A new year begins in Whitewater with partly sunny skies and a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:31 for 9h 06m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 73.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Sunday in Whitewater will see flurries and ice with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:30 for 9h 05m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 80.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1759, Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:30 for 9h 04m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1916, Russian mystic and advisor to the Tsar Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is murdered by a loyalist group led by Prince Felix Yusupov.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:29 for 9h 04m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
The two consultants — University of California, Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman and Carnegie Mellon University postdoctoral fellow Jonathan Cervas — may not be household names in Wisconsin, but they have played prominent roles in settling map disputes in other states.
In Wisconsin, they’ll weigh in on whether the maps abide by the court’s standard that any new maps contain equally populated districts; be bounded by county, precinct, ward or town lines; include only contiguous territory; be as compact as possible; and comply with federal law.
They’ll also assess whether the maps preserve communities of interest, reduce municipal splits and are drawn so that no party benefits more than the other.
On Tuesday, the consultants sent out a letter to parties in the case specifying how they will evaluate the proposed maps. They called for each party to note themselves when their proposed maps may go up against one of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s proposed metrics, and said they’ll independently verify each claim.
The new maps must be submitted by Jan. 12, and the professors’ evaluations are due by Feb. 1.
AC [Alex Crowe of Morning Edition]: There’s going to be a big fight now over drawing some new maps. With this ruling, are we going to get new maps right away before the election in 2024? What does that process look like?
RK [Rich Kremer of WPR]: The court didn’t immediately draw new legislative districts to replace those deemed unconstitutional, but like you said, they have to be in place prior to the 2024 elections. Justice Karofsky said she’s hopeful that the GOP-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will agree on new maps.
In the meantime, they’re going to be proceeding toward adopting what they call remedial maps. What that means is in a separate court order, the majority laid out deadlines for maps and they appointed two national experts to oversee the process. Parties in the case have until Jan. 12 to submit remedial maps. These consultants have until Feb. 1 to file a report on the competing proposals.
The majority also said it will consider partisan impact when evaluating the remedial maps. But Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said in recent months that the U.S. Supreme Court will have the last word on the redistricting litigation in Wisconsin. This week, he said the Legislature will pursue all federal issues arising out of the case.
And so, and so — there are state processes certain to take place, and federal litigation likely to take place.
After 1,000 Martian days of exploration, NASA’s Perseverance rover is studying rocks that show several eras in the history of a river delta billions of years old. Scientists are investigating this region of Mars, known as Jezero Crater, to see if they can find evidence of ancient life recorded in the rocks. Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley provides a guided tour of a richly detailed panorama of the rover’s location in November 2023, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument.
Composed of 993 individual images and 2.38 billion pixels, this 360-degree mosaic looks in all directions from a location the rover science team calls “Airey Hill.” Portions of the rover itself are visible in the scene, appearing more distorted toward the edges as a result of the image processing.
A color enhancement applied to the image increases contrast and accentuates color differences. By approximating what the scene would look like under Earth-like lighting conditions, the adjustment allows mission scientists to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. The view on Mars would be darker and more reddish. The panorama can be explored and downloaded at: https://go.nasa.gov/3tmJnGB.
Our feline friends may now be the toast of the internet and social media, but they have also long served as subjects and inspirations to artists all the way back to the Middle Ages. Renoir has captured the blissful languor of the cat, just as Picasso depicted its playful savagery and Chagall its kineticism. And that’s not mentioning Louis Wain, who enriched the genre with the sheer volume of his anthropomorphized cat paintings.
But sadly, not all artists get cats. In fact, some have turned out artworks that portray them less like our furry housemates and more inexplicably strange, even grotesque creatures. Cats are weird, but surely not this weird. Below, we bring you seven times artists got these purrballs wrong—so wrong.
A young woman shown three-quarters length seated to right, holding a swaddled cat on her lap and preparing to feed it with a spoon; a steaming bowl on the table to left; curtain in the background; before clock added on the wall behind and phial and other implements on the table. 1772
Hand-coloured mezzotint
Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:28 for 9h 03m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Universities of Wisconsin Regents unanimously voted yesterday evening to fire UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow over Gow’s appearance with his wife, Carmen Wilson, in several pornography videos. The story, understandably, has attracted national attention. Never a dull moment in the Badger State.
Gow, 63, and his wife, Carmen Wilson, appear in videos on several porn websites using “Sexy Happy Couple” as the account name, a moniker also used on at least two social media accounts.
The couple also published two books under pseudonyms detailing their experiences in the adult film industry. Both books and the social media accounts feature photos clearly showing Gow and Wilson.
