Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Line 76 (1058)

 They hung out in the saloons of Whiskey Hill and were tolerated by though not especially beloved of the regulars, who were mill hands with little patience for extreme forms of belief, unless it was Anarchism, of course.

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"Whiskey Hill"
From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History at Case.edu:

"After the CIVIL WAR, cheap housing made the Haymarket attractive to impoverished immigrants. Though Italians and Slavs predominated in 1870, later contemporary observers counted 40 nationalities and 14 languages. For some, the Haymarket was a stopping place; for others, enmeshed in the cycle of poverty, its deteriorating housing provided permanent residence. The area and nearby Whiskey Hill became an overcrowded refuge for the unemployed, derelicts, transients, and criminals who preyed on the other hapless residents. Nearby factories and passing trains polluted the area with dirty smoke."

So once again, the idea of a population who embrace Anarchism are really just a population who have been failed by America and are desperate for change. Perhaps these mill hands and the other residents stricken by poverty tolerated these Æther enthusiasts primarily because they and their theories dealt with change and the search for a better way. Maybe not a tactile better way that can feed people's families. But a change for a better model of light and light transmission, at least. Perhaps it was this optimism for finding truth that made them tolerable to the regulars.

Anarchism
As we've seen, the tent of Anarchism houses many different people but the label is used to indict anybody embracing it as violent and destructive. Which, I suppose, they are. When something changes (even if it's for the better), those who accepted the thing for what it was can only see the thing as having been broken or destroyed. So when those America steps on want to destroy the status quo and lift up the masses, they're seen as destructive and violent.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Line 75 (1057)

 It was a sort of small Ætherist community, maybe as close as Merle ever came to joining a church.

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Earlier in the text, Heino Vanderjuice described scientists' belief in Æther as based more on faith than evidence. Pynchon continues that idea here as he likens the Ætherist club to a church.

"as close as Merle ever came to joining a church"
Obviously this can mean a lot of things based on the reader's beliefs and experiences. This could just mean a close-knit community of people brought together by a single overarching belief. It could mean that Merle has never before been tricked into believing unhelpful bullshit while lording his position over others simply because he has something inherent in his brain missing which allows him to believe in nonsense. It's possible Pynchon means this on a tangible level and means that Merle has never in his life met up in the same place at the same time on a regular basis. I like to believe that Pynchon is simply pointing out that Merle was a rational and scientific man, an areligious bloke, who would never have even considered affiliating with religion so this meeting of scientific nerds in a bar to discuss something vaguely scientific is the only way he'd ever come anywhere close to joining a church.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Line 74 (1056)

 "If there was a reliable light-meter," said Roswell, "it might make a difference to know about how the light was being transmitted, is all."

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Here we see where Roswell's priorities lie. He's a photographer. A light-meter measures the intensity of light and photographers use them to determine the correct length of the exposure when taking a photograph. Roswell has no stake in whether or not Æther exists. He'd just like scientists to know for sure so that they could develop a superior light-meter.

At this moment in the story, Merle Rideout has not discovered his passion for photography. But he's here at this table in this saloon listening to some regulars discuss light. He's obviously going to be drawn to the cool and cynical photographer rather than the hyper-focused nerd making up shit on the fly to hold court over the others. What's happening here has nothing to actually do with Æther. We're learning the secret origin of Merle's hobbyhorse. You know! Photographing naked ladies!

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Line 73 (1055)

 "Is this just your usual wet-blanket talk, or do you really want to know?"

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As I speculated before Ed became guarded, Roswell Bounce could have meant the question in two ways: innocent amazement of the fact or cynical skepticism of Ed Addle's bloviating explanation of humidity within Æther. Ed knows Roswell better than I do (having just met him a paragraph ago) so he has experience of Roswell's participation in these discussions as being "wet-blanket talk." Characterizing Roswell this way gives the reader insight into Roswell's reaction seeing that he's a "person who spoils other people's fun by failing to join in with or by disapproving of their activities."

Of course Ed could, if he wasn't just blowing turds out of his mouth, just answer the question simply by saying, "Yes, of course there is a U.S. Bureau for this information!" But since he chooses not to say that, we have to assume he's trying to deflect the critical question and turn everybody against Roswell.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Line 72 (1054)

 Ed became guarded.

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Guarded. As in to protect. Like a person who stands before a structure looking to keep people out. Possibly a gate. A gate-keeper. In this case, Ed senses somebody outside the community looking to bring doubt onto the premises. His premises (as in both his territory and his suppositions).

