When I was young, my mother still called the refrigerator the icebox:
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Open thread 5/12/2025 — 50 Comments
In Sept of 2023, I was in Paris, staying at a Hotel that did not have A/C. It was one of the hottest Sept on record. It was miserable. A/C and refrigeration are a boon to mankind.
I keep checking news this morning to see whether the last living American hostage has been released by Hamas. So far, nothing.
Boston summers — that’s right, I said Boston — were absolutely miserable without A/C. It’s way more humid there than a lot of people think.
Shark.
Beyond a certain combination of heat and humidity, seated work such as being in school, so forth, suffers from disturbed concentration. “Is this paper going to stick to my forearm?” “Am I going to sweat through the seat of my pants?”
In the South, and in institutions influenced by the South, “dinner” is an noon because it’s easier to cook a big, more elaborate meal starting at ten in the morning than at four in the (summer)afternoon. And “supper”, a lighter meal is at evening because it’s less wearing to get out the leftovers at six pm.
When I was in the Army fifty-plus years ago, “dinner” was at noon and you paid more at the mess hall–if an officer–than you did for “supper” in the evening.
2) In a very surprising move, one of my lefty friends (who has TDS but tries hard to be reasonable at times) posted this am that if Trump lowers scrip prices and the China deal goes through, he will actually thank him. His more crazy friends immediately piled on the poor guy for such a horrible statement. They really hate apostates as much a Trump.
3) Europe summers without AC: we were in France in 2019 for the World Cup and it was a record breaking heat wave. Yeah, no AC in Europe can be really annoying.
My grandparents house still had an icebox in 1960.
Aubrey,
My lady is Louisiana through and through, and has been trying to get me to get on board with the dinner-supper swap for decades.
Physicsguy, from Schlichter’s article, this is the scary part.
“If the Democrats put up somebody who’s not a complete buffoon, they’re likely to beat our complete buffoon. North Carolina still elects Democrats. This was never going to be a slam dunk, but here comes dopey Thom Tillis, alienating his own base by being a squish and finally deciding that the straw that’s going to break the camel’s back is the United States Attorney gig in freaking Washington, DC. How dumb must you be to choose this hill to ritually sacrifice your career on?”
they know what they are doing, Tillis voted for Garland and Austin and Mayorkas and a host of others, because of what they did to the country, as Julie kelly points out the 1512 abuse alone on the part of Garland and Graves, was odious, he seems to have held his fire against Judge Jeannine, but you never know with these scoundrels,
he tried to sabotage hegseth with these little games through third parties, which failed, as hans mancke has pointed out, a switch of officers slows the investigations down for a time, like the ones into wikileaks and the January 6th
kangaroo court,
that reminds me, where are all the glorious reports of josh stein, the giant slayer, I’m sure he has contined to foul up what the last governor did, but the outrage about Mark Robinson was satisfying, wasn’t it, didnt really solve any problema,
I supported, including donating to, an R opponent on Tillis’s first re-election campaign. The Tillis campaign dug up something that looked bad from the candidate’s business record, and he bailed out. On the second re-election, Tillis might have lost had the Dem candidate not been found to be having his mistress in his home while his wife and children were at the beach.
I’m all in favor of a credible and well-funded primary opponent. I hope Elon Musk is looking for the right one.
Miguel C, I can’t fact check one percent of what you write, but you always sound so confident. Are you a savant for politics and political history? I mean that seriously. Or am I a carney mark?
In a very surprising move, one of my lefty friends (who has TDS but tries hard to be reasonable at times) posted this am that if Trump lowers scrip prices and the China deal goes through, he will actually thank him. — physicsguy
I flipped on the TV early this morning, and there was Trump speaking about this on financial news.
Of course, the drug pricing issues are big news, but the thing that caught my interest was what he had to say about EU regulators and judges. He said that the regulators and the complicit and compliant EU judges were systematically syphoning tens of billions out of our companies. Mainly tech companies.
For many years, it has struck me that what passes for EU antitrust is primarily a scheme to screw over US companies and probably all non-EU companies to some extent. I recall that decades ago, the merger between GE and Honeywell was blocked by the EU. I was shocked that they could get away with that. And antitrust is just one component.
Apparently, there is a strong regulatory component to the low drug prices that the EU enjoys, though I confess that I’m not aware of any of those details.
which part what tillis chose to do, what western leaders foolishly endorse, at their peril i guess I’m just a close observer, of what has happened before,
Tillis was slightly less adept that Graham, remember when he was pleased Ashley Babbitt was shot, or how he touted the Arab Spring, and never really revisited the consequences of same, he always found a way to get enough primary candidates to eke out a win,
the way he groveled to Erdogan after the so called Arab Spring, I don’t recall if he was all in on the Khashoggi durge, but probably, I hope for the best, but I am realistic about how little progress happens and how much chaos comes to pass,
Physicsguy…”scrip prices”??
My latest post is about the fall of France in May 1940…and its relevance to our current situation.
From 1933 to 1939 we had an ice box. The icehouse was about a half mile away. My brother and I would go to the icehouse with our wagon and bring home a 40-pound block.
The icehouse was a big barn-like building with heavy insulation. The ice was insulated with straw as I recall. When we got a refrigerator, it seemed like a miracle.
Growing up in Florida I remember that A/C went from being a luxury to a necessity within a few years in the mid-60s.
By 1970 it seemed everyone had A/C, at least in Ormond Beach.
Don’t underestimate A/C. It was and is a transformative technology. The rise of the American South as an economic power has much to do with A/C.
For many years, it has struck me that what passes for EU antitrust is primarily a scheme to screw over US companies…
TommyJay:
Preach it, brother!
