Were I live - Portugal - almost all homes have white vertical external window shutters which can be raised or lowered from inside.
The principle is the same - when its hot you want the sunlight to be ideally reflected or at worst absorbed and transformed into heat outside the windows. Courtains don’t really work well for this (even the white ones, which are the ones which reflect most light) because any sunlight they absorb is transformed into heat inside rather than outside.
In practice when it’s really hot you can manage the temperature at home passivelly to quite an extent by having your shutters down (they deploy from above) during the hours when sunlight would otherwise hit your window and be transformed into heat inside it.
By the way, maybe the most effective way of an improvised “light shield” is by putting aluminum foil on the outside of the windows, but that’s of course more expensive than basically painting them white as they’re doing in France plus it totally cuts down on the light coming in, which this doesn’t.
Why the French are painting their windows with chalk to beat the heat
Seems like the headline answered its own question
No we’re not.
Yes you are. BBC says it so it has to be true. You just probably don’t remember doing it and can’t see it on the windows.
Did you came here for the 5 minute argument or the 30 minutes one?
Thanks for that. :)
I came here for the orgy. When does it start again???
Oh, that’s over there, second door to the right.
An argument’s not just saying, “no we’re not”!
Yes it is
Oh I’ve had enough of this
And by god I have had enough of this congress!
No you haven’t
fine. i’ll go watch that skit again. ❤️
We’re really not.
You’re getting left behind then. Come on, get on with it!
We haven’t invented blinds yet, that’s how backwards we are apparently
The French: say non to anglicisms: it’s not “e-mail”, it’s «courriel», and you don’t “download”, you «télécharger».
also the French: what do we call painting roofs white to reflect heat? How about «le cool roofing»
You’re thinking of Québec, they’re the ones with the strict translation policy which leads them to use direct expressions borrowed from English which sound weird to the French, they are much more used to just integrating the English word.
«Courriel» is an Académie Française coinage, IIRC
Courriel is québécois, the official metropolitan french translation is “mél” which as far as I know sees virtually no use.
Also the académie isn’t coining these official government translations , but rather an entity called the CELF. What the académie does is, well, nothing, it’s basically just a tool for embezzlement that happens to be supported by a major newspaper.
Could very well be, but it’s not used in informal language, everyone says email. Maybe in government letters or so. The Canadians do though, as well as arrêt instead of stop signs, fin de semaine instead of weekend, etc.
Le wifi
das WLAN
(I find it kinda funny that in English it’s a technical term but in German it’s just… their word for the wifi)
– Frost
Better than WiFi meaning internet access, which makes me feel like a grumpy millennial when I hear it.
heck I’m Gen Z and it makes me grumpy! And we grew up on wifi with no wired connections at all! (our family was all in on laptops for some reason)
– Frost
Did you grew up with forums too? Because uuh i see a pattern here
Actually no we didn’t! We’ve seen forums when looking stuff up, but never really actively participated in them.
– Frost
Oh waitt, are ya in a system? If yes, i am sorry XD i thought you were someone who used to wander in forums because in many forums people would leave a signature at the end of their message
Because they’re a developed country with free healthcare, education, and Wi-Fi
Healthcare isn’t free. It’s funded by your insanely high taxes. Unless you’re broke and jobless you’re paying for it. The US has free education, wifi is a whopping $35, air conditioning, a massive military, cheaper gas, vastly more robust infrastructure…
So that makes me wonder what are you paying insane taxes in Europe for? Free wifi and healthcare? Your power grid can’t support AC even if people had them, you don’t have a huge road network, I guess you could equate the good train network to US roads. Shit military by comparison.
It’s not even a pissing match between countries. I know where the bulk of the US taxes go even if I don’t like it all. France has state healthcare that you pay for, free wifi, and a nice subsidized train network.
I think Trump is a scammy POS and then some, but if you ask me someone is robbing you blind in France and waving “free healthcare” flag over your face going you don’t realize someone is pocketing that tax money.
This comment smells so much of US of A citizen stereotype that i wonder if it’s irony
Best not look at how much the US spends on health care with our taxes.
(spoiler:, it’s nearly $2 trillion/year, France is something like $325 billion euro)
The US has free education
I think you might be a victim of it.
I hate to see people lose their life savings and go bankrupt due to medical bills, or whose insurance companies deny treatment until loved ones die, but if it’s gotta happen, let’s hope it happens to someone like you who has no empathy for those who suffer the same currently.
And why not suffer a disability that makes you unable to work too and then you can see what living on permanent disability is like and how little the government cares for you. If it’s gonna happen, I’ll hope it happens to someone like yourself.
I’m French. Our healthcare is awesome, and honestly I wish we paid more taxes, so we could make public transport and trains free as well !
US health insurance is more expensive than European taxes and it doesn’t even cover everything.
US has free education
Ahahahahahahahaha
As an American, sit down, Hoss.
As someone who has seen hot climes before, I feel like a bunch of us should go to Europe and, y’know. Explain.
Shade=good!
Ice=good!
Underground=good!
White cars=good!
Sunglasses= well, you got this oneYes, we know?
Which reminds me, Paris should have opened up the Catacombs for people to stay in during the heatwave.
Which reminds me, Paris should have opened up the Catacombs for people to stay in during the heatwave.
Well somebody doesn’t then
As someone who has seen hot climes before, I feel like a bunch of us should go to Europe and, y’know. Explain.
Absolutely. I’m from a cold place in the US, but we still at least got PSAs for a variety of climates. I’ve met several Germans who had a vacation companion melt their flip flops on hot sand, which sounds silly, but it’s not something they ever had to think about.
On the other hand, I’ve learned a lot about dealing with the cold here, because it’s not silliness, just climate specialization.
A whole bunch of them got a lesson in applied meteorology on a visit to the New World this spring.
Sunglasses= well, you got this one
The French make sunglasses look good.
I’ll never be as cool as this guy.
Nah if you don’t hate poor people you are, in fact, cooler than this guy
For sure
Congrats, top belligerent comment of the week.
I’m just saying, tips ‘n tricks can be handy. Like how to cool a hot car fast.
But you’re not allowed to see it.
I haven’t seen this yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me because I had the same idea. People are trying everything because every shop is sold out of fans and mobile AC units, and the mylar film stuff. Crazy. Even spray bottles.
If you can get these materials you should try these cooling packs. The materials should be cheap enough to give them to everyone you know.
Chalk’s not paint…
If you mix crushed chalk with water, it becomes paint-like and can be painted onto things. Which is what they are doing.
That’s dope
No, it’s chalk.
And paint
Stucco on the window
Would be a decent band name.
No, but paint can be chalky.
That’s why I don’t read the articles, time-released learning. 😅😶🌫️
