Delvin4519

So I am around as far north/as "cold" (a.k.a "least hot") as I can get for any large, major city, south of the southern border. So there are no more large, major cities that have less hot summers than the one I am in right now, except for those that are in Canada.

I am curious on what are the summers like in these 6 Canadian cities specifically, in terms of actual human experience:

• Toronto
• Ottawa
• Winnipeg
• Edmonton
• Calgary
• Vancouver

How would you describe the summers in these cities? Is it generally comfortable (too hot/cold)? How widespread is AC adapation (percentage wise/etc), and where can I find data on this topic? Is air conditioning universal? Is AC something that is needed every day, or is it only necessary to use it on only rare occassions? How many days are too hot to do rigourous physical activities outdoors?

I know I can already consult the average and percentile data for any city globally, and I did do so already, but an average and percentile can only tell so much. Averages cannot necessarily describe how widespread the local population is going to adapt AC, or if a summer "feels comfortable or not" to a person. (In Melbourne Australia, the average maximum is "only" 26C, but since it can hit 44C then they'd still adapt AC even if it's 2C "colder" than my city).

I am coming from a baseline of 28C as the average daily maximum, 19C for average minimum, and 18C for dew point. A typical year seems a mean absolute maximum around 36C, but this summer has reached 39C with the heat index higher. 94% of households have air conditioning within my current area. So that is my reference point.

So I discovered the hard and painful way that my 5 year friendship with my autistic friend (same age/gender), as a autistic person, isn't quite at the point yet where sleepovers make sense. However me and my friend live 2 hours apart on exact opposite ends of the same city. So I'm not exactly sure what our options are for hanging out in person; considering we live quite far from each other, but sleepovers are impractical and don't make sense yet.

Since both of us are autistic and young, we don't exactly have the money for restaurants or movies. Plus the city libraries close at 4:45pm on Saturdays and Sundays, meaning that when we have the weekend off, options for meeting is limited. Living 2 hours apart from each other makes meeting for a meal quite time expensive, since one of us would have a 4 hour round trip commute. Meeting in the evening means leaving at 7:25 p.m. for a 10pm bedtime, or going to bed after midnight if we were to meet til 10pm.

For me in particular, I come from a particularly very toxic family, so meeting at my home isn't exactly the best idea, and I have a desire to be less reliant on texting/voice chatting; and put greater value on face to face interaction with my friend. I only recently met with my friend's family for the first time attending his graduation, at his now-alta mater, on his behalf.

So what are good options/activites for me and my friend to hang out IRL in this situation? The two of us can't drive due to our autism. We both rely on the city public transport's bus and subway system for transportation and will need to do so for the rest of our lives. (Both of us do like trains, and we tend to prefer deep convos and share our obsessions with minecraft, weather, transportation, etc.; but we are comfortable with other activites like going walking outside together, etc.)

The maximum statistics shown on the Lemmy statistics page on Fedecan only goes out 2 years at most.

However, since the initial Reddit API exodus is now approaching the 2 year anniversery, this means that after this month, the Fedecan statistics pages would no longer be able to show the activity trends on Lemmy prior to the surge of users in June 2023. This is because after June 2025, the 2 year graphs would cut off before it would show the API exodus, as it becomes greater than 2 years old; and so it would not be displayed in the graphs after that time.

Would it be possible to add an additional set of graphs to all 4 statistics pages on Fedecan to show the all time statistics on Lemmy (i.e. with a fixed start date so it shows all statistics)?

In the past few weeks the !canada@lemmy.ca community has grown quite a bit. The growth has mostly consisted of news and (geo)political posts, which is understandable.

However, this makes it hard to follow any text threads like these or non-news/political posts. This leaves the only option of either blocking the !canada@lemmy.ca community completely, or having to use a mobile app with keyword filtering (I'm not aware of any on desktop, and keyword filters do not sync between devices yet).

I'd suggest changing/updating the rules of !canada@lemmy.ca to note to users to post their political (and geopolitical?) news threads in !canadapolitics@lemmy.ca instead. Alternatively, split geopolitical with (world) news into a separate lemmy.ca (world)news community like with !worldnews@aussie.zone? This split community would have a rule that all posts would need to link to a news site or equivalent. Text & image posts would remain at !canada@lemmy.ca.

This would make it a lot easier to find text posts, general discussion threads, and image posts without them being drowned out by the news and (geo)political news threads.

