FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread for 1.3.23: The Medium is Snow

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with scattered showers and a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:33 PM for 9h 08m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1957, the Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.


Winter is a demanding season — as these months are desert-like in their sparsity — and yet deserts are abundant in sand as winter is abundant in snow.  Rob Mentzer reports This Stevens Point sculptor’s medium is snow

When Jef Schobert started making snow sculptures, he faced them toward his house. He’d shape a Mickey Mouse or some other cartoon character for his young daughter.

One day, his mail carrier stopped and told him he should make them face the street, for everyone to enjoy. 

“It kind of blew my mind,” said Schobert, a 57-year-old with a white Santa Claus beard.

That was likely thousands of snow sculptures ago. In the decades since he started making them, Schobert’s annual sculptures have become a fixture outside his Stevens Point home, which he calls the Snow Art Zone. He makes around 100 different pieces per winter — carvings of a castle or a carriage or Aquaman on a throne — and posts photos and videos on his Facebook, Instagram and TikTok pages. Occasionally, one goes viral, as did his January 2021 sculpture of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wearing mittens.

“Snow is very temporary,” Schobert said. “I take pictures of it, and the pictures then become my art, even after the art’s gone.”

There’s a fellow who knows how to make the most of an austere season. We should all hope to do half so well. 


Severe Wind Forces easyJet to Abort Landing in England

Severe winter winds in Bristol, England, forced this easyJet to abort its landing on December 28. Luckily, the plane was able to reclimb, circle back, and safely land approx 15 min later.

Daily Bread for 1.2.23: Delusion Far and Near

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with rain & drizzle and a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM for 9h 07m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1942, the FBI obtains the conviction of 33 members of a German spy ring headed by Fritz Joubert Duquesne (the Duquesne Spy Ring) in the largest espionage case in United States history. 


Consider, from the faraway Russian dictatorship, a New Year’s Eve special on state television:

The clip is from Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews), whose reporting and translation of Russian state media is comprehensive and praiseworthy. Her work is painstaking and revealing. 

The Russian program looks to outside eyes as though it could not possibly be real, as though it were a scene from an American parody like The ProducersThe program has a Springtime for Hitler feel. 

It’s real.  

Such are conditions in Europe, that hundreds are killed each day while Russians dance in Moscow.

And yet, and yet, such are conditions in America, that fellow travelers of Russia’s dictator would prefer the dancing go on all night. 


Russia rings in New Year attacking Ukraine with 45 drones:

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Daily Bread for 1.1.23: Happy New Year

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 44. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM for 9h 06m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1836, the Wisconsin Territory is formed by an act of the Michigan Legislature. Brown County lost a portion of its original possession north of the Menominee River but gained the remainder of the eastern peninsula. Territorial officials were sworn on July 4th of the same year.


A quiet day in this beautiful and precious city, before the year’s work begins. See What Ails, What Heals.  

Opportunity is bountiful, if only one would see as much.  

Each day begins, as always, from a position of humility. See The Better Approach of the Dark-Horse Underdog

Happy New Year. 


What’s in the Night Sky January 2023:

Daily Bread for 12.31.22: A Victory for Home-Based Wisconsin Businesses

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:31 PM for 9h 05m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 66% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1999, the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.


Daniela Jaime reports Wisconsin residents can sell more than baked goods from home, judge rules:

Wisconsinites who want to sell homemade goodies to friends, neighbors and the public no longer have to stick to baked goods like cakes and cookies.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled this week that other nonhazardous food items, not just baked goods, can be made and sold from home without a commercial license or kitchen, which plaintiffs argued can be cost-prohibitive. That includes items like candy, cocoa bombs, fried donuts and roasted coffee beans.

Many of those who want to sell homemade goods are people like moms with young children who hope to make a bit of money by selling the items they make at home.

This week’s ruling is the second victory for a trio of women — B&B owner Lisa Kivirist, 56, and farmers Dela Ends, 69, and Kriss Marion, 54 — who have been fighting for years to be able to sell nonhazardous food items from home.

The women won their first lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection in 2017, successfully arguing that a state ban on the sale of home-baked goods to the public was unconstitutional.

In February 2021, they filed a follow-up lawsuit arguing that Wisconsin residents should be able to sell other shelf-stable goods out of their homes, too, like roasted coffee beans and hot cocoa bombs.

“The first case said that the government can’t ban the sales of perfectly safe homemade baked goods. And so, since we already had that victory regarding baked goods, it definitely made things easier the second time around,” said Justin Pearson of the Institute for Justice, the organization that represented the plaintiffs in both cases.

“If you’re allowing people to bake cookies and muffins and breads, why should they not be allowed to make cocoa bombs?” Marion asked.

See also Institute for Justice, Victory for Wisconsin Home Bakers.

The decision was handed down this week, and there’s no word yet on whether the government will appeal. 


One of the Last Blacksmiths in Japan Forging Bonsai Scissors by Hand:

Daily Bread for 12.30.22: Vos Was for Trump for Years Before He Was Against Him

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:30 PM for 9h 05m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 56% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is formed.



On his Twitter account, as late as August 2021 — eight months after the January 6th attempted insurrection — Speaker Robin Vos was flying with Trump, praising Trump, and touting his selection of Michael Gableman to conduct a “top-to-bottom” election investigation.

How odd, then, to read from Molly Beck at the Journal Sentinel a credulous account that  Speaker Robin Vos says he will ‘try as hard as I can to make sure Donald Trump is not the nominee’ in 2024:

Robin Vos first started campaigning for Republicans 44 years ago, eight years before he could vote for them. His politics gave him a lifelong career. He is described by Wisconsin historians as the longest-serving Assembly Speaker since the state formed. But for the last two years, Vos has been the target of insults, taunts and calls for his removal from the leader of his party.

Now, as Vos prepares for a new presidential election season that will hinge on Wisconsin voters, and in the wake of a midterm election that delivered Republicans fewer wins than expected, he is signaling he won’t vote for Donald Trump if he is the nominee in 2024.

“During my entire life, I have always voted for the Republican. So I am going to try as hard as I can to make sure Donald Trump is not the nominee,” Vos said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Vos was with Trump in 2016, in 2020, and even after January 6th, but now he’s reformed, and we should see that he, Vos, is the true victim of “insults” and “taunts” from the very Trumpists he once supported. Indeed, Speaker of the Assembly Vos has suffered so much from the Trumpists he once encouraged that he has received — steady oneself — “calls for his removal from the leader of his party.”

Vos’s supposed injury in this is that he might no longer be the speaker in a gerrymandered legislature. No list of serious injuries will ever include the upset of one man from Rochester, Wisconsin that he might not remain speaker as long as he wants. (Indeed, even the mere call for his removal is accounted as meaningful.) 

Many suffered under Trumpism, but Beck’s reporting presents Vos as the true victim. (The first paragraph, cited above, is in Beck’s words, not Vos’s.)

It’s no surprise that Vos is beginning a statewide Not-as-Reprehensible-As-You-Thought Rehabilitation Tour. It’s disappointing, however, that the Journal Sentinel would become Vos’s press agent for the effort. 


Texas bats released into the wild after they were found frozen in Arctic storm:

Friday Catblogging: Cats of Yore

Hillary Frey praises Cats of Yore as the The Best Cat Account on the Internet:

My Twitter feed is kind of a mess lately. Whatever changes Elon Musk has made to the algorithm have resulted in a bunch of posts from randos and brands that don’t seem to bear much relationship to anything I care about. Fortunately, though, a pre-Musk follow of mine that lightens up my timeline continues to break through: Cats of Yore.

The account is exactly what it says it is: pictures of cats of yore. These cats may be in historic paintings, or accompanying a child in early-20th-century New York City. They might play with a ball of string, or wear a top hat. They might be napping or hissing or licking their sibling. One thing they all have in common is extreme cuteness. If you are a cat person, this is enough. And even if you aren’t, this account may just change your mind.

It’s a fine account, well worth following if you’re on Twitter.

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Daily Bread for 12.29.22: Pyromanic Criticizes Fire-Safety Efforts

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:29 PM for 9h 04m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1845, the United States annexes the Republic of Texas.


Foxconn was, and remains, a national embarrassment for Wisconsin. See a FREE WHITEWATER category dedicated to Foxconn. Through it all, after years of revealed mistakes and lies, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has been a Foxconn booster. See Speaker Vos shares excitement for Foxconn deal with Wisconsin (from 2021, long after the rest of America had grown hoarse from laughing about the deal). 

Now — still— Vos has the temerity to offer advice about business development in Wisconsin. Corrinne Hess reports Robin Vos calls state’s economic development agency an ‘abject failure,’ says large companies not looking to Wisconsin:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is calling the state’s economic development department an “abject failure,” and says Wisconsin can no longer compete with other states to attract large companies.

Vos, who appointed himself to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.’s board in January 2021, said he took himself off the board this year because he “couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Their strategy is cookie cutter, literally saying to every business in the state ‘we’ll give you $5,000 or $10,000’ that drives little or no innovation,” Vos said. “What industry should we really try to make bigger in Wisconsin? What should we say ‘you’re a thing of the past that we shouldn’t invest in?’ We don’t have any of those discussions.”

Democrats fired back, calling Vos the lead advocate for WEDC’s creation under former Gov. Scott Walker.

“It is no surprise that he chooses to walk away from leadership at a time when there are opportunities for WEDC to shift to a more sustainable strategy that strengthens local economies and supports small businesses,” said state Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, who was recently appointed to the WEDC board.

This libertarian blogger is no supporter of the WEDC, although fortunately there’s no chance that the agency will ever find again a project as fraudulent as Foxconn has been. A lightning bolt of such destructive intensity is not going to strike us twice. 

Nevertheless, it says something about Vos’s shamelessness that he’d venture any opinion on development.

How many times does a person or clique get to make development mistakes before they’re no longer allowed to do so? 


 Llama on the Loose Sends Police on a Wild Chase

A loose llama led police on a chase in Fairfax County, VA, earlier this month, and multiple officers were needed to wrangle it. Aerial video with thermal imaging released by police shows the llama in a backyard. Body-worn camera video shows officers trying to lasso the llama with a rope, but it keeps getting away.

‘Always ready to give chase when a suspect flees, our officers and animal protection police (APP) encountered a nimble, furry suspect Sunday night,’ the police department wrote alongside the video on Facebook.

Eventually, three officers surrounded the llama and secured the animal with a rope, then led it to a waiting trailer. Police said the llama was later transported to an animal shelter.

Daily Bread for 12.28.22: A Solution to Southwest’s Cancellations

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:28 PM for 9h 03m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1836, Spain recognizes the independence of Mexico with the signing of the Santa María–Calatrava Treaty.


Tanya Sichynsky and Daniel Victor report Southwest’s Meltdown Draws Federal Scrutiny as Passengers Remain Stranded (‘The airline canceled another 2,500 flights on Wednesday and said it would be days before normal service resumes’): 

ATLANTA — Federal scrutiny is growing. The chief executive is apologizing to customers.

And as the meltdown at Southwest Airlines, one of the worst that industry observers have seen in decades, entered yet another day on Wednesday, irate customers remained stranded, separated from their families and some still carrying Christmas gifts they planned to deliver days ago.

There was no relief early Wednesday: Southwest had canceled more than 2,500 flights, or 62 percent of its planned flights for the day, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking service. The company has said it could be days until the knots are untangled and normal service resumes.

….

The issues stem from the carrier’s unique “point to point” model, in which planes tend to fly from destination to destination without returning to one or two main hubs. Most airlines follow a “hub and spoke” model, in which planes typically return to a hub airport after flying out to other cities.

When bad weather hits, hub-and-spoke airlines can shut down specific routes and have plans in place to restart operations when the skies clear. But bad weather can scramble multiple flights and routes in a point-to-point model, leaving Southwest staff out of position to resume normal operations.

Southwest has a travel model that works well for them except in bad weather, as against other airlines’ models. Federal scrutiny isn’t needed here; consumer awareness is what’s needed. If travelers decide that flying Southwest is an itinerary risk not with taking, the airline will either change its model, decline in size, or go under. Poor safety isn’t sinking Southwest, it’s their logistical plan that doesn’t work well in bad weather that troubles them. Southwest’s planes aren’t falling out of the sky; they’re stuck on the ground. 

Travelers, not the United States Department of Transportation, should be deciding Southwest’s prospects. 


Drone footage shows New York town buried in snow:

Daily Bread for 12.27.22: Frederick Prehn finally resigns from Natural Resources Board

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:27 PM for 9h 03m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 23.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM.

 On this day in 1929, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin orders the “liquidation of the kulaks [successful peasants] as a class.


Fred Prehn, Walker appointee to the Natural Resources Board, has resigned effective 12.30.22. Prehn refused to leave his seat at the expiration of his term, leading to a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling (4-3) that he did not have to resign until the Wisconsin Senate would not confirm a replacement. The WISGOP Senate wouldn’t confirm Gov. Evers’s nominee, so Prehn stayed on. Laura Schultz reports Scott Walker appointee Frederick Prehn resigns from Natural Resources Board after over-staying term:

Prehn, a Wausau dentist, was appointed by Walker in 2015. He refused to step down after his term ended, denying Evers’ appointee Sandra Naas a seat and maintaining a 4-3 majority for Republican appointees.

Prehn, after his term ended, cast the deciding vote to increase the quota for the state’s wolf hunt and to scrap limits of so-called forever chemicals in groundwater. Earlier this month, Prehn was part of a unanimous vote to restart the process of setting PFAS limits, a process that will take years to complete.

In his resignation letter, Prehn self-pityingly writes that “Unfortunately, it took the Supreme Court to confirm my decision to stay on at great expense for the taxpayer and an immense personal price.”

That ‘immense price’ includes the self-inflicted wound of revealed text messages in which Prehn described his plan: “So I might stick around for a while. See what shakes out. I’ll be like a turd in water up there.” Can’t say Prehn doesn’t understand himself. See Fred Prehn, the Most Self-Aware Man in All History and Tiny Fred Prehn

As it turns out, the Centers for Disease Control has a webpage describing why people should not relieve themselves in pools of water. See from the Centers for Disease Control, Poop in the Pool. (There doesn’t seem to be any guidance on what do do about people who describe themselves as poop in a pool.) 

Prehn by character is a vulgarian, but by occupation’s a dentist and cranberry farmer. One would have expected a better grasp of self-image (and of hygiene) from someone in either line of work. Fortunately, Prehn’s not my dentist, so I’m all good there. 

But I drink cranberry juice (it’s delicious!), and there’s a possibility that Prehn might be supplying to my favorite brand. A switch might be in order, right? 

Our youngest would advise “pondering on that.” Indeed. 


Robot paraglider drops from high-altitude balloon:

Daily Bread for 12.26.22: After the Confidence Game Collapses

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 18. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:27 PM for 9h 02m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1944, George S. Patton’s Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne, Belgium.


The collapse of FTX (cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund) is a financial loss for many. (I have no investments in crypto, and so the story is, for me, merely an instructive ethical tale.) No one is writing more usefully about FTX (or other financial topics) than Matt Levine. 

See about FTX: Hey, Whitewater Here’s How to Bringing Order to Chattering Chaos (SBF Missed FTX’s Risks) and Crypto Is about More than Crypto (Crypto Debt Can Be Trouble).

See also about Twitter: Levine About Musk About Twitter (‘Elon Checks His Pockets) and Quite the Mess, Isn’t it? (‘Elon Wants Some Twitter Help). 

Levine writes now about how, since FTX’s collapse, some of CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s partners in alleged crime have become plea-entering witnesses against him. (For background see from the New York Times Two Executives in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Plead Guilty to Fraud.) Levine assesses the dynamic between Bankman-Fried and his former colleagues in FTX Friends Flip on SBF

Of course there will be several FTX movies, and maybe the most cinematic scene in the whole story is the meeting that Caroline Ellison, the chief executive officer of Alameda Research, FTX’s affiliated trading firm, held to tell her employees that they’d been stealing FTX customer money. Imagine! Imagine coming into the company all-hands meeting at the lucrative trading firm you work at, in the Bahamas, far away from your friends and family and competitors, in a slightly cult-like environment where your every need is catered to out of the firm’s enormous profits. And then your 28-year-old boss is like “so guys, a little bad news, actually we’re a Ponzi? Sorry if I didn’t mention that earlier.” Everyone quit immediately, but much too late. 

….

Ellison and Gary Wang, the former chief technology officer of FTX, have agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud charges for their role in the FTX implosion. (The plea agreements say that Ellison and Wang face maximum sentences of 110 and 50 years in prison, respectively, though presumably they will end up with substantial discounts for cooperating.) Last night, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX and Alameda, landed in New York to face similar charges. There is something of a prisoner’s-dilemma situation here, in that there was in theory the possibility that everyone at FTX and Alameda could have stuck together and said “what, we never did anything wrong,” and that they might have persuaded a jury of that. The odds were always low, but it is the approach that Bankman-Fried has taken in public interviews.

….

The question I always have in situations like this is: How did they think this would go? What was the good outcome here? Why do all this? Many financial crimes have essentially the shape of Ponzi schemes, which by their nature snowball: You take some money from new customers to pay fake returns to old customers, which requires you to take even more money from newer customers to keep paying the fake returns, etc., until the hole gets too big and you go to prison. If you start by stealing $1,000, pretty soon you need to steal $10,000, and then $100,000, and then you find yourself running a billion-dollar Ponzi. And there’s rarely a way to come back from that. It is hard to make back a billion dollars at the roulette tables.

You can keep this going for a while, if you are good and lucky; Bernie Madoff ran a huge Ponzi for years. But that doesn’t really help. The longer you run the Ponzi, the deeper the hole gets; being respectable and trusted for decades doesn’t really get you the billions of dollars you need to plug the hole. It is hard to grow your way out of it; growth mostly makes the problem worse.

And that’s it: “the deeper the hole gets.” They should have walked away years ago, after the first day of this confidence game. Levine, by the way, saw this as a confidence game months before FTX collapsed. In a podcast with Bankman-Fried, Levine’s questions to Bankman-Fried made plain that Bankman-Fried’s thinking was like someone running a Ponzi scheme. See Odd Lots Podcast and Sam Bankman-Fried Described Yield Farming and Left Matt Levine Stunned.

But Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and Wang kept going, with hubris that only invited Nemesis.  

They should have done better by others, but then, truthfully, they didn’t see better even of their own limits.


Extreme winter snow storm leaves buildings covered in icicles:

Daily Bread for 12.25.22: Merry Christmas 2022

Good morning.

Christmas in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 11. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:26 PM for 9h 02m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine’s referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.


 

Perfect World – Katie Melua from Karni and Saul – Sulkybunny on Vimeo.

Daily Bread for 12.24.22: It’s Okay, Whitewater — Somehow, Some Way, We’ll Manage

Good morning.

Christmas Eve in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 8. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:25 PM for 9h 02m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1943, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is named Supreme Allied Commander for the Operation Overlord.


There are local elections for school board, city council, and the city’s municipal court in April. The deadline for candidates to submit nomination papers for those races is 1.3.2023. That’s ten days from now. (As it turns out, ten days is also 240 hours, or 14,400 minutes, or 864,000 seconds.) Plenty of time. 

And yet, and yet, over at the Whitewater Banner (a publication that uses a byline but has no real journalists) there’s some worry, it seems, that there might not be enough school board candidates: Three School Board Seats Open; What Happens if There are Less Than Three Candidates? (https://whitewaterbanner.com/three-school-board-seats-open-what-happens-if-there-are-less-than-three-candidates/).

A few quick remarks. 

 There’s one candidate declared, and there may be more by 1.3.23. Nothing happened yesterday, and nothing will happen tomorrow, that will in any possible way adversely affect education in Whitewater.

 We won’t know if there will be three open seats until January 3rd. Both the school district’s Central Office and the Banner have used the term ‘open seats’ incorrectly. See Elections, Candidates, and ‘Open Seats.’ 

 How many people are in government matters less than what government does. Let’s suppose, despite all possibility, that no one ever runs for school board again in Whitewater. No one, ever. There will still be public education in Whitewater, however organized. Then — as now — it will matter what is taught and how it is taught. It’s what you do that matters, and the doing of education, so to speak, is teaching and learning. See “You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.”

 This Banner post follows a professionally written story at Fort Atkinson Online that was published many hours earlier. The earlier story should have been credited as previously reported.

 I’ve no idea — no normal, professionally-oriented idea — why the Banner chose to accompany its post with a photo of a small, confused child, layered in sepia. There’s no reason for confusion or worry, or justification to impute confusion or worry to anyone. 

It’s okay — we’re gonna get through this. Breathe deeply, think of ocean vistas and kitty cats, and you’ll be fine.

Whitewater has many challenges that she can, and must, overcome. The manner for candidates declaring and when is not among them. Indeed, if this were the measure of our problems then we’d have no problems at all.


Jingle Cats Sing Silent Night: