FREE WHITEWATER

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Politics, Reasoning

Daily Bread for 10.11.22: Identifying Types and Spotting Issues

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers with a high of 74. Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 6:18 PM for 11h 13m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater will have a Finance Committee meeting at 4:30 PM, a Referendum Information Session (Fire & EMS) at 5 PM, and a Public Works meeting at 6 PM.

On this day in 1968, NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission.

Critical to any analysis is an accurate understanding both the whole and also the elements into which one divides it. So, if someone is studying badgers, he’s not supposed to mistake them for skunks, and he’s supposed to understanding something of a badger’s anatomy. He cannot credibly, for example, confuse a badger’s foot with its ear.

This needn’t require a degree in badgerology, but at least someone shouldn’t make basic mistakes of identification.

And yet, and yet, in these overwrought times, mistakes of identification and issues are common.

Mistakes of identification: not knowing one species from another. Skunks, badgers, stoats: getting them all mixed up. 

In Whitewater, this would be ignorance about how many political orientations there are in this small city, or failing to discern the size of each. For political groups and their respective sizes in town see FREE WHITEWATER’s category Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021.

Whitewater does not have, for example, a leftist/communist/socialist/globalist cabal. YMBFKM. Whitewater has a tiny number of progressives who are too few in number to shape policy in this city. One doesn’t have to be a progressive (as I am not) to be able to count their numbers accurately. 

Whitewater does not have, for example, a powerful trade union. It doesn’t matter whether Whitewater should or shouldn’t have a powerful trade union — the city doesn’t have one.  Those holding up the local teachers’ union as a powerful trade moment have no idea what the concept of power means. Our local unions, of whatever kind, are politically inconsequential in this city. (Someone might believe, even insist, that rabbits eat people, but as it turns out they don’t.) 

Mistakes of issue spotting: failing to determine which concerns reasonably arise from a given action. If there’s a badger attack, for example, a relevant and material issue would be treating animal bites. A badger attack would not, however, suggest a concern over whether badgers might be anabaptists.  (They’re not.)

In Whitewater, failing to issue spot correctly often involves seeing too much or too little in a policy choice. For some professions, especially law, failing to issue spot is a fatal career liability. From a given set of facts, a lawyer must be able to identify the relevant and significant legal issues that arise. (This skill is so fundamental to the profession that someone who cannot issue spot accurately should not be graduated from law school. There are other careers, enjoyable and fulfilling, for would-be attorneys who lack this ability; the law would not be among them.) 

As there is a torrent of ideological discussion in America, it’s too easy, deceptively so, to apply national types and topics to Whitewater. Our local problems, and we have them, are not identical to a common set of national problems, either in nature or number. (In Whitewater, it would be a risible error to think, for example, that defunding the police was truly a possibility. It never was, and never will be.) 

There are problems in town, and risks waiting in the shadows, but so far we have escaped the worst ideological struggles that grip other parts of the nation. Keeping local conditions that way — and avoiding worse political conditions — is a social obligation.

Avoiding worse for Whitewater, however, begins with seeing the city with clear and dry eyes.

Fundamental to this task: identifying types and spotting issues. 

 Ukrainian Woman Reunites With Her Dog Who Fled During Russia’s Invasion: 

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Business, CDA, City, Conflicts of Interest, Daily Bread, Ethics, Michels, Regulatory Capture, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 10.10.22: He Won’t Divest — He’ll Only Say He Has

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 6:19 PM for 11h 16m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM. 

On this day in 1492, the crew of Christopher Columbus‘s ship, the Santa Maria, attempt a mutiny. 

The Journal Sentinel’s Corrinne Hess and Laura Schulte report that Tim Michels says he will divest from his family business if he’s elected governor. Experts say that will be a difficult task:

Tim Michels, Wisconsin’s Republican candidate for governor, is pitching himself as a successful businessman who can turn around state government.

But if he gets to the governor’s mansion he’ll have to figure out how to untangle his interests from his family’s construction business, which has received more than $1 billion from state road contracts and has ties to a pipeline project that is awaiting a key environmental study.

Michels, co-owner of Michels Corp., the state’s largest construction company, has said he’ll divest himself from the business but has not provided any details.

Experts say his task won’t be easy.  

State records show the Brownsville-based Michels Corp. has received more than $1.1 billion from Wisconsin for construction projects since 2014. 

When Tim Michels entered the governor’s race in April, he said he hoped the company would continue to compete for state work if he won the race for governor. 

He estimated his company had made about $1.3 billion in state road contracts since 2008, during an April 25 interview with conservative host Jay Weber on WISN-AM (1130). 

(Emphasis added.)

The story highlights two points about Michels. First, Hess’s and Schulte’s reporting shows how Michels’s business has been dependent on, if not parasitic of, government spending.

(Admittedly, Tim Michels is not merely a landlord in Whitewater whose business has been dependent on, if not parasitic of, a public university. Michels has worked on a bigger scale.)

Second, Michels talks about the primacy of private industry over public spending (he’s right!) but if he should take office, there’s likely to be finagling about the separation between public and private. Worse, he still wants his hand in the till for more publicly-funded contracts.

(In Whitewater, this would be like a councilman insisting that the city’s Community Development Authority should operate as though private when it is, in fact, a public body organized under state law and local ordinances. These landlords, bankers, and public relations men like to talk private while serving on public bodies.)

Public or private: pick one. Failing to choose leads too easily to regulatory capture — private business interests dominating public bodies in self-interested, anti-market directions.  

 Inside the Final Days of the Doctor China Tried to Silence: 

City, Daily Bread, Reasoning, Rhetoric

Daily Bread for 10.9.22: Trolls and the Exclamatory, Interrogatory, or Declaratory Response

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 6:21 PM for 11h 19m 13s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1812, in a naval engagement on Lake Erie, American forces capture two British ships: HMS Detroit and HMS Caledonia.

 As cities of all sizes find themselves with Facebook and Twitter trolls, a few words about managing that ilk. (Whitewater has Facebook trolls, but really nothing similar from Twitter, as Twitter’s not a significant medium for this small town. Statewide, yes; locally, no.) 

A portion of my time at FREE WHITEWATER these days includes moderating against comment trolls, who come to a post from near or far depending on the topic. All posts here go through moderation, so nothing hits this site that has not been approved. That’s a simple system. It involves no more than deleting unworthy remarks that sit in queue. This is a private publication, and so is private property: no troll will ever pass moderation here. 

What’s regrettable is how local political discourse in Whitewater has its own trolls, across more than one Facebook forum. Facebook is designed to be an easy-to-use platform, and that ease of use allows trolls to make a start: they need neither reason nor write well. (It’s common among them that they praise their own work, no matter how ill-composed or ill-considered. In a pinch, they’ll settle for their own praise but they truly crave others’ emotional injuries.)

There is no greater demonstration of how our society has failed to educate properly than to watch native-born trolls misuse the English language and abuse principles of reasoning. (Strong skills do not require a college education. A sound K-12 education should equip a student with all that he or she needs to speak, write, and argue soundly. Most of the trolls one sees, by contrast, write and reason as though they slept soundly past middle school.) 


A word about USDA Grade A trolls: by their nature, they write or speak to illicit an emotional reaction. They’re not in the game for the discussion, for the claims or counter-claims; they’re in the game for others’ emotional response to the discussion. If they can elicit discernible upset, shock, or anger in others, they’ve achieved their goal. While praise satisfies them, they find it not half so enjoyable as seeing that they’ve unsettled or wounded others.

Although a serious man or woman advances (and responds) to arguments with sangfroid, the troll is, at bottom, an emotional man or woman: beginning emotionally and seeking an emotional response. They begin with treacly neediness and end with repulsive malevolence. 

So, how should the serious approach trolls?  

Having watched people struggle with trolls in Whitewater, a few suggestions. 

