Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 23. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset is 4:45 for 9 hours 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1911, Roald Amundsen‘s South Pole expedition makes landfall on the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Yesterday’s post concerned Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates’ views on data centers. There’s reporting today on Microsoft’s view of Wisconsin data centers:

One of Microsoft’s top executives said he would support a new state law to regulate and set standards for data center developments across Wisconsin. 

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and vice chair, also said he supports a proposal from We Energies for a “Very Large Customer” rate for data centers in the state.

“We want to pay a higher price so that our data center does not increase the price of electricity for consumers,” Smith said in an interview with WPR. “That’s the right thing to do for the state and for our business.” 

See Evan Casey, Microsoft president says he would support a Wisconsin law to regulate data centers (‘Microsoft released a new ‘Community-First AI Infrastructure’ plan Tuesday’), January 14, 2026.

While this libertarian blogger argued yesterday for “as little state regulation as possible, leaving counties and cities with the choice of whether they’d prefer a data center in their community,” Microsoft, the vast corporation, seems to be more amenable to regulation than one libertarian resident would be.

Why? A few reasons come to mind. First, there are different possible regulations. Some regulations might involve rates for electricity (the ‘very large customer rate’) and some regulations might address the very presence of a data center in a community (regardless of the electricity rate it might pay).

Second, Microsoft might calculate it would be able to bear state regulations more easily than competing data centers (from smaller companies that were less well-financed). In this way, Microsoft would benefit from regulations that, in effect, inhibit data-center competition from smaller companies.

Third, the statement from Microsoft’s president and vice chair is only an opening offer, not a final one, from that corporation.

Fourth, of course, Microsoft might simply believe in regulation for the hell of it. That fourth possibility, however, would sit alongside the belief that small flying creatures live on the moon.¹

Regulation of data centers in Wisconsin is an evolving discussion; more twists and turns lie ahead.

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1. They don’t. ↩︎

Dog rescued from ice-covered Danube in Budapest:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset is 4:44 for 9 hours 21 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM.

On this day in 1953, an article appears in Pravda accusing some of the most prestigious and prominent doctors, mostly Jews, in the Soviet Union of taking part in a vast plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership.

Data centers have become a concern for many Wisconsinites. Henry Redman reports on this year’s gubernatorial candidates’ views on data centers:

Here in Wisconsin, communities are grappling with how to make agreements with the big tech companies hoping to build the data centers, how to avoid the broken promises at the top of mind of many Wisconsinites after the Foxconn development in Mount Pleasant failed to live up to its lofty initial projections and how to manage the often huge demands the data centers make on local water supplies and energy. 

Despite those challenges, the construction of a data center can offer benefits to local governments — mostly by boosting property tax revenue from a development that won’t consume many local government services. 

Unlike many other issues, the question of data center development has not become politically polarized, with a range of positions among candidates of both parties. 

“Data centers are a new issue that has not taken on a partisan edge in the public mind,” Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison, said. “This is likely to change because among politicians Democrats are more skeptical about data centers and Republicans are more enthusiastic about them. If this partisan divide continues or even becomes sharper, the public is likely to begin mimicking the positions taken by party leaders. But at least for a while the issue is likely to cut across party lines.”

In Wisconsin’s crowded open race for governor, most of the candidates told the Wisconsin Examiner they were supportive of some level of statewide regulation on data centers. 

See Henry Redman, What do Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates think about data center development?, Wisconsin Examiner, January 13, 2026.

I’d argue for as little state regulation as possible, leaving counties and cities with the choice of whether they’d prefer a data center in their community. The rush to build data centers may not last, and the centers may take markedly different shapes from one proposal to another.

It’s early in the game to decide more than a minimal set of regulations on their development.

Wildfires in Argentine Patagonia rip through nearly 12,000 hectares of forest: