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Comment by estomagordo | Hacker News Reader

"In Stockholm, Sweden, where winter lasts 9 months out of the year",

according to what crazy-ass definition?

3.5 months is a common length of winter for Stockholm, according to the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.

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The (crazy-ass, yes) definition is in the article: the period the house needs heating.

Yeah, I noticed they mentioned needing heating for about that long. But, really, they didn't explicitly call that winter. Nor should they.

No need to be pedantic, it's cold 9 months in a year, and that's the point we are trying to make here.

Then write that. Saying winter lasts 9 months is nonsense and nonsense in journalism should be pointed out, though not as aggressively perhaps.

Well now that I think about it, I do welcome literary devices when they are so obvious that they only assume primary schooling. Normally they make the text more human, more fun. Also, I can't really see someone getting deeply confused by this; and momentarily confusion is even good to revisit some knowledge from time to time.

No, its far from nonsense, it makes the article more fun and interesting or maybe the author has different definition of winter. They are not writing formal academic paper.

I agree, you must have misunderstood, I define 'nonsense' as something creative and fun to read.

I define "winter" as the time honeybees don't fly. Summer bees don't fly below 13 Celsius, and winter bees don't fly below 8 Celcius. Winter bees are the first ones out of the hive in spring, raising up the summer bees for the big harvest.

Kind of insulting to those who have all 4 seasons. Heating must be done in autumn and spring but I understand winter when it is <0 celsius or close to that or maybe one day +5, other -x. Yeah, that's still winter.

I disagree. It's not about being pedantic, but losing confidence that the author understands concepts that are highly relevant to the subject.

For me winter starts below 15 degrees Celsius :) But for example on Tenerife there's only spring and summer. These things are flexible :)

As a South African, her definition did sort of make sense to me in a social context, but I understand that metereologically it would be incorrect.

The amount of months that Johannesburg would require heating I would say is probably 3—4 or 4—5 if you take into account only minimal heating at the edge cases.

You are using SMHI (The Meteorological service) definition of winter which is

> the daily average temperature is at most 0 degrees Celsius at least 5 days in a row

This doesn't work for the international reader, in many countries the temperatures in the winter never goes below zero

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