FREE WHITEWATER

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Politics, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.16.26: Intrusive Politics Leads to Perpetual Politics

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 69. Sunrise is 6:11 and sunset is 7:38 for 13 hours 27 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Calendar Committee meets at 4:30 PM and Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writes his open letter from Birmingham Jail, sometimes known as “The Negro Is Your Brother,” while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama, for protesting against segregation.

This April saw the election of Judge Chris Taylor to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She will take office this August. There will be another election for a seat on Wisconsin’s high court in April 2027. (Justice Ziegler has announced that she will not run for re-election.)

The campaign for the 2027 Wisconsin Supreme Court election has begun:

Barely a week after this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election, a candidate has entered the race for next year.

Clark County Judge Lyndsey Boon Brunette declared Thursday that she’ll run to replace outgoing Justice Annette Ziegler, who announced her retirement from the court in March.

In a video, Brunette highlighted her background as a former prosecutor and said she’d work to apply the law “fairly and equally.”

See Anya van Wagtendonk, Liberal Judge Lyndsey Brunette announces 2027 Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign, Wisconsin Public Radio, April 16, 2026.

Brunette is one of two circuit court judges in Clark County. Clark County is a small county east of Eau Claire, with its largest city (and county seat) at Neillsville. The county has voted Republican by large margins both in presidential elections and in the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Although Judge Brunette is described as a liberal, she’s served on the bench in one of Wisconsin’s reddest counties.

There will be other candidates, likely both liberal and conservative.

If Judge Brunette’s announcement seems premature, then one hasn’t considered the conditions of ceaseless political conflict in which we now live.

Donald Trump isn’t the origin of our endless politics, but he is its leading exemplar: his evident character disorders compel him to inflict himself, and federal power, into every discussion (political, religious, cultural) that wanders through his cluttered mind.

Those who want a less intrusive and less incessant politics should start by voting for national leaders with well-ordered minds.

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Economic Demand, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, and Whitewater’s Workforce.

Robots crack jokes and grab items at Humanoid Robot Expo in Tokyo:

They can dance and they’re good at doing repetitive work we humans tire of, but the big question at the Tokyo Expo is when will the humanoids be able to look after us at home.

Daily Bread, Fair Maps, Gerrymandering, Gov. Evers, Legislature, Speaker Vos, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.15.26: The Special Legislative Session Stays Open for Now

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with evening showers and a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:13 and sunset is 7:37 for 13 hours 24 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1922, U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal.

Gov. Evers convened a special session of the legislature to consider a solution to partisan gerrymandering. Legislative leaders left that session open, rather than gaveling it closed:

Evers announced his intention to call the special session in February, urging lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymandering. He officially ordered the session in March. The constitutional amendment would include language to expressly prohibit drawing districts that give a disproportionate advantage or disadvantage to any political party. It would not lay out a new process for drawing maps.

Wisconsin adopted new legislative maps in 2024 following a state Supreme Court decision that found the previous maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. The maps will be in place until 2030 when redistricting happens again. Unless there is a change to the current process, lawmakers will again be in charge of drawing new maps in 2031.

Ahead of the noon start time for the session, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) announced their intentions to leave the session open in a statement. They said they did so in “an effort to continue meaningful dialogue.”

“We view the Governor’s proposal as a first step on which to build a more comprehensive, workable solution for Wisconsin,” the leaders said, adding that they want a face-to-face meeting with Evers to discuss ideas. “We’re committed to a transparent and balanced solution that reflects the interest of all Wisconsinites.”

[…]

“In nearly every instance in which Republicans did not immediately gavel out of the governor’s special sessions, Republicans simply quietly gaveled out months later, largely to avoid press interest, bad headlines, and public scrutiny and accountability,” Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback wrote in a social media post.

See Baylor Spears, Lawmakers leave conversations with Evers on gerrymandering, tax relief, school funding open, Wisconsin Examiner, April 15, 2026.

An earlier deal on gerrymandering, in which the WISGOP agreed to state legislative maps with less gerrymandering, came about only because the Legislature faced the immediate prospect of an adverse decision from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The WISGOP accepted Evers’s proposal as an escape from the likelihood of an even less favorable outcome from Wisconsin’s high court. See Associated Press, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor signs his new state legislative maps into law (‘Republicans control the Legislature but approved the new lines to avoid a court fight’), Politico, February 19, 2024.

