Where I live, in December, it's already night by 4pm, whereas in July, 4pm isn't even the peak of heat yet. But if someone said "good evening" to me at 4pm in either of them, I'd prob accept it either way, and I'm a meteorologist

Also: In the UK and the US, the typical meteorological standard is just to split seasons by month (DJF MAM JJA SON) for easy stats reasons, but other countries have entirely different standards based on climate. Different people have different definitions and it's completely fine

sorry, my mistake, I totally meant to say I value "community" not "communism" ;)

(also, I'm not North American!)

it's about a drug sniffer dog who bites off the balls of a mafia boss, runs away from witness protection, and gets adopted by a mailman.

It's definitely a stupid antics movie: at one point, a woman gets farted on by a zebra whilst holding a lit match

that makes a lot of sense! I'm very grateful to be part of an academic community that seems to value open access, as well of part of a university that pays for access and submission to most of the journals I need to use

Hugely agree, those would all be fantastic additions.

can't believe I have to say this, but even if kids have no genetic or medical reason for being fat, bullying children relentlessly is still unkind and unhelpful

the guardian has messed up their headline a bit here. The paper they're citing attributes a 9.7% decrease in children's total sugar consumption to the sugar tax.

The "sugar consumption halved!" is more accurately: "free sugar from soft drinks only" dropped from 22g per day (pre-tax) to 12g per day (post-tax).

Considering "Children aged 7 to 10 should have no more than 24g of free sugars a day" is the recommended amount - a reduction from 22g to 12g from changes to soft drinks alone is still a big win

It's a concern already for low-lying atoll islands like those in the Maldives and Tuvalu. Half of Tuvalu's capital city is expected to be flooded by 2050, but they've been seeing the effects for years unfortunately.

It really depends where you are though - my town is at around 100 m elevation and about 80 km inland. When I was a kid, my mum used to have nightmares about tidal waves coming over the horizon because she was so scared of sea level rise.

I've been keeping an eye on the ensemble since early last week - at one point it was forecast that Cornwall was going to get 6 inches of snow! Snow is notoriously tricky to forecast unfortunately

In Sweden they have kebab pizza (kebab meat, iceberg lettuce, raw onions, salad cream) - it's actually great but it's horrific microwaved. They also have "banana curry" pizza (did not attempt)

hard agree on the siesta idea but instead of 12-3 I'd say stop work at 3-6 instead, or work mornings and evenings (with lots of time in between)

in summer, the hottest part of the day can be 4-6pm (because there's a big lag between the sunniest part of the day and the ground heating up, which then heats the air) - also Spain has a weird timezone (GMT+2 despite being west of us, so their sunrise was 5 mins earlier than ours, but was at 7am local time, and ours was at 5:05am)

If you're interested in up-to-date data on this sort of stuff, Zach Labe has some really great figures on his website: zachlabe.com

(I mean, the figures aren't great because of the ramifications, but they're clear and concise)