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Business, Daily Bread, Gov. Evers, Legislation, Legislature, Speaker Vos, State Government, Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.20.26: The Shifting Politics on Data Centers

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:34 and sunset is 8:27 for 14 hours 53 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 41.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board – Food Pantry Subcommittee meets at noon and the Library Board at 6:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1969, Apollo 11‘s crew successfully makes the first human landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility.

Buzz Aldrin salutes the U.S. flag on the Moon (mission time: 110:10:33). His fingertips are visible on the far side of his faceplate. Note the well-defined footprints in the foreground. Buzz is facing up-Sun. There is a reflection of the Sun in his visor. At the bottom of Buzz’s faceplate, note the white ‘rim’ which is slightly separated from his neckring. This ‘rim’ is the bottom of his gold visor, which he has pulled down. We can see the LEC straps hanging down inside of the ladder strut. In the foreground, we can see the foot-grabbing loops in the TV cable. The double crater under Neil’s LM window is just beyond the LM shadow.

The politics of data center construction have shifted greatly over these last few years. While this libertarian blogger has argued for the minimum set of state regulations to make data center policy uniform across Wisconsin, that’s a minority position. Indeed, it’s now so evidently a minority position that the Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany has forgotten (or is lying) about legislation passed as recently as the 2023-2025 legislative session that offered tax breaks for data centers:

A 2023-25 budget provision granting a sales tax exemption to data centers was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by the Democratic governor in July 2023. 

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau said in March that the tax break will cost the state more than $2 billion in sales tax revenue, mostly from massive data centers in Beaver Dam, Port Washington and Mount Pleasant. When the budget was approved in July 2023, hyperscale data centers were so new the fiscal bureau didn’t estimate how much an exemption would affect state tax collections should they be built.

While the high cost has drawn scrutiny, the incentive was originally designed to drive economic growth. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 38 states offer tax incentives on data centers.

See Audrey Lopez-Stane, Was a Wisconsin data centers tax break put in place solely by Gov. Tony Evers?, Wisconsin Watch, July 20, 2026.

Now, Tiffany wants to assign all the responsibility for data center tax breaks to Gov. Evers. Democrat Evers could not have signed tax-break legislation if the Republican-controlled legislature had not passed that legislation.

It’s worth noting that I support those tax breaks just as I support the minimum set of statewide regulations on data centers (so that each community can either build or refrain as it wishes).

The waxing statewide view is, however, hostile to data centers and rapidly growing more so. It’s so hostile that it’s caused Tiffany either to forget or deceptively to abandon his own party’s past.

(Note well, for those few in Whitewater or elsewhere who think Speaker Robin Vos will have an ongoing influence: Vos’s influence fades by the hour. Leaders in both parties are even now consigning Vos to the faded newsprint and the brittle pages of yesterday’s news.)

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Well done, Spain:

Animals, Birds, Conservation, Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.19.26: Bird Banding at the Hemlock Draw Preserve

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:33 and sunset is 8:28 for 14 hours 55 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 64, the Great Fire of Rome causes widespread devastation and rages on for six days, destroying half of the city.

Trained and licensed bird banders make tracking migratory birds possible. Several beautiful species were banded at The Nature Conservancy’s Hemlock Draw Preserve last month:

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Dark Energy Camera Reveals a Real-Life ‘Starry Night’ in Space:

The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the NSF Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope captured an amazing view of the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud. “The scene contains glowing nebulae, dark dust lanes, and newborn stars, reminiscent of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night,” according to NOIRLab.

Daily Bread, Gubernatorial Race 2026, WisDems, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 7.18.26: A Large Wisconsin Gubernatorial Field Is Nothing New

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:32 and sunset is 8:29 for 14 hours 57 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1968,  Intel is founded in Mountain View, California.

There are several candidates for Wisconsin governor (mostly among Democrats, but even the Republicans nominally have more than one, although Tiffany is the only one who matters). For the WisDems, this is nothing new:

If the 2026 Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor seems large, 2018 certainly had it beat.

That year, 10 names were on the Democratic primary ballot, plus an 11th write-in candidate, according to results of the 2018 partisan primary kept by the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Two Republican candidates and two additional write-ins appeared on the 2018 GOP primary ballot. 

The Aug. 11, 2026, primary ballot includes seven Democrats and two Republicans.

