Yes, but there are two different ones - one for medical appointments and one for medicine.

Sweden.

A few alternatives:

• I could book an appointment at the local health center. I would probably get a time at the earliest next week, and it would cost me $30. Health center doctors are generally quite overworked, and can sometimes be a bit dismissive of your issues in my experience, but they will help you. If you need specialist care, they will give you a referral, which could take several months depending on the priority of the case and the type of specialist.
• I could use an app to get access to a video call with a doctor, after having described my symptoms in the app. I would get a video call the same day and it would cost me $30. Given the remote nature of this kind of contact, they can be a bit limited in what they can do for you, but will try to help you regardless. If your case requires in-person examination, they will ask you to go to a health center instead. If you need specialist care, they will give you a referral and you’ll have to wait the same amount of time as for a referral in the health center scenario.
• I am lucky enough to have a private health insurance plan through my employer. If I have any problems, I’ll submit them to this private health insurer, and they put a human on the case and connects me with a specialist right away if the problem warrants one. Typically this happens the same or the next day. This costs me nothing, apart from what I pay in benefit taxes to be on the private health insurance plan.

All in all, things work fairly well in Sweden, but having gotten private health insurance has definitely jaded me a bit on account of how much better the experience is when you have that. If only the public system wasn’t systematically underfunded and run by the dumbest politicians on offer in the country, then maybe everyone could have great patient experience.

Blackout curtains are mandatory equipment for any Swedish bedroom, in my opinion. There’s no way to get enough sleep without them. Sleep masks also help if you’re particularly sensitive to light.

AC is generally speaking not required, as nights are cool and letting in air can provide adequate cooling for all but the hottest days of the year. This is of course a problem for people like me who are allergic to grass pollen, which is active during summer, but I’ve been able to get by mostly with a fan these days.

But don’t tell anyone because we don’t want more people moving here!

You need to build more housing so that more people can enjoy it, but more significantly so that the people already there can afford it.

I’ve been told it’s positively Mediterranean this year though, is that right?

Well, it begins with too warm for comfort here, and then it gets progressively worse.

Winter is quite nice when there is snow. We don’t get that in Stockholm, for the most part.

Depends on where you are. Miserable in hotter places I’m sure, but in Sweden it’s quite honestly glorious. Sun up from 03:30 to 22 in Stockholm, and it never quite gets dark. Does wonders for your mood.

Winter, however, is a cold, dark and wet mess. Truly depressive.

Spring and autumn are alright, but suffer from just a little bit too much rain.

Naturally, the climate crisis is making things slightly too warm for comfort now, and we’re going to have to retrofit all homes to withstand heat better before too long.

I’d agree, but my understanding is that Elitewheels are quite trustworthy.

I’ll let you know if they break and I eat pavement

Scored myself a very nice set for under $400, for road use.

The key in this case is of course to buy from China

A decent road bike. Not top specced, and with none of the additional gear you’ll probably want, but you can definitely get started with €1k. I bought my current bike for approximately €700 and have upgraded + bought additional gear for probably a bit over €1k, but that has gotten me some really great stuff and I basically want for nothing in the sport.

If the fire department is happy with one staircase, great.

Fire departments make for very poor authorities on these matters, unfortunately. See the issue of them mandating completely oversized roads, since they can’t imagine smaller fire engines that have precedent around the world.

It just doesn’t sound plausible that 6-15% premium for additional staircases is a root cause of the housing crisis, when developer profit opportunity is clearly the greater constraint.

That’s the thing though - there is no single root cause for the housing crisis. It’s just a bunch of small issues stacked on top of each other, and each has to be addressed individually.

It’s important for public projects to manage their costs as well, as it affects how much can be built using the limited public funds available. I think we can all agree that we need large amounts of public housing in constrained places like San Francisco, to alleviate the current situation.

It is in fact one of the major advantages of building public housing - you unlock the lower costs of building at scale, which reduces costs in several ways:

• Building the same type of units makes workers familiar with the product and allows them to complete them faster
• Pre-fabricated modular units can be constructed off-site and shipped in, and making them at scale drives costs down
• Large contracts are more lucrative and can hence be negotiated to better rates with contractors

For a wildly successful example, look to Miljonprogrammet that took place in Sweden during the 60s and 70s. Following that project, a vast supply of housing was available for the population, with housing costs below 1% of income being common.

Public housing follows the same rules. This makes any multi-story building more expensive for everyone, and the rules need to be reformed regardless of who builds the building and regardless of their motivations.

As the other comment mentions, Japan is listed as not having a maximum, making this more or less lose relevance.

On top of that, the stated motivation for the two stairwell rule is fire safety, which is only really adjacent to earthquake safety. Other locations have figured out that two stairwells are very much not necessary to achieve appropriate levels of fire safety, and San Francisco would do very well to learn from them.

It’s not fool-proof by any means. All I’m saying is that you should prefer the option when available.

Steering another human by voice is a very bad interface. Prefer remote control when available.

Keep your living space cooler by blocking out sunlight from coming through the windows, preferably using shading on the outside.

Make liberal use of fans, they lower perceived temperature by several °C.

Wear loose-fitting linen clothing.

Use hats that provide shade, like a cap or something with a larger brim.

Go for a swim.

Take a warm shower before bed (counterintuitive but helps in my experience).

Try to create a breeze through your home by opening windows on opposite sides of the home, when the temperature is higher inside than outside.

Use sunscreen.

It was a not-insignificant part of why I chose to move here, that’s for sure.

It’s a small gym in my co-op.

I’m usually even alone there when working out in the morning, it’s magical. Basically a private gym for my purposes. It has everything I need with a barbell, rack, benches, dumbbells, exercise bikes etc