I think much anti-Americanism is based on resentment. Anti-Semitism too.
otoh, without air conditioning, washington dc would be a sleepy sweltering southern town, not the leviathan it has become, (now it gets by with it’s own hot air)
even in florida, when we get a good governor like desantis, the possums or ferrets seem intent on undermining him, some bogus lawfare aimed at him through a charity his wife supports, this is lhe leg, that tried to slip backdoor amnesty or at least block the enforcement of federal immigration law,
conversely there is almost no break in how much damage a blue state governor can do, take newsom,whitmer, witch hochul, they just keep going burning the state down to cinder, grinding metal as time goes on,
Apparently, wind and solar power do not mix well even with nuclear power leading to grid instability and potential power outages like in the recent Spain and Portugal incident.
See this report about the stability of the French system, which has a high fraction of nuclear power, with the addition of wind and solar.
“Many previously claimed that the nuclear industry could be harmoniously paired with wind energy and thus lead to a decarbonized French electricity mix. But that is proving to be more fantasy than reality. The recent Spanish blackout was a glaring example of what can happen when ideology clashes with hard science and reality.
Many engineers and specialists had warned of the risks and complications involved with nuclear power plants having to adapt their output to uncontrolled, fluctuating energies like wind and sun.”
@Bob Wilson:wind and solar power do not mix well even with nuclear power
They only mix well with hydro and natural gas, since both of those can be “spun up” or “spun down” very quickly. Hydro has no carbon emissions so letting wind and solar push hydro off the grid is no net benefit emissions-wise, but of course everyone is getting paid which is the important thing.
“Icebox” was a common term when I was growing up in the South 1950s-60s. But it was a synonym for “refrigerator.” I can’t remember ever encountering an actual icebox.
Re AC in the South: yes, as huxley said it went from virtually unknown to standard in roughly 10 years 1960-70. And like many people who were children pre-AC I don’t remember the heat being a big deal, even though we went to school in un-ACd buildings at the height of summer (weird schedule due to agricultural needs). It was different for adults, I’m pretty sure. I remember a relative, born most likely in the 20s, insisting with some passion that “there were no good old days” before AC.
Mac:
I grew up in NYC before air conditioning was at all common, and I remember that even that far north the last couple of weeks of school were stifling. It occurs to me that perhaps southern schools got out earlier in the season? We in NYC went to the bitter end in those days, June 30, and began again right after Labor Day.
David Foster,
Prescription med prices. I’ve spent waay too much time in hospitals the past 9 months where you start picking up on the med lingo.
For you Southerners, was the quick changeover with pest services similar to A/C? Regular, home bug and termite services seem nearly pervasive in the modern South but I assume in prior times folks just tolerated the ubiquitous pests?
I grew up in Phoenix in the 1950s and 1960s. We had a new house with AC, but some friends of mine had “swamp coolers” which worked pretty well since the humidity outside was quite low.
I moved from Minot ND to Montgomery,AL. The first month (October) in Minot, it hit 0 on the 5th. The first sub-zero was Nov 19. I had not experienced that kind of cold. Then Bama. My gosh it was HOT. Our house had AC, the school didn’t. Some of the hillbilly kids came to school barefoot. One day, there was a very, very light dusting of snow. None of the bama kids had seen snow before. My one hillbilly friend came to school with a coat…and still barefoot.
I have an electric icebox now, but when I was a little kid we had an old-fashioned refrigerator that was powered by a block of ice delivered by an iceman.
Our first telephone didn’t have a dial. Instead, an advanced speech recognition system called an “operator” would say “number, please?” and we would tell her what number we wanted to be connected to. She had trouble understanding my Grandma’s broken English, so I would often have to place calls for her. I still remember her best friend’s phone number: Elkhurst ****.
We never had AC in school until I got to high school, where they had an addition (library and music room) which had it. I remember sweating through my clothing quite often towards the end of the school year.
My grandparents had a window unit for the guest bedroom. Only time I ever saw it used when there were no guests was for afternoon naps.
Having just gotten back from New Orleans I really can’t imagine living there during the summer without AC. It was hot enough in May.
Re: the video and dwelling temperature control without AC.
This was more on the heating side of things, and not historical, but my physics mentor was a moderately wealthy guy who moved his primary residence and built a new “passive solar” home in about 1983.
It featured a number of interesting items. The primary thing was a large amount of south facing windows and just inside the glass was a Trombe wall.
Wiki
Trombe walls may also be referred to as a mass wall, solar wall, or thermal storage wall. However, due to the extensive work of professor and architect Félix Trombe in the design of passively heated and cooled solar structure, they are often called Trombe Walls.
This system is similar to the air heater (as a simple glazed box on the south wall with a dark absorber, air space, and two sets of vents at top and bottom) created by professor Edward S. Morse a hundred years ago.
Supplementing the thermal mass wall were motorized curtains on a timer, and he bonded some sheeting to the concrete wall called “black chrome.” It is black and light absorbing in the visible range, and effectively “silvery” and reflective in the infrared range.
I imagine that in areas where cooling is the main concern, a Trombe wall could be configured to limit the effect of the peak temperatures of the day.
huxley Don’t underestimate A/C. It was and is a transformative technology. The rise of the American South as an economic power has much to do with A/C.
Agreed, but in looking at the reduction of the South’s per capita income gap compared to the US, more of the gap-closing occurred before AC (1930-1960 est. 55% to 77%: 22% gain, versus about 15% gain since then.) More Pricks than Kicks: The Southern Economy in the Long 20th century
Per capita income of South as % of national per capita income
I am reminded of Thomas Sowell’s pointing out that from 1940-60, the black-white income gap closed more than it did during the Affirmative Action era after 1960.
Here is one take on closing the South/North per capita income gap from the above article. Which didn’t need AC.
