Fifty-three French departments now bask in orange vigilance—which is to say, we have finally perfected the art of administering heat waves through bureaucratic colour-coding. How reassuring to learn that somewhere in Lyon or Marseille, a prefect is grimly updating his dashboard whilst the mercury devours another degree. The heatwave itself, one gathers, finds no comfort in such precision. Nature, that most stubborn of artists, refuses to recognize our warning system and persists in its crude business of making people uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Americans lift naval blockades whilst Iranians announce deals 'out of desperation,' as though desperation were not simply another word for the abrupt surrender of negotiating leverage dressed in diplomatic language. And here sits Emmanuel Macron, solemnly calling for 'great vigilance' in difficult days—a sentiment so universally true that it might equally apply to a man crossing the street or a bank manager balancing his ledger.

We live in an epoch where we have grown frighteningly competent at naming our crises, quantifying our disasters, and issuing warnings from ever-more-sophisticated warning systems. The only thing we seem unable to do is stop issuing warnings and actually prevent the disasters themselves. But perhaps that would be asking too much of an age that finds profound utility in the colour orange.