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Daily Bread for 2.21.21

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with snow this afternoon and evening and a high of 32.  Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 5:35 PM, for 10h 54m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 66.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1947, Edwin Land demonstrates the first “instant camera,” the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Cary Spivak reports Milwaukee thought it ousted a notorious central city landlord. Now, it appears Mohammed Rashaed is back:

Elijah Mohammed Rashaed, long known as one of Milwaukee’s most notorious landlords, is back in the business despite a three-year effort by the city to toss him out of it.

About a half-dozen tenants or their lawyers told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel they have recently talked to Rashaed about issues in their rental units even though the properties are owned by companies controlled by his children.

One tenant said she paid Rashaed $1,000, which he refunded after her Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee lawyer demanded the payback because the home she was going to rent had no heat.

“The specter of him still being involved in the background is there,” said Nicole Penegor, a Legal Aid lawyer, who was astonished to learn Rashaed was again active in the central-city landlord business.

….

The city sued Rashaed, charging his real estate empire was a public nuisance that exploited the poor. The city charged that Rashaed targeted individuals who have trouble finding a place to live because of “income limitations, criminal or eviction records, or need to move quickly.”

The lawsuit said that in 2017 there were 269 orders pending against properties owned by an array of Rashaed companies. The city demanded the Rashaed operation fix 1,007 building code violations.

In 2018, Milwaukee Circuit Judge Glenn Yamahiro appointed Ogden & Co. to manage Rashaed’s rental portfolio, stripping him of control of the more than 160 properties and the revenue generated by them.

Anton Troianovski reports China Censors the Internet. So Why Doesn’t Russia?:

But even as Mr. Putin faced the biggest protests in years last month, his government appeared unwilling — and, to some degree, unable — to block websites or take other drastic measures to limit the spread of digital dissent.

The hesitation has underscored the challenge Mr. Putin faces as he tries to blunt the political implications of cheap high-speed internet access reaching into the remote corners of the vast country while avoiding angering a populace that has fallen in love with Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.

“They’re afraid,” Dmitri Galushko, a Moscow telecommunications consultant, said of why the Kremlin hasn’t clamped down harder. “They’ve got all these weapons, but they don’t know how to use them.”

More broadly, the question of how to deal with the internet lays bare a dilemma for Mr. Putin’s Russia: whether to raise state repression to new heights and risk a public backlash or continue trying to manage public discontent by maintaining some semblance of an open society.

 Hannah Knowles reports United flight rained debris a mile wide near Denver after engine failure, officials say:

The United Airlines flight, Honolulu-bound with more than 200 passengers, returned to Denver International Airport shortly after takeoff Saturday afternoon following an engine failure, strewing debris at least a mile wide in yards and a park where children play, authorities said. Police in Broomfield, Colo. — about a half-hour drive north of Denver — sent out a “code red” urging about 1,400 people to check their yards for fallen wreckage.

How 40 Million Cork Wine Stoppers Are Harvested a Day:

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