"Next came Solórzano, who performed in a leather jacket, throwing his first snowball from a cocktail shaker—a blend of cedar, benzoin, and cardamom which conjured the smell of whiskey."

"To a soundtrack of ragtime and death-metal bluegrass, he waved his towel with muscular grace, using it to represent (variously) lightning in a prairie thunderstorm, his dead lover’s body, and a bar tray that he used to deflect bullets. Between vigorous towel-waving sequences, he narrated his moral dilemma, of whether or not to take vengeance on his former best friend, an outlaw who’d killed his girl.... As the temperature surged to two hundred degrees, Solórzano slammed a snowball scented with black pepper and juniper tar onto the rocks, filling the room with a gunpowdery musk, and waved furiously, darting up and down the sauna stairs, tossing his towel in an elegant plume of white. The crowd went wild."

From "Sweating and Storytelling in a Williamsburg Sauna/Aufguss: a world championship for twirling a really hot towel" (The New Yorker).

Had you heard about Aufguss?

"For the first time, my insides don’t feel like fire. They feel like warm, golden love."

Says Penelope, a child in the book "Born Ready," described by Justice Alito in the new Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v. Taylor:

The book Born Ready...  follows the story of Penelope, an apparently biological female who asserts “ ‘I AM a boy.’ ” Id., at 458a. Not only does the story convey the message that Penelope is a boy simply because that is what she chooses to be, but it slyly conveys a positive message about transgender medical procedures. Penelope says the following to her mother: 

“ ‘I love you, Mama, but I don’t want to be you. I want to be Papa. I don’t want tomorrow to come because tomorrow I’ll look like you. Please help me, Mama. Help me to be a boy.’ ” Id., at 459a.

Penelope’s mother then agrees that Penelope is a boy, and Penelope exclaims: “For the first time, my insides don’t feel like fire. They feel like warm, golden love.” Id., at 462a. To young children, the moral implication of the story is that it is seriously harmful to deny a gender transition and that transitioning is a highly positive experience....

A child's "insides" described as feeling like fire or, alternatively, warm, golden love! Quite aside from the topic of transgenderism, that is — if not blatantly sexual — too closely approximate to sexuality to belong in reading material for children. If I say I'm amazed that school authorities would adopt such a book for classroom instruction, I am sure commenters will scoff at me for being too naive to perceive the deliberate "grooming."

"Through it all, Europeans tried their best to bear up, especially in places where air conditioning is still a luxury, or frowned upon."

"Some people worry about the pollution it causes; some older Italians just believe it’s bad for health."

From "Dangerous Heat Grips Much of Europe, With More to Come/A punishing heat wave broke records in southern Europe and hasn’t peaked yet in some places, prompting warnings to residents, employers and tourists to alter their habits" (London Times).

What is this belief held by older Italians... and could they be right? People love the comfort of air conditioning and at some point feel fiercely attached to it and resistant to hearing that it might be bad. Obviously, it's bad for the environment, but what about our health? 

But first, what exactly to the old Italians think? According to Grok, the idea is that you should keep you body in balance and not move it back and forth between hot and cold. And they speak of "colpo d’aria" or "colpo di freddo" — "blow of air" or "blow of cold" — as a cause of various pains and respiratory ailments. There's a mistrust of modern inventions and a preference for traditional ways, such as opening windows, fanning, and seeking out the shade. Natural seems better than artificial. 

Is there an element of truth in that... truth... or beauty?

I wondered if The London Times had ever talked about "colpo d’aria" in any other article. Answer: Yes, 3 times:

"They found that human wounds took more than twice as long to heal as wounds of any of the other mammals."

"Our slow healing may be a result of an evolutionary trade-off we made long ago, when we shed fur in favor of naked, sweaty skin that keeps us cool.... Each hair grows from a hair follicle, which also houses stem cells.... 'When the epidermis is wounded, as in most kinds of scratches and scrapes, it’s really the hair-follicle stem cells that do the repair,' Dr. Fuchs said. Furry animals are covered in follicles, which help quickly close up wounds in mice or monkeys. By comparison, 'human skin has very puny hair follicles,' Dr. Fuchs said. And our ancestors lost many of those follicles, packing their skin with sweat glands instead.... Most furry mammals have them only in certain places, mainly the soles of their paws. But human ancestors went all-in on sweat — modern humans have millions of sweat glands all over our bodies, and they’re about 10 times denser than those of chimpanzees...."

From "Humans’ Wounds Heal Much More Slowly Than Other Mammals’/We naked apes need Band-Aids, but shedding the fur that speeds healing in other mammals may have helped us evolve other abilities" (NYT).

If you had to choose between the power to heal fast or to cool fast, would you not choose the cooling power? It's what evolution chose for us, but not for all those other animals. Why?

"When you are half-naked or even sometimes completely naked, it allows for deeper discussion."

"You talk in a way that doesn’t happen when you are sitting around a table with a tie on or at some formal thing."

Said Mikko Hautala, the ambassador of Finland to the United States, in "'Whatever Happens in the Sauna Stays in the Sauna': Diplomacy, Conducted in the Nude/The Finnish Embassy offers one of the hottest invitations in Washington: a chance to discuss serious topics in a sauna" (NYT).

"Iran's parliament is set to pass a bill regulating how men dress in public..."

"... banning apparel that 'is against public modesty, such as clothing that does not cover a part of the body lower than the chest or higher than the ankle." But the Basij, the nation's morality police, is already enforcing the law. They have been beating and arresting men caught wearing shorts in public, at a time when temperatures reaching 45° Celsius (113° Fahrenheit) and frequent power outages have led many men to wear shorts outside."

Reason reports.

"When Exit Here organized the funeral last year of Poppy Chancellor... who died at 36, guests shared photos of the 'leaving party,' as the service was called, on social media."

"Inside the West London crematory were big, beautiful banners emblazoned with slogans like 'Embrace joy today' and 'I want to see you dance again.' In one video, guests were doing the limbo to the silky vocals and pulse of Beyoncé’s hit song 'Heated.'"

From "They’re Putting Some Fun in Funerals/Modern, even hip, mortuaries around the world are hoping to answer one question: How do we commemorate death in 2024?" (NYT).

Is this hip? Big, beautiful banners with slogans like "Embrace joy today"? Seems too close to the "Live/Laugh/Love" approach to home decor — the antithesis of hipness, no?

But I'm not the arbiter of hipness, so I'll just say....

Inside the West London crematory... Beyoncé’s hit song "Heated"....

Crematory... Heated.... intentional?

"I think we have set up an expectation or even an entitlement around comfort such that it makes it really difficult to start to ask people, do you really need to turn up your air conditioning today?..."

"And I think we're increasingly going to see architects and builders trying to rediscover these lost ideas that we used to have about how to design buildings with the climate in mind. You know, how to shade them, how to ventilate them in a more natural way. But I also have talked to some people who say that all of that is not going to be enough. One of them is Daniel Barber, who's an architectural historian who has thought a lot about life after air conditioning, or as he puts it after comfort.... We need to sort of think anew about our relationship to comfort. And are we willing to be uncomfortable some of the time?..."

From today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "How Air-Conditioning Conquered America."

"Former President Donald Trump s campaign is hiring extra medics, loading up on fans and water bottles and allowing supporters to carry umbrellas..."

"... to an outdoor rally Sunday in Las Vegas, where temperatures are expected to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.... Campaign organizers say they will have ample water bottles to hand out to attendees and that cooling tents will be place throughout the venue. Misting fans will be given out. The campaign has paid for additional EMS services to be on site in the case of emergency. The U.S. Secret Service will be making an exception to allow people to bring in personal water bottles and and umbrellas. During a Trump rally in Arizona on Thursday, the Phoenix Police Department said 11 people were transported to hospitals, treated and released for heat exhaustion. Many Trump’s supporters waited in line for hours and some were unable to get inside before the venue reached capacity. The temperature reached a record 113 degrees Fahrenheit... that day...."

ABC News reports.

He's got dedicated supporters.

UPDATE: A NYT account of the Las Vegas event:

"I was doing great, I was sort of like a hot guy. I was hot as a pistol. I think I’m hotter than I am now and I became president."

"I asked somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now. I don’t know… Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? You have to always keep moving forward. And when it’s your time you’ve got to know it’s your time. And I said to myself in terms of politics, ‘You know what: we did so well in number one and we did even better in number two… we’ve got to do it again. I’m not doing it for myself, I’m doing it to make America great again...."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump brazenly asks Bronx crowd if he was 'hotter' before or after becoming president." 

That's in the Independent, which says "He is seemingly attempting to make inroads with ethnic minority voters, hoping it can bolster his support in traditionally Democratic strongholds and swing states."

Seemingly! The polls show that he has made inroads with ethnic minority voters, and he's keeping up the pressure, what with this rallying in the South Bronx. As he said, you have to perceive your hotness and move forward into greater and greater hotness. 

I watched most of the Bronx speech, and I thought he seemed especially happy to be there. New York is his town, and — telling stories about building in the city — he conveyed real love for the place. He wanted the people of his favorite city to know he cares and he can rebuild things for them — quickly — like he rebuilt the Wollman skating rink.

How threatened do Democrats feel? I'd like to know. How dare he come for their safe safe safe state of New York? He dares. He's hot. He senses his own hotness and goes for it. Who else would do that? No one.

