Hah, I had the same reaction to setting up a siphon. That's for when you need to get a liquid up over a hump and down to a lower point.

You draw the liquid into a tube from the source [1] and drag the outlet to a lower point. Then, as if by magic, the higher pool gets sucked through the outlet until it's drained, without any mechanical pump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon

[1] you can do it by sucking it in like a straw, but there are less gross ways like using a flexible bottle to provide pumping action

You basically have a fan that sprays a very fine mist. The water evaporates, and in doing so the temperature of the air drops. Note that this only works when humidity is low enough for evaporation to actually happen. If the humidity is too high this doesn't work.

Edit: wiki goes in to way more detail about other methods I was not familiar with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

I live in Southwest US where it’s common to use a swamp cooler (aka evaporative cooler) for your house. Instead of the normal refrigerated air unit that sits outside your house, there is basically a box with a big fan that pulls air across a big wooden or synthetic “sponge” and pushes it into your house ducts. A small pump like in a fish tank continuously pulls water across the sponge to keep it wet. You leave a couple windows in your house cracked open to leave an exit as new cold air is pushed in. Has a nice humidifying effect which is good in the desert too!