City, Film
Film: Tuesday, October 28th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Sinners
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Tuesday, October 28th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Sinners @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Folk Horror/Period Drama/Supernatural/ Thriller Rated R (language/violence/frightening & intense)
2 hours, 17 minutes (2025)
Our annual Halloween horror film has received multitudinous accolades and awards season buzz. It’s a good, old fashion rip-roaring monster movie. Please be advised to bring your own crucifix, garlic, silver bullets, and a wooden stake.
One can find more information about Sinners at the Internet Movie Database.
City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Housing
Daily Bread for 10.23.25: The Single-Family, Owner-Occupied Housing Proposal for Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 50. Sunrise is 7:18 and sunset is 5:59 for 10 hours 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2001, Apple Computer releases the iPod:
Portable MP3 players had existed since 1997; however, Apple found existing digital music players “big and clunky or small and useless” with user interfaces that were “unbelievably awful”. They also identified weaknesses in existing models’ attempt to negotiate the trade-off between capacity and portability: flash memory-based players held too few songs, while the hard drive based models were too big and heavy. To address these deficits, the company decided to develop its own MP3 player. [Citation omitted.]
On September 16th, the City of Whitewater’s Economic Development Director, Mason Becker, told the Whitewater Common Council that our local government would propose a single-family, owner-occupied housing plan this October. Of that September meeting on development generally, see An Upcoming Presentation on Development.
Whitewater has now had a chance to look at that single-family, owner-occupied plan, first at the Community Development Authority meeting of October 16th and then at the Common Council meeting of October 21st.
As with so many others in our small city, I’ve been awaiting that plan.
It’s a notably strong plan: sound in its direction, perceptive in its grasp of market needs, and thorough in its details.
The plan and its author speak for themselves sensibly and persuasively. I’ll add no remarks of my own today, leaving the presentation for readers’ review. I will note that the Whitewater Common Council voted unanimously to adopt Option A (the full amount of the fund for a Home Renewal Program) of the two options presented in the plan, with further consideration of the age of the housing stock eligible for assistance. (Video at 1:52:21.)
Below are the video remarks from the city’s Economic Development Director and his accompanying presentation —
King Charles prays with Pope Leo in 500-year first:
City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Open Government, Special Interests, Unfounded Aspersions
Daily Bread for 10.22.25: Anatomy of an Unfounded Aspersion
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset is 6:00 for 10 hours 44 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1962, President Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval quarantine of the Communist nation.
On Monday morning, October 13th, FREE WHITEWATER published a post entitled Two Techniques of the Special Interest Men. One of those two enumerated techniques was to level
False claims about lack of transparency….
Listen closely, and a special-interest faction of small-town cronyism will do what it can to level charges that it was not told something, did not know something, was denied information about something. These are the same men who for years concealed information on the old Community Development Authority, e.g., unfavorable audits, a cease and desist order, lost paperwork, firings, the terms of wasteful deals, the reasons for wasteful deals, etc.
By Monday evening, October 13th, at a meeting of the Planning and Architectural Commission, they’d helpfully provided an example of that technique. This post presents and assesses an unfounded aspersion about supposed lack of transparency.
The Agenda Item. On the agenda for the Planning meeting that night, Items 6 and 7 listed a notice that there had been a change to the agenda, and cited Whitewater’s Transparency Ordinance:
The change, printed in red, lists the date and time (10.11.25 @ 9 AM), lists the nature of the change (“update to memo”), and cites Whitewater’s Transparency Ordinance (Whitewater Transparency Enhancement Ordinance, Whitewater, Wis., Code of Ordinances ch. 2.62).
A Question About the Change. The chair of the Planning Commission (and a councilmember) raised an objection to the consideration of Items 6 and 7 during the October 13th meeting (Video @ 4:12):
I will make a motion to remove items six and seven until the next meeting and my reasoning for that being it’s obviously a hot button topic for the city already. I don’t know if there was changes to the planner’s report. I would like to see those out to the city for the 72 hours to allow the public to comment and or digest them.