Indeed, one shouldn’t minimize the role of such in-migration and of the South’s larger population “swap” with the North during the postwar boom—with the South losing large numbers of its poor and uneducated and gaining in return large numbers of better educated migrants with middle-class incomes from the North—in explaining the Sunbelt/Rustbelt phenomenon.
But what CAN be said about air conditioning and the south is that net migration TO the South began AFTER AC took over the South.
TX summers are hot. I have often said that only the poverty-stricken or the insane stay in town in August. I find an indoor temperature of 80-82 degrees to be comfortable. I find the temperature in most buildings in the summer–low 70s?– to be uncomfortable. If my bedroom temperature is 84 or above, I find it difficult to sleep.
When I was a young child, my grandparents in Oklahoma had a swamp cooler, later replaced by air conditioning. Don’t recall how effective the cooler was. At least in OK, the temperature went way down after sundown. Where I live TX, it usually doesn’t get below 90 until 9-10 pm. Occasionally midnight will see 89-90 degrees. Oh well.
Bob Wilson brings up a good point about the problem of 100% reliance on wind or solar. There are going to be weather conditions that will shut them down. During the big freeze of 2021 in TX, I pointed out to some relatives that wind power shuts down in very cold weather. A yellow dog Democrat cousin in NYC replied that wind wasn’t the main culprit. I replied with info from a USG database that pointed out that, in comparing the big freeze to ordinary winter weather, wind energy fell the most during the big freeze. The relative replied with the alleged Mark Twain quote about “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” But when I requested that he give proof, he declined.
Regarding hot in the Northeast, I recall two weeks of 90 degree weather in New England. Maybe more now.
Dinner supper. I once got in trouble with my OK aunt when, before I went for a drive around the countryside, we agreed that I would return in time for dinner. Except that for her, dinner was at noon, and for me, dinner was in the evening.
Tommy Jay
This was more on the heating side of things, and not historical, but my physics mentor was a moderately wealthy guy who moved his primary residence and built a new “passive solar” home in about 1983.
I am reminded of a 1980s tale from my New England hometown. A guy who was responsible for a lot of the housing construction in the area decided to add solar heating to the house he was building for himself. He put the solar windows on the NORTH side of the house. 🙂 Oh well….
Family friends were more successful when they built a new home partly embedded into a hillside and with solar windows on the SOUTH side of the house. I don’t recall what reduction there was in their heating bills.
Another lifelong friend in town added a wood stove. A friend chainsaws dead trees on her property. No lack of trees on her property. She takes an ax to the chainsawed wood to cut them down to size for the stove. At age 80! Her oil heating bill has fallen by about half.
I imagine that in areas where cooling is the main concern, a Trombe wall could be configured to limit the effect of the peak temperatures of the day.
One thing to do is to minimize windows on the south—and especially on the west—sides of the house. Ditto with adding roof overhang to block the sun.
My grandparents called their fridge an “icebox,” though it wasn’t one any more by the time I came along. When my mother was small in the early 1930s, however, they had an actual icebox. One day my grandmother saw from an upstairs window that the iceman was backing up his wagon, unaware that my mother, aged maybe three or four, was behind it. The wagon hit my mother and knocked her down. She fell under the wagon but between the wheels, and was not seriously hurt. My grandmother, however, saw her daughter disappear under the wagon but did not know until she ran downstairs and outside that she was fine. She said she lost several years of her life.
Neo, actually it was the other way around–we went to school in the worst of the heat. I can’t at this distance give any but the roughest dates and intervals, but it went more or less like this: school let out at a typical late spring/early summer date, stayed out for six weeks, resumed for six weeks in the middle of summer, got out for another six, started back at a typical October-ish date, then got out for six weeks at a tbd date. I’m saying six weeks because that’s the number that I recall, but that seems to add up to too much. Probably some of those intervals were only four, and may have varied with conditions.
Why? Cotton. That autumn recess was referred to as “cotton picking.” This was a country school. Most families were small farmers or sharecroppers, and the whole family was needed to pick the cotton crop. Town schools did not do this btw.
Yes, I grew up in a very different world from even other Americans of my age.
By the end of the ’60s mechanical pickers had become standard and such arrangements were no longer needed. Also the small family farm was disappearing. How the teachers survived that summer session I don’t know.
It’s never dumb to incorporate as many passive heating/cooling features into your home as are appropriate for your climate; it may not be cost-effective if you can’t find a cooperative developer. It may be cheaper in the long run to have whatever house they already build and to just pay more for heating and cooling.
One of the features of my house that I most dislike is that the roof is sloped in such a way that about 75% of its surface drains to the six feet of gutter right above the front door; the other gutters have nothing to do but fill up with leaves. Another is that the floor plan is a sort of horseshoe and there’s not good airflow through the house, there’s sort of two dead ends so to speak.
But these were not the primary considerations behind buying. Few of us are in a position to get what we want without any tradeoffs.
bof…”Our first telephone didn’t have a dial. Instead, an advanced speech recognition system called an “operator” would say “number, please?” and we would tell her what number we wanted to be connected to.”
And the elevators in department stores had an even more advanced speech recognition system! You would tell this system what item you wanted, and it would neuro-electrically determine what floor it was on and take you there!
If I remember correctly, the U.S. Capitol building was the first major building in the U.S. to have Air Conditioning installed, and that tells you a lot about priorities.
This morning AesopSpouse took the cover off of our swamp cooler and turned it on for the first time since summer 2022. It was in pretty good shape, although we weren’t here the last two summers to run it. I actually get too cold when it is on and blowing directly into the room I’m in. Our summers in the Wyoming mission weren’t too bad, the visitor center is an old ranch house, which would have had some of the cooling features until it was closed off and air conditioned. Outside, I stayed in the shade as much as possible.
