Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:52 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 15m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Fire Department will hold a business meeting @ 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1945, after years of war and refusal to surrender under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, Japan is devastated yet further when an atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima by the United States.
Recommended for reading in full —
Devi Shastri reports Support for COVID measures builds as UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stout, UW-La Crosse now ‘expect’ masks:
The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, UW-Stout and UW-La Crosse have announced they “expect” employees, students and guests to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, stopping short of reinstating a requirement as two other UW schools have.
The UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout guidance is effective Aug. 9. It does not apply to students in Marshfield and Barron County at this time, as county COVID-19 transmission rates there are not at “high” or “substantial” levels as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The UW-La Crosse guidance went into effect immediately.
Wisconsin colleges are re-evaluating masking rules in the wake of new CDC guidance and rising COVID-19 cases across the state.
Last week, UW-Milwaukee was the first major college to return to explicitly requiring masks, followed a few days later by UW-Madison, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Edgewood College — a private school in Madison — and, most recently, Madison Area Technical College.
Scott Girard reports Wisconsin private schools saw enrollment decline along with public schools:
The Wisconsin Policy Forum highlighted new private school enrollment data from the 2020-21 school year in its latest report, showing that the sector declined along with public schools, albeit at a lower level.
Private school enrollment last year declined 1.5%, while public school enrollment around the state dropped 2.9%. Both sectors saw the largest drops in early grades.
“The figures offer at least a partial counterpoint to speculation about a potential surge in private school enrollment during the pandemic as many public schools continued remote instruction through the fall and winter,” the report states.
For public schools, pre-K and kindergarten enrollment “plunged,” the report notes, while first through eighth grades saw a smaller decline and high school enrollment “actually increased slightly.” Private schools, meanwhile, saw a 15.4% decline in pre-K and 4K enrollment for the year, while K-12 enrollment “essentially held flat.”
Philip Bump writes Hungary turned to authoritarian nationalism. So Tucker Carlson went to Hungary:
Carlson and other polished conservatives, such as Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, argue forcefully for the primacy of American families. They espouse a largely unobjectionable position — that the government should make it easier to have children — but frame it in contrast with the less-ideal or problematic form of population growth that accompanies increased immigration. Vance, a politician, massages this idea a lot. Carlson, a firebrand, does not. To hear Carlson tell it, the country is imperiled by immigration at an existential level, at risk of seeing its essence diluted, and increased procreation by Americans is less a good in and of itself than as a bulwark against change.
He frames this — in the same way that many white nationalists do — as a broad battle between Western civilization and outsider hordes encouraged by a cabal of elites who are eager to see traditional values collapse. Those who engage in the defense of the West are presented by Carlson as heroes of the cause.
In February 2018, for example, he praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for defying the European Union on the issue of immigration.
“At least one politician in Europe is fearlessly raising an alarm about the kind of society European elites want to create, one that is rejected unanimously almost by European citizens,” Carlson said. “In a speech yesterday kicking off his party’s bid for reelection, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that politicians in Brussels, Berlin and Paris are going to destroy Western civilization with their enthusiasm for mass migration left unchecked.”
See also Perfectly Clear (‘Glass frogs, the tiny, translucent amphibians of Central and South America, are full of surprises’).