"Grown men were walking up to cops on street corners begging them to shoot."

The little weather box on the top right of the front page of the Times said that today’s climate was “oppressive,” whereas tomorrow will be “stifling.” I was somewhat puzzled by this, given that tomorrow projects as even hotter, but a third party made a strong case that being stifled would in fact be worse than being oppressed. Anyway, either term seems quite inadequate.

In a related note, there are people who say that they don’t like the climate in the Pacific Northwest. Such people are, to put it charitably, clearly not in control of anything that could be described as “mental faculties.”