The video, although it was a well done summary with good pictures, didn’t tell me much that I was not familiar with except that the lower layers of skirts worn by the women acted as a kind of personal swamp cooler, cooled by their own evaporating sweat.
We had swamp coolers during my childhood in the Texas panhandle, and I remember how excited we were when my aunt and uncle got a Refrigerated Cooler for their window in another Texas town further east, sometime in the sixties.
Our school district followed the now-common schedule of being out all summer.
We didn’t have an ice ice-box, but refrigerators were called iceboxes anyway.
My biggest complaint about AC is that the churches and stores lower their temperatures to a point in the summer that is actually colder than they heat them up to in the winter. In the summer, I have to take layers of clothing that I can PUT ON when I go inside, whereas in the winter I take the layers off when I get in the building.
Oh well.
I wonder if someone could arrange a net-zero power outage for DC that would shut down all their AC?
Some cities once had central systems for cooling, in which chilled brine was circulated through pipes to individual refrigerators in homes and businesses…the refrigerator could then be very simple, with no active parts other than a thermostat-actuated valve. Such systems were in use in Boston and in New York City as early as 1890. Sort of a “cloud” approach to refrigeration—Cooling as a Service!
…On election night, Griffin [GOP] led Riggs by 9,851 votes. Provisional and absentee ballots that qualified were then added to the totals, which swung the race by 10,585 votes, resulting in a win for Riggs.
Griffin and state Republicans argued in their lawsuits that 60,000 ballots should be rejected in the election because ineligible voters fraudulently cast them.
The allegations included voters not having a Social Security or a driver’s license number in their voter registration records and overseas voters having failed to provide photo identification with their ballots and haven’t lived in North Carolina.
Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled the majority of the contested ballots must be counted. The court, in a 4-2 decision, determined that ballots containing missing information, including Social Security numbers, were still valid. However, the ruling also determined some ballots could be struck, including thousands of overseas and military ballots on which voters needed to prove their identity.
Go figure…
Niketas Choniates on May 12, 2025 at 6:14 pm said:
“It’s never dumb to incorporate as many passive heating/cooling features into your home as are appropriate for your climate; it may not be cost-effective if you can’t find a cooperative developer.”
I agree, and one of the core features of passive energy design is orienting the long side of your house along the E-W axis. Thereby, in summer the sun rises in the NE, arcs high over the house (so S Wall protected by modest overhangs), and sets in the NW. Planting deciduous trees on the NE and NW sides of your house provides initial and ongoing shade as the trees grow. Adding conifers in the NW for winter wind protection is a plus if you have the room. Or put your garage there in the NW, instead?
Plus of course in winter the sun rises in the SE, arcs lower in the sky, and sets in the SW, so maximizing solar gain on the south side, where the max window exposure it best, and shines under the modest to largish roof overhangs [at least 2 ft up to 4 ft, depending on latitude].
And the max cost benefit comes from a lot of insulation in the attic/ceiling area, followed by corresponding amounts for the wall.
But it appears no developers ever think along these lines, orienting houses to the street, in any pattern that fits the most houses in the available area. And most of their customers are even less attentive to these ideas and features when selecting their lot and/or house in the development. Thus developers get little in market forces pushing them towards these passive considerations. I gather the building codes don’t really address it either, aside from equipment energy factors and some attention to insulation.
The pictured men’s 2-3 piece suits, (I presume) long sleeved shirts, and ties wouldn’t contribute to coolness. Ditto the upholstered chairs.
When I was reading Simenon’s early Maigret books, I encountered garde-manger, which means roughly “keep to eat.”
In early 20th Century France the garde-manger was a ventilated cupboard attached to an outside wall, usually with a grill to keep out pests.
The idea was that the cold air outside the apartment would preserve the food better than the warm air inside.
Makes sense. But as a modern American accustomed to full climate control, the garde-manger sounds like something from the Middle Ages.
I grew up in Southern California, and IIRC, one of our homes had a small window unit: otherwise, houses that we lived in were built to maximize air flow, and being California in the non-desert zones, were quite comfortable. We had the practice of opening up all the windows and curtains at night, when it was cool in the summer – and then closing up after sunrise to preserve the cool. We usually had shade trees all around the house, and windows that maximized airflow. I did the same when I lived in military housing in Sacramento for a summer. The house that I lived in for a couple of summers in Ogden, Utah had a swamp cooler, for the summer. It was a dry heat there, so a swamp cooler worked quite well. I’ve lived in South Texas for three decades now, and AC is absolutely essential. My house has no natural airflow, and when the power goes off in the summer, it is unbearable.
As an aside, I always heard “ice-box” and “refrigerator” used interchangeably. In the 19th century, providing natural ice was also a huge and very profitable business, harvesting huge blocks of New England ice in the winter, and shipping it to the South and to Europe and into Asia. In Texas, “icehouse” is still a colloquial term for a certain kind of store, selling cold drinks, ice cream, etc.
In my early childhood (1950s), the very small Texas town where my grandparents lived had an actual ice house: a warehouse for the stored ice blocks, which were taken from there to be delivered. You could buy some extra blocks if you were making ice cream in the ubiquitous hand-cranked machines.
Doing some repair work in the Detroit area, got into some very large, old homes which had been really upscale for their time. One item I had to have explained to me was the hole in the roof. Maybe four by four with a weatherproof hatch which would be manipulated from the inside. On hot evenings, it would be opened. In that area, about an hour after the sun does down, things start moving toward better. And opening the roof would allow for the chimney effect have warm air rise through the house with lower windows open to draw in the cool(er) air. Never experienced it myself, but was told things got better by maybe ten in the evening.