One can look to !australia@aussie.zone and note how that community makes it clear in the rules that politics, (world) news, and geopolitics have to be posted into the Australian politics/(world) news communities. This makes the main Australia community much easier to browse and scroll through without going insane.

I really cannot understand the fanfare of "warm weather" places like Texas, Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, and the Gulf Coast. I feel like society has a tendency to idolize warm weather destinations like those.

Even living in the northern, more continential parts of North America, I still feel like local meterologists have a pro-summer season bias.

In the late winter and spring local meteroligists would countdown the milestones to the "first day of spring", and the start of "baseball season". It's as if they are biased against mild or cold temperatures. They also make things like "putting on a light jacket" seem like a "chore". I feel like they tend to phrase it as "Don't forget that light jacket if you're going out tonight because the temperatures will drop tonight". Meterologists also seem to idolize beach and pool weather for some reason, as if it's something that is a "good lifestyle" somehow.

T-shirt and shorts weather is terrible. I hate it not being cold enough to wear long sleeved clothing. If it is too hot to wear school uniform or business clothing, then it is too hot, period. I cringe at schools and businesses that previously banned shorts that decided allow it as part of the "uniform" because it got so hot outside. Cold weather is just so much better. People just suck at putting on proper clothes when it gets cold. Unlike when it is cold, when it is hot, one can't just take off clothing within social norms as it gets hotter outside.

A lifestyle in a hot weather place seems like it would just be an awful way to live. Places that shutdown from 2pm to 5pm because it is too hot to do anything outside, wasting hours of daylight and delaying dinner after sunset waiting for the temperature to drop. Or having to get up at 5am to go outside for exercise before the temperature climbs to 32°C (90°F) by 10am. The idea that it is so hot and humid outside that people would need to take showers plus a change in clothing upon arriving at work in the office. It would seem so cumbersome and a terrible way to live in a terrible climate; whereas with winter one can just take off layers as needed. I don't understand society's obsession with beach and pool weather and wanting to go to the pool or beach. What is so good about the pool or the beach such that people idolize them so much?

I hate how ugly window AC units are, both from the inside and outside. They are eyesores to look at and can ruin the urban streetscape as well. They are large, bulky, take up space, and are uncomfortably loud. Come late May or early to mid June, it sucks having to guess how many comfortable days are left before the AC units need to go in.

The fact that air conditioning allows people to live and build major cities in otherwise miserable parts of the world is just a symbol of mankind's arrogance. ACs allows big oil to keep working class citizens forever hooked and dependent on the power grid to not die in the summer heat. Oh man, just wait for the heat index to reach 42°C (107°F) and wait for a blackout power outage to strike. Lots of people are in for a rude awakening as they find out of the consequences of depending on their ACs and living in such awfully hot climates. Unlike the summer heat, at least with winter there's clothes and blankets to put on to stay warm, as well as the fact that buildings trap heat better than radiating heat to cool off.

It's crazy to me how people tend to say "Canadians have a brutal climate", or "The weather in England and Ireland is awful and it sucks", in stark contrast to the idolization of Florida, Hawaii, Texas, and Arizona as places famed for their "warm" temperatures and "mild" climate. On the one hand, Florida and Texas have a heat index of 40-43°C (104-110°F) in the summer. On the other hand; Ottawa, Winnipeg, Toronto, Edmonton, and London England; each have summer daily maximums around 22-26°C (72-79°F); and it is hard for the temperature to reach 32°C (90°F).

Is it really worth living in an area where the heat index is 40-45°C (104-113°F) months on end, just because people can't stand a temperature of 3°C (38°F) in winter? Man, people are pretty crazy if they rather take a heat index of 42°C (107°F) in the summer; over a 3°C (38°F) winter temperature. The snow is perhaps a gift and reward for those who choose to live in an area with mild summers around 22-28°C (72-82°F), over a more brutal hot and humid climate.

Man, imagine a world without air conditioning. It would be so much better. Perhaps if AC never existed, people would not be living in terrible hot and humid climates. People would not be so harsh to look down on Canadian winters if instead, people had to treat summer heat a lot more seriously. It's crazy how people (or local meterologists) look down on even a temperature of 12-17°C (54-63°F); in stark contrast to the obsession and idolization with the beach, the pool, and wearing T-shirts and shorts.