Not with the exclamatory. One could respond to a troll with exclamations of shock (Oh my! or How awful!) but that’s a troll’s food supply. These repulsive few are undeserving of what they crave. In any event, those of us who are not easily shocked would have no reason to answer this way. 

Seldom with the interrogatory. One could ask a troll a question (If that should be so, then how do you explain…), but then they’re in the game for attention-seeking and emotional-wounding, not a solid discussion. They are not interested in answering responsively for discussion; they’ll answer responsively to prolong the conversation to wound others, get attention, or praise themselves.  

If at all, respond with the declarative. One answers coldly to a troll, in direct, terse statements (point by point, nothing too much, nothing emotional). Argument is wasted on trolls, rhetoric is wasted on them, electrons are wasted on them.  The troll wants a fraught conversation with serious people; serious people should want a quick dispatch for the troll. 

How Silk Is Made From Silkworm Cocoons:

 

Daily Bread, Foreign Affairs, Putin, Russia, Ukraine, War

Daily Bread for 10.8.22: The Kerch Bridge

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 6:23 PM for 11h 24m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1871, the Peshtigo Fire devastates a Wisconsin community: 

On this date Peshtigo, Wisconsin was devastated by a fire which took 1,200 lives. The fire caused over $2 million in damages and destroyed 1.25 million acres of forest. This was the greatest human loss due to fire in the history of the United States. The Peshtigo Fire was overshadowed by the Great Chicago fire which occurred on the same day, killing 250 people and lasting three days.  

The Kerch Bridge to illegally-occupied Crimea has partially collapsed following one or more explosions. See Blast damages Crimea bridge central to Russia war effort. Retired Australian Gen. Mick Ryan offers a careful initial analysis in a tweet thread:

Can’t emphasize enough how, on Twitter or elsewhere, one should rely on serious and grounded analyses like Ryan’s. Ryan’s Twitter account, @WarintheFuture, is a valuable resource on military analysis. 

As a matter of rhetoric, not military science, Jessica Berlin, @berlin_bridge, a Germany-based internationalist and supporter of Ukraine, had a well-crafted response when the news first emerged about damage to the Russian-built Kerch bridge: 

Clever, very clever. 

If you’re on Twitter, both @WarintheFuture and @berlin_bridge are well-worth following. For more on Ryan, see https://mickryan.com.au. For more on Berlin, see https://www.jessica.berlin. 

Ukraine war: Fire engulfs bridge spanning from Crimea to Russia after explosion:

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America, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment

Daily Bread for 10.7.22: National Jobs Numbers Still Strong

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 6:24 PM for 11h 24m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 94.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1774, Wisconsin Becomes Part of Quebec:

On this date Britain passed the Quebec Act, making Wisconsin part of the province of Quebec. Enacted by George III, the act restored the French form of civil law to the region. The Thirteen Colonies considered the Quebec Act as one of the “Intolerable Acts,” as it nullified Western claims of the coast colonies by extending the boundaries of the province of Quebec to the Ohio River on the south and to the Mississippi River on the west.

U.S. Job Growth Cools but Remains Solid:

The labor market remained strong in September, showing its resilience. But the persistent strength in hiring also underscored the challenges facing the Federal Reserve as it tries to curtail job growth enough to tame inflation.

Employers added 263,000 jobs last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said Friday. That was down from 315,000 in August. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, from 3.7 percent a month earlier.

“If I had just woken up from a really long nap and seen these numbers, I would conclude that we still have one of the strongest job markets that we’ve ever enjoyed,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust.

Labor participation was little changed in September, at 62.3 percent, around where it has hovered for the duration of the year but still below where it was before the pandemic. Wages rose 0.3 percent, matching the prior month’s gain.

The Federal Reserve’s next rate decision is scheduled for Nov. 2, and officials have emphasized that the central bank is watching the jobs data closely as they determine how aggressive to be. They are eager to see evidence that interest-rate increases are cooling off a frenzied labor market, but not enough to tip the economy into a recession. For months, job growth defied expectations, as employers continued to add workers despite increased borrowing costs.