I think it was in Charleston where I saw old homes with the longest roof extensions over porches I’d ever seen. Those were oriented west and south and the point was no direct sun got into the house that way, nor even hit the walls.
But, on the other hand, nobody likes to be cold. And the “sun room” is a feature of much smaller homes. Might not be able to heat it, but you could sit on a kind of chest in the sun. Mostly on the south or west sides.
This was a wonderful reminder of how it used to be!
All my grandparents were born in the late 1800’s, and their homes reflected these techniques for handling the weather.
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In Sept of 2023, I was in Paris, staying at a Hotel that did not have A/C. It was one of the hottest Sept on record. It was miserable. A/C and refrigeration are a boon to mankind.
I keep checking news this morning to see whether the last living American hostage has been released by Hamas. So far, nothing.
Boston summers — that’s right, I said Boston — were absolutely miserable without A/C. It’s way more humid there than a lot of people think.
Shark.
Beyond a certain combination of heat and humidity, seated work such as being in school, so forth, suffers from disturbed concentration. “Is this paper going to stick to my forearm?” “Am I going to sweat through the seat of my pants?”
In the South, and in institutions influenced by the South, “dinner” is an noon because it’s easier to cook a big, more elaborate meal starting at ten in the morning than at four in the (summer)afternoon. And “supper”, a lighter meal is at evening because it’s less wearing to get out the leftovers at six pm.
When I was in the Army fifty-plus years ago, “dinner” was at noon and you paid more at the mess hall–if an officer–than you did for “supper” in the evening.
1) For Kate, via Kurt Schlichter:
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/05/12/time-to-punt-thom-tillis-n2656857
2) In a very surprising move, one of my lefty friends (who has TDS but tries hard to be reasonable at times) posted this am that if Trump lowers scrip prices and the China deal goes through, he will actually thank him. His more crazy friends immediately piled on the poor guy for such a horrible statement. They really hate apostates as much a Trump.
3) Europe summers without AC: we were in France in 2019 for the World Cup and it was a record breaking heat wave. Yeah, no AC in Europe can be really annoying.
My grandparents house still had an icebox in 1960.
Aubrey,
My lady is Louisiana through and through, and has been trying to get me to get on board with the dinner-supper swap for decades.
Physicsguy, from Schlichter’s article, this is the scary part.
“If the Democrats put up somebody who’s not a complete buffoon, they’re likely to beat our complete buffoon. North Carolina still elects Democrats. This was never going to be a slam dunk, but here comes dopey Thom Tillis, alienating his own base by being a squish and finally deciding that the straw that’s going to break the camel’s back is the United States Attorney gig in freaking Washington, DC. How dumb must you be to choose this hill to ritually sacrifice your career on?”
they know what they are doing, Tillis voted for Garland and Austin and Mayorkas and a host of others, because of what they did to the country, as Julie kelly points out the 1512 abuse alone on the part of Garland and Graves, was odious, he seems to have held his fire against Judge Jeannine, but you never know with these scoundrels,
he tried to sabotage hegseth with these little games through third parties, which failed, as hans mancke has pointed out, a switch of officers slows the investigations down for a time, like the ones into wikileaks and the January 6th
kangaroo court,
that reminds me, where are all the glorious reports of josh stein, the giant slayer, I’m sure he has contined to foul up what the last governor did, but the outrage about Mark Robinson was satisfying, wasn’t it, didnt really solve any problema,
I supported, including donating to, an R opponent on Tillis’s first re-election campaign. The Tillis campaign dug up something that looked bad from the candidate’s business record, and he bailed out. On the second re-election, Tillis might have lost had the Dem candidate not been found to be having his mistress in his home while his wife and children were at the beach.
I’m all in favor of a credible and well-funded primary opponent. I hope Elon Musk is looking for the right one.
Last living American-Israeli hostage released:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/american-hostage-edan-alexander-released-hamas-after-more-than-580-days-captivity
one step forward, two steps back
https://www.frontpagemag.com/does-the-western-suit-erase-the-islamic-sword/
there is suggestion, that pantsless brett mcguirk, is the middle man in the talks with Hamas, which need to be done Sonny Corleone style,
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sjmkqrcxle?s=09
when you dial down the ambient noise
Miguel C, I can’t fact check one percent of what you write, but you always sound so confident. Are you a savant for politics and political history? I mean that seriously. Or am I a carney mark?
In a very surprising move, one of my lefty friends (who has TDS but tries hard to be reasonable at times) posted this am that if Trump lowers scrip prices and the China deal goes through, he will actually thank him. — physicsguy
I flipped on the TV early this morning, and there was Trump speaking about this on financial news.
Of course, the drug pricing issues are big news, but the thing that caught my interest was what he had to say about EU regulators and judges. He said that the regulators and the complicit and compliant EU judges were systematically syphoning tens of billions out of our companies. Mainly tech companies.
For many years, it has struck me that what passes for EU antitrust is primarily a scheme to screw over US companies and probably all non-EU companies to some extent. I recall that decades ago, the merger between GE and Honeywell was blocked by the EU. I was shocked that they could get away with that. And antitrust is just one component.
Apparently, there is a strong regulatory component to the low drug prices that the EU enjoys, though I confess that I’m not aware of any of those details.
which part what tillis chose to do, what western leaders foolishly endorse, at their peril i guess I’m just a close observer, of what has happened before,
Tillis was slightly less adept that Graham, remember when he was pleased Ashley Babbitt was shot, or how he touted the Arab Spring, and never really revisited the consequences of same, he always found a way to get enough primary candidates to eke out a win,
the way he groveled to Erdogan after the so called Arab Spring, I don’t recall if he was all in on the Khashoggi durge, but probably, I hope for the best, but I am realistic about how little progress happens and how much chaos comes to pass,
Physicsguy…”scrip prices”??