My motion is just to remove items six and seven to the next meeting. Is there any second? Second. All right. [Moved by Hicks, seconded by McCormick.]
An Explanation of the Change. Whitewater’s Code Enforcement Officer offered an explanation (Video @ 5:03):
The only change that was made was I expanded slightly on my review of the comprehensive plan amendment and I added in some more details pertaining to the reason for the project meeting our comprehensive plan amendment requirements. So, no changes to the application or no changes to what they’re requesting. The only change was my memo and adding in further detail and expansion on some bullet points in the first section of my memo.
Motion to Postpone Item Rejected, and so Approval of the Waiver After Explanation of the Change (Video @ 12:19).
The Accuracy of the Explanation. As it turns out, this libertarian blogger keeps his own record of municipal agendas and recorded videos. I have both the original agenda .pdf from Friday, October 10th and the memo-updated agenda .pdf from October 13th. Comparing the two documents, the only changes were exactly as Whitewater’s Code Enforcement Officer had described them. If they were otherwise, then I’d be the first person in this city to say so. The updates were not otherwise — they were as she has described them.
A Public Comment Much Later in the Meeting Complaining About the Update on Items 6 and 7 (Video @ 1:24:01):
I had a question that, that has troubled me. And that was the amended transparency ordinance for seven, six and seven. And I didn’t see this and I had a conflict. I wasn’t going to be here. But so the question I’ve got is when did that change get thrown in? And why are we rushing these? Why couldn’t this take time where more people could have possibly attended. But can somebody explain to me related to seven? Why was there a change 24 hour change in the agenda…I got here late because in fact, I canceled somewhere else. I was going to be here. What happened that created that issue?
An Assessment.
The motion to delay consideration comes even before an explanation of why the agenda was updated.
The motion to delay gives the game away by contending that it’s a ‘hot-button issue.’ A hot-button issue is not a procedural irregularity. One person’s hot-button issue suggesting delay is another person’s need to proceed with ordinary municipal and business transactions initially advanced in the Whitewater Common Council many months ago. This was not a new issue, it was not a rushed one.
The original agenda item was timely posted, and the changes here were minor (not involving the item itself, but only small changes to supporting materials). In fact, the aspersion against the update is only possible because the city was notably and admirably transparent.
This city government represents 15,000 people. Having posted an agenda properly, it does not owe a delay to one resident’s scheduling conflict.
In the video, one hears that same resident, having not noticed or managed his schedule properly, is troubled. In life, there are reasons that a man or woman might be troubled. I’ll suggest this is not one of the reasons to be troubled in one’s life. One would have expected that lobbyists were of stouter heart.
After receiving an explanation (that should have been clear by reading the document’s plain language of ‘update to memo’ or attending on time to hear an explanation when it was first given), all that accusatory energy (being troubled) fades away into “Okay, thank you very much” after the explanation was given a second time during the meeting.
Keel-billed Toucan Takes a Bite During Lunch:
City, Culture, Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Entitlement, Reasoning, Special Interests, Speech & Debate
Daily Bread for 10.21.25: On an Application of Newton’s Third Law of Motion to Whitewater, Wisconsin
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:15 and sunset is 6:02 for 10 hours 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1805, a British fleet led by Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve in the Battle of Trafalgar.
Newton’s many works have been rightly lauded for centuries, both particularly as science and generally as an example of comprehension of the world. Of that broader view, consider Alexander Pope’s observation about Newton:
“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”
See Alexander Pope, Epitaph: Intended for Sir Isaac Newton (1727), in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (Yale Univ. Press 1963), https://verse.press/poem/epitaph-xii-intended-for-sir-isaac-newton-in-7321.
Well, that’s quite an epitaph.
So what was that Third Law of Motion, in particular, from Sir Isaac? It was this, translated into English:
Law III.
To every Action there is always opposed an equal Reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
Whatever draws or presses another is as much drawn or pressed by that other. If you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone. If a horse draws a stone tied to a rope, the horse (if I may so say) will be equally drawn back towards the stone: for the distended rope, by the same endeavour to relax or unbend it self, will draw the horse as much towards the stone as it does the stone towards the horse and will obstruct the progress of the one as much as it advances that of the other…
See, Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 17–18 (Andrew Motte trans., London 1729), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_Philosophy_%281729%29/Axioms%2C_or_Laws_of_Motion.
Of physics, this blogger has nothing to add — obviously — to the application of Newton’s observations of ordinary mechanics to Whitewater, Wisconsin.
There is, however, a metaphorical way to think about Sir Isaac’s observation that To every Action there is always opposed an equal Reaction — the application of an understanding of the physical world to social reactions of ordinary people (e.g., political, cultural).
Most of the time, and in a free society very often, a human action produces a human reaction. Not always, and not always of equal proportion, but a reaction of similar magnitude. And so, and so, a reaction not so definite and certain as with the ordinary physical world, but yet still probable and meaningful.
On its own, that doesn’t seem to be much of an observation. And yet, and yet, there are times when this isn’t plain, when it’s not obvious to a few. Which times and which people would those be?
People with a status-based outlook, people who are entitled, people who are self-absorbed, and people who are in the grip of motivated reasoning typically lack the sense to see that their actions will produce a reaction. They take action, but can’t grasp a reaction (for human events of equal or even greater magnitude than their own actions) coming in response.
Special interests are often like this. They can make a claim (however specious), but can’t imagine a counterclaim (however trustworthy). This ilk overestimates itself, and underestimates everyone else.
The Better Approach of the Dark-Horse Underdog is to see “issues without entitlement, without over-confidence. There is, each time, nothing other than the work of observing, assessing, and writing thereafter.”
Can’t imagine any other way.
See also The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town, Two Techniques of the Special Interest Men, and The Shock of the Normal.
Kevin the Canadian Chihuahua understandably loves fall weather, even if, like many Canadian canines, he expresses his affection in salty terms. Click on Kevin’s picture to play the video:
America, Constitution, Daily Bread, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Speech, Law, Liberty
Daily Bread for 10.20.25: Peaceful After All (As It Was Sure to Be)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 63. Sunrise is 7:14 and sunset is 6:03 for 10 hours 49 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1774, the Continental Association, a nonconsumption and nonimportation agreement against the British Isles and the British West Indies, is adopted by the First Continental Congress.
And so, and so, the No Kings rallies were peaceful after all. They were sure to be, all along. Claims to the contrary were unfounded. (Good morning, Fort Atkinson: so very well done, and a pleasure to exercise one’s First Amendment rights with you.)
From many of the residents assembled:
From an honest press:
And for those of us who aren’t Democrats but are Never Trump:
“On Saturday, the American people assembled lawfully on behalf of the rule of law. Pro-Kings propagandists hoped for violence, extremism, and evidence of hate for America. But instead they saw peace, patriotism, and loyalty to America. It was a frabjous day.” www.thebulwark.com/p/long-live-…
— Bill Kristol (@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social) October 20, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Inside the frozen vault where scientists are preserving the world’s plants for the future:
Holiday, Music
Monday Music: Halloween Trio No. 2
by JOHN ADAMS •
Jack Marshall, Munsters Theme Song
Vic Mizzy, The Addams Family Theme Song
Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, Stranger Things (Main Title Theme)
America, Daily Bread, History
Daily Bread for 10.19.25: Six Years, Six Months
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:13 and sunset is 6:05 for 10 hours 52 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
October 19th has been a happy day for many centuries. On this day in 1781, the British surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown:
After initial preparations, the Americans and French built their first parallel and began the bombardment. With the British defense weakened, on October 14, 1781, Washington sent two columns to attack the last major remaining British outer defenses. A French column under Vicomte de Deux-Ponts took Redoubt No. 9 and an American column under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton took Redoubt No. 10. With these defenses, the allies were able to finish their second parallel. With the Franco-American artillery closer and its bombardment more intense than ever, the British position began to deteriorate rapidly. Cornwallis asked for capitulation terms on October 17. After two days of negotiation, the surrender ceremony occurred on October 19; Cornwallis was absent from the ceremony. With the capture of more than 7,000 British soldiers, negotiations between the United States and Great Britain began, resulting in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
While the Revolution would continue for two more years, America’s victory was assured after Yorktown:
The British Prime Minister, Lord North, is reported to have exclaimed “Oh God, it’s all over” when told of the defeat. On March 4, 1782, a motion to end “further prosecution of offensive warfare on the continent of North America”—effectively a no confidence motion—passed in the British House of Commons. Lord North and his government resigned on March 20. [Citations omitted.]
