The world is projected to install 1.6 billion new air conditioners by 2050. That’s 1.6 billion more people too soft to function in our warming world. It’s gonna be hot, baby. Deal with it.

A construction crane in Midtown Manhattan dropped a colossal air conditioning unit onto Madison Avenue on Sunday, shearing the side of an office building and injuring 10 people, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The state of Texas is, as one would expect of Satan's favored playground, hot. Texas is also "tough on crime," meaning it enjoys locking people in jails but cares little what happens to them afterwards. So while Americans love air conditioning for themselves, Texans don't see the point of giving it to prisoners. What next—water?

This is a counterpoint to Hamilton Nolan's rant, "Air Conditioning Makes You Weak."

Uh oh, everyone panic: the temperature outdoors is not cold. Repeat: it is not cold outside. Well, gee, the only reasonable reaction to this state of affairs is to run a huge unwieldy power-sucking machine which will use massive amounts of energy in order to return our indoor space to its natural state—frigidity.

Here in Gawker Media "HQ," the temperature, in the summertime, stays at approximately 43 degrees Fahrenheit (estimated), due to the wonders of air conditioning, necessitating the wearing of winter clothes inside the office during the most sweltering season of the year. Now—in a classic example of the mainstream media turning a minor everyday nuisance into something I can write a blog post about (thank god)—the Washington Post reports that office workers in DC are also very cold in the summer, because of the air conditioning. Coincidence—or trend????

Brownout! ConEd says it's decreasing voltage to some parts of Brooklyn by 8 per cent.

Air conditioning is not just one of the most important summertime problems facing the media. It's a problem facing everyone, because high gas prices are turning air conditioners into machines that burn $100 bills to produce cool air. Stores in high foot traffic areas have always thrown their doors open in the summer and blasted the AC, knowing that sweaty people will come in and browse just to get out of the sun. But now that strategy is not only hugely expensive, but bad PR as well; environmentalist customers will whine and complain and call the city and organize boycotts. An intrepid NYT reporter finds that wanton AC-wasters are centered—like the media—in SoHo:

Many members of your Gawker editorial team are not in the Gawker office at the moment. Why? Because the AC there is a crap shoot (or has been), and SOME PEOPLE don't want to take their chances in DANGEROUS HEAT like we have today. I'm in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, and I'm sweating here, too! But it's not just us; a trendworthy number of key media figures are facing air conditioning problems. The media cannot work like this!