My latest post is about the fall of France in May 1940…and its relevance to our current situation.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/74028.html
From 1933 to 1939 we had an ice box. The icehouse was about a half mile away. My brother and I would go to the icehouse with our wagon and bring home a 40-pound block.
The icehouse was a big barn-like building with heavy insulation. The ice was insulated with straw as I recall. When we got a refrigerator, it seemed like a miracle.
Growing up in Florida I remember that A/C went from being a luxury to a necessity within a few years in the mid-60s.
By 1970 it seemed everyone had A/C, at least in Ormond Beach.
Don’t underestimate A/C. It was and is a transformative technology. The rise of the American South as an economic power has much to do with A/C.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EttmT1vHuMk#ddg-play
For many years, it has struck me that what passes for EU antitrust is primarily a scheme to screw over US companies…
TommyJay:
Preach it, brother!
I think much anti-Americanism is based on resentment. Anti-Semitism too.
otoh, without air conditioning, washington dc would be a sleepy sweltering southern town, not the leviathan it has become, (now it gets by with it’s own hot air)
even in florida, when we get a good governor like desantis, the possums or ferrets seem intent on undermining him, some bogus lawfare aimed at him through a charity his wife supports, this is lhe leg, that tried to slip backdoor amnesty or at least block the enforcement of federal immigration law,
conversely there is almost no break in how much damage a blue state governor can do, take newsom,whitmer, witch hochul, they just keep going burning the state down to cinder, grinding metal as time goes on,
Apparently, wind and solar power do not mix well even with nuclear power leading to grid instability and potential power outages like in the recent Spain and Portugal incident.
See this report about the stability of the French system, which has a high fraction of nuclear power, with the addition of wind and solar.
“Many previously claimed that the nuclear industry could be harmoniously paired with wind energy and thus lead to a decarbonized French electricity mix. But that is proving to be more fantasy than reality. The recent Spanish blackout was a glaring example of what can happen when ideology clashes with hard science and reality.
Many engineers and specialists had warned of the risks and complications involved with nuclear power plants having to adapt their output to uncontrolled, fluctuating energies like wind and sun.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/12/expert-assessment-warns-expansion-of-wind-and-solar-energy-jeopardizing-french-power-grid-stability/
@Bob Wilson:wind and solar power do not mix well even with nuclear power
They only mix well with hydro and natural gas, since both of those can be “spun up” or “spun down” very quickly. Hydro has no carbon emissions so letting wind and solar push hydro off the grid is no net benefit emissions-wise, but of course everyone is getting paid which is the important thing.
“Icebox” was a common term when I was growing up in the South 1950s-60s. But it was a synonym for “refrigerator.” I can’t remember ever encountering an actual icebox.
Re AC in the South: yes, as huxley said it went from virtually unknown to standard in roughly 10 years 1960-70. And like many people who were children pre-AC I don’t remember the heat being a big deal, even though we went to school in un-ACd buildings at the height of summer (weird schedule due to agricultural needs). It was different for adults, I’m pretty sure. I remember a relative, born most likely in the 20s, insisting with some passion that “there were no good old days” before AC.
Mac:
I grew up in NYC before air conditioning was at all common, and I remember that even that far north the last couple of weeks of school were stifling. It occurs to me that perhaps southern schools got out earlier in the season? We in NYC went to the bitter end in those days, June 30, and began again right after Labor Day.
David Foster,
Prescription med prices. I’ve spent waay too much time in hospitals the past 9 months where you start picking up on the med lingo.
For you Southerners, was the quick changeover with pest services similar to A/C? Regular, home bug and termite services seem nearly pervasive in the modern South but I assume in prior times folks just tolerated the ubiquitous pests?
I grew up in Phoenix in the 1950s and 1960s. We had a new house with AC, but some friends of mine had “swamp coolers” which worked pretty well since the humidity outside was quite low.
I moved from Minot ND to Montgomery,AL. The first month (October) in Minot, it hit 0 on the 5th. The first sub-zero was Nov 19. I had not experienced that kind of cold. Then Bama. My gosh it was HOT. Our house had AC, the school didn’t. Some of the hillbilly kids came to school barefoot. One day, there was a very, very light dusting of snow. None of the bama kids had seen snow before. My one hillbilly friend came to school with a coat…and still barefoot.
I have an electric icebox now, but when I was a little kid we had an old-fashioned refrigerator that was powered by a block of ice delivered by an iceman.
Our first telephone didn’t have a dial. Instead, an advanced speech recognition system called an “operator” would say “number, please?” and we would tell her what number we wanted to be connected to. She had trouble understanding my Grandma’s broken English, so I would often have to place calls for her. I still remember her best friend’s phone number: Elkhurst ****.
We never had AC in school until I got to high school, where they had an addition (library and music room) which had it. I remember sweating through my clothing quite often towards the end of the school year.
My grandparents had a window unit for the guest bedroom. Only time I ever saw it used when there were no guests was for afternoon naps.
Having just gotten back from New Orleans I really can’t imagine living there during the summer without AC. It was hot enough in May.
Re: the video and dwelling temperature control without AC.
This was more on the heating side of things, and not historical, but my physics mentor was a moderately wealthy guy who moved his primary residence and built a new “passive solar” home in about 1983.
It featured a number of interesting items. The primary thing was a large amount of south facing windows and just inside the glass was a Trombe wall.
Wiki
Supplementing the thermal mass wall were motorized curtains on a timer, and he bonded some sheeting to the concrete wall called “black chrome.” It is black and light absorbing in the visible range, and effectively “silvery” and reflective in the infrared range.
I imagine that in areas where cooling is the main concern, a Trombe wall could be configured to limit the effect of the peak temperatures of the day.
huxley
Don’t underestimate A/C. It was and is a transformative technology. The rise of the American South as an economic power has much to do with A/C.
Agreed, but in looking at the reduction of the South’s per capita income gap compared to the US, more of the gap-closing occurred before AC (1930-1960 est. 55% to 77%: 22% gain, versus about 15% gain since then.)
More Pricks than Kicks: The Southern Economy in the Long 20th century
I am reminded of Thomas Sowell’s pointing out that from 1940-60, the black-white income gap closed more than it did during the Affirmative Action era after 1960.
Here is one take on closing the South/North per capita income gap from the above article. Which didn’t need AC.
But what CAN be said about air conditioning and the south is that net migration TO the South began AFTER AC took over the South.
TX summers are hot. I have often said that only the poverty-stricken or the insane stay in town in August. I find an indoor temperature of 80-82 degrees to be comfortable. I find the temperature in most buildings in the summer–low 70s?– to be uncomfortable. If my bedroom temperature is 84 or above, I find it difficult to sleep.
When I was a young child, my grandparents in Oklahoma had a swamp cooler, later replaced by air conditioning. Don’t recall how effective the cooler was. At least in OK, the temperature went way down after sundown. Where I live TX, it usually doesn’t get below 90 until 9-10 pm. Occasionally midnight will see 89-90 degrees. Oh well.
Bob Wilson brings up a good point about the problem of 100% reliance on wind or solar. There are going to be weather conditions that will shut them down. During the big freeze of 2021 in TX, I pointed out to some relatives that wind power shuts down in very cold weather. A yellow dog Democrat cousin in NYC replied that wind wasn’t the main culprit. I replied with info from a USG database that pointed out that, in comparing the big freeze to ordinary winter weather, wind energy fell the most during the big freeze. The relative replied with the alleged Mark Twain quote about “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” But when I requested that he give proof, he declined.
Regarding hot in the Northeast, I recall two weeks of 90 degree weather in New England. Maybe more now.
Dinner supper. I once got in trouble with my OK aunt when, before I went for a drive around the countryside, we agreed that I would return in time for dinner. Except that for her, dinner was at noon, and for me, dinner was in the evening.
Tommy Jay
I am reminded of a 1980s tale from my New England hometown. A guy who was responsible for a lot of the housing construction in the area decided to add solar heating to the house he was building for himself. He put the solar windows on the NORTH side of the house. 🙂 Oh well….
Family friends were more successful when they built a new home partly embedded into a hillside and with solar windows on the SOUTH side of the house. I don’t recall what reduction there was in their heating bills.
Another lifelong friend in town added a wood stove. A friend chainsaws dead trees on her property. No lack of trees on her property. She takes an ax to the chainsawed wood to cut them down to size for the stove. At age 80! Her oil heating bill has fallen by about half.
One thing to do is to minimize windows on the south—and especially on the west—sides of the house. Ditto with adding roof overhang to block the sun.
My grandparents called their fridge an “icebox,” though it wasn’t one any more by the time I came along. When my mother was small in the early 1930s, however, they had an actual icebox. One day my grandmother saw from an upstairs window that the iceman was backing up his wagon, unaware that my mother, aged maybe three or four, was behind it. The wagon hit my mother and knocked her down. She fell under the wagon but between the wheels, and was not seriously hurt. My grandmother, however, saw her daughter disappear under the wagon but did not know until she ran downstairs and outside that she was fine. She said she lost several years of her life.
Neo, actually it was the other way around–we went to school in the worst of the heat. I can’t at this distance give any but the roughest dates and intervals, but it went more or less like this: school let out at a typical late spring/early summer date, stayed out for six weeks, resumed for six weeks in the middle of summer, got out for another six, started back at a typical October-ish date, then got out for six weeks at a tbd date. I’m saying six weeks because that’s the number that I recall, but that seems to add up to too much. Probably some of those intervals were only four, and may have varied with conditions.
Why? Cotton. That autumn recess was referred to as “cotton picking.” This was a country school. Most families were small farmers or sharecroppers, and the whole family was needed to pick the cotton crop. Town schools did not do this btw.
Yes, I grew up in a very different world from even other Americans of my age.
By the end of the ’60s mechanical pickers had become standard and such arrangements were no longer needed. Also the small family farm was disappearing. How the teachers survived that summer session I don’t know.
It’s never dumb to incorporate as many passive heating/cooling features into your home as are appropriate for your climate; it may not be cost-effective if you can’t find a cooperative developer. It may be cheaper in the long run to have whatever house they already build and to just pay more for heating and cooling.
One of the features of my house that I most dislike is that the roof is sloped in such a way that about 75% of its surface drains to the six feet of gutter right above the front door; the other gutters have nothing to do but fill up with leaves. Another is that the floor plan is a sort of horseshoe and there’s not good airflow through the house, there’s sort of two dead ends so to speak.
But these were not the primary considerations behind buying. Few of us are in a position to get what we want without any tradeoffs.
bof…”Our first telephone didn’t have a dial. Instead, an advanced speech recognition system called an “operator” would say “number, please?” and we would tell her what number we wanted to be connected to.”
And the elevators in department stores had an even more advanced speech recognition system! You would tell this system what item you wanted, and it would neuro-electrically determine what floor it was on and take you there!
If I remember correctly, the U.S. Capitol building was the first major building in the U.S. to have Air Conditioning installed, and that tells you a lot about priorities.
This morning AesopSpouse took the cover off of our swamp cooler and turned it on for the first time since summer 2022. It was in pretty good shape, although we weren’t here the last two summers to run it. I actually get too cold when it is on and blowing directly into the room I’m in. Our summers in the Wyoming mission weren’t too bad, the visitor center is an old ranch house, which would have had some of the cooling features until it was closed off and air conditioned. Outside, I stayed in the shade as much as possible.
The video, although it was a well done summary with good pictures, didn’t tell me much that I was not familiar with except that the lower layers of skirts worn by the women acted as a kind of personal swamp cooler, cooled by their own evaporating sweat.
We had swamp coolers during my childhood in the Texas panhandle, and I remember how excited we were when my aunt and uncle got a Refrigerated Cooler for their window in another Texas town further east, sometime in the sixties.
Our school district followed the now-common schedule of being out all summer.
We didn’t have an ice ice-box, but refrigerators were called iceboxes anyway.
My biggest complaint about AC is that the churches and stores lower their temperatures to a point in the summer that is actually colder than they heat them up to in the winter. In the summer, I have to take layers of clothing that I can PUT ON when I go inside, whereas in the winter I take the layers off when I get in the building.
Oh well.
I wonder if someone could arrange a net-zero power outage for DC that would shut down all their AC?
Some cities once had central systems for cooling, in which chilled brine was circulated through pipes to individual refrigerators in homes and businesses…the refrigerator could then be very simple, with no active parts other than a thermostat-actuated valve. Such systems were in use in Boston and in New York City as early as 1890. Sort of a “cloud” approach to refrigeration—Cooling as a Service!
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/62406.html
Here’s a strange one:
“Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin concedes defeat in 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court election”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/republican-judge-jefferson-griffin-concedes-north-carolina-supreme-court
Why strange?
Concluding grafs:
Go figure…
Niketas Choniates on May 12, 2025 at 6:14 pm said:
“It’s never dumb to incorporate as many passive heating/cooling features into your home as are appropriate for your climate; it may not be cost-effective if you can’t find a cooperative developer.”
I agree, and one of the core features of passive energy design is orienting the long side of your house along the E-W axis. Thereby, in summer the sun rises in the NE, arcs high over the house (so S Wall protected by modest overhangs), and sets in the NW. Planting deciduous trees on the NE and NW sides of your house provides initial and ongoing shade as the trees grow. Adding conifers in the NW for winter wind protection is a plus if you have the room. Or put your garage there in the NW, instead?
Plus of course in winter the sun rises in the SE, arcs lower in the sky, and sets in the SW, so maximizing solar gain on the south side, where the max window exposure it best, and shines under the modest to largish roof overhangs [at least 2 ft up to 4 ft, depending on latitude].
And the max cost benefit comes from a lot of insulation in the attic/ceiling area, followed by corresponding amounts for the wall.
But it appears no developers ever think along these lines, orienting houses to the street, in any pattern that fits the most houses in the available area. And most of their customers are even less attentive to these ideas and features when selecting their lot and/or house in the development. Thus developers get little in market forces pushing them towards these passive considerations. I gather the building codes don’t really address it either, aside from equipment energy factors and some attention to insulation.
The pictured men’s 2-3 piece suits, (I presume) long sleeved shirts, and ties wouldn’t contribute to coolness. Ditto the upholstered chairs.
When I was reading Simenon’s early Maigret books, I encountered garde-manger, which means roughly “keep to eat.”
In early 20th Century France the garde-manger was a ventilated cupboard attached to an outside wall, usually with a grill to keep out pests.
The idea was that the cold air outside the apartment would preserve the food better than the warm air inside.
Makes sense. But as a modern American accustomed to full climate control, the garde-manger sounds like something from the Middle Ages.
I grew up in Southern California, and IIRC, one of our homes had a small window unit: otherwise, houses that we lived in were built to maximize air flow, and being California in the non-desert zones, were quite comfortable. We had the practice of opening up all the windows and curtains at night, when it was cool in the summer – and then closing up after sunrise to preserve the cool. We usually had shade trees all around the house, and windows that maximized airflow. I did the same when I lived in military housing in Sacramento for a summer. The house that I lived in for a couple of summers in Ogden, Utah had a swamp cooler, for the summer. It was a dry heat there, so a swamp cooler worked quite well. I’ve lived in South Texas for three decades now, and AC is absolutely essential. My house has no natural airflow, and when the power goes off in the summer, it is unbearable.
As an aside, I always heard “ice-box” and “refrigerator” used interchangeably. In the 19th century, providing natural ice was also a huge and very profitable business, harvesting huge blocks of New England ice in the winter, and shipping it to the South and to Europe and into Asia. In Texas, “icehouse” is still a colloquial term for a certain kind of store, selling cold drinks, ice cream, etc.
In my early childhood (1950s), the very small Texas town where my grandparents lived had an actual ice house: a warehouse for the stored ice blocks, which were taken from there to be delivered. You could buy some extra blocks if you were making ice cream in the ubiquitous hand-cranked machines.
Doing some repair work in the Detroit area, got into some very large, old homes which had been really upscale for their time. One item I had to have explained to me was the hole in the roof. Maybe four by four with a weatherproof hatch which would be manipulated from the inside. On hot evenings, it would be opened. In that area, about an hour after the sun does down, things start moving toward better. And opening the roof would allow for the chimney effect have warm air rise through the house with lower windows open to draw in the cool(er) air. Never experienced it myself, but was told things got better by maybe ten in the evening.
I think it was in Charleston where I saw old homes with the longest roof extensions over porches I’d ever seen. Those were oriented west and south and the point was no direct sun got into the house that way, nor even hit the walls.
But, on the other hand, nobody likes to be cold. And the “sun room” is a feature of much smaller homes. Might not be able to heat it, but you could sit on a kind of chest in the sun. Mostly on the south or west sides.
This was a wonderful reminder of how it used to be!
All my grandparents were born in the late 1800’s, and their homes reflected these techniques for handling the weather.