….
The couple’s account on X, formerly Twitter, hinted at their hobby: “The Passionate plant-powered couple cooking, conversing, and shooting with top adult video stars. Visit our LoyalFans and OnlyFans sites for fully explicit scenes!”
Gow and Wilson have six videos on OnlyFans that feature adult film stars, according to descriptions of the videos. They also appear on at least two other porn websites, PornHub and XHamster. Some videos have more than 200,000 views. All videos were posted in the last two months.
Liam Beran of the Daily Cardinal offers more detail:
The couple has posted nine videos on their Youtube channel Sexy Healthy Couple — described as “a plant-powered couple [making] delicious vegan food with top adult stars,” per a channel description — with the first posted on Dec. 9, 2023, as first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The videos feature Gow and Wilson making recipes alongside adult film entertainers and small segments of suggestive material.
The channel’s Twitter account advertises “fully explicit scenes” on their OnlyFans account.
In one video, Gow shows a book entitled “Monogamy with Benefits: How Porn Enriches Our Relationship,” which he says he wrote with Wilson. The book is listed under pen names Geri and Jay Hart, which are described on Amazon as “pen names of a married woman and man who serve in executive positions at two well-known organizations in the U.S.”
“Not our real names, because we’re still forced to kinda lay low on that, but someday,” Gow said in the Dec. 13 video.
Properly speaking, if Gow wanted to describe ongoing concealment in the present, he would use lie low, not lay low (past tense). Lay low would correctly describe prior concealment, but then again Gow might have been using lay low as wordplay to describe the particulars of his lifestyle. Perhaps chancellors in La Crosse are crafty that way.
The Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman stated after Gow’s dismissal that
“Upon my recommendation, the UW Board of Regents today terminated Dr. Joe Gow from his position as chancellor of UW-La Crosse effective immediately. In recent days, we learned of specific conduct by Dr. Gow that has subjected the university to significant reputational harm. His actions were abhorrent.
“As a tenured faculty member, Dr. Gow will be placed on paid administrative leave as he transitions into his faculty role at UW-La Crosse. However, I have filed a complaint this evening with interim Chancellor Betsy Morgan regarding Dr. Gow’s status as a tenured faculty member, asking that such status be reviewed. In addition, an outside law firm has been engaged to undertake a fulsome investigation of the matter. We anticipate the complaint will be considered in the normal course as dictated by Wis. Admin. Code Ch. 4.”
While one can understand that Gow’s behavior is embarrassing to the Regents, Rothman’s use of abhorrent (lit., inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant) seems a bit much for a public university system that has over many years tolerated far worse than anything Gow has done. (All Gow’s actions were, after all, apparently weird-but-consensual.)
Gow, himself, has few regrets, as Kelly Meyerhofer reports:
He wishes he hadn’t self-censored that part of his life for so long, fearing his secret would lead to his being shunned by the higher education community.
After years of hearing UW leaders profess the importance of free speech, Gow decided to test that commitment. He felt the timing was apt, with months left in his chancellorship and plans to return next fall as a faculty member.
“I felt a little bit more open about ‘let’s raise these free speech issues and see how the board responds,’ and now we know,” he said.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:27 for 9h 03m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1929, Soviet General Secretary Stalin orders the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” leading to a Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kulaks (prosperous peasants) and their families.
In order to get the U.S. Supreme Court to look at the case, the Legislature and its allies will need to make the argument that there was a violation of federal law. That’s because, explained Rob Yablon, University of Wisconsin Law School professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative, the core legal claim in the case — contiguity — is a matter of state law.
The case brought to the court argued the maps violate Wisconsin’s Constitution because some legislative districts include pieces of land that are not connected.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has the last word on state law questions,” Yablon said.
A request for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a state Supreme Court decision (or a federal appeals court decision) is known as a petition for certiorari, or cert petition. Under U.S. Supreme Court rules, four of nine justices must vote to accept such a case.
“(The majority) did a really intentional job of sticking to very narrow state constitutional issues, which has the effect of insulating a lot of the decision from U.S. Supreme Court review,” said Daniel Suhr, a Republican attorney who served in former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration. “When a case is decided on only state constitutional grounds, there’s not a U.S. constitutional hook for the Supreme Court to rely on in intervening.”
In their story, Opoien and Beck consider two principal arguments for federal intervention (Protasiewicz’s participation in the Wisconsin decision and if any new maps have an unlawful racial bias) but report through interviewed experts that both lines of argument have uncertain prospects.
In any event, while it’s four to take the case, it’s five to overturn on federal grounds.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 51. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:27