The July Dispatch

I’m taking some inspiration from some of the OG mom bloggers I’ve been following since the ‘00s. Many have moved to Substack and post somewhat regularly but also send out ‘Monthly Edit’ Emails: A post or two and a list of curated links.

I used to do that with my business newsletter and people loved it, and this project was always meant to be heavy on curation. So here goes!

I got really triggered by the ‘Europoors Don’t Have Air Conditioning’ discourse.

Not because I’m against air conditioning, but because the people wagging their fingers and concern trolling are mostly divorced from the context of why much of Northern Europe doesn’t have air conditioning.

One of my notes, didn’t exactly ‘go viral’ but it got the most traction anything I’ve posted ever has on Substack.

So of course, I had to expand it into an article:

Air Conditioning Culture Wars

The Concern Trolling Has Got to Stop

The Europa StarEleanor Mayrhofer

I’ve since followed up with another note, which didn’t get nearly the same traction, but I’ll be ready when the haters start back up. Interestingly, a question arises asking whether America has a cultural inferiority complex, and if it’s at the root of this (because why do they care?!?)

Other things that caught my attention

#1 Mind Enterprises: Seizing the means of relaxation

The weekend that the Iran War broke out, Ursula von der Leyen announced hat she would convene a meeting on Monday. This went viral on the interwebs. The sentiment being Europeans and the EU are uncomproimising on work-life balance (and I say good, dammit!)

I can’t find it now, but A woman on X posted a video of these two guys grooving on a balcony saying something like ‘Europe seizes the means of relaxation and schedules a meeting for Monday!’ I lolled and decided I had to find out who these guys were.

Turns out they are the Italian techno duo Mind Enterprises. I love them, I love the memes and I love their music. If you live long enough you start to see everything go full circle. Their 1980s synth vibe fused with Italo disco feels (to me) both nostalgic and new at the same. time. What’s old is new again. Here they are in a short podcast interview with Monocle:

They’ve appear in memes when the intent is to convey ‘screw it, life’s to short’, and really this strikes me as a pretty sane reaction to living in an insane world. Guessing from their ‘Negroni Love’ video, looks they were in the US for the World Cup:

#2 The Fires in France and Spain

I am very depressed by the wildfires taking place in France and Spain right now. A little hope from this New York Times story on how farmers are adapting:

“As fires worsen, European nations are adapting, focusing less on purely responding and more on preparing. One novel idea that fire researchers are promoting is that winemakers — along with truffle farms and apiaries — have a critical role to play in making dry, arid places more resilient to climate change and extreme blazes.”

Another surprising (to me) factor in the fires is the depopulation of the European countryside.

But experts say there’s another factor behind the continent’s large fires, one rooted in societal changes that could be hard to reverse. In parts of Europe, a generational shift away from farming has replaced patchworks of pastures and plowed fields with untamed vegetation that burns intensely during hot, dry summers like this one.

Maybe we all need to move back to the land.

#3 New Euro Designs

The EU has commissioned several designers to submit proposals for bank notes. Below are some of my favorites:

Whichever designs are selected, all bank note denominations will feature Maria Callas, Leonardo da Vinci, Ludwig von Beethoven, Miguel de Cervantes, Marie Curie and Bertha von Suttner. If you don’t know who von Suttner was, neither did I. She was an Austrian peace activist, and winner of the first Nobel Peace prize.

ICYMI

Can Europe Defend Itself, Parts 1, 2 and 3.
My thoughts on the Millenial European novel ‘Perfection’

See you next month!
Eleanor