Doug French, “European Pols Demand People Suffer for the Planet,” DouglasinVegas.com, 2023/6/27

Europe’s heatwave has its collective masses suffering under the sweltering conditions. The Wall Street Journal editorialized, “But this makes it all the stranger that governments prefer that their citizens sweat it out rather than use the modern invention known as air conditioning.”

The French government believes AC is only appropriate for the sick and elderly. Everybody should, “Wet your body (at least your face and forearms) several times a day.” Wear a hat outside. Drink more water and try cold soups and other “water-rich foods to help you stay hydrated.”

 “Dim the electric lights” and cover the windows in your home, and avoid using appliances like a computer or a hair dryer that could generate heat. All this in the interest of saving the planet. “AC uses too much energy and contributes to climate change.”

 America, thankfully, as I write, on a computer, while it’s 106 degrees outside here in Las Vegas choses to enjoy the benefits provided by Willis Haviland Carrier, the “father of air conditioning”. In a lecture at the 2006 Mises U, I made the point, “Willis Haviland Carrier made a huge difference in many peoples’ lives, people that have never heard of him. Can you imagine Mises University in August in Auburn without it? Would millions of people be moving to Phoenix and Las Vegas without air conditioning?”

Of course the downside is Washington DC stays in business all year around. “The installation of air conditioning in the 1930s did more, I believe, than cool the Capitol,” reminisced Rep. Joseph W. Martin, a Massachusetts Republican, in 1960, “it prolonged the sessions.” “Would American statism have come full flower in a non-air-conditioned capital city? Always, in technology, there are debits and credits,” wrote Jim Grant in 1999.

Grant, writing during the .com bubble, “To those who inhabit the hazy, hot and humid portions of the physical world, the Internet will never seem so seminal an invention as the low-tech room air conditioner. Visionaries may claim that the ’net will do nothing less than create new industries, refashion old ones, enhance productivity and rewrite the script of social, economic and political life the world over. Air conditioning has done all that, and more. Yet it has so far created no financial Garden of Eden, and we think we know the reason.”

Grant cited Raymond Arsenault’s essay entitled “The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture” (first published in 1984 in The Journal of Southern History), “The so-called ‘air-conditioning revolution’. . . was actually an evolution—a long, slow, uneven process stretching over seven decades.”

Grant summarizes, “A Brooklyn lithography plant was the first recipient of the Carrier apparatus, in 1902. Sales to a wide variety of industrial customers followed. But the so-called comfort market went uninvaded until the successful commercialization of centrifugal refrigeration, in 1922. When, on Memorial Day in 1925 Carrier successfully cooled the patrons of the Rivoli Theater, New York, a new day dawned. Yet almost 30 years would have to pass before the residential air conditioning market came into its own. Carrier himself wouldn’t live to see it.”

Carrier would not live to see massive productivity increases during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson eras. The first UNIVAC computer arrived in 1951, the Boeing Dash 80 (prototype of the 707 jetliner) debuted in 1954, interstate highway system legislation was signed by President Eisenhower in 1956 and the Xerox 914 copier came on the market in 1960. “And it was in the fabulous ’50s that residential air conditioning became a fixture,” Grant wrote.

Meanwhile, in 2026, Europeans suffer. A 67-year old woman told French paper Le Parisien that she takes three or four showers a day to cool down from the 90 degree home temperature. She wets the exterior of her home with a garden hose. “I’ve even fallen over due to dizziness because I was too hot,” she said.

Today’s bubble is Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to CoPilot, “AI enhances productivity, decision-making, and innovation while reducing human error and enabling automation across industries.

Okay, but I’ll take air conditioning first.

Americans are supposedly celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (aka Declaration of Secession from the British Empire) this week.  However, most of the merchandise being sold by American retailers regarding “The Fourth of July” celebrates the state’s flag, the military, and the empire (that replaced the British empire) and makes no mention of independence and certainly not of secession.  The 1776 Declaration of Independence is one of three famous American declarations regarding independence; two are in favor, and one against.

As an aside, you may recall that one of the slogans of the American Revolution was opposition to “taxation without representation.”  My friend the late Walter Williams once told me that a British friend, Eamon Butler, once asked him, “So how do you like taxation with representation?”  Walter said he had no response!

If you see a journalist wearing black today, chances are they cover entertainment.

The scribes are in collective mourning due to “Supergirl’s” terrible box office weekend. The same scribes don’t don black for any ol’ movie, though.

They reported on “Masters of the Universe” under-performing a few weeks back without the dark garments and teeth gnashing. The same held true for “The Breadwinner,” the Nate Bargatze vehicle that under-perforrmer mere weeks ago.

At first, journalists were trying to spin away the awful numbers – $38 million at U.S. theaters, and collectively less across the globe.

Now, it’s time to start the five stages of grief. For far-Left journalists, that typically stars with the fans.

AKA the bigots.

Yes, misogny is partly to blame for “Supergirl’s” terrible box office debut. Not the film’s anemic script, lackluster star, bland action set pieces or low-stakes adventure.

Not even the CGI dog – as big a flaw as any movie could muster – gets name checked today.

Just ask The New York Times, which immediately blasted fans for not rallying around a movie Variety dubbed, “Super horrendous.”

box office analysts on Sunday noted an uncomfortable truth: Female-led superhero movies have been rejected almost uniformly over the past five years or so, perhaps reflecting a resurgent misogyny among the core fan base, which is largely male.

The same Variety that excoriated “Supergirl” also blamed misogyny for the film’s poor showing.

While the culture war is a contributing factor in the poor performance of female-led superhero films, with hordes of online misogynists lashing out at them sight unseen, previous entries like “Wonder Woman” and “Captain Marvel” withstood similar backlash — who can forget the manly meltdown over women-only screenings of “Wonder Woman?” — to big box office returns, and the female-focused “Barbie” shattered records, grossing $1.4 billion worldwide.

Later in the SAME PARAGRAPH, the far-Left site admitted the problem.

That’s because those films were made with care and consideration, unlike “Supergirl…”

Oh.

Kudos to Forbes.com for a fair, sober analysis of the film’s failure.

There is absolutely zero way to spin the performance of Supergirl over the weekend, the film coming in below even not-great expectations. Supergirl made $38 million in its domestic opening weekend, less than a third of Superman and below all-time horrors like Morbius at $39 million.

Bottom line: Audiences, male and female, love great movies. They rallied for 2017’s “Wonder Woman” and the “Hunger Games” franchise. They ignored inferior films like “Birds of Prey,” “Madame Web” and “Wonder Woman 1984.”

It’s not complicated. Why are reporters trying to make it so?

Actually, we know why…

The post Legacy Media Mourns ‘Supergirl’s Box Office Collapse appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.