#AcademicRunPlaylist - 6/22/25

Author

Ben Waber
June 22, 2025

A selfie of me looking down onto the field at Yankee Stadium, with a white tarp over the infield, from the upper deck with mostly empty blue seats. I'm a bald, middle-aged, white man with a red beard flecked with white. I'm wearing black sunglasses and a black shirt with white vertical stripes.

Even though the Yankees won (😡) I still had a good time at the stadium with the family, and while keeping cool inside afterwards I read a book for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

Today I read "Before the Refrigerator" by Jonathan Rees. The massive development of the ice industry in the US and its gradual displacement by refrigeration technology is an important example of technological disruption, and Rees does an excellent job concisely reviewing this history. The ice industry was interestingly made possible by the development of railroads, and the examination of the "cold chain" and how massive refrigeration machines gradually supplanted natural ice over parts of that chain until consumer refrigerators first slowly and then extremely rapidly decimated what remained of the natural ice industry. Importantly, the large ice producers also got disrupted themselves here. Highly recommend https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11407/refrigerator