The climate varies greatly between different places on the same latitude. She seems to live near Abakan, Russia at about 53 deg. N; according to Wikipedia, this has average daily means ranging from -18.3 C to +20.0 C. Compare with Manchester, UK (53 deg 28'N): about +4.5 C to +16 C.
A low of -18 C isn't uncommon, but a daily mean of -18 C across a whole month (day and night) is pretty cold! It's colder than any major North American city except Fairbanks, at least. The other cities I think of as being cold all have significantly higher daily means in their coldest month: -11 C in Anchorage, -10 C in Minneapolis, Montreal, and Ottawa, and -4 C in Chicago.
Sure, it gets cold in the winter there, but, say, -20C is not too cold to get out of the house to get some firewood nearby.
I walked at -20C to school as a kid, and it was ok. I wouldn't go out when it was -30C, but considering the mean of -18C, -30C would be rare, and almost never in the middle of the day.
Bottom line: people have lived just fine for thousands of years in much harsher climates, for example, a thousand miles north from where she lives.
-18 C night and day is not that cold. It does not stop any daily activities - like kids playing outside. Going near -30 C and below - with regular "urban" winter clothing - that starts to modify ones routines. Don't look at the statistics, observe the real effects.
It depends on a few other factors, among which are wind and humidity. -18 C in Munich is lovely for a stroll. 8 C on the west coast of Ireland is omfg.
This is also found in the Ruby hardware description language (not the same as the scripting language). A commonly-occurring pattern is:
R^~1 ; S ; R
where R and S are functions, ';' is composition ('.' in Haskell) and '^~1' is inverse. Usually this is for wiring (change order or grouping of wires to suit block S).
The wrinkle in Ruby is that R and S can be relations, not just functions, so data can flow both ways, just like actual hardware (can only flow from right to left in Haskell). Ruby won't try to guess the obverse function, unlike J.