That’s not what’s at stake here. Gov. Evers is simply proposing a constitutional amendment prohibiting overly partisan maps. He isn’t proposing new district maps, but rather a requirement that whenever new maps are drawn, they be drawn in a generally nonpartisan way.

Perhaps that’s even too much for the WISGOP.

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Economic Demand, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, and Whitewater’s Workforce.

Wolf Steals a Bear Sign in Yellowstone National Park:

Click image for video

Agriculture, Daily Bread, Economy, War

Daily Bread for 4.14.26: Effects of Trade War and the Iran War Reach All the Way to Midwestern Soybean Farmers

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered evening thundershowers with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:14 and sunset is 7:36 for 13 hours 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Innovation Center Advisory Panel meets at 8:30 AM and Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM.

On this day in 1988, in a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement including a pledge to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

Someone once said that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” That same man later called the Iran War a “total and complete victory. 100 percent. No question about it.” (The rational among us do have, in fact, a few questions. See Peter Baker, Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate, New York Times, April 13, 2026.)

The consequences of reckless and violent policies are so powerful that they reach from battlefields and boardrooms all the way back to Midwestern soybean famers:

Sweeping tariffs levied by President Donald Trump in April 2025 exacerbated a trade war with China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans. China responded with retaliatory tariffs and effectively boycotted U.S. soybeans, cutting off a major export market for Midwest farmers and driving the price of soybeans even lower.

“When that was announced and soybean prices basically collapsed, if you could afford to hold on to your beans and wait for better times, you were OK,” said Mike Cerny, a soybean and winter wheat corn farmer in Sharon, Wisconsin. “If you had a mortgage due or payments due or cash flow needs and you had to sell at that point, you were taking it pretty rough.”

The U.S. and China eventually reached a deal in late 2025. Beijing committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans by January and at least 25 million metric tons annually for the next three years. China has since met its initial soybean purchase goal, and the Trump administration also rolled out a $12 billion temporary aid package in December to boost farmers affected by the trade war.

But the damage is already done, experts and farmers say. While China’s renewed purchases and the federal payments are helping, it’s not enough to recover farmers’ losses. Even after federal assistance, farmers still lost almost $75 per harvested acre of soybeans in the 2025 crop, according to the American Soybean Association. And the trade war further pushed China toward competing soybean exporters, such as Brazil — accelerating a trend of declining U.S. soybean exports to China.

[…]

The war also caused gasoline and diesel prices to surge, causing further headaches for farmers. Oil prices dropped following the ceasefire announcement, but the war and the closure of the strait will have lasting impacts on farmers, said Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, an investment research company. Facilities in the Middle East that are critical for exporting chemicals, oil and other commodities were damaged or destroyed during the war, and it will take time for supply chains to recover, he said.

See Eric Ferkenhoff (Lee Enterprises) and Josh Kelety (Associated Press), Already under financial pressure, Midwest soybean farmers are squeezed further by tariffs, Iran war, April 14, 2026.

A person of average foresight would have seen these risks and mitigated them. The best mitigation of trade wars and shooting wars? Well, that would be free trade and peaceful relations among nations.

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Economic Demand, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, and a Whitewater Comparative Analysis.

Monster typhoon in the Pacific Ocean is bearing down on group of remote US islands:

A typhoon is taking aim at several remote U.S. islands in the Pacific Ocean. Super Typhoon Sinlaku is on track to barrel over the Northern Mariana Islands late Tuesday local time with widespread rain and flooding along with destructive winds that could cause lengthy power outages, the National Weather Service said.

Daily Bread, Early Childhood, Economy, Employment, Trump, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 4.13.26: Trump on Daycare

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 6:16 and sunset is 7:35 for 13 hours 19 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 18.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 4:30 PM and Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1970, at 10:08 PM EST, an oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the Apollo command and service module (codenamed “Odyssey“)while en route to the moon.

By NASAScan by Kipp Teague – Apollo 13 Image Library (image link), Public Domain, Link.

Not long ago, as one of his many daily observations1 of life on this planet, Donald Trump complained that the federal government couldn’t afford to subsidize daycare, but that states should do so.

There’s more than one way to see daycare: as the (1) raising of children and simultaneously as (2) a cost of labor market participation that reduces the actual wages parents earn in the marketplace (or deters them from working altogether). This libertarian blogger has been clear on those few times that I’ve written about daycare that I lack the knowledge to design a daycare program. By contrast, I and many others can more easily grasp the economics of daycare within society.

Fundamentally, daycare is obviously significant both as child-rearing and for its economic consequences.

Here’s Trump speaking at a private White House luncheon:

“Don’t send any money for day care, because the United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too.”

Later in his remarks, the president added that states would have to raise their taxes to pay for child care costs and that the federal government “could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up” for it.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”

See Eleanor Skelly, Alexandra Marquez, Tara Prindiville, and Sarah Dean, Trump says it’s ‘not possible’ for the U.S. to pay for Medicaid, Medicare and day care: ‘We’re fighting wars,’ NBC News, April 2, 2026.

Oh.

As it turns out, Mr. Trump concedes the significance of daycare2 when he answers that “You got to [sic] let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too.” Although he considers daycare less important than funding his expensive war in the Persian Gulf, Trump gives the game away twice over: that daycare is important and that it is so important that it should be state funded.

State funding would be justified, in my own way of thinking, only if there were no private alternatives and if that state funding produced a credible net economic gain. It’s possible, as barriers to workforce entry are serious concerns. A productive society offers its workers (and attracts potential workers to the labor market) as efficiently as possible.

The traditional libertarian arguments against government involvement may be found at the Cato Institute, Childcare, https://www.cato.org/publications/childcare. It’s worth noting that a libertarian prescription would “loosen state regulation [including zoning regulations] of childcare staffing and licensing and of home-based businesses, expand immigration, and reform federal childcare subsidies.” Prescriptions that include expanding immigration3 and reducing zoning regulations are sure to be non-starters for the MAGA movement. In our current environment, a truly private (and a sensible approach) that includes the free flow of labor into America isn’t going to happen.

The key point is that Trump, a restrictionist4 opposed to these private approaches, including free labor movement, has created conditions under which he is forced to concede that daycare should receive government funding. Someone should probably tell Tom Tiffany and the WISGOP.

_____

  1. Last night, Trump criticized Pope Leo. One doesn’t have to be Catholic to see that Trump is decomposing and decompensating before our eyes. The Catholic Church has outlasted men far more intelligent and accomplished than Trump. Napoleon, for example, who wasn’t anti-clerical as much as he was manipulative and controlling of all those around him, came and went while the Vatican is still going strong. (Napoleon could have been drunk all day and would yet have been more formidable than Trump.) ↩︎
  2. Trump, in his remarks, leaves unstated why he thinks daycare is important. It might be because he’s spent his life thinking about his own parenting, or because he’s considered studiously the cost of daycare to the workforce. No, and no again. One has to think there must, in Trump’s case, be a more plausible motivation in favor of subsidized daycare than his fatherly nature or grasp of economics. ↩︎
  3. Immigrant workers are as likely to care properly for children as any of the current residents walking around this town. ↩︎
  4. Only Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are less libertarian than Donald Trump. ↩︎

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Economic Demand, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, and a Whitewater Comparative Analysis.

Thousands celebrate in Hungary as Péter Magyar ends Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule:

Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 4.12.26: The Key Number Behind Low Consumer Confidence

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 72. Sunrise is 6:18 and sunset is 7:33 for 13 hours 15 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 27.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, the U.S. Ninth Army under General William H. Simpson crosses the Elbe River astride Magdeburg, and reaches Tangermünde — within 100 miles of Berlin.

If consumer sentiment is down — and it is — then what condition, what variable, explains the low level of consumer confidence? Writing in Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris has a plausible theory:

I’ve got some data I’m going to dig into next week that speaks to this more directly. But for now, look at the following chart from the Michigan survey itself. It tracks the share of consumers who cite high prices as the reason they are personally struggling financially.

IMG_4660.jpeg

Before 2021, this number hovered near zero percent. Empirically speaking prices were a non-factor in how people viewed the state of the economy.

Then, everything changed. The share of adults citing high prices as a source of anxiety went exponential during the 2021-22 inflation spike and never came back down. It’s now above 50%, likely because of the gas prices spike from the war in Iran.

[…]

While inflation dropping from 8% to 3% reflects a “cooling off” of the economy, but evidently people still mostly just see high prices for things and get upset about that. And fair enough!

