Some common geographic mental misplacements
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Would be a decent jeopardy clue
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
Vancouver is in the Eastern half of British Columbia
Point Peelee Ontario is south of parts of Northen California
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...
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)
Buffalo is East of Miami
Cheyenne is South of Cleveland
DC is North of San Francisco
Atlanta is West of Detroit
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.