What’s considered “healthy” and “optimal” by research conducted by and on folks living in the higher and drier northern latitudes doesn’t always match what people in the tropics “feel”.

The annual average for humidity is 77% where I grew up, and highest humidity is around 88% during the monsoons. Well outside your healthy range. My childhood home doesn’t have air conditioning to this day, so I do feel these humidities whenever I’m there. And I like it, unless it’s peak summer (I adore the monsoons - it’s my favourite season, and I miss that I don’t really have “proper” monsoon rains where I live now). Most friends who still live there also adore the monsoon weather - though they hate that their clothes takes days to dry after a wash, and other inconveniences. None of them use dehumidifiers, or complain of humidity outside the summer sweating season.

The annual average where I currently live is 55%. Which is pretty high on your healthy range. But my skin feels dry AF, even with daily moisturization, my lips crack if I drink < 5L water per day, and my hair has this brittle texture I don’t like. All of which disappears after a week in my childhood home.

So high humidity might promote mould growth (though I have never encountered it myself, it’s entirely possible we will find some if we break the walls down), but to people who grew up with it, it can also feel comfortable. Hence the market for humidifiers, with air conditioning on the rise - rather than dehumidifiers.

Counter Rant

I don’t understand the insistence in the western Anglophone world that milk automatically means cow’s milk.

Coconut milk is a very normal word to say in my mother tongue (Bengali). What else are you even supposed to call it? Coconut “beverage” or “liquid” would be hella confusing because we wouldn’t know if one means the milk (the creamy liquid that comes from pressing the coconut pulp) or the water (the transparent liquid that resides in the pulp, and tastes and behaves completely differently). Are we supposed to go invent a new word every time we encounter a milky liquid?

Also, what about other mammalian milks? Do we need to invent a new name for goat milk? (Which is a fairly common drink in India, possibly thanks to Gandhi’s obsession with the stuff) What about sheep milk (not very common in India, but widely used in some parts of Europe). Or Yak’s Milk? (Pretty popular in specific pockets of India).

Milk is any white creamy liquid. That’s how it has always been used, in English and in other languages, going back centuries. The cow agriculture industry must have mounted one hell of a PR campaign to convince western consumes that milk automatically implies it must come from a cow. In India, you just look at the packaging. Does it have a picture of a cow on it? Well then it comes from a cow. Does it have a coconut on it? You guessed it, it comes from a coconut. Simple. I don’t see how that can ever be confusing to customers.

Rant over

I don’t understand why they aren’t more popular here.

As somebody from a humid climate, who moved to a much drier region - it’s probably because we kinda like the humidity

Does it suck to be all sweaty during summer? Yes, absolutely. But my skin requires much less moisturizing and my hair changes to a nicer texture every time I am back in my childhood home. I just avoid going there in summer months!

I don’t have experience with a sarong, but a saree is basically the same thing.

The difference is in the shape and size of the piece of cloth. That’s how you can tell a saree, bedsheet and towel apart. There is also usually difference in material (but fine silk towels exist, as do coarse cotton sarees), patterns/weaves (but there are towels and sarees that share pretty similar patterns) and quality of materials used (but again, ridiculously high quality silk bedsheets are a thing). The real difference is the shape and size - sarees are always 5.5m x 1.15 m (‘standard’ 6-yards), or 8.2m x 1.15m (9-yards, worn only on special occasions now, and only in a few specific regions).

In a pinch, a saree works as a towel or a bed sheet or a cover sheet of any sort, really. However, good luck getting a towel or bedsheet draped onto your body - you’ll look like you’re in a sack. They just don’t have the right shape!

I think the original analogy works better.

If an EU country goes rogue, other EU nations can’t just isolate it and bar it’s citizens from entry. There is no expulsion from the EU AFAIK. But Lemmy instances can block another instance fairly easily and unilaterally - like how nations can refuse visa to citizens of a rogue nation. And Lemmy instanced are expected to federate with most other instances, just like countries are expected to grant visas to most other countries - unlike joining the EU, which is a whole big process and all EU members have to agree (there are no vetoes in Lemmy federation).

But most importantly, the EU members are required to act as one in many circumstances - most laws apply across all EU members, EU negotiates trade deals as a block, etc. That is not true for Lemmy instances. Each is completely independent and makes its own laws - and must only comply with some very loose principles (which boil down to “don’t be a total jerk”) to not be isolated from other instances. This is much closer to the kind of independence countries have, than EU members.

I think it’s not helped by the fact that most early adopters are “techies” who enjoy talking about the underlying tech.

The average user doesn’t really need to understand this whole fediverse thing to sign up and use Lemmy. We could just have a website with a big sign up button that randomly (to load balance) selects an instance from a whitelist and signs the user up there to get them started. But instead we have GitHub docs with detailed comparisons of various instances, and long discussions about underlying protocols and what the federation means and how that’s different from centralized platforms.