My theory is that price levels account for much to most of the “puzzle” of why consumer sentiment is lower than you would predict based on the historical relationship between CPI, unemployment, the cost of money and etc.

(Emphasis added.) See G. Elliott Morris, The mystery variable that explains stubbornly low consumer sentiment, Strength in Numbers, April 12, 2026.

There are many measures of economic performance, but American consumers have settled on inflation (rather than other measures like unemployment, interest rates, etc.). While there are relationships (of course) between all these measures, ordinary Americans have made high prices their high priority.

This focus on higher prices places a federal administration that is pushing higher tariffs and struggling to assure the resumption of tanker transit in the Persian Gulf in a notably weak position with consumers.

There’s a longstanding claim that Trump cheated to get into Wharton (from Trump’s own niece and aunt!). I’ve no idea about his conduct back then, but his grasp of economics is below that of an ordinary person. Here’s Trump contending that because it’s hard to get oil from the Persian Gulf, nations are sending their empty tankers to America and fill up on American oil:

“Massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers, some of the largest anywhere in the World, are heading, right now, to the United States to load up with the best and “sweetest” oil and gas anywhere in the World.” 

This libertarian blogger has no idea whether Trump’s lying yet again about current events, but anyone sensible can say what increased demand for a product in one place means during a shortage in a global market: higher prices for whatever is still available. Competition over scarce oil will drive up prices for domestic and foreign buyers. This is Trump telling people they’ll pay more for oil without expressly telling people they’ll pay more for oil.

Honest to goodness.

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Economic Demand, Trump on Daycare, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, and a Whitewater Comparative Analysis.

Hawaiian volcano Kilauea erupts for the 44th time:

Lava poured from Kilauea on Thursday. It was the 44th time the Hawaiian volcano has erupted. The lava fountain reached a peak of 800 feet, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 4.11.26: Inflation Up, Consumer Confidence Down

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 55. Sunrise is 6:19 and sunset is 7:32 for 13 hours 13 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp:

A detachment of troops of the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, from the 6th Armored Division, part of the U.S. Third Army, and under the command of Captain Frederic Keffer, arrived at Buchenwald on 11 April 1945 at 3:15 p.m. (now the permanent time of the clock at the entrance gate). The soldiers were given a hero’s welcome, with the emaciated survivors finding the strength to toss some liberators into the air in celebration.

A needless war comes at a cost, both moral and economic. Of the economic cost, one reads that consumer prices rose 3.3% in March:

Consumer prices spiked in March as the Iran war sent energy costs soaring and took the Federal Reserve further from its inflation target, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Friday. Underlying inflation, however, was relatively tame.

The consumer price index increased a seasonally adjusted 0.9% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.3%, pushed by a 10.9% surge in energy costs. Both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus. The annual rate was the highest since April 2024 and up from 2.4% in February.

See Jeff Cox, Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March, as energy prices spiked due to Iran conflict, CNBC, April 10, 2026.

Rising inflation understandably leads to falling consumer sentiment:

Consumer sentiment fell in April to the lowest level recorded in the 70-plus-year history of the University of Michigan’s survey, evidence of Americans’ concerns that the Iran war will hit the domestic economy.

The survey’s initial April reading came in at 47.6, versus 53.3 in March. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal were expecting a drop to 52. The April reading is below the previous low point of 50 recorded in June 2022, when the economy was facing searing inflation.

See Matt Grossman, Consumer sentiment hits record low, Michigan survey shows, Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2026.

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Economic Demand, Trump on Daycare, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, and a Whitewater Comparative Analysis.

Watch how Artemis II returned to Earth:

Artemis II’s crew of four have emerged one-by-one from their lunar capsule Friday after a splashdown in the Pacific. The three Americans and one Canadian set a distance record for space travel during their lunar flyby, surpassing NASA’s Apollo 13.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Newspapers, School District, University

Daily Bread for 4.10.26: The Best Town Newspaper for Local Affairs This Year? It’s Been the Royal Purple.

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:21 and sunset is 7:31 for 13 hours 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 46.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1606, the Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter from James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.

Twenty years ago this April, residents in town might have pointed to the Whitewater Register, the Daily Jefferson County Union, or the Janesville Gazette as leading (if imperfect) sources of local news. Few, if anyone, would have said then that the Royal Purple (https://royalpurplenews.com), whatever its strengths, was a leading source of community news off campus, especially news of Whitewater’s local government and public school district. (FREE WHITEWATER came along in 2007, and it has never been, nor ever aspired to be, a newspaper. This is a “website of commentary on politics, policy, and popular culture, published from Whitewater, Wisconsin since 2007.”)