ADDED: Are you having trouble understanding "I think I’m hotter than I am now"? Listening live, you probably wouldn't be confused. He just switched to speaking about the past in the present test. He means, at the time, back then, he thought I'm really hot. And the hotness, as he subjectively thought about it, was hotter than the hotness he has "now." And by "now," he means the entire political phase of his life, including the time, quite a few years ago, when he actually was President. It's a pretty long "now." But he had his building mogul phase, he's TV star phase, and his political phase. He was damned big — AKA "hot" — in all 3.

ALSO: Sorry for leaving out the usual hedging when I wrote: "He wanted the people of his favorite city to know he cares and he can rebuild...." Normally, I would write "He seems to have wanted the people of his favorite city to believe he cares and he can rebuild...." I don't know what's really in his head, but it just seemed irritatingly weaselly to make a thing out of that in the original post. But I did nevertheless feel I needed to pay tribute to truth in this addendum. Carry on!

At this point, they're only asking you to suffer physically for the sake of the environment.

But you really ought to take that shower in "warm or room-temperature water — or even cold water"

I'm reading, "Why you should embrace using cold water, almost all the time/Heating water gobbles energy, leading to higher utility bills and more planet-warming emissions" in The Washington Post.

If I keep the house at 62° or lower all winter, may I still take the hot bath I think need to restore heat to my inner core? Or will the failure to take cold showers count as a sin henceforward? 

Look at the backhanded treatment of baths:

Instead of taking long hot showers or baths that can dehydrate your skin, dermatologists recommend showers of no more than 10 minutes, using warm or room-temperature water — or even cold water — which is less drying to skin.

They can't time limit a bath. Unlike a shower, the water usage is complete at the point when you get in (unless you stay in so long you need to reheat it with new water). But maybe you know the number of minutes it takes to fill your bath, so you could take a "10 minute" bath. Would that fill your bathtub? I ask Siri to set my timer to 15 minutes, and of course, I use hot water. Maybe I should only fill the bath 2/3 of the way — with room-temperature water — for the planet. I'd rather take a 3-minute shower and have it hot.

Taking away our hot showers and baths? It feels as if you want to deprive us of the most basic pleasures of living in the modern world.

Random "garner" sighting of the day.

I'm reading "No, bad tourist, you can’t touch the hot springs at Yellowstone/Omnipresent warnings and scalding temperatures do not stop park visitors from testing the waters" (WaPo):

Photos from nearly a century ago show visitors peeking their heads into geysers. This summer, more examples have been captured on social media or posted to YouTube, fitting into a larger pattern of rule-breaking tourists emerging from the pandemic. A few months ago, a woman garnered national attention after dipping her foot and fingers into a scalding Yellowstone hot spring as well....

"For almost a century, scientists have known that people with schizophrenia struggle to regulate their body temperatures."

"In the 1930s, two doctors in Worcester, Mass., placed people with and without schizophrenia in a small, windowless room with eight electric heaters. Under hot conditions, the researchers noted, the patients with schizophrenia’s body temperatures rose farther and faster than the control group. 'Schizophrenic subjects,' they wrote later, 'are unable to comply normally … with the regulation of heat.'... Schizophrenia has also been linked to problems regulating dopamine, the chemical that makes the body feel good; altered levels of dopamine can also prevent the body from effectively cooling itself off.... Many antipsychotic medications... also make their users more sensitive to heatstroke....Then there is the tendency of patients with schizophrenia to wrap themselves in layers upon layers of clothing, even in boiling temperatures.... Experts also say that people with schizophrenia lack insight into themselves and their condition — in medical terms, this is known as 'anosognosia.'... Under psychosis, a patient might walk for miles engaging only with the voices and characters in their own mind. Under normal conditions, that might simply be dangerous. In Phoenix, it’s deadly."

From "The unexpected reasons that extreme heat is so dangerous for those with schizophrenia/Schizophrenia may be the deadliest preexisting condition during heat waves. The fate of one man in America’s hottest city shows why" (WaPo)(headline at the front page. At the article page, it's "Heat's Hidden Risk").

"The burn appears to be about an inch deep, and mars the swath of intricate, black-inked tattoos of skulls and faces that once covered his back."

A description of a burn in an anecdote about a man who fell asleep on the sidewalk in Phoenix that begins the Guardian article "‘The burns can cook them’: searing sidewalks cause horrific injuries in US." 

The article quotes Kevin Foster, director of the Arizona burn center:

"Scandalously... seventy per cent of the state’s prisons do not have air-conditioning in living areas. The temperature inside those enclosed, often windowless spaces..."

"... can be higher than it is outdoors—a carceral heat dome. Earlier this year, a measure to install air-conditioning passed in the Texas House, only to die in the state Senate, despite the fact that the state has a budget surplus. The state has instead dealt with the issue haphazardly, mostly by shuffling the elderly incarcerated to detention centers that are air-conditioned, and, supposedly, by distributing water. Inmates and their advocates have compared the conditions to torture. The Texas Tribune reported that in the past few weeks there has been an unusual spate of prisoners dying of cardiac arrest or of undetermined causes. One of them had been mowing grass outside; he was thirty-five years old...."

From "How Much Hotter Can Texas Get?" (The New Yorker).

"Many people in southern India, and especially those who toil outside, begin their workday around 4 a.m. and work until no later than noon."

"The afternoon often includes a nap. Work then resumes at 4 or 5 p.m. for a few more hours.... [T]raditional homes manage to stay cool... open windows early in the day and close them before it begins to warm up. Heavy, dark curtains block light and heat from entering the house, and ceiling fans circulate the cool air trapped inside. My family home had curtains made of khus, a native Indian grass, which we sprayed with water every couple of hours. The curtains transformed hot gusts into cool, fragrant breezes. Many traditional Indian homes have verandas, high ceilings and walls of mud that keep the interior cool...."

From "Bring Back the Parasol/And other time-tested ways to cope with extreme heat from cultures around the world" (NYT).

If you can do it, beginning your workday — or your exerciseday — at 4 a.m. is a very effective way of structuring your waking hours to avoid summer heat.

"With this summer’s heat waves in Europe, Americans wearing shorts and ordering ice water may butt up against etiquette and norms in some areas."

A caption under a photograph of so many tourists at the Parthenon that it makes me think it's absolutely pointless (aesthetically) to visit the Parthenon. That's my cultural norm. I don't want the sight I'm seeing to be other tourists.

But the article is about the cultural norms of the people in the place the tourists are visiting: "Iced Coffee and Flip-Flops as Europe Broils? Not So Fast, Americans. As large numbers of U.S. tourists visit Europe during a record hot summer, their efforts to stay cool are running up against cultural norms" (NYT).

The article still takes the point of view of the American tourists, because the reason for paying attention to the cultural norms of the place you are visiting is that you aspire to "blend in with the locals."

"When it gets hot enough, as it has across the South in recent weeks, barefoot toddlers suffer second-degree burns from stepping onto concrete."

"People who fall on the blistering pavement wind up with skin grafts. Kids stay inside all day, 'trying to survive.' Windshield wipers glue themselves in place, and the ocean transfers heat back into your body. One electric blackout could bake thousands to death inside their homes. You would think people would flee such a hellscape expeditiously. But as record-breaking heat fries the Sun Belt, the region’s popularity only grows. The numbers, laid out recently in The Economist, are striking: 12 of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the U.S. are in the Sun Belt."

I'm reading an Atlantic article that purports to answer the question I've been asking: "Why People Won’t Stop Moving to the Sun Belt."

But does this article really know why people do what they do? The author gives us 3 reasons: 1. cheap housing, 2. "a 'business-friendly' environment," and 3. warm winters. That is, on point 3, the weather is still a reason to go there, not a reason to escape. Ah, well, the fear of the cold is deep-seated. 

Here I am, lying on a nearly empty beach on the shore of Lake Superior, on August 14th, wearing 2 layers of long-sleeved shirt, experiencing what to me is the perfect temperature — 62°:

Why isn't everyone here? Ah, well, I like the emptiness. The sand was very fine and soft, the water perfectly clear... and swimmable if you're hale and exuberant. 

"Heat Singes the Mind, Not Just the Body."

Reads the headline at The New York Times. 

To "singe" is to scorch superficially.

In French, "singe" means "monkey."

But let's read on. This sounds quite serious:

WaPo seems to want to write about the heat — but you can't elevate the heat story over the smoke story.

So we get this awkward amalgam:

These stories are not connected, but they are put together, I suspect, to intensify concern about long-term global warming, which, to me — living where the air quality index is 270 at the moment — feels like a failure to take the smoke problem seriously. It's often hot in the summer in the south! This smoke is something I have never seen in my life. It's actively unhealthy for millions of Americans. After staying home for years hiding from a virus, I am now hiding from the air. On Twitter, I'm seeing conspiracy theories. The mainstream media treating this problem as a phenomenon on the level of 100° temperatures in Texas in the summer is going to make some of us paranoid.

Here's the kind of material I'm seeing, from that first headline:

Scientists said climate change helped shape the weather conditions that were causing misery and putting lives at risk from Mexico to Canada. There was no disputing the impact: If it wasn’t way too smoky, it was way too hot.

"No disputing the impact"?! The condition exists, and there's no disputing that, but to say "impact" is to make an assertion about the cause. I guess the word "helped" is supposed to fudge everything. There's climate change — who knows how much? — and it has some effect on the amount of smoke produced in a fire and how that smoke moves around — who know how much? — so it "helped" the conditions that had the "impact." Scientists said. But let's move on: It's way too smoky, right? We sure do know that. Idiocy!