Ukraine rights group learns of Nobel Peace Prize win:

Animals, Bad Ideas, Carnivores, City, Coyotepocalypse, Laws/Regulations

Friday Coyoteblogging: In Whitewater, People Won’t Feed Coyotes — Coyotes Will Feed on People

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I’ve warned Whitewater more than once about the probability of a coyote invasion. See Coyotes Begin War Against Humanity, Cat Defends Arizona Home Against Coyote, Coyotes abundant, troublesome in Rock County — GazetteXtra, Cat Defeats Three Coyotes in Combat, and Cat v. Coyote.

(Ludicrously, Whitewater last year passed a ban against feeding wildlife on homeowners’ private yards — including feeding chipmunks and squirrels, honest to goodness. All the while, the city took no action in the face of the looming coyotepocalypse. That’s a case of over- and under-regulation. It should have been obvious to Whitewater’s last council president that there was a greater threat facing this city. Some people simply can’t see the forest for the trees.

Alternatively, perhaps that gentleman was aware of the danger, and thought that banning squirrel feeding would reduce the supply of food for marauding coyotes. Oh, no, not at all! By banning the feeding of harmless squirrels and chipmunks, Whitewater’s ordinance will force ferocious predators to move up the food chain: pets, small children, then finally slow-moving adults.)

Even those generally sympathetic to coyotes, if not duped by them, unwittingly reveal where this trend leads.  David Drake, et al. write that Coyotes are here to stay in North American cities – here’s how to appreciate them from a distance  [emphasis added]:

Coyotes have become practically ubiquitous across the lower 48 United States, and they’re increasingly turning up in cities. The draws are abundant food and green space in urban areas.

At first these appearances were novelties, like the hot summer day in 2007 when a coyote wandered into a Chicago Quiznos sub shop and jumped into the beverage cooler. Within a few years, however, coyote sightings became common in the Bronx and Manhattan. In 2021 a coyote strolled into a Los Angeles Catholic school classroom. They’re also appearing in Canadian cities.

People often fear for their own safety, or for their children or pets, when they learn about coyotes in their neighborhoods. But as an interdisciplinary team studying how people and coyotes interact in urban areas, we know that peaceful coexistence is possible – and that these creatures actually bring some benefits to cities.

‘From a distance’ connotes to as far away as possible.

In parts of this country now overrun, if not truly dominated, by coyotes, pet owners have turned to private industry to protect their companion animals from depredation. CoyoteVest (‘Not Today, Coyote’), for example, equips small pets to face the dangers lurking outside:

In Whitewater, people won’t feed coyotes — coyotes will feed on people.

Yet, for it all, I am confident that we can prevail, if only we would focus on the true challenges facing us.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, October 11th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

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Tuesday, October 11th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Comedy/Drama

Rated PG, 1 hours, 55 minutes (2022).

A widowed cleaning lady in 1950s London falls madly in love with a couture Dior dress and decides that she must have one of her own. After she works, starves, and gambles to raise the funds to pursue her dream she embarks on a Paris Adventure, to the House of Dior.

One can find more information about Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris at the Internet Movie Database.

Daily Bread, Elections, Sen. Ron Johnson, US Senate Race 2022, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.6.22: Mandela Barnes Will Lose Without a Fundamental Change in Messaging

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Good morning.

 

 

Thursday in Whitewater will see an even chance of morning showers with a high of 65. Sunrise is 6:58 AM and sunset 6:26 PM for 11h 27m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1927, The Jazz Singer, the first prominent “talkie” movie, opens.

Truth precedes preference. Readers at FREE WHITEWATER know that this website has been critical of, and opposed to, Sen. Ron Johnson. (There’s a Thursday morning understatement for you.) When assessing political fortunes, however, the realistic, not the desirable, governs. The trajectory of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race favors Johnson. Without a fundamental change in messaging, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes will lose this race to incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson.