In the years since, how the landscape has changed: Over the last few years, the Royal Purple has done a better job of covering local government (while also covering campus issues) than any other newspaper in this community. The stories covering public affairs are more solidly rooted in journalism, more consistent in coverage of local public bodies, and better written than competing news and media publications in our area.

The paper’s local election coverage is a good example (but only one). The Royal Purple placed all the local candidates for the Whitewater Common Council and the Whitewater Unified School District Board in the same concise, yet informative, story. Longtime newspaper readers know that’s a standard journalistic format for a reason — elections are about choices and choices are made easier through at-the-ready comparisons. See Eric Arguelles, Macey Hotz, and Lily Adams, Common Council, School Board candidates share priorities, April 6, 2026.

Throughout the year, the paper has ably covered local government in this town. Now here’s the kicker (for those who’d like to imagine otherwise): it has done so more ably than any other newspaper. The paper doesn’t publish all year, but it’s a fine newspaper for Whitewater during the majority of the year when it does publish.

Obvious point: this libertarian blogger has no connection to the Royal Purple, or any other area local newspaper or news site, except as a reader. I’m quite satisfied being an ordinary newspaper reader at a suitable remove from other publications.

The Royal Purple has become what this town needs: solid, consistent, earnest — yet lively.

If it’s not near the top of your Whitewater reading list, it should be. You’ll be glad to have bookmarked the site: Royal Purple (https://royalpurplenews.com).

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Economic Demand, Trump on Daycare, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, and a Whitewater Comparative Analysis.

A new species of spider has been captured on video for the first time:

A new species of spider has been captured on video for the first time. Researchers in southern Spain are racing to learn more about the tiny Cryptodrassus michaeli arachnid and the ecosystem it inhabits.

Cats, Science/Nature

Friday Catblogging: Japanese Scientists Discover Unexpected Reason Cats Leave Meals Unfinished

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Cats leave meals unfinished not merely because they’ll full, but sometimes because of the meal’s scent:

A research group led by Professor Masao Miyazaki at Iwate University, Japan, has now shown that domestic cats may stop eating not only because they are full, but also because smell plays an important role in regulating feeding motivation. The study suggests that feeding behavior in cats is dynamically influenced by olfactory habituation and dishabituation. The study was published in Physiology & Behavior.

[…]

In further experiments, the researchers tested whether the decline in intake caused by repeated presentation of the same food could be reversed by introducing a different food. Cats were given the same food for five consecutive trials and a different food in the sixth. Intake decreased significantly from the first to the fifth trial, but increased again when a new food was introduced, regardless of whether it was more or less palatable than the original one.

Remarkably, even without changing the food itself, simply introducing the odor of a different food restored intake. The researchers also found that continuous exposure to the same food odor between feeding cycles led to a further reduction in subsequent food intake. However, this effect was mitigated when a different odor was introduced during the intervals.

See Rachel Gordon, Why Cats Often Leave Food Behind Even When They’re Not Full, PHYS.ORG, Apr. 9, 2026.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, April 14, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, If I Had legs I’d Kick You

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Tuesday, April 14 at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of If I Had legs I’d Kick You @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Psychological Drama

Rated R (language) 1 hour 53 minutes (2025)

With her life crashing down around her, Linda (Rose Byrne) attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband (Christian Slater), a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her icy therapist (Conan O’Brien). A Best Actress Oscar nomination (and golden Globe winner) for Rose Byrne in a stunning, exhausting disturbingly brilliant performance.

One can find more information about If I Had legs I’d Kick You at the Internet Movie Database.

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 4.9.26: Yard Signs

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 62. Sunrise is 6:23 and sunset is 7:30 for 13 hours 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 55.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

Each election season, Whitewater has its share of political yard signs throughout the city. A yard sign may simply represent a property owner’s expressed feelings, without any design to affect the outcome of an election. Political speech is often like this: speaking one’s mind.

As a practical matter, however, yard signs are a poor indicator of political outcomes in Whitewater.

First, it’s typical of local landlords (mostly if not exclusively right-leaning) to place yard signs for candidates on their properties. The location of these plentiful clusters, especially the ones on Main Street, are well-known to the community as student rental operators’ properties. (That is, they don’t represent the sentiments of the many residents therein, but instead of a few owners thereof.1) Anyone who’s been in town for more than a year sees this, so the many yard signs on rental properties are reasonably discounted as a false indicator of popular opinion.

Imagine the landlords’ thinking:

Behold, our utilitarian buildings lovely properties of multi-tenant individually-owned residences that will trick convince Whitewater’s voters as an astroturf a grassroots movement in favor of our latest set of disposable beloved catspaws candidates!

I’d guess that local landlords see the clustered placement of their preferred candidates’ yard signs as a significant electoral advantage for their candidates. It’s obviously not.

Second, yard signs are overrated even in a media desert like ours. As a form of campaign advertising, yard signs are a low-cost, but also a low-impact, medium. A study from Columbia University in 2016 suggests that yard signs influence vote share only slightly:

The study, “The Effect of Lawn Signs on Vote Outcomes: Results from Four Randomized Field Experiments,” provides what the authors conclude is the most comprehensive research on lawn sign effectiveness to date. The six researchers, led by Donald P. Green of Columbia University, worked with four campaigns in different electoral contexts to conduct four separate experiments. The experiments, together, focused on a total of 376 voting precincts in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The study’s findings include:

  • After pooling the results of the four experiments and examining their averages, it appears that lawn signs raise vote shares, on average, by slightly more than 1 percentage point.
  • Based on pooled results, lawn signs are “on par with other low-tech campaign tactics such as direct mail that generate … effects that tend to be small in magnitude.”
  • Signs, in some scenarios, do not appear to be as effective when they make reference to a specific political party or ideology.

See Lauren Leatherby, Do election lawn signs generate votes? New research, Journalist’s Resource (March 25, 2016).

One percent is something, yet not a huge influence.

Yard signs are part of Americana, but they’re unlikely to change any races in Whitewater.

I’ll take a moment to discuss another medium that didn’t affect the Spring Election outcome. Social media in Whitewater, and that means Facebook, was ablaze in December and January with posts that suggested a significant right-leaning local trend. Relying on those winter posts would have been a false reliance on sincere but, as it predictably turned out, ephemeral sentiments. Facebook burns hot but fast. A steady candidate, holding his or her nerve, can weather a political torrent on social media. Neither fickle human nature nor an edgy algorithm keeps its focus for long.

The closer you look, the less you see. It’s all a matter of the proper perspective.

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Newspapers, the Regents, Economic Demand, Trump on Daycare, Claims of Legacy, and a Particular Species of Democrat.

_____

  1. It’s still one person, one vote in Wisconsin, isn’t it? ↩︎

Secondhand sales of the iPod are surging:

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Local Government, Open Government, School District, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.8.26: April Election Results, First Pass

by  • 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 65. Sunrise is 6:24 and sunset is 7:29 for 13 hours 5 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1820, a Greek farmer discovers the Venus de Milo on the Aegean island of Milos.

With Wisconsin’s Spring Election now over, I’ll offer preliminary remarks (beginning locally from the City of Whitewater and moving outward). Unofficial local results for all precincts below are from the election websites of Walworth, Jefferson, and Rock counties. Unofficial results for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race for >95% of the vote are from The New York Times.

Whitewater Common Council. Three Common Council contests for the City of Whitewater saw two incumbents (Orin Smith and Brian Schanen) re-elected and one new member (Gavin Kelleher) earning a seat on the council:

Whitewater Council At Large

Orin Smith1,081 (Walworth 920, Jefferson 161)
Aubrey Thompson861 (Walworth 700, Jefferson 161)

Whitewater Council District 2

Gavin Kelleher 190
Sean Liebherr 46

Whitewater Council District 4

Brian Schanen375
Chuck Mills210

Whitewater’s local government has been on the right path these last three years. Re-electing Smith and Schanen and electing Kelleher most effectively preserves the positive momentum the city has seen since 2022. This was the best possible outcome for Whitewater.

A ceaseless effort to deny evident municipal progress, sometimes relying on the use of non-residents’ false and ludicrous claims, did not obscure the progress that actual residents saw with their own eyes. In the end, truth is the most skillful advocate, achievement the finest rhetorician.

Doubt not, however, that the special interest men will say whatever they can, and do whatever they can, to control this city to their particular benefit. There are long years, and important work, yet ahead. One wakes up every day as a dark-horse underdog.

Whitewater Unified School District. In this race, four candidates (incumbents Stephanie Hicks, Lisa Huempfner, Christy Linse, and first-time candidate Terri Jones) sought three seats. Unofficial results show Huempfner and Hicks returned to office, joined by newcomer Jones.

Lisa Huempfner 2,053 (Walworth 1614, Jefferson 297, Rock 142)
Stephanie Hicks2,044 (Walworth 1543, Jefferson 321, Rock 180)
Terri Jones1,849 (Walworth 1447, Jefferson 279, Rock 123)
Christy Linse1,707 (Walworth 1289, Jefferson 272, Rock 146)

I’ve been a critic of our school board, and I’ll leave more particular remarks on that matter for another time. Whether there will be a change of board direction, toward a genuine embrace of open government, I’ll not venture beyond the expression that hope springs eternal.

Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Statewide:

Chris Taylor905,155 — 60.1%
Maria Lazar600,044 — 39.9%

In Whitewater:

Chris Taylor1,749 (Walworth 1,431, Jefferson 318) — 74.7%
Maria Lazar 591 (Walworth 489, Jefferson 102) — 23.4%

Judge Taylor ran even better in Whitewater than statewide.

Hers was also a more lopsided contest than even favorable polling (albeit admittedly sparse) suggested. Consider these figures from the Times website:

County typeLeader marginWho is ahead of their benchmark?
Large cities 391,831 votes inTaylor +60Taylor by 12 pts. Needed at least +48
Smaller cities and suburbs 645,852 votes inTaylor +7Taylor by 21 pts. Lazar needed at least +14
Rural 337,810 votes inTaylor +4Taylor by 23 pts. Lazar needed at least +19

In each geographic category — for cities, suburbs, and rural areas — Taylor significantly exceeded the benchmark vote that she needed to win. In Walworth County, where Trump won by 22 points in 2024, Maria Lazar only won by 0.9 points in 2026 (that’s zero point nine, an amount less than one percent).

Here’s the Wisconsin vote by county from November 2024 and April 2026:

I know it's risky to read much into state-level elections, but the difference in these two maps is pretty striking. The left shows county-level votes for Trump and Harris in 2024 in Wisconsin. The right shows the results of yesterday's Supreme Court race, where the Democrat won in a landslide.

— Jess Calarco (@jessicacalarco.com) April 8, 2026 at 8:35 AM

Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Yard Signs, Newspapers, the Regents, Economic Demand, Trump on Daycare, Claims of Legacy, and a Particular Species of Democrat.

Whitewater is the work — and adventure — of a lifetime.

Artemis 2 captures views of a solar eclipse during lunar flyby:

NASA’s Artemis 2 crew captured these amazing views of a solar eclipse during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026.

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.7.26: Elections Are a Beginning

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 43. Sunrise is 6:26 and sunset is 7:28 for 13 hours 2 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 73.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1927, AT&T engineer Herbert Ives transmits the first long-distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).

I’ve read somewhere that today is election day in Wisconsin… Sometimes, in Whitewater, there’s a small flurry of schemes and lies in March that precede the April local election. We have not had that this year. (This year in Whitewater, the schemes and lies came along in February.)

This Election Day isn’t merely the end of a political season; it’s the beginning of a new one. It brings the commentary assessing the result and preparing for what comes next.

People choose freely. Afterward, one makes one’s way in the world of those choices.

Artemis II breaks Apollo 13 record with moon flyby:

Daily Bread, Documentary, Faraway Places, Nature, Science/Nature

Daily Bread for 4.6.26: Life Unearthed

by  • 

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 45. Sunrise is 6:28 and sunset is 7:27 for 12 hours 59 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 81.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 5:30 PM and the Police and Fire Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1965, the Communications Satellite Corporation’s ‘Early Bird‘ (Intelsat I) becomes the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.

Ariel Waldman, explorer and filmmaker, has a new series on PBS: LIFE UNEARTHED. The first episode (Antarctica: Life at the Edge) is now available. Upcoming episodes include examinations of fireflies, wetlands, prairies and prairie fires, dry valleys with Mars-like conditions, and Antarctica.

Before and after politics — before and after this long conflict that grips America — the natural order. Sometimes, as respite and rejuvenation, even now.