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Lines 70-71 (1052-1053)

 "There's a U.S. Bureau in charge of reporting all this?" wondered Roswell Bounce, who was gainfully self-employed as a photographer, "a network of stations? Ships and balloons?"

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Oh shit. A skeptic whose name evokes UFOs and bouncy houses! Also, since he's a photographer, he doesn't have anything invested in taking a stand on whether Æther exists or not. Sure, he's into light and maybe concerned about how it travels but he's a self-employed dude just trying to, like Merle, take as many naked lady pictures as possible. What does he care how the light moves through the air from the boobies to his glass plate?

By not having a vested interest in one side of the scientific debate or the other, Roswell concerns himself with the realistic particulars of Ed Addle's supposition. If all of this information is being collected by the government, there must be tangible proof of the Bureau collecting the information, proof of the technology they use, and instruments and locations where they collect the data. I don't even believe Roswell is challenging Addle on his information; Roswell's just genuinely surprised that the government's running a Bureau of Æther.

By invoking balloons, which Roswell probably just means weather balloons that measure Ætheric conditions, Pynchon seems to suggest that some of the balloonists do this kind of work. That, currently, these measurements can be made, and are being made, by teams of young balloonists around the world. Because until the Michelson–Morley experiment happens, Æther remains extant. The experiment won't destroy it entirely so expect more it in the storied years ahead but it will have plastered a marginal half-life to it. Its days are numbered.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Lines 65-69 (1047-1051)

"What, in the Æther, would occupy the place of water-vapor in the air? Some of us believe it is Vacuum. Minute droplets of nothing at all, mixed in with the prevailing Ætheric medium. Until the saturation point is reached, of course. Then there is condensation, and storms in which not rain but precipitated nothingness sweeps a given area, cyclones and anticyclones of it, abroad not only locally at the planetary surface but outside it, through cosmic space as well."

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You may have noticed the timestamps on the last entry and this one and think, "What was this lazy blogger up to? Doesn't he know he's already not going to ever complete this project even if he weren't drifting away from it for years at a time?" Or one might accidentally jump to the correct assumption: "Ed Addle broke this blogger's brain." I really wish Merle Rideout hadn't just been sarcastic about humidity but Ed Addle would also have realized that and decided not to answer.

One of my greatest problems is that I'm not interested in things I'm not interested in. Perhaps that's one of the greatest problems of all of us, poorly expressed. If that something blocks me from the stuff that interests me, I can usually suck it up, get through it, and continue at the pace, already far too slow for a mortal lifetime, that I'd been on. But sometimes, you're not just faced with something you're uninterested in: you're faced with two things you're uninterested in intertwined and tangled up with things you're too daft to understand. The "you" in that sentence being "me" and the "things" being "these five sentences of dialogue". Because Ed isn't just discussing Æther, a thing that soon won't exist in this novel's reality but does actually exist at the moment this takes place (evidence of this being all of the equipment that Ed mentions previously that exists to measure things within the Æther (as well as all the evidence collected by balloonists)) and also a thing I'm not interested in, but he's also discussing humidity and weather, things that I'm so not interested in that I abandoned this project for a year and a half so I wouldn't have to bother with them.

Or, if I'm going to be absolutely transparent, I just kind of forgot about this project or became overly anxious about some post-fifty aging issue or, as I often do, just put the project on the back-burner to simmer as if I have all the time in the universe to get back to it before it boils over and I die. Is that what you call a mixed metaphor?

"What, in the Æther, would occupy the place of water-vapor in the air?"
Try to remember way back to the previous two or three entries that this was in response to Merle asking about humidity within Æther (probably jokingly but nerds are gonna nerd, you know?). Ed approaches this problem logically in that, based on current thinking, Æther would act much like atmosphere or water. It's the substance that exists in space when no other substance exists which allows waves to propagate across it. Because our atmosphere is a thing that exists and is made up of stuff (you know the stuff: smog, farts, air, balloons), Æther probably acts much like it. Meaning weather patterns can form or tides can move through it based on its interaction with other nearby bodies. Just as air bubbles can occupy water and water-vapor can occupy air, something must be able to form or move through Æther in much the same way. In other words, humidity (or, if I want to keep adding water to this analogy for some reason, a fart).

"Some of us believe it is Vacuum."
Why? Ed doesn't discuss why because you can't test a scientific hypothesis on something that doesn't actually exist (even if it does sort of exist in this novel's idea that the way people thought things work is the way they worked until we figured out the reality of it (which, maybe, is how things work?)). But somebody thought it so it's as valid a theory as anybody else's. Which is one of the main problems with the way people think about reality in the year of your Lord 2025. The common sense kind of people seem to think that a scientific theory is something you just think up out of whole cloth and then that's it: it's as valid as anybody else's theory. What they're really talking about is opinion and speculation but they can't separate themselves from the mainstream definition of theory. To them, the theory of gravity holds equal weight (hee hee) to the theory of a flat Earth. They don't understand the difference between a hypothesis based on observation using experiments to test its validity so that it becomes a scientific theory if evidence shows the hypothesis hold time and time again. They just figure, "I thought glanced off the side my brain so it must have some validity!" Then they run to ChatGPT and ask it if it makes sense and ChatGPT is all, "Sure! Great job! You're the smartest!" Then they spiral into narcissism and madness.
    Sorry! The explication of this one line got away from me. I know I grouped it with four other lines but since it's all one piece of Ed Addle's explanatory dialogue, I figured I needed them all for context. So back to this line!
    Is it ironic that their speculation that a vacuum forms in Æther to explain the humidity of Æther comes so close to explaining exactly what Æther actually is? Just a vacuum! Remember, my knowledge of chemistry and physics stems from high school and maybe one year of college before I became a Lit Major. So I can't really explain how vacuum forms within Æther. But I can speculate and my speculation is equally as valid as the speculation of a PhD scientist (according to the illiterate masses, I mean).
    Here's my speculation: I've seen that trick where you float a candle in colored water and then put a glass over the candle until the flame uses up all the oxygen and goes out. The water rises up into the glass because a vacuum is formed when the fire burns off all the oxygen. So maybe the hypothesis is that light moving through Æther is a catalyst which causes a chemical reaction to burn up small amounts of the Æther. This forms tiny bubbles of vacuum within the Æther. Now, you'd think this would cause the Æther to collapse in on the bubble. But if Æther fills everything, there's nothing to move into the space that the Æther leaves behind if it were to collapse in. So the bubble of vacuum remains somewhat stable. And it is the build up of these vacuum bubbles that cause "weather" in the Æther.
    One other thought: some of us believe it is Vacuum sounds somewhat like some of us believe in a Vacuum. Not that they believe in a thing called a Vacuum but that their beliefs are unmodified by outside context. Pynchon is saying, in a roundabout way, that Ed Addle's "some of us" are merely speculating. There is no actual evidence for what he's about to discuss.

"Minute droplets of nothing at all, mixed in with the prevailing Ætheric medium."
Opinions and speculation within the prevailing scientific discussion are "minute droplets of nothing at all."

"Until the saturation point is reached, of course."
This is when the storms happen, as with the interaction between humidity and temperature (is that how weather patterns form? Also the movement of the Earth? I never took any weather classes at all!). Also something that causes somewhat of a storm: new ideas into the scientific discussion that can no longer be ignored, based either by evidence (hopefully!) or faith because it seems to explain things so well. Here, Pynchon seems to be discussing crazy theories that sweep the scientific community, leading many astray into vacuums of ignorance. Heino and Merle had a bit of a discussion about these things earlier which is why I'm staking my reading comprehension's reputation on following this train of metaphorical thought. Heino believed Æther itself was a storm of vacuum bubbles that would eventually amount to nothing at all.

"Then there is condensation, and storms in which not rain but precipitated nothingness sweeps a given area, cyclones and anticyclones of it, abroad not only locally at the planetary surface but outside it, through cosmic space as well."
Eventually, these loony theories need to be dealt with by the scientific community as they condense among groups of scientists willing to believe a popular, untested theory that seems to easily and readily explain a problem they've been having in their math and observations. These would "condense" in a local area first, sweeping the scientific community and buggering up their data. If it was attractive enough, it would then move through "cosmic space" as well, infecting the entire science. These are seen as "storms" because they simply disrupt the entire scientific process until they pass.
    On a more literal level, I suppose these storms which produce "cyclones and anticyclones" of vacuum somehow cause the vacuum to re-integrate into the Æther, or, more probably, simply dissolve into more nothingness. Is that a thing? Can nothingness become greater nothingness so that it doesn't exist as a bubble but stops existing entirely? I guess it doesn't matter because, once again, Ed Addle's theory here is pure speculation about a thing that soon won't even be something discussed by scientists. In essence, the whole idea of Æther is one of these vacuum storms which has only recently begun to finally pass and dissipate.