Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:02 and sunset is 5:16 for 10 hours 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 68.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1964, The Beatles land in the United States for the first time, at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.
See The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin, 2025 Annual Report (Dec. 9, 2025).
Heavy snow blankets Japan ahead of Sunday’s election:
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:03 and sunset is 5:14 for 10 hours 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1919, in Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic.
In Whitewater, a university town, one often hears that a large percentage of residences are, understandably, apartments. A large number of these apartments are student apartments. The university is large in proportion to the whole city, and so no one should be surprised by this.
This environment produces a claim from landlords and a few other special-interest men that is closer to a mantra than an ordinary economic claim: 71% of Whitewater’s residences are apartments, and so there should be no more apartments. To people who are captivated more easily by a number than the economic realities that underlie the number, the 71%-but-no-more assertion must seem powerful, almost indubitably true.
It’s not. It’s not no matter how often repeated.
Here is the sensible, economically rational question Whitewater faces:
Will current and projected households be adequately housed — at reasonable costs — without leaving many residents paying too much while a few reap high rents or mortgage receipts?
That’s it: from where we are, what makes the city’s residents more able to live within the city without exorbitant amounts of their income going to rent or housing costs?
Student housing, and that’s what most of the apartments in Whitewater are, can inflate the apartment share without telling you much about whether non-students can find places to live.
Student and non-student apartments are not the same, and no one not self-deluding thinks they are. We do not have a fungible, universal type of apartment in this city designed generically for anyone. There are landlords who have built student apartments, and some who have built a few apartments for elderly residents dependent on federal assistance, but far fewer residences of any kind for a middle class resident who might want an apartment or a house.
That’s why any given percentage — even 71% — means far less than what people wielding the figure think it means. Consider: If 71% of the coats in a store are size Small, the store still fails if most customers wear something else. A percentage tells us what’s on the shelf but doesn’t tell us whether the shelf matches demand.
Part of the problem of large-scale home construction in Whitewater is that one or two large landlords think any smaller home that is similar in square footage to a middle class apartment might also be a threat and should be opposed.
A few landlords come close to a residential oligopoly over apartments in Whitewater, and they assert an anti-growth, anti-market agenda to preserve the first-mover advantage they have inherited from an earlier generation. They insist that the easier first-mover conditions of a generation (or more) ago should apply today to anyone building in the city in today’s more difficult conditions of affordability.
These are like men who were admitted to school when standards were easier, and now insist that all current students should meet standards they themselves did not, and probably could not, ever meet.
This maintains their near-oligopoly on existing student-rental apartments directly, but also denies the city middle-class, non-student options of rentals or home ownership.
This is also why vacancy rates in conditions of a near-oligopoly of student-rental landlords are deceptive vacancy rates: part of that vacancy rate comes because those student-rental apartments are not desirable (or even suitable) for middle-class rentals.
That’s not what a middle-class market wants. These student-rental landlords built for only one segment (when they thought that was the only market that mattered). Now they want to keep anyone else who would supply a middle-class market from building (either by outright prohibition or by imposing limitations not suited to suppliers’ and consumers’ present-day conditions.)
Whitewater’s solution should include more missing middle housing (apartments, duplexes, townhomes) to broaden the non-student market with flexible standards in parking and design rather than a blunt rejection of anything.
That’s the difference between a self-intested incumbent landlord and a free-market advocate. The self-interested incumbent will fight for his profits (student-rentals, senior-citizen apartments) even if the rest of the community gets little or nothing for itself.
The free-market advocate will advance proposals that uplift the general good, acknowledging that today’s proposals are more difficult to achieve than the first-mover conditions of fifty years ago.
Tuesday, February 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of One Battle After Another @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Action/ Dark Comedy/ Political Thriller/ Drama Rated R
2 hour, 41 minutes (2025)
Washed–up Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off the grid with his spirited, self reliant daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). When his evil nemesis, Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) resurfaces after 16 years, and Willa goes missing, Bob, the former radical, scrambles to find her, now father and daughter both battling the consequences of his past. The film also stars Regina Hall and Benito del Toro.
One can find more information about One Battle After Another at the Internet Movie Database.
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset is 5:13 for 10 hours 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch United Artists. (UA is now a label within MGM, an Amazon Company.)
On a first reading, the Whitewater Common Council unanimously approved a change to the city’s comprehensive plan for future land use and a zoning change for a possible residential development along Bluff Road. A video of the discussion appears above, and excerpts from the Whitewater Common Council packet appear below.
PROPOSAL:
Stonehaven Development, LLC seeks a Comprehensive Plan Future Land Use Map change from Highway Commercial to Single Family Residential. The requested amendment would allow for the development of 14 new single-family homes, providing much-needed housing within an established residential corridor.
[…]
This proposed rezoning aligns with existing land-use of the immediate area. All properties along East Bluff Road are currently developed with low-density housing. This land use change would provide improved compatibility with the nearby area, as compared to potential commercial developments. Overall, this proposed change is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, supports sustainable growth, and preserves the residential character of the neighborhood.Stonehaven Development, LLC seeks to rezone multiple parcels on Bluff Road from Highway Commercial to One-Family Residence-Small Lots. The requested amendment would allow for the development of 14 new single-family homes, providing much-needed housing within an established residential corridor.
This proposed rezoning aligns with existing land-use of the immediate area. All properties along East Bluff Road are currently zoned Single-Family Residence and are currently developed with low-density housing. This rezone would provide improved compatibility with the nearby area, as compared to potential commercial developments. Overall, this proposed rezoning is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, supports sustainable growth, and preserves the residential character of the neighborhood.
See Whitewater Common Council Agenda Packet (Feb. 3, 2026) Agenda Items 22 and 23.
The community has a choice on whether there will, practically, be more single-family homes in the city. Supporters of a project like this — and this libertarian blogger would be among those supporters — offer, by their support, a genuine and concrete option for the community.
Opponents, however, cannot expect that opposing each new proposal without offering a real and practical alternative will fulfill the community’s desire for more single-family homes. Merely objecting (not here, not now, etc.) doesn’t offer a useful (or compelling) alternative.
That’s the problem opponents of every housing project that comes along face. It’s not enough for them to say that they support programs in the abstract, with sometime and somewhere yet to be determined. They’ve not managed to get past the point of being mere opponents, so to speak.
Because the desire in this community for additional non-student residences is so strong, opponents’ efforts need to include agreement with at least some significant actual proposals and projects.
Always opposing, supporting only conceptually, or supporting only seldom simply doesn’t meet community desire and demand.
Wisconsin dog wins Westminster agility title:
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 24. Sunrise is 7:06 and sunset is 5:12 for 10 hours 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin found Facebook.
One reads, unsurprisingly, that state Sen. Steve Nass is retiring. For many (too many) of those years his district included Whitewater. In the statement announcing this as his last term, Nass offers no specific reason for declining to run again. Having been in the Legislature for forty years, no stated reason is necessary. (The increasing likelihood of a WisDems majority in the state Senate perhaps played an unstated role.)
There is something about his career worth noting, about both Nass and also so many others in the WISGOP. He and they were once significant local figures in their communities. Nass, in particular, was a bête noire of the center-left, progressives, and the UW System. Through his frequent email blasts, written (or perhaps written for him) in a burn-it-all-down style, Nass was once an attention-getter.
Those were the days.
Were the days, not are the days — this state’s right-wing home office has long ago shifted from Wisconsin to Mar-a-Lago. For the right, Wisconsin has become a mere local branch, a single storefront, of a corporate behemoth with a home office in Florida.
Nass was around for decades, of course, and so retiring by now was to be expected. He stayed long enough, however, to have become a mere afterthought in a movement that looks to others located elsewhere.
Watch the moment a Greenland sled dog steals an AP camera:
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 23. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset is 5:10 for 10 hours 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
Around this week in 1637, Tulip Mania collapses within the Dutch Republic.
CLAIM:
On December 16 of last year, during public comment at a Whitewater Common Council meeting, a local student-rental landlord offered examples of the property-tax assessments of some other homes in four communities along a narrow set of parameters. His transcribed remarks appear below:
I compared taxes and I brought some comparables from other communities around us.
It’s not a big sample. It’s just other houses in the other communities that are priced within $5,000 a month, fair market value. So my home has gone up, again, 71% since 21, on the city portion, and the school portion’s actually dropped nine.
I picked a home in Elkhorn that is, fair market value is within $2,000 of mine. Their property taxes on the city portion over the last four years are up 15%. Their school taxes are up 10%.
Their overall city portion of their tax bill in 2025 is $2,284. Mine is $2,732, $500 more. You can do the math on the percentage.
Picked a home in Delavan, $1,000 less fair market value than mine. Their property tax increase on the city portion of their bill since 21 is up 12%. The school district portion of their bill is up 17%.
It’s kind of hard to compare school districts a lot because they maybe had a new building done, but everybody has school district referendums on their bills, different amounts of money. So again, their total city tax portion of the bill, $2,446, mine $2,731. Lake Geneva, they’re a different kind of an outlier, but I’m comparing the four cities.