The time between the beginning of the war at Lexington and Concord and victory at Yorktown stretched over six years, six months.
Our forefathers were resolved and tenacious.
Bright fireball seen over Kentucky and Alabama:
America, Daily Bread, Law
Daily Bread for 10.18.25: Words to Live By
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 72. Sunrise is 7:12 and sunset is 6:07 for 10 hours 55 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1597, King Philip II of Spain sends his third and final armada against England, but it ends in failure due to storms. The remaining ships are captured or sunk by the English.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Volunteers save dogs from a flooded Alaska village, 1 tiny plane at a time:
Charity, City, Daily Bread, Early Childhood, Education
Daily Bread for 10.17.25: On the Extraordinary Donation for Early Childhood Care in Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 75. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset is 6:08 for 10 hours 58 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1931, Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion.
At the Journal Sentinel, Cleo Krejci reports on the charitable donation of former Whitewater business owners looking to address the city’s child care gap:
Steve Moksnes remembers wondering how to best invest in his hometown of Whitewater, Wisconsin.
Then his wife of 63 years, Billie, suggested he research the impacts of early childhood education.
“You’re not just getting them ready for kindergarten. You are teaching them to work with other people, to problem solve, to control their emotions,” he said. “And that just fired my imagination.”
In September, the Moksnes donated $10 million to fund a nonprofit Whitewater Early Childhood Education and Childcare Center. They want the center to be affordable for families, and to provide competitive salaries and benefits for workers.
The goal is for the new space to open with at least 100 child care spots in 2026. The location has yet to be announced.
The project is a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the Whitewater Unified School District and the City of Whitewater.
“We spent the better part of a year having conversations with the city, the university, their child care center, other child care centers, the school district — a lot of different stakeholders,” said project co-lead Kristine Zaballos. “To talk about the need, talk about potential solutions, and to make sure that everybody who wanted to be included in the conversation was at the table.”
A 2022 study on Walworth County found the area has a steep need for child care options.
…
Thayer Coburn, vice-chair of the city’s Community Development Authority and former Whitewater school board president, is also co-leading the project. He described child care as a driver of development in the city — and a “limiting factor for growth” when there’s not enough of it.
City Manager John Weidl said a lack of child care options has prevented businesses from opening, or expanding, in the city. Most people looking to buy a home, or work in Whitewater have children, he said.
See Cleo Krejci, Former Whitewater business owners look to address child care gap with $10 million donation, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 16, 2025.
Our city has among its many talented residents those who can make this donation for early child care an enduring success. (For myself, I am in the position of a man who can tell time but cannot build a watch. I can see that a timepiece is needed, but I wouldn’t be able to craft it.)
It’s enough to know, as I’ve noted elsewhere, that this is a charitable contribution unmatched in Whitewater’s history — not merely in magnitude, but also in direction and timing. There could be no better object of charity than the care of Whitewater’s youngest residents, and no better time to meet their needs than now.
James Webb Space Telescope captures Milky Way’s ‘largest star-forming cloud’:
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Cats’ Affect on Human Brains
by JOHN ADAMS •
Laura Elin Pigott writes of what owning a cat does to your brain (and theirs):
Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fuelled by brain chemistry.
The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges when a mother cradles her baby or when friends hug, fostering trust and affection. And now studies are showing oxytocin is important for cat-human bonding too.
Oxytocin plays a central role in social bonding, trust and stress regulation in many animals, including humans. One 2005 experiment showed that oxytocin made human volunteers significantly more willing to trust others in financial games.
…
A February 2025 study found that when owners engaged in relaxed petting, cuddling or cradling of their cats, the owners’ oxytocin tended to rise, and so did the cats’ – if the interaction was not forced on the animal.
The researchers monitored oxytocin in cats during 15 minutes of play and cuddling at home with their owner. Securely attached cats who initiated contact such as lap-sitting or nudging showed an oxytocin surge. The more time they spent close to their humans, the greater the boost.
See Laura Elin Pigott, What owning a cat does to your brain (and theirs), The Conversation, September 12, 2025.
City, Daily Bread, Economy, Entitlement, Reading, Reasoning, Special Interests
Daily Bread for 10.16.25: Large Language Models and Whitewater (Or You Are What You Put In)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset is 6:10 for 11 hours 1 minute of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Association meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1780, the Great Hurricane of 1780 finishes after its sixth day, killing between 20,000 and 24,000 residents of the Lesser Antilles:
The hurricane struck Barbados likely as a Category 5 hurricane, with one estimate of wind gusts as high as 200 mph (320 km/h), before moving past Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Sint Eustatius, and causing thousands of deaths on those islands. Coming in the midst of the American Revolution, the storm caused heavy losses to the British fleet contesting for control of the area, significantly weakening British control over the Atlantic. The hurricane later passed near Puerto Rico and over the eastern portion of Hispaniola, causing heavy damage near the coastlines. It ultimately turned to the northeast and was last observed on October 20 southeast of Atlantic Canada. [Citations omitted]
Matt Levine writes a newsletter, Money Stuff, on American finance for Bloomberg, and one doesn’t have to be a financier to appreciate the depth of his insight. Yesterday’s edition discussed the limits of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other generative AI enterprises.
Here’s Levine on the contrast between ambitions for ChatGPT in 2019 and the reality in 2025:
There’s a famous Sam Altman interview from 2019 in which he explained OpenAI’s revenue model:
The honest answer is we have no idea. We have never made any revenue. We have no current plans to make revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. We have made a soft promise to investors that once we’ve built this sort of generally intelligent system, basically, we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you. [audience laughter] It sounds like an episode of Silicon Valley, it really does, I get it. You can laugh, it’s all right. But it is what I actually believe is going to happen.
Levine continues:
It really is the greatest business plan in the history of capitalism: “We will create God and then ask it for money.” Perfect in its simplicity.
I began this section with a jokey maximalist vision of AI, “create God,” “an omniscient superintelligence,” that sort of thing. The jokey minimalist vision of AI is probably “ChatGPT is a blurry JPEG of the web”: Modern AI systems are approximately a synthesis of all human knowledge and communication, but given the way computers work, that means especially a synthesis of the internet, which is where you get the bulk of machine-readable human knowledge and communication. Ryan Broderick writes: “Think of ChatGPT as a big shuffle button of almost everything we’ve ever put online.” I once wrote about asking ChatGPT to pick stocks:
If you ask a modern publicly available large language model which stocks to buy, it will in some sense draw on all of human knowledge and its own powerful reasoning capacity to tell you which stocks to buy. But, among all of human knowledge, it might give extra weight to the knowledge on Reddit. And the knowledge on Reddit about what stocks to buy is “meme stocks.”
You can apply similar reasoning here. In a science fiction story, if you invented a superintelligent robot and asked it how to make money, it might come up with cool never-before-seen ideas, or at least massive fun market manipulation. But in real life, if you train a large language model on the internet and ask it how to make money, it will say “advertising, affiliate shopping links and porn.” That’s the lesson the internet teaches!
See Matt Levine, Revenue Model, Bloomberg’s Money Stuff (October 15, 2025).
Levine highlights the problem for OpenAI (and others): you start out hoping for a human version of divine omniscience — knowledge of all possible events and facts — but you’re doing so by relying on what humans write, mostly on the web. The limitations are obvious. There’s much that generative AI can do, but large language models are limited by, sadly, all-too-human writings.
And so, and so, Levine’s observations about using large language models apply to approaching problems everywhere, including in Whitewater, Wisconsin; you’re relying on what you’ve read of what others have written. If you’ve read well, all these years, then at least you’ve a model on which some derivations may be productively generated.
But if not, then someone who has read poorly (or scarcely at all) will begin to look inadequate compared with those who are truly more knowledgeable. That’s one effect of bringing in experienced development professionals to speak to the Whitewater Common Council these last ten months. One sees plainly that an overly entitled man, by contrast, will produce argumentation that seems to rely, metaphorically, on little better than advertising and affiliate links. (It also means that others who allow themselves to be tied to, and identified with, someone like that will begin from an impaired position…)
Moment when security guard saves woman from oncoming tram in Turkey:
Agriculture, Bad Ideas, Daily Bread, Economy, Trade, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 10.15.25: Elderly Gentleman Slowly Realizes What a Trade War Means
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with morning showers and a high of 60. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset is 6:11, for 11 hours 3 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 31.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1815, Napoleon begins his exile on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Conflicts can escalate quickly for the ignorant, the emotional, or the undisciplined among us. Start raising tariffs, and you might find yourself in a trade war. Find yourself in a trade war, and you might notice one day — believe it or not! — that a trade war involves other nations retaliating:
Trump posted on Truth Social last night: “I believe that China purposefully not buying our soybeans, and causing difficulty for our soybean farmers, is an economically hostile act. We are considering terminating business with China having to do with cooking oil, and other elements of trade, as retribution.”
Talk of retribution is precisely the opposite of what markets had hoped for, and is a further about-turn from the White House on relations with Beijing. On Friday, Trump threatened 100% tariffs on its key trading partner, before issuing assurances that a deal will be reached. It comes as the latest export data for China shows Washington may not have as strong a hand as it believed in the trade war, with Chinese exporters reporting growth having focussed on trade with the rest of the world as opposed to the States.
See Eleanor Pringle, Powell says exactly what Wall Street wants to hear as Trump provokes soybean battle with China, Fortune, October 15, 2025.
See also, from yesterday, Trade War Creates Cycle of Agriculture’s Dependency on Government.
California engineer wins pumpkin contest with 2,346-pound gourd:
Agriculture, Bad Ideas, Daily Bread, Economy, Trade, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 10.14.25: Trade War Creates Cycle of Agriculture’s Dependency on Government
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset is 6:13, for 11 hours 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 41.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM, and the Finance Committee meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress denounces the British Parliament’s Intolerable Acts and demands British concessions.
The proposition that “trade wars are good and easy to win” is under daily stress, as the plight of Wisconsin agriculture makes evident:
Farmers harvesting their crops this fall are also waiting to hear whether they can expect a check from the government.
The administration is reportedly eyeing $10 billion to $15 billion in aid to farmers. President Donald Trump has said he’d like to use tax revenue generated by tariffs to provide relief for farmers, who’ve lost a key soybean market due to the trade war with China. Yet the expected announcement has been pushed back indefinitely in the midst of the federal government shutdown.
Matt Rehberg operates a farm near the Wisconsin-Illinois border and is the vice president of the Wisconsin Soybean Association.
He says the boycott from China — which purchased around half of all U.S. soybean exports last year — has made this year especially hard for soybean farmers. But he believes bailout programs are only a temporary solution.
“We want markets. Markets are consistent. We can bet on them,” he said. “When you go to these ad hoc bailout programs, they definitely help. But it’s kind of like putting a Band-aid on a gunshot wound.”
Along with international trade uncertainty, farmers are also struggling due to a mix of low crop prices and high costs for things like fertilizer, making this an especially tough year for farm finances.
A survey of 1,034 farmers released in September by the National Corn Growers Association showed that nearly half believe the U.S. economy is on the brink of a farm crisis, and two-thirds are more concerned about their farm’s finances than a year ago.
See Joe Schulz, Farmers caught in Trump’s trade war wait for bailout. But many call it a temporary fix, Wisconsin Public Radio, October 13, 2025.
Come for the culture war, stay for the economic decline.
SpaceX Starship travels halfway across world in successful test flight: