nationwide, two people died and more than 190 were injured, according to a provisional tally from the French interior ministry. More than 260 cars were burned and more than 500 people were detained.

Sporadic riots aren’t uncommon in France after major sports events, or even on New Year’s Eve. Officials for a time published a yearly tally of how many cars were burned during New Year’s riots, until they decided that the public numbers were encouraging more burnings.

Even in the mostly-peaceful BLM protests here in the U.S. I don’t think that 260 cars were burned (though maybe our tireless investigative journalists couldn’t be troubled to tally up the destruction?). Why are the French so passionate about torching cars?

From the New York Post:

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Report on the Expat Life in Spain

by philg

I recently caught up with a friend who bailed out of Brooklyn in August 2020. He retired in 2019 after a couple of moderately successful startups (by NY standards, not by NVIDIA/OpenAI standards). He, his wife, and two kids (now 6th and 8th grade) moved to a beautiful historical downtown of a small city in Spain (population 220,000) that is 30 minutes from the beach (admittedly cold/wet for most of the year; he’s not fighting it out with expat Brits on the Mediterranean coast).

He pays $1400/month for a five-bedroom apartment that is 180 square meters (1940 square feet) and children attend public school (as in Maskachusetts, and unlike in Florida, they teach to only one level. There is no gifted education and the teachers’ attitude to a kid who says everything is easy is “That’s great; you won’t have to work hard”. Nobody obsessively preps to gain admission to university). I asked about the cost of living, specifically health insurance:

Expats are required to get private health insurance, but that doesn’t mean what Americans think it means. In New York, my family’s insurance cost me about $25,000 in 2019. Here, it’s currently about $3,500. Point of comparison: a couple of years ago, I had a heart attack. The public hospital treated me (even though as an expat, I’m not part of the national healthcare system) and billed me afterwards. My private insurance informed me that because I’d gone to a public hospital, I had zero coverage. The total bill for ER admission, an ambulance ride, angioplasty with two stents, and three days in the coronary ICU came to about $3,000.

Mid-range cars are similar, but replace all the above-average-size ones (pickups and full-size SUV’s) with below-average-size ones (compact cars like the Audi A1 or Skoda Fabia). Since those cars retail between €20k – €30k, I’m guessing that brings the average price down. Not sure what a Tacoma or Suburban costs these days.

Groceries are way cheaper than the US — or at least than NYC. I don’t really know what food costs outside New York. I bought apples yesterday for about $1/pound; I think in New York it’s a lot more. A sandwich and a beer come to about €5; a prix-fixe lunch menu (very common here) runs €12 – €20; wine is €2 – €3 a glass; but an entree at dinner could go as high as €30, depending what you choose. Of course, you can pay more if you try; there are fine-dining restaurants that cost far more.

There is nothing that he misses about Brooklyn and his friends who are still there say that the quality of life in many Brooklyn neighborhoods and also in Manhattan has deteriorated dramatically. The heart attack is cautionary. He’s younger than I am and his lifestyle must be vastly superior and more relaxed.

Maybe Spain isn’t the best destination for Jews, unless they want to hang out in a working class town. As in the U.S., anti-Israel sentiment is correlated with education and left-wing politics (“Spanish public opinion regarding the recognition of the State of Palestine”, May 2024):

Related:

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