Only have four cities that are predominantly in Walworth County. They have an awful lot of high-end homes out on Lake Geneva that kind of subsidize a lot of the other ones. Their property tax increase since 2021 for the city portion of the bill is 8%.
ASSESSMENT:
So one student-rental landlord of an inherited business picks a tiny group of homes from four other communities that are similar to his home in market value and offers this as a statistically meaningful sample for Whitewater?
If these remarks came from someone who was unfamiliar with any recognized empirical method, one would simply smile and ignore the comments. These are instead the words of a former member of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, former chairman of that body, former member of the Whitewater School Board, former president of that board, and (if I have this correctly) someone who claims a knowledge of finance.
He does admit, at least, that “it’s not a big sample.” No it’s not. His sample is the opposite of big.1
People have — and must always have — a right to speak to the Whitewater Common Council. That includes this gentleman as much as any other. That right, however, does not include having their arguments taken seriously.
Sometimes arguments are weak, sometimes samples are underpowered. This landlord’s public comments from December 16 would be one of those times.
_____
NASA delays Artemis II moon launch to March after fuel leaks during test:
Good morning.
Groundhog Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 27. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset is 5:09 for 10 hours 1 minute of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Earlier today, America’s finest meteorologist predicted six more weeks of winter.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 4:30 PM. Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1653, New Amsterdam (later renamed New York) is incorporated.
One aspect of a libertarian position is that government should be limited. Limited here means both in size (how many people, how much in costs) and reach (how those people conduct themselves). This is not, however, the most important libertarian claim — the most important claim is, and will always be, that each person possesses individual rights.1 See Tenets for my own description of libertarian positions.
CLAIM:
On December 2 and December 16 of last year, during public comment for Whitewater Common Council meetings, longtime and established residents asked about the number of employees that the city has recently hired, implying through their questions that the city government has embarked on profligate hiring.
CITY REPLY:
Clarification of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Changes Since 2022
Since 2022, the City’s total Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) count has increased by 17.5 FTEs. However, nearly all of these additions are the result of major organizational changes—not discretionary hiring.
A breakdown is as follows:
- 9.0 FTEs – Fire/EMS Department
These positions were created because the Fire/EMS Department became a full-time, fully staffed municipal department in 2023. Prior to this transition, the City relied heavily on a volunteer/paid-on-call model that was no longer sustainable for service demand and emergency response requirements.
- 7.5 FTEs – Police Department
These positions reflect staffing needed to meet operational requirements, ensure officer safety, improve response times, and address increasing service calls. Public safety staffing levels are routinely reevaluated to ensure the City meets industry standards and community expectations.
- 1.0 FTE – All Other Departments Combined
Outside of Fire/EMS and Police, the entire City organization has added only one net FTE in the past two years. This demonstrates that the City has not engaged in broad, organization-wide hiring, but instead has focused on staffing increases where they were operationally essential.
(Emphasis added.) See Clarification on City’s Increase in Hired Staff, City of Whitewater, January 20, 2025.
ASSESSMENT:
Anyone who has organizational knowledge — anyone who positions himself as an established man worth listening to — would look at the number of employees in an organization and ask if they are full or part-time and why they’ve been hired. Those two questions are so fundamental that even those without organizational familiarity would likely hit upon that line of inquiry.
In this case, those who have been here for years should know that this city has had voter-approved referendums that mandated additional hiring. Some of these gentlemen can tell you when, in 1975, a squirrel on Prince Street developed indigestion but somehow they can’t figure out in this small city that most of the municipal hiring has come from these recent referendums.
I’ve always — unlike others — supported people speaking and discussing. See Yesteryear’s Familiar Tune. That’s because in most cases people have interesting and valuable insights.
Sometimes, however, it becomes clear that a few entitled men are simply talking out of their hats.2 This is one of those times.
See also A Baseless Speculation About the City of Whitewater’s Salary Scale.
_____
What’s Up for February 2026 Skywatching Tips from NASA:
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset is 5:08 for 9 hours 59 minutes of daytime. The moon will be full today with all of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1893, Thomas A. Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria, in West Orange, New Jersey.
Something of a palate cleanser for today. Sophia Smith Galer, a British journalist writing about language, tech, and culture, interviews Zay Dupree, a student in linguistics and cognitive science, about how Dupree detects the region of someone’s accent. Dupree explains his informed method of assessment. Both Smith Galer and Dupree are well worth following — there are always new things to learn.
Click image for video
Capturing Epic Slow Motion Footage of Backyard Birds:
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 24. Sunrise is 7:10 and sunset is 5:06 for 9 hours 56 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, the House of Representatives passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery, and submits it to the states for ratification. (The Senate had previously passed the amendment on April 8, 1864.)
