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City, Daily Bread, Demographics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.15.23: Wisconsin Needs More Young People (But They Have to Want Wisconsin)

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:31 AM and sunset 8:11 PM for 14h 39m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 17.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 6 PM, and the Library Board meets at 6:30 PM. 

On this day in 1911, in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.

 Over the winter, Joe Schulz reported Wisconsin needs more young people to prevent worsening the labor shortage, but there’s no easy solution:

Twenty-five-year-old Matt Gill grew up in the Fox Valley. After a stint at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, he left Wisconsin last June.

“The reason I left is because I started working remotely after COVID, and my girlfriend got a job in Utah,” he said. “We will probably come back in the future to be closer to our family, but it depends on how her career goes.”

Gill works in information technology, or IT, while his girlfriend is a naturalist educator at a nature center in Utah.

But their story isn’t unique. Over the last decade, the state lost 106,000 people under the age of 26, according to a recent report by Forward Analytics, the research arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association. 

If Wisconsin doesn’t improve efforts to attract and retain young people, its labor shortage could get worse by the end of the decade — but there’s no simple solution to address the issue. And, if demographic trends continue, the state’s working-age population could shrink by about 130,000 people by 2030, the report found.

“Attracting and retaining these young people is critical for Wisconsin,” said Dale Knapp, director of Forward Analytics, in a statement last September. “Attracting and retaining them would not only grow the current workforce, it would also help long term as many of these young adults will soon be starting a family and raising the next generation of workers.”

Doing so, however, requires a combination of promoting IT jobs already in the state, recruiting industries young people want to work in and embracing the state’s growing diversity, according to local government officials, researchers and regional economic development organizations.

Dave Egan-Robertson, a demographer for the UW-Madison’s Applied Population Lab, said Wisconsin has traditionally been an importer of high school graduates and an exporter of college graduates.

He said the state generally sees a net gain in people between 15 and 19, but experiences a net loss of individuals between 20 and 24.

Young people have to want to come to Wisconsin and stay in Wisconsin. Young people have to want to come to Whitewater and stay in Whitewater. It’s their wants, and their needs, that will determine whether they’ll stay.

That’s the challenge for everyone else: recognizing that those needs are different, and then being willing to meet those different needs. ‘This is how we’ve always done it’ is the surest expression of how communities keep doing it the wrong way. 

Testing Out JPL’s New Snake Robot:

Daily Bread, Film, Holiday

Daily Bread for 5.14.23: Happy Mother’s Day

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:32 AM and sunset 8:10 PM for 14h 37m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 27.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1973, Skylab, the United States’ first space station, is launched.

Mather:

Following a day in the life of Demelza Mather, musician and mother, “Mather” is a film told through contrast. 16mm and digital, color and black and white, drums and mums.

Tiny Galápagos island birds make promising comeback:

Cats, Daily Bread, History, Science/Nature

Daily Bread for 5.13.23: When Domestic Cats Had Their Own Constellation

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:09 PM for 14h 35m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 38.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, the USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

Cats of Yore explains when domestic cats had their own constellation:

Forging Forgotten Ancient Greek Armor:

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City, Daily Bread, Government Spending, Legislature, Local Government, State Government, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.12.23: Shared Revenue Changes Advance

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with intermittent thunderstorms and a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:08 PM for 14h 33m 39s of daytime. The moon is in its third quarter with 49.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1949, the Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin.

Shawn Johnson reports Negotiations continue at Wisconsin Capitol over local government funding plan (‘Republicans say the full Assembly will pass a bill next week that would revamp the state’s shared revenue program’):

Under the GOP bill, every community would see at least a 10 percent increase in state funding, but larger cities like Green Bay and Racine receive millions less than they would under the governor’s plan. Some small towns would see increases of several hundred percent, though the total dollars they’d receive would be relatively modest.

“I’m not hearing anything about a big change in the formula,” Novak said of the ongoing negotiations. “But that may change.”

The Republican bill also attaches far more strings for local governments to receive the money. They include:

Whitewater’s concerns, however, exceed what this shared revenue plan, or any other, would meet. We’ll need a different approach to address those needs. See What Ails, What Heals, Waiting for Whitewater’s Dorothy Day, Something Transcendent, and in the Meantime, An Oasis Strategy, and The Community Space. 

This is how a conservationist restores a centuries-old painting:

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City, Film

Film: Wednesday, May 17th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, All Quiet on the Western Front

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Wednesday, May 17th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of All Quiet on the Western Front @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Action/Drama/War

Rated R (war violence); 2 hours, 28 minutes (2022)

A German retelling of the classic story of a young German soldier’s terrifying experiences and distress on the Western Front during World War 1. Academy Award winner: Best International Film, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Production Design. This film will be shown with the original German dialogue and English subtitles.

One can find more information about All Quiet on the Western Front at the Internet Movie Database.

Cats, Science/Nature

Friday Catblogging: The Best Way of Getting a Cat’s Attention

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Rachael Funnell writes This Is The Best Way to Get A Cat’s Attention According to Science:

With the help of 18 domestic cats (8 females, 10 males) with a job history of at least three years in a cat café, experimenters tried four different approaches to getting a cat’s attention: using visual cues, using vocal cues, using both, or using neither (as the control).

This was far from the team’s first rodeo in exploring cat behavior around humans, which meant they approached the experiment with some idea as to what might happen.

“Knowing that cats have developed specific vocalizations for interacting with humans, we hypothesized that they would be keener to approach a human engaging in vocal communication compared to visual communication,” they explained. However, cats aren’t famous for their cooperation.

The results of the different experimental conditions revealed that actually, cats interacted significantly faster in response to visual and bimodal (both visual and vocal) communication compared to vocal cues alone. Interestingly it also showed that failing to acknowledge a cat completely may stress them out, as the most tail wagging was observed in the control condition where the experimenter ignored the cat.

It seems that if you want to catch the attention of a cat on the street, you’ve really got to go for it.

“Taken together, our results suggest that cats display a marked preference for both visual and bimodal cues addressed by non-familiar humans compared to vocal cues only,” concluded the authors. “Our findings offer further evidence for the emergence of human-compatible socio-cognitive skills in cats that favour their adaptation to a human-driven niche.”

The study is published in the journal Animals.

Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Never Trump, Populists, Presidential Race 2024, Trump, Trumpism

Daily Bread for 5.11.23: ‘You Can — and You Will’

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:06 PM for 14h 31m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 63% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Aquatic and Fitness Center Subcommittee meets at 6 PM. 

On this day in 1997, Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

And so, and so, the CNN town hall with Trump went as we of Never Trump expected it would: the spectacle of a lying autocrat and his braying supporters. It’s worth watching in full, every word, every gesture, every audience response.  

Trump is predictable and so are his extreme supporters. Not a word Trump uttered, not a claim he made, was one he had not made many times before. 

As it turns out, this means that a reasonable person can accurately predict Trump’s fate:

Oh yes — so very many of us can — and we will.

Safer skies: Romania’s fourth Patriot missile air defense battery goes into service:

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Daily Bread, Sen. Baldwin, US Senate Race 2024, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.10.23: Closer to Unbeatable

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:05 PM for 14h 29m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 73.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater will hold a Role of Government training at 4:30 PM, the Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM, and the Police & Fire Commission meets at 7 PM. The Whitewater School Board goes into closed session shortly after 6 PM, to resume open session at 7 PM. 

On this day in 1869, the first transcontinental railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory with the golden spike.

Of Tammy Baldwin, Bruce Murphy asks Is Baldwin Vulnerable? Or Unbeatable? The question arises (only) because some national pundits have Baldwin on a list of vulnerable U.S. Senators: 

According to The Hill, the Capitol insider publication, Wisconsin’s U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin is “one of the eight most vulnerable Senate Democrats in 2024.”

Wisconsin, the publication warned, “remains a crucial battleground state with a propensity to swing wildly from one election to another.” I guess we’re a little wacky here in Wiscoland.

CNN rated the seat number six on its list of the 10 senate seats “most likely to flip,” cautioning the competitiveness of Wisconsin “shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Murphy correctly notes that, by contrast, those with a better grasp of Wisconsin politics (rather than list-makers looking to fill out a card) recognize that Baldwin is in a strong position:

Baldwin [is] currently looking a good deal less vulnerable than some of those rankings suggest. “It was telling that [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell recently mentioned four Senate races he is focused on,” [pollster Charles] Franklin noted, “and did not include Wisconsin on the list.”

Murphy’s own assessment is good — Mike Gallagher would be a stronger opponent for Baldwin but he likely won’t run; Tom Tiffany will be a much easier opponent for Baldwin and he likely will run.

(Tiffany, slathered in insurrection, would be a worse version of Leah Vukmir. It would be as though central casting sent over the nuttiest, dog-crap-quality opponent they could find to run statewide against Baldwin. Someone should check if Baldwin has a relative in the WISGOP who’s pushing Tiffany as a choice.) 

In a post from two weeks ago, this libertarian blogger assessed Baldwin as the prohibitive favorite. See Baldwin as the Prohibitive Favorite. 

She is now, and will be in 2024.  

Buddy Holly is Best in Show Winner at Westminster:

Conservative Populism, Culture, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.9.23: What if Contention is Emotional Rather than Analytical?

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:04 PM for 14h 27m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 82.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1662, the figure who later became Mr. Punch makes his first recorded appearance in England. (These centuries later, he’s still irritating.) 

Consider the following observation from Dr. Laura Robinson about what happens when someone’s contention — someone’s argumentation — goes bad:

If you can’t follow the logic of an argument without getting somewhere catastrophic, and need to head off the catastrophe at the pass by saying “please don’t follow the logic of this argument” – isn’t it a bad argument? 

Quite right: that would be a bad argument.

(Robinson’s observation, by the way, appears in her series critiquing the view of sexuality presented in Joshua Ryan Butler’s Beautiful Union. Robinson’s six-part, fifteen-thousand-word critique is formidable, with range from exegesis to anatomy.)

In Robinson’s field, academic theology, bad arguments are, understandably, to be avoided. 

There is, however, no avoiding bad arguments in the field of social media. Many arguments are offered not because they lead someplace reasonable but because they lead someplace satisfying for the offeror. That satisfaction need not be benign, but is often malevolent. Adam Serwer’s Cruelty is the Point captures the impulse of conservative populism toward inflicting injury as a primary goal (and, fundamentally, all populism demonizes this way). See Defining Populism, Populism Doesn’t Apologize, and Extreme Populism Presents as Trolling.

For so many of the local men who talk about ‘common sense,’ Hobbes was spot-on, that reason is a spy for the passions (“the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired”).

I’ll not say that Robinson’s environment is easier, of course. One could look at this and see that Hobbes would be nearly as correct about Robinson’s environment as any other. How much of the book that Robinson critiques is simply what the book’s author wants to believe? It is, however, a book, and an argument contained within. 

For arguments offered in our local scene, there’s an impatient conflation, a mad rush, from claim to desire.

Stunning Timelapse of Full ‘Flower Moon’ Captured in Australia: 

Courts, Daily Bread, Ethics, Federal Government

Daily Bread for 5.8.23: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Ethics Crisis

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 57. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:03 PM for 14h 24m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM, and the city’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 7:30 PM.

On this day in 1912, Paramount Pictures is founded. 

From The Daily, The Supreme Court’s Ethical Crisis:

Harbor Seal Enjoys Relaxing Manicure at Saint Louis Zoo:

Adventure, Cycling, Daily Bread, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.7.23: Rail Trails

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see intermittent clouds with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:02 PM for 14h 22m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.91% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1920, in the Treaty of Moscow, Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of the Democratic Republic of Georgia only to invade the country six months later.

  Emilie Burditt writes Wisconsin’s rail trails: Connecting communities with the outdoors (‘A brief history of Wisconsin’s railroads and trails built on old railroad paths’): 

“(Rail trails) make the perfect base for a walking and biking trail,” said Eric Oberg, the Midwest Regional Director of the national nonprofit Rails to Trail.

Wisconsin has more than 100 of these trails, and the very first rail trail in the United States was created in Wisconsin. The beginning of a collection of rail trails that now span almost 2,000 miles across Wisconsin began with the Elroy-Sparta State Trail, which is considered the first rail trail.

….

But it wasn’t the easiest railroad to convert. Oberg said the tunnels in the Elroy-Sparta trail were hard to work with during construction, even if they are half the fun. He said despite the challenges the trail’s bridges and tunnels created, they’re an unbelievable and beautiful part of what he says may be the best rail trail. 

After the Elroy-Sparta trail was created in 1965, the idea to get people outside using such a system really stuck.

In fact, that’s what [reader Phil] Kaznowski was doing when he reached out to WHYsconsin. A few months after moving to Wisconsin, he began to really enjoy his outside adventures biking on the rail trails, and he couldn’t help but want to know more.

On the trails, he sees people of all ages walking, biking and running, and he sees people using wheelchairs. The often wider paths make it, so families can walk together alongside bicyclists.

And that’s the whole point, Oberg said: Rail trails are meant to conserve history, nature and bring people closer to the outdoors and their community.

“Every facet of your community is out using that trail,” Oberg said. “And unlike in your car when you pass people, if you pass people on a trail, it is a personal experience. At the very least you smile at each other. More often than not you say, ‘Hello,’ maybe you stopped to have a conversation. It’s the place where community happens now.”

Biking the Elroy-Sparta Trail:

Daily Bread, Faraway Places, Film, Nature

Daily Bread for 5.6.23: Entre Ciel et Terre

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset 8:01 PM for 14h 20m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1915, actor and filmmaker Orson Welles is born:

On this date,  George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha. The name George was soon dropped. The family moved to Chicago in 1919, and two years later, Welles’ parents separated. After his mother’s death in 1924, he travelled the world with his father, only to lose him in 1928.

Welles turned down the chance at college in 1931, choosing instead to go on a sketching trip to Ireland. In 1934, Welles made his New York debut, playing Tybalt in Katherine Cornell’s staging of Romeo and Juliet. In the mid 1930s, he established himself as a radio actor on The March of Time and The Shadow, among other shows. He began working with John Houseman and together they formed the Mercury Theatre in 1937. Their program, The Mercury Theatre on Air, became famous for the notorious events surrounding their version of The War of the Worlds in 1938, in which they provoked mass panic among listeners.

A renowned actor, writer, producer, and director, Welles is known best for his roles in such films as Citizen Kane (1941), Jane Eyre (1944), MacBeth (1948), Moby Dick (1956), A Man for all Seasons (1966), and Catch 22 (1970). Welles was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 1971 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1975. 

Entre Ciel et Terre:

There are only a few regions in the world where the skies meet the Earth with almost no distinction between the two. La Palma in the Canary islands is one of them. ‘Entre Ciel et Terre’ literally means ‘Between the sky and Earth’ and was a perfect fit here. While most of the volcanic island is isolated under a thick layer of clouds, the tip of its crater often punches through it and allows you to be one step closer to the Heavens.

At an altitude of about 2300 meters above sea level you feel so far removed from any kind of civilization especially because of the cloud inversion. The air is thin and pristine and the living conditions are harsh but that’s the reason why the ORM (Observatory Roque de Los Muchachos) — operated by the IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) and part of the European Northern Observatory, was built up there.

The summit of La Palma’s caldera benefits from dry and clear skies almost year round with almost no light pollution to disturb it, and only rare Calima (this dusty wind coming from the Sahara desert). 

How big are supermassive black holes? NASA size comparison: