Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:58 PM, for 13h 57m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 32.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand three hundred seventy-fourth day.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 1:30 PM via audiovisual conferencing.
On this day in 1942, Major General Eugene Reybold authorizes the construction of facilities that would house the “Development of Substitute Materials” project, better known as the Manhattan Project.
Recommended for reading in full —
Jennifer Rubin writes American greatness is in the future, not the past:
When does the president think America was great? Maybe the 1950s, when Jim Crow was in effect and few women worked outside their homes. Maybe the 1970s, when landlords still finagled to deny Hispanic and Black renters a place to live, and when White flight was seen as the antidote to living with “those” people. Maybe it was during the post-Civil War South, when Southerners erected their Lost Cause rubbish, which Trump seems to have adopted as his own, to mask the real motivation behind the Civil War — slavery.
….
November’s election really is about which America you want to live in. The one where Trump and White evangelical snake-oil salesmen would have you think the Lost Cause defines America’s “tradition”? Or the one that reflects the kaleidoscope of American experiences and demands that we take our founding documents seriously? Biden sure had it right when he first declared that the election is about the soul of America. His running mate amplifies his vision of 21st-century America. Together they invite us to stride forward.
Tom Philpott writes Industrial Hog Farms Are Breeding the Next Pandemic:
The likely source of the next pandemic is all around us: It’s the same one that triggered the 2009 scare. Industrial-scale hog and chicken farming—innovated in the United States and rapidly spreading globally—provides an ideal environment for the evolution and transmission of novel pathogens, especially influenza, that can infect people. (Cattle generally aren’t susceptible to human-adapted flus.)
“Another influenza pandemic occurring at some stage of the future is exceedingly high,” said Richard Webby, professor of infectious diseases at Memphis-based St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals. “The chances that it’ll come from some sort of farmed animal—my personal opinion is, that’s high as well.”
Gregory Gray, a professor of medicine, global health, and environmental health at Duke University and an expert on animal-to-human disease transmission, is even more direct. His biggest worry for the next viral pandemic? “Influenza A viruses that originate in pigs,” he said. “Hands down.”
Oliver Milman reports US proposes change to shower rules after Trump’s hair-washing moan:
The US president’s hair-washing complaints on Wednesday prompted the government to propose an easing of shower pressure standards.
The Trump administration proposed rule changes that would allow shower heads to boost water pressure, after Donald Trump repeatedly complained that bathroom fixtures do not work to his liking.
The Department of Energy plan followed comments from Trump last month at a White House event on rolling back regulations. He said he believed water does not come out fast enough from fixtures.
“So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair – I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect,” he said.
How Larry King Unwittingly Starred in Chinese Propaganda: