How knowledge fades: Tam was playing back an interview about storm damage in our a neighborhood a couple of weeks ago, as in the tree that fell and crushed a neighbor's house (empty at the time). Another neighbor was interviewed about the event, saying the sound "...was like one of those energy boxes up on a pole? When they go out."
A what, now?
I suppose some of my reaction is curse-of-knowledge stuff: my work is power distribution adjacent, since we're out of business when the juice stops flowing (and maintain our own MegaWatt-sized backups); and some of it is age: when I was young, most people knew that humming thing up on the pole was a transformer, and no few even knew it by its nickname, "pole pig," fat and round, with small insulators sticking out the sides and a bigger one at the top. Rotate it ninety degrees, and it is indeed shaped like some kind of robotic pig. They are the magic that makes big power grids possible: it's a lot easier to ship electricity around at high voltage and low current, but it's more useful in your home at a lower voltage. The transformer's the middleware that makes it possible.
Or, you know, the energy box. They work the same no matter what you call them. (If your wall-socket juice travels underground, you'll have a warm, humming cube hiding in an out-of-the-way spot every few houses instead. They work the same way, but are all buttoned up to keep curious fingers away.)
Having known both animate and energized pigs from an early age, my farmer grandparents' raising animate and my electrician dad's dealing with the energized, I still like the energy box. It brought a smile to my face. Thanks for passing it along.
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