Yesterday, FREE WHITEWATER‘s daily post included a screenshot of polling averages from FiveThirtyEight that showed Johnson 1.9 points ahead of Barnes. Barnes had been ahead in August, but saw his lead fade as September went on. 

The change in these candidates’ prospects has caught national attention. Reid J. Epstein reports Democrats Worry as G.O.P. Attack Ads Take a Toll in Wisconsin (‘Mandela Barnes, the party’s Senate candidate, is now wobbling in his race against Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent’): 

Democrats in Wisconsin are wringing their hands about how Mr. Barnes’s political fortunes have sagged under the weight of the Republican advertising blitz. Grumbling about his campaign tactics and the help he is receiving from national Democrats, they worry that he could be one of several of the party’s Senate candidates whose struggles to parry a withering G.O.P. onslaught could sink their candidacies and cost Democrats control of the chamber.

….

It has been an abrupt turnaround for Mr. Barnes since late summer, when he won the Democratic primary by acclimation and opened up a lead in polls over Mr. Johnson, who has long had the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent senator on the ballot this year. But the hail of attack ads from Mr. Johnson and allied super PACs has tanked Mr. Barnes’s standing, particularly among the state’s finicky independent voters.

Republicans have seized in particular on Mr. Barnes’s past progressive stances, including his suggestion in a 2020 television interview that funding be diverted from “over-bloated budgets in police departments” to social services — a key element of the movement to defund the police. Since then, Mr. Barnes has disavowed defunding the police and has called for an increase in funding.

Barnes likely needs a saturating message that’s half reassurance against Johnson’s charges and half reminder on how Johnson’s party has supported, and seeks, national limits on reproductive choices. Barnes was always going to get hit on his views about crime, and his campaign should have made better efforts to inoculate him on this issue. They didn’t, and October is late in the campaign to make the effort.

This libertarian blogger has never supported defending the police (the proposal is a blunt, lazy instrument of public policy), and other Democrats (the ones who dropped out for Barnes) would not have been similarly vulnerable.  

Barnes needs more than to remind voters of Johnson’s execrable record; he needs to reassure persuadable Wisconsin voters that he understands their worries over public safety. While some of these worries are overwrought, yet still these voters’ concerns need to be addressed to win the their support. 

If they are not convinced, Barnes will lose this race to one of America’s worst senators. 

Russian missile destroys Ukraine residential building in Zaporizhzhia:

Daily Bread, Elections, Gubernatorial Race 2022, US Senate Race 2022, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.5.22: Wisconsin’s Gubernatorial & U.S. Senate Polls

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 6:28 PM for 11h 30m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1846, First State Constitutional Convention Meets:

On this date Wisconsin’s first state Constitutional Convention met in Madison. The Convention sat until December 16,1846. The Convention was attended by 103 Democrats and 18 Whigs. The proposed constitution failed when voters refused to accept several controversial issues: an anti-banking article, a homestead exemption (which gave $1000 exemption to any debtor), providing women with property rights, and black suffrage.

The following convention, the Second Constitutional Convention of Wisconsin in 1847-48, produced and passed a constitution that Wisconsin still very much follows today.

Below are weighted polling averages from FiveThirtyEight for Wisconsin’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races.

(The next Marquette Law School Poll will be out on 10.12.22. In FiveThirtyEight’s assessment, the Marquette Law School Poll isn’t the most accurate pollster this election cycle. The Marquette Poll comes in as a solid A/B poll, but Public Policy Polling,  Beacon Research, and Trafalgar rank higher. The Marquette Poll is, however, the most famous poll within the state, having successfully marketed itself as a gold standard.)  

Below, FiveThirtyEight’s averages:

 

The Beatles ‘Love Me Do’ at 60:

City, Culture, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.4.22: The Same Idea Problem

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 6:30 PM for 11h 33m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 67.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. 

On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launches the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. 