In both years, a few candidates dropped out of the race, but their names remained on the ballot due to approval deadlines. 

As of July 14, that includes Democrats Missy Hughes and David Crowley. So, only five of the Democrats on the Aug. 11 ballot are still campaigning.

In 2018, two higher-profile candidates had also dropped out by late June: Andy Gronik and Dana Wachs, though both appeared on the ballot.

Hope Karnopp, Did more Democrats run for Wisconsin governor in 2018 than in 2026?, Wisconsin Watch, July 16, 2026.

Even now, the field is flux: Crowley, it turns out, may return to campaigning.

Perhaps, for partisans, all this is stressful — which person will their party nominate?

If, by contrast, you are part of a larger, supportive coalition yet not a Democrat (as I am not), then your outlook may be different. (At least, this libertarian blogger’s outlook is different.) One fights with the candidate that one has, and although I will vote in the partisan primary, it’s mostly Democrats who will decide their nominee. One hopes they’ll pick their strongest remaining candidate for the fall, although that’s not certain. It’s not even probable, candidly.

One carries on, regardless, as part of a broader coalition. Any Democrat remaining in the race, even the least favorable choice for the fall, would be better than Trump’s man for Wisconsin.

Never means never.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Naked mole-rat queens’ secret sauce for domination:

Naked mole-rats are…weird, to say the least. Now scientists may have solved the long-standing mystery of how their unique social structure is maintained, and the answer is a surprisingly simple and commonplace chemical. It’s used in the production of cosmetics and plastics (it’s the active ingredient in many head lice treatments) and also seems to be the key to maintaining a queen’s place in naked mole-rat colonies.

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Local Government

Daily Bread for 7.17.26: Civic Participation Has Been Low in Many Communities for Many Years

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with scattered afternoon thundershowers and a high of 90. Sunrise is 5:31 and sunset is 8:29 for 14 hours 58 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1821, the Kingdom of Spain cedes the territory of Florida to the United States.

A resident often finds significant and interesting work from the municipal administration in the Whitewater Common Council’s consent agenda. A memo among the consent agenda items for the July 21 council meeting addresses participation on city boards and commissions. See Memorandum from Becky Magestro, Chief of Staff, City of Whitewater, to Whitewater Common Council, Board and Commission Resignations and Volunteer Recruitment (July 21, 2026). However regrettable, it has been true for many years that in Whitewater (and cities across this country) civic participation has often been low.

This topic of low participation, where the city relies on a small number of the same people to fill commission and board vacancies, was broached in Whitewater nearly a decade ago. When the city manager at that time first mentioned the problem publicly, this libertarian blogger was surprised: Old Whitewater disfavored discussions that might call into question the culture of the city. Admittedly, Old Whitewater’s decline as a force was already evident, and while its many mistakes were undeniable, it still had some kick to it. This problem, however, was not unique to Whitewater then or now.

I’ll not suggest that I have an adequate answer. It is plainly, however, a longstanding and common affliction across our area and beyond. In this, Whitewater is not alone and is now managing civic participation as well as anyone nearby.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Landslide in Chongqing:

An unknown number of people were buried after a landslide struck a county in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, causing multiple residential buildings downhill to collapse, according to state media. A dashcam video captured the moment a section of hillside collapsed onto homes and businesses below, sending debris across the road and forcing passing cars to stop.

Cats, Science/Nature

Friday Catblogging: Not All Cat Grooming Is a Friendly Gesture

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Sometimes cats groom each other for friendly reasons … but sometimes not:

Morgane Van Belle, another cat behavioral scientist at Ghent University and the study’s lead author, was observing her own cats, Fabio and Giovanni, interacting over a favorite napping spot in the sun and noticed something.

“I saw these weird grooming patterns in my own cats where I thought, This is not super friendly at all,” she said. “Sometimes one cat would lay on the blanket near the window and the other cat would come up and start licking it — but in an annoying way.” The interaction would induce the licked cat to get up and forfeit the sunny spot, she said.

To check whether this behavior was more widespread, Ms. Van Belle and her colleagues looked at 53 households across Europe with two or more cats. After telling the pet owners what to look for, the researchers had them submit videos of their cats’ interactions. The scientists then randomly selected a submission from each participant and used statistical analyses to tease apart the hidden nuance in cat-licking behavior.

[…]

The results revealed two things. The first was consistent with typical grooming behavior: The cats licked each other on the head, neck or ears. In these videos, the cats were much more likely to mimic each other’s body postures, either cuddling together or sitting next to one another before and after the grooming. The licks were clearly friendly gestures.

The other side of the cat-licking coin revealed something more in line with bullying. A subset of the videos showed that licking often preceded conflict. These interactions were defined by differing body postures, where one cat might stand and lick the other sitting cat. The aggressive licks were followed by signs of stress in the licked cat, including staring, yowling, rotating the ears, licking the lips or swiping at the other cat. The results were inconsistent with the prior conception of cat allogrooming.

See Taylor Mitchell Brown, Your Cat Is Being Nice? Think Again (A new study finds that sometimes cats groom each other specifically to be annoying), New York Times, July 10, 2025.

Climate, Daily Bread, Weather, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.16.26: Wisconsin Under Smoky Skies

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 90. Sunrise is 5:30 and sunset is 8:30 for 15 hours of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is destroyed in a head-on collision with Jupiter.

Brown spots mark impact sites on Jupiter‘s southern hemisphere. Hubble Space Telescope Comet Team and NASA.

All of Wisconsin is under smoky skies, and northern Wisconsin most of all:

Wildfire smoke from fires blazing in Canada and Minnesota will blanket much of Wisconsin this week, bringing hazardous air quality to northern Wisconsin and statewide effects.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued an air quality advisory Tuesday that runs through 11 a.m. Thursday, which could be extended.

[…]

Climate change is driving heat and drought that have set the stage for wildfires to burn. Wildfires in Canada have worsened as the nation has seen warmer and shorter winters that have enhanced drought conditions, said Amanda Latham, climate outreach specialist with the Wisconsin State Climatology Office. 

“When we have these really, really dry conditions, and we also start to introduce the warmer conditions during the summer, that really expands the wildfire season,” Latham said. “Oftentimes, it makes it a lot worse than what we’ve seen in historic records.”

In Canada, around 835 fires are burning with nearly 3,500 so far this year that have consumed around 4.7 million acres. The number of fires is above the 10-year average.

A Minnesota Star Tribune analysis found wildfire activity has increased in Minnesota almost every season since 1992, including a tenfold increase in the average number of fires during summer and fall.

See Danielle Kaeding, Wisconsin sees hazardous levels of pollution as fires burn in Canada and Minnesota (‘Wisconsin sees unhealthy air as 17 fires burn in northern Minnesota, including 3 in the Boundary Waters’), Wisconsin Public Radio, July 15, 2026.

Our weather has changed because our climate has changed.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Gov. Evers will appeal the Trump adminstration’s denial of assistance to four counties hit by April storms. There is a pattern of delay and rejection. Trump delays and rejects disaster aid for Democratic states at higher rates, AP finds:

When major disasters strike, Americans are routinely waiting weeks — or even months — to receive presidential approval for aid. And if they live in a state that didn’t support President Donald Trump, chances are greater that aid will be denied.

Authoritarian Populism, Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Law, Musk, Never Trump, Trump, Trumpism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.15.26: Musk’s 2025 Wisconsin Election Payments Bring Criminal Referral

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 94. Sunrise is 5:30 and sunset is 8:31 for 15 hours 1 minute of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1916, in Seattle, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).

In the first few months of 2025, after Trump’s second inauguration, it seemed to many as though Trumpism and the MAGA movement were America’s foreseeable future. Those of us in opposition, including those of us who are Never Trump, knew that those grandiose claims of an enduring future were false, would prove transitory and, in retrospect, delusional. And look, and look — those heady days of Trumpism now seem as though they were a hundred years ago.

And yet, and yet — at the time, Trump and his then-allies thought and acted as though they were free from the practical and moral constraints present across centuries of American history:

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has referred two complaints against billionaire Elon Musk to the Brown County district attorney’s office, saying it found “probable cause” to believe Musk broke state election bribery laws last year.

Two letters sent to Musk and Wisconsin residents who filed the initial complaints state that the elections commission’s bipartisan board voted 5-1 last week on a motion finding probable cause that Musk violated the state’s election bribery statute, “by making a social media post that offered one million dollars to individuals who voted in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court Election in order to induce them to vote in that election.”

The actual complaints themselves are not publicly accessible under state law.

Musk was heavily involved in backing former Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel’s campaign against current liberal Justice Susan Crawford. Musk and groups connected to him gave more than $20 million to support Schimel’s campaign and offered $100 payments to residents who signed a petition opposing “activist judges.” Musk also said he gave people in Green Bay and Eau Claire $1 million for signing the petition. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission letter, however, appears to focus on a specific post from Musk to his social media platform X on March 27, 2025, in which he announced he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” at an event where only “those who have voted in the Supreme Court election” would be allowed in.

“I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote,” said Musk.

[…]

He deleted the post the next day and replaced it with another stating that people who signed his petition “in opposition to activist judges” would be allowed in and the million-dollar payments were no longer just for those who voted.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul tried to stop Musk’s million-dollar giveaway, but his lawsuit was dismissed by a county circuit court, state appeals court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court. At the event, held in Green Bay on March 30, 2025, Musk handed out two large checks for a million dollars. One of them went to the state chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans. 

With the elections commission’s referrals, it’s up to Republican Brown County District Attorney David Lasee to decide whether or not to file criminal charges.

See Rich Kremer, Wisconsin Elections Commission says Elon Musk likely violated bribery law, Wisconsin Public Radio, July 15, 2026.

I’ll not be waiting for Brown County’s district attorney to take action. It seems unlikely that there will be any prosecution of Musk for his 2025 actions.

Note, however, how distant Musk’s Wisconsin intervention feels now. In Wisconsin Supreme Court races, Crawford defeated Schimel easily in 2025, and Taylor defeated Lazar easily in 2026.

Tariffs, bloated federal legislation, concealment of Epstein’s vast network, murders in our streets, and wars in Venezuela and Iran have reminded a majority of our people what Trumpism consists in equal measures impracticality and moral transgression.

Musk himself is likely to escape justice in Wisconsin, but a far harsher sentence — public rejection — builds against the movement Musk so ludicrously promoted in the winter and spring of 2025.

This long political conflict is not over: worse is yet to come, but whatever comes will, despite the difficulty, be overcome.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

A headline for our time: ‘Can We Lose the Same War Twice? With Trump, Anything’s Possible.’ U.S. reimposes Iran blockade after attacks on ships in Strait of Hormuz:

The U.S. military early Wednesday reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports over Tehran’s attacks on ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, sparking new strikes on nations hosting U.S. forces as an interim deal to end the war further unraveled.

Climate, Daily Bread, Science/Nature, Weather, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.14.26: Tornado Alley Moves Toward the Midwest

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 95. Sunrise is 5:29 and sunset is 8:32 for 15 hours 3 minutes of daylight. The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Innovation Center Advisory Panel meets at 8:30 AM and the Public Works Committee at 5 PM.

On this day in 1789, French revolutionaries storm the Bastille.

We’re closer to Tornado Alley than we once were as that traditional area for storms shifts toward the Midwest:

The U.S. has had a busy tornado season so far, and the majority of the storms are blasting through the Midwest, east of what’s traditionally thought of as Tornado Alley.

Wisconsin has seen a higher than average number of tornadoes so far this year, according to data from the National Weather Service.

“It’s been an active tornado year so far across Wisconsin with 39 documented tornadoes, which ties it with (2025) for the sixth most in an entire year since 1950,” the NWS wrote in an update released Monday.

The NWS says the average number of tornadoes for Wisconsin in a calendar year is 23. In recent years, the state has seen tornado totals around double that number.

Historically, tornadoes have most frequently touched down in the Great Plains, hitting states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, but research has found since 1979 that pattern has been shifting.

“Tornadoes have been happening with less frequency in the Great Plains over the last 40 years,” said Victor Gensini, a professor and director at Northern Illinois University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Convective Storms. “And they’ve been having greater frequency in places like Illinois and Indiana and Tennessee and portions of the Mid-South and the Midwest.”

See Abigail Bottar, Tornadoes are breaking records in Midwest states as Tornado Alley moves east (With 39 tornadoes so far this year, Wisconsin has already matched last year’s total of tornadoes), Wisconsin Public Radio, July 14, 2026.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Astronomers find evidence of sugar in the space between stars:

The space between stars in the Milky Way just got a little sweeter for Spanish researchers who’ve found evidence of a sugar which is found in raspberries and self-tanning lotions. The sugar, called erythrulose, lurks in interstellar space, or the space between stars.

Daily Bread, Education, School District, University, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.13.26: The Cultivation of Curiosity

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:28 and sunset is 8:32 for 15 hours 4 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1977, during a period of financial and social turmoil, New York City experiences an electrical blackout lasting nearly 24 hours that leads to widespread fires and looting.

These are difficult economic and social times, and understandably parents worry for their children’s prospects. And yet, and yet, there should be time in college life for curiosity:

On one side, universities are under enormous pressure to become engines of employment.

A study of nearly a million students this spring ranked liberal-arts graduates among the lowest financial returns of any field. On June 29 the Department of Education finalized rules that will strip federal loans from programs whose graduates do not out-earn high school diploma holders. In addition, this month the Department of Education launched Workforce Pell, extending the nation’s largest college aid program to job training courses as short as eight weeks.

On the other side stand traditionalists, exemplified by the retired Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, who recently defined the university as a community devoted to the cultivation of the mind. They see all of this as the surrender of education to employment.

[…]

Here is the mistake: concluding that if job outcomes are the goal, then job training is the method.

The capacity that actually carries a person upward over a forty-year career — through layoffs, through industry upheavals, and now through AI — is not any particular skill. It is curiosity, which is the drive to close the gap between what you know and what you want to know. And curiosity is developed precisely by the parts of education that look least vocational.

[…]

Minds grow the way muscles do: by being challenged. Environments that withhold the answer long enough for the question to deepen produce curious people. Environments built for the fastest path to a credential produce fewer — not because skills training is bad, but because it is designed to eliminate exactly the struggle in which curiosity forms.

This is why, as politically tone-deaf as it sounds, we still need to teach Chaucer and Tocqueville. The humanities put a particular kind of question at the center: questions with no single right answer. What does this passage mean? What holds a democracy together? Working on such questions is not soft; it is rigor of a harder kind, marshaling logic and evidence when no experiment will ever settle the matter.

See Ryan Martin and Sachin Shivaram, Wisconsin colleges should cultivate curiosity | Opinion, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 13, 2026.

Well said.

There’s no question that this libertarian blogger leans, as Martin and Shivaram express it, on one side of this divide: my paternal family, my spouse, and our children all share the conviction that education is fundamentally about curiosity and investigation. This is our way.

In this, it’s possible — I’d say easily so — to share a view of “a community devoted to the cultivation of the mind, both the theoretical mind that raises one’s sights and the practical mind that makes one mindful of necessities” without Mansfield’s socially repugnant politics. (Mansfield’s sad irony: a commitment to the cultivation of the mind yet accompanied by an inveterate narrowness of mind toward minorities.)

One of the aspects of educational discussions in Whitewater is that most supporters and most critics of education have singular positions: either all educational decisions are right (regardless of cost) or all educational decisions are wrong (because of cost).

Expenses, budgets, marketing, branding, communication — underneath all of these merely instrumental or procedural means lie substantive, enduring principles of learning.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Field Campaign in the Arctic: Measuring Sea Ice From Air and Space:

Arctic sea ice is changing, with implications for ocean conditions, weather patterns, ecosystems, and shipping routes. To better understand these changes, researchers are using new types of measurements. During a field campaign over the Arctic Ocean and remote parts of northern Canada in April 2026, researchers collected airborne data alongside satellite observations. By combining the two, scientists hope to improve measurements of sea ice thickness in particular. The campaign used data from the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite; NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2); and ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) CryoSat-2. Instruments aboard the research flights were similar to what ESA will use on its upcoming CRISTAL satellite.

Daily Bread, Environment, Nature, Water, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.12.26: Water, Shade, and Shelter

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:27 and sunset is 8:33 for 15 hours 6 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 5.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1998, France wins its first World Cup title, defeating defending champion Brazil 3–0.

A healthy environment requires water, shade, and shelter:

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Thailand zoo celebrates viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng’s 2nd birthday:

A zoo in Thailand celebrated the 2nd birthday of the viral sensation pygmy hippo Moo Deng on Friday, with a large cake made of fruits and vegetables.

America, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Federal Government, Housing, Local Government, Old CDA, Special Interests, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.11.26: Federal Housing Bill Becomes Law

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:26 and sunset is 8:33 for 15 hours 7 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 11.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1914, Babe Ruth makes his Major League Baseball debut.

The long-running campaign of a few local landlords to prevent an increase in the housing supply runs counter to the goals of both major national parties:

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, a bipartisan bill that aims to tackle housing affordability, officially became law early Saturday, despite a series of attempts by President Donald Trump to stall the legislation.

Its passage signals that lawmakers recognize the frustration many Americans feel about the high cost of housing. At a time of elevated mortgage rates and near-record high home prices, many feel locked out of homeownership or struggle with monthly rent payments.

[…]

The nation’s housing affordability crisis did not stem from a single event or policy failure. It is the result of years of underbuilding, restrictive local zoning, rising demand and policy decisions and, in many cases, policy inaction.

The legislation reflects the complexity of the crisis, combining a total of 47 proposals aimed at increasing housing supply, reducing costs and expanding access to affordable homes.

But immediate relief may not come just yet for homeowners and renters, said Yonah Freemark, a housing research associate at the Urban Institute. Building new homes takes time, and the law gives short-staffed federal government agencies a new workload to manage.

“We’re talking about a situation where not only will the federal government have to make changes, but then state and local governments also will have to make changes and then businesses, developers, etcetera will have to make investments, which itself takes time,” Freemark said.

(Emphasis added.) See Samantha Delouya, Sweeping housing affordability bill becomes law, despite Trump’s delay. Here’s what it actually means for the housing market, CNN Business, July 10, 2026. See also The Growing Consensus for More Housing.

These few area gentlemen find themselves out of step with the national consensus in the most advanced and productive society in human history. Not for the first time; perhaps not for the last time….

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Fans gather in Times Square to celebrate 10 years of Pokémon GO:

Pokémon GO celebrated its 10th anniversary with a Times Square takeover featuring a special event to defeat the Pokémon species Mewtwo.

Daily Bread, Health, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.10.26: Overdose Deaths in Wisconsin Decline

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 84. Sunrise is 5:26 and sunset is 8:34 for 15 hours 8 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 20.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1212, the most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground:

The second of the two great medieval fires of London, also known as “the Great Fire of Suthwark” [sic], began on 10 July 1212 in Southwark, the borough directly to the south of London Bridge. The flames destroyed Our Lady of the Canons (Southwark Cathedral, also known as St Mary Overie) and strong southerly winds pushed them towards the bridge, which also caught fire. London Bridge had only just been rebuilt in stone, and the structure itself survived the blaze. However, King John had authorised the construction of houses on the bridge, the rents from which were supposed to pay for its maintenance, and it appears that these were lost to the flames.

Even in a time without plentiful good news, one still finds encouraging developments. The decline in overdose deaths in Wisconsin is one of those encouraging developments:

Overdose deaths in Wisconsin rose from 1,061 in 2016, to 1,830 in 2022. A Wisconsin Department of Health Services report found stress and isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic may have helped drive the increase. 

But in the past few years, the state has seen a sharp decline in overdose deaths, dropping from 1,772 in 2023 to 1,185 in 2024. [Director of Substance Use Initiatives at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services Michelle] Haese said there is not just one reason why overdose deaths have dropped in Wisconsin, but she did point to the “cumulative effect of years of investment.”

“This is a public health ecosystem working as intended and that’s finally showing up in the lives that are being saved, and the public health outcomes that we’re seeing in this space,” Haese said. 

Haese also said people receiving medications for opioid use disorder — such as buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone — has been helpful. Those are three medications, “that can help people stop or reduce opioid use,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“There’s still a long ways to go, we’re cautiously hopeful, but we’re definitely seeing signs of this turning around,” she said.

See Evan Casey, After record highs, communities across Wisconsin see decline in overdose deaths, Wisconsin Public Radio, July 9, 2026.

One day, our long political conflict will end, as all conflicts do. Until then, there is work that should and can be done regardless of one’s politics.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.

The Bayeux Tapestry arrives in London ahead of a sell-out show:

The Bayeux Tapestry has arrived in Britain for the first time in nearly 1,000 years ahead of a sell-out exhibition at the British Museum this year, traveling under police escort during a meticulously choreographed journey from France.