It feels… and depending on where you are things “feel” different.
I have experienced cold weather in different sections of Canada and the climate plays a huge part on how it feels.
In the Pacific Northwest, our climate is very moist being near the ocean. That moisture help the cold seep through “to the bone” so “warmer” temperatures feel colder than on the prairies or Toronto.
I’ve walked around Downtown Toronto in -20 wearing less and feeling warmer that -5 in Vancouver. In Winnipeg and Saskatoon I went for walks in -20 but it’s so dry it barely affected me. (sorry my American Amigos, I use Celsius)
So in my old employment when I was working with people back East more often, I would hate when they would be “oh looks like it’s just 0 where you are, it’s -10 here.” If they haven’t ever experienced 0 degrees here, don’t tell me it’s colder where you are, because that number may reflect what it may physically be externally, but how you actually feel may very.
I’d say the damp cold = more intense cold thing is also subjective. If I’m out in the cold with wet hair or clothes, sure. But damp cold by itself doesn’t make me feel the chill more acutely than dry cold does. (Also in damp cold I don’t need to reapply my lip balm every three minutes, so that’s good.)
The point is that it’s all personal and subjective, same reason why I never find my home warm enough in winter, what I find to still be too cold, my wife finds too warm.
Some of this must be energy inefficiency. My office’s thermostat reads 72 F in the basement. Upstairs, a bunch of people are sitting at their desks in hoodies.
I’m just happy to see someone else mention this. I tell my wife all the time that I’d rather be outside for a while in a light jacket in 10º dry air than a heavier coat in 30º and humid. That cold and moist thing just gets to me in a hurry.
I’ve long advocated for a second horn. One for a friendly “beep beep” for saying thanks or hi. The other, angrier horn for jack wagons who think the left lane is for doing 5 under.
I’m not a fan of cake that doesn’t look like cake. I’m talking cake made in the shapes of books, castles, animals, or other food that’s not cake. I saw a raw chicken cake the other day. Ditto making a cake look like it’s made of inedible ingredients like gems, rocks, dry leaves, etc. Just make a damn cake. Try making it taste good instead of making it look like Hogwarts or some nonsense.
Heh. I think those are neat, but I doubt I’d ever shell out the mind-blowing amounts of money you’d need to get a really good one. I’d also want to sample the bakery’s product first. Because, yeah. What’s the point if it doesn’t taste good? Fondant, for example, looks nice but does anyone actually eat it?
I’m gonna contrariwise some of the contra-contrarianism.
The thing about the time change is besides being pointless and arbitrary (on the already arbitrary issue of time), nobody can make a good rationale for it coming into being, and a lot of people make the case that it results in everything from minor inconvenience to death.
I recommend The Logic of English: I have no idea where the “i before e” thing came from, but there are 35 rules that cover 95% of English.
See previous. The argument for spelling reform always comes down to “Words should be spelled like they’re prononced,” while glossing over the question of “pronounced by whom”?
Dinah Shore used to do commercials for a bank. She’d say “When you say ‘jump’, we say ha ha.” That lovely southern drawl.
I suppose my most contrarian opinion is that people create dumb controversies, like whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, or whether hot dogs are a sandwich and should be allowed to have ketchup on them, because they’re futilely trying to obscure the fact that they’re wasting their lives buried in trivialities and pretending their epitaphs won’t be, in essence: “Won An Argument On Twitter”.
Well, I’m certainly not saying that anyone would or should take that example (not mine, obviously, as it’s been around as long as I can remember) as a legitimate and real-world option for spelling “fish,” just that there are some counterintuitive (to the non-speaker) exceptions that make English a tricky little bugger.
Yeah, it’s more of a sore point for me because the argument is generally ignorant–see previous comment about 35 rules covering 95% of the language–but “reform” would alienate modern readers from the history of the language, and thereby the culture.
If we took all the -ed words, for example, and made them just -d (forged => forgd, danced => dancd, etc.) not only would it become that much harder to read anything in the past, and destroy a lot of poetry, there’d be no cue that the -ed used to be pronounced.
And then, in the future, when we’re all talking like marble-mouthed Springsteens or what-have-you, we have to “reform” the language again…