Over the years, Whitewater officials have occasionally admitted that Whitewater has a same-ten-person problem. The aptly-named problem occurs when too few people play too may roles in a community. As there aren’t enough volunteers for all the available roles, the same people show up again and again.

There are thousands of people in Whitewater. The same-ten people problem is not one of demographics but rather a problem of culture. See The Solution to the ‘Same Ten People Problem.’

The problem is either that newcomers cannot participate (because someone else will not relinquish a role) or they do not wish to participate (because they’re expected only to acquiesce to incumbent members’ ideas). In both cases, a culture problem (this is my role for life or newcomers can join only if they conform to current practices) prevents community improvement.

The unwillingness or inability to accept newcomers as equals, including considering the newcomers’ points of view, is a principal reason that Whitewater has struggled since the Great Recession. 

Old Whitewater had an adaptability problem, indeed an unwillingness to believe that it needed to adapt at all, and so it has mostly faded away. But some obstinate, entitled residents remain. 

And so, and so, the government men and women (either elected or appointed) of Whitewater have a choice. Will they continue to think and act as the last generation has, following a course that has has left the city as a low-income community? Alternatively, will they at last look beyond a few to look at all residents of the city?

Free choices (in markets economic or cultural) are by their very nature not under any single person’s control or whim. Obvious point: if this libertarian blogger had the power to will the city in one direction or another, I would never do so. A power to compel like that is a dangerous, if not wicked, power. 

There are a few in this town, however, so adamant that they cannot accept even the slightest deviation from their tired, ineffectual orthodoxy under which well-fed private men insist on the use of public funds for their preferred business schemes. 

A few are sometimes able to get a smattering of others to join them, and using the crudest and most obvious methods they typically try to create an impression of widespread community concern. A small group that talks big does not make its ideas bigger or better. 

A good future, now and always, looks beyond special-interest demands. 

 Bear Feasts on Sweets After Breaking Into Chocolate Factory: 

Daily Bread, Foreign Affairs, Reading, Russia, Ukraine

Daily Bread for 10.3.22: Russia, Ukraine, and the Value of Expertise

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 68. Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 6:31 PM for 11h 36m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1990, the German Democratic Republic is abolished and becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany; the event is afterwards celebrated as German Unity Day. 

There are a thousand opinions about the Russia invasion of Ukraine, but that’s understandable. We are, after all, a nation of hundreds of millions, on a planet of billions.

Opinions about the war, however, are not all of the same quality and reliability. Some profess to advance military recommendations without any military background, and others claim to describe Putin or others in the Russian dictatorship with no background in Russian history, or Ukraine’s history and separate culture. 

We’ve been through this with the pandemic, haven’t we? Suddenly every other person became an epidemiologist, virologist, or public health expert. Why rely on those who went to medical school when, after all, everyone had ‘common sense’ and a repository of videos from Rumble.  

Those types have been an embarrassment to themselves and America. 

I’ve not held myself out as an expert on the pandemic because I’m not an expert in epidemiology or public health. I’ve not held myself out as a scholar of Slavic history and culture (a vast field) because I’m not a scholar of Slavic history. 

(Indeed, FREE WHITEWATER is, by design, a blog for all readers; it is not a blog for a particular field or profession. A blog of that latter type would be wholly different.)

People should, as the Whitewater School’s District motto once hoped, be engaged lifelong learners. Part of lifelong learning is reading carefully, among those others who have studied in specific and demanding fields. Lifelong learning does not mean believing — pretending, really — that anyone is an expert merely because he wishes to be. 

And so, and so — a reasonable, knowledgeable person realizes that he or she should read from among those who have made credible and creditable careers as experts in particular fields. One looks for the respect these experts have earned. (They may not always be right, as no one is always right, but they are a better starting point that a loon on a park bench or drunk on a barstool.) 

Tatiana Stanovaya is a creditable and credible expert of Russian politics and foreign policy. See Stanovaya’s bio.  Writing at Carnegie Endowment, she observes that Russia’s Elites Are Starting to Admit the Possibility of Defeat: 

When Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine back in February, many believed a Rubicon had been crossed after which the Russian president’s relationship with his elites would never be the same. It was then that Putin began to be seen as a desperate leader, no longer capable of normal interaction with the outside world.

Nonetheless, the feelings of despondency and doom that prevailed among the elites didn’t stop them from continuing to demonstrate loyalty to the president or from feeling collective anger at the West. It helped Putin’s case that many senior officials sincerely held Washington and Brussels responsible for the conflict, blaming them for pushing Russia so far that it had no choice but to take action.

In recent weeks, however, this fragile faith has been rocked by the humiliating Russian retreat from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the announcement of a partial mobilization that looks likely to become a full mobilization, and growing doubts over whether Russia can actually win this war. This raises the question of whether the Russian elites are prepared to stick with Putin until the bitter end, particularly amid growing threats to use nuclear weapons.

….

Putin is prepared to keep going until the bitter end and turn everyone into radioactive dust unless Russia is allowed to win in a way it deems satisfactory. The elites are, for now, still prepared to support Putin against Ukraine, but their belief that victory is inevitable is fading. And if there is to be no victory, that leaves two options: defeat, which would mean the collapse of the Putin regime and all the associated risks for the ruling elite, or the nuclear argument, which would mean a universal threat to physical survival.

Stanovaya does not suggest that Russia will fail, but instead observes that Russian elites now see failure as possible. 

 What’s in the Night Sky October 2022:

Daily Bread, Podcasts

Daily Bread for 10.2.22: Old Crime TV Becomes New Crime Podcast

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 6:33 PM for 11h 39m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1789, the Bill of Rights is sent to the states for ratification. 

There have been television shows about crimes for decades. They’ve found new life in a new medium. Josh Koblin reports Mystery Solved: ‘Dateline’ Finds Path From TV to Podcast Stardom (‘The true crime storytelling that has done so well for so long on television seems to have met a moment in an entirely new medium’): 

For years, television franchises and established news media institutions have taken turns trying to adapt to of-the-moment formats, whether digital video, newsletters or podcasts. Many times, the results are awkward and abandoned. “Pivot to video” and Facebook Live are bywords for news media experiments best forgotten.

And yet “Dateline” has transformed itself into a podcast powerhouse, churning out several original series a year, all of which have been hits. In addition, twice a week, “Dateline” opens its vault and turns old segments from the television show into podcasts. The archival material is also a success. On any given day, the “Dateline” podcast with the repurposed TV segments is usually among the top five podcasts on Apple’s charts.

What “Dateline” has done so well for so long on television — true crime, told with relish and deep reporting — appears to have met a moment in an entirely new medium.

“At a time where it is so hard for new television programs to break through, or for new brands to be established, the fact that ours seems to have renewed life? It’s great,” said Liz Cole, the executive producer of “Dateline,” who helps oversee both the TV show and the podcasts.

Listeners have downloaded “Dateline” podcast episodes nearly 800 million times since the first one appeared in 2019, NBC News said. Last year, the show beat out online heavyweights like ESPN, Barstool Sports and Crooked Media in Apple’s rankings of free podcast channels.

Of course, true crime and podcasts go hand in hand. The Hulu comedy “Only Murders in the Building” is explicitly a parody of the ubiquitousness of the genre. And there are plenty of other podcasts on the charts that center on bloody mysteries, with titles like “Morbid,” “Crime Junkie” and “My Favorite Murder.”

Still, the “Dateline” podcasts are helping the genre reach a new audience. The median age of viewers of the Friday night edition of “Dateline” is 63, according to Nielsen. On Spotify, the median age of a “Dateline” podcast listener is 41, according to data from Chartable, which was supplied by NBC News.

Consider Dateline’s Dark Valley: 

When film executive Gavin Smith vanishes, Los Angeles detectives search for clues amid reported sightings and suspicious circumstances. The case takes a dramatic turn when Gavin’s wife reveals painful secrets. Keith Morrison reports.