You can really tell who’s never experienced poverty and food insecurity when it comes to discussions around food costs and how unhealthy food is cheaper. Some fucker always comes in with the price of like… lettuce or… apples. And it’s like yeah bitch but can you work an 11 hour shift after eating some salad and an apple!?! Find me something cheaper, and more filling than the broke ass staples of boxed mac and cheese, hot dogs, noodles, bread, beans, and rice. I’ll wait.
It also ignores the mental toll that poverty takes like maybe your home made veggie filled recipe isn’t crazy expensive but it also involves prep time and cooking time and organization in terms of fresh food that a lotta poor people can’t manage.
Not to mention if you can only afford to get to the store once every couple weeks via bus or cab then you can’t keep fresh veg on deck.
An Edna suit would NEVER have torn within the first what, week? Of wear. Galbaki or however you spell his name is slacking. Mr Incredible’s suit only tore after 15 years in storage and then a cut my an ultrahard metal droid. The Galbaki suit tore after a bout of hand-to-hand combat. Pathetic. This is a Mode house.
There are now more than 90 people dead. You can bitch and whine that’s it’s hotter where you are, but you have to understand that it’s the elderly, homeless and small children who don’t have air conditioning and are susceptible to health problems. How fucking despicable can you be to just laugh at people dying because temperatures are hotter where you are. Our infrastructure was built to withstand -30 C°, not the heat. It’s not about how Canadians are “weak”, it’s literally just shitty circumstances.
Not to mention that people who are accustomed to cold climates have a physically more difficult time coping with temperatures that their bodies aren’t used to. Also a lot of people who have never had to cope with hotter temperatures aren’t as familiar with heat exhaustion or heat stroke, don’t know how to manage the heat safely , etc!
That last point.
Denmark is currently in its hottest summer ever recorded, and the number of people I’ve talked to who have only now discovered what a heat stroke is amazes me, because I grew up in the South of France where summers are hot as fuck every year – my brother-in-law went out for a bike ride without a hat and with a half a liter of water for three hours and came back and was sick because of it.
The idea that he’d get sick because of the sun didn’t even OCCUR to him, because in his 30+ years on this green ball swirling through space, it’s never been an issue for him.
In the South of France, most cafés have mist sprayers and all shops / malls are air-conditioned. In Denmark, most cafés do NOT have mist sprayers (but heat lights!) and the shops are not always air-conditioned.
Most of the warehouses have been out of portable air-conditioners and fans on an off since May because people are hot and have no air-condition installed. The buildings are built to keep heat IN. Not out.
No air con, buildings designed to keep heat in, not even ceiling fans, no drinking fountains, windows that don’t open in buildings, and we expect people to work in those buildings, in their full uniform which has no ‘hot weather’ option – I mean what employer is going to provide short sleeves and shorts for that one week every three years where it gets above 25/80 degrees? – windows that don’t open on public transport, and often no shade while waiting for said public transport, we have heaters and insulation and draft excluders, we buy black cars and dark clothes, we buy sunscreen for our holidays in Spain, then forget where we put it, when we find it and apply it we sweat it off again because we’re not used to the heat, we walk places rather than drive and even if we drove, our cars don’t have proper air con and we don’t have covered parking, school playgrounds and public parks have no shade, people don’t have pools so kids play out all summer in the heat. We don’t have ‘American style’ large fridges or freezers with ice makers and they break down when competing with hotter than usual ambient temperature, most of us don’t even own cool boxes – or if we do it’s at the back of the shed full of spiders.
So yes, we have to be told it’s going to be hot. And we have to be warned to check our elderly neighbours and to help them take the blankets off their bed or to swap to a summer duvet, to suggest they have a cold drink instead of a pot of tea and take off their cardigan.
Because we only know people who got sunstroke on their holidays abroad.
And we have never in our lives known anyone who died from the heat.
To anybody who thinks it’s funny when people die, you can go fuck off a tall bridge.
I live in Phoenix. It’s going to be 115F/46C degrees today. This is nothing unusual for this time of year. And yet every year we lose people to the heat. I can’t imagine what super temps must be like when you are not used to it. England, Quebec, and most of Europe’s home were designed to keep heat in. Not let it out. So instead of giggling like evil children over someone else’s horror, try being a little more understanding at the very least of what they are going through.
I live in Halifax, NS – ESE of Montreal, but very similar climate – and am currently in Phoenix. And there’s a few major factors at play here.
One, as mentioned, people up there have no fucking clue how to deal with the heat. Every time I come to Phoenix, I need to be retrained to drink more fucking water, because my natural instinct is to go through maybe a liter on a particularly thirsty day. It took time and experience to learn just how much difference it makes standing in shade vs sun. These are things that just don’t come up in Canada as a rule.
Two, because these things don’t come up, our infrastructure isn’t equipped to deal with it. Air conditioners are extremely rare, and buildings are designed to retain heat – because heating is a much larger issue than cooling, generally, and lack of heat is so lethal that we have government subsidies just for furnace oil.
And three, the humidex. See… you understand humidity the way we understand heat. As of right now, the humidity in Halifax is 67% (after being burned off for most of the day; it’s 4 PM there) and Montreal isn’t much drier. This has a massive effect on the way temperature impacts the body.
Two days before I left, the actual temperature in Halifax peaked at 82 degrees, with humidity of 67%. That’s a humidex value of 15 degrees – the effective felt temperature on the body was 97 degrees.
Have you ever experienced 97-degree weather in which you couldn’t sweat, couldn’t get to air conditioning, and the baseline indoor temperature is higher?
So yeah. You might be capable of handling higher absolute numbers. But you’ve got the experience, the infrastructure, and the resources to do so. People are fucking dying en masse. This is not a joke.
For my friends in areas like this, take some advice from a lifeguard trained to treat heat stroke:
If someone is suffering from heat stroke, they are not sweating. If they are suffering from heat exhaustion, they are sweating profusely. In both cases, the patient will have flushed skin and have trouble breathing. It is always important to know the signs of both so you know when to get someone medical attention.
In the case of both heat stroke and heat exhaustion, get the person out of the sun, that is what’s causing the problem, find them some shade or get them inside.
Liquids, I cannot stress enough how much a person with heat stroke needs to be hydrated. They’re so hot that they’re no longer sweating, get them water. Get them water, but tell them to sip it. Guzzling water with heat stroke will make the person vomit and that will make things worse. Vomiting dehydrates the body and the last thing you need is for the person to be more dehydrated. Sip not gulps.
If you can swing it, get this person electrolytes. They’ve lost a lot from sweating. Gatorade is the best bet in this case (it will also keep blood sugar up, it may drop when dehydrated), but any sports drink will do. If you can’t just give them water.
DO NOT GIVE THEM ICE WATER. Their body is at a temperature extreme. You know how you’re told to warm yourself with cool water when you have hypothermia so you steadily raise your body temperature because heat might cause shock? Same principle, in reverse. Cool or lukewarm water will do someone with heat stroke more good than ice water.
If someone has heat stroke, call an ambulance. Heat stroke is deadly you NEED to get them medical attention as soon as possible.
Stay calm. If treated in time heat stroke is not dangerous, but you need to know what you’re looking for, be prepared, and stay calm.
I work at an outdoor pool with no air conditioning, I have passed out while on stand from the heat and I’m trained to know how to handle excessive heat. You can get heat stroke in temperatures as “low” as 85 degrees (29 degrees C), be vigilant and take care of anyone particularly susceptible to heat.
Borne Ceaseless 