There are elections ahead in 2026, and if there’s an election ahead, then there’s an opportunity for conspiracy theorists to spread false claims about those elections. Convicted federal felon Peter Bernegger (for fraud, fittingly) is back with new lies about Wisconsin’s voter rolls:
A misleading claim that Wisconsin has more registered voters than people eligible to vote is gaining traction on social media, including in posts shared this week by President Donald Trump.
[…]The posts circulating this week cite a video asserting that Wisconsin’s voter rolls contain more than 7 million names — far more than the state’s voting age population — and are overlaid with text reading, “This Is Not a Glitch — This Is Election Fraud Waiting To Happen.”
The video features Peter Bernegger, an entrepreneur who has been convicted of mail fraud and bank fraud. Bernegger has repeatedly promoted false theories about the 2020 election in Wisconsin legislative hearings and repeatedly filed unsuccessful lawsuits against election officials in search of proof for his claims.
But his claim conflates two datasets in Wisconsin’s voter registration system: the Wisconsin voter list and active registered voters.
[…]As of July 2025, the state had about 8.3 million names on its list — in line with the number Bernegger cites. But of them, only 3.7 million were active registered voters. The remaining roughly 4.6 million are inactive voters. Inactive records include people who previously registered to vote but later moved out of state, died, lost eligibility because of a felony conviction, or were ruled incompetent to vote by a court. Those individuals haven’t been removed from the voter list, but because of their inactive status, they cannot vote unless they re-register, which requires proof of residency and a photo ID.
(Emphasis added.) See Alexander Shur, No, Mr. President. Wisconsin’s voter roll figures aren’t a sign of ‘fraud waiting to happen’ (‘People on Wisconsin’s inactive list aren’t eligible to vote, but their records stay on file indefinitely — a practice that actually helps reduce the likelihood of fraud, election officials say’), Wisconsin Watch, January 30, 2026.
A successful conspiracy theory requires a suspicious claim (why are the voter rolls so big?) but deceptively conceals a sensible explanation (some of those names are marked as inactive and cannot vote). Bernegger is not a federal felon because he tried to steal a loaf of bread — he’s a federal felon because he’s a defrauding liar.
Some men stay in the same lane their entire lives.
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 16. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset is 5:05 for 9 hours 54 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1862, the Union Navy launches the American ironclad warship the USS Monitor.
There’s a story at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel describing how Trump’s Tom Tiffany endorsement scrambles Wisconsin governor race.
I don’t see how.
Trump was always going to endorse someone, and that candidate would thereafter secure the WISGOP nomination in August. For the WISGOP, the only candidate who mattered was going to be the one with Trump’s endorsement, and Trump was sure to endorse someone. No one on this planet spends more time interjecting himself into issues of all sorts, political or apolitical, than Donald J. Trump. The name for a primary and general election candidate for the WISGOP needs no surname — DONALD J. TRUMP’S CHOICE is name enough for most Republican voters.
For the WisDems, by contrast, this was always going to be a race through to the August primary. (Mandela Barnes is popular with many voters, but not so much that he will have an inevitable march toward August 11.)
Those conditions do not describe a ‘scrambled’ race — they describe a predictably top-down WISGOP contest and a predictably competitive WisDems contest. This was, by late January or early February, the probable state of play. And so it is.
Meet the crawling, grabbing spider-hand robot:
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 13. Sunrise is 7:12 and sunset is 5:04 for 9 hours 52 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1891, following the death of her brother Kalakaua, Lili‘uokalani is sworn in as the first and only queen of the Hawaiian Kingdom. (Her reign would end two years later when the Hawaiian monarchy was abolished following a U.S. military-supported coup d’état.)
Yesterday’s post contended that, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement of U.S. Rep. Tiffany, the WISGOP Gubernatorial Primary Is Effectively Over.
Yes.
See Shawn Johnson, Republican Josh Schoemann drops out of Wisconsin governor’s race (‘Schoemann, the Washington County executive, announced his decision the day after he failed to receive the endorsement of President Donald Trump’), Wisconsin Public Radio, January 28, 2026.
The WISGOP is merely a chapter, however small, of a national party. That national party is closer to a movement than an ordinary political party. That movement has a base, a core, that follows the will of one man. Those running statewide in the WISGOP are not running for office — they are running for that one man’s endorsement for office.
Those who tell you that these are ordinary times could not be more wrong. See generally A Conventional Framing for Unconventional Times.
Hubble and AI discover over a thousand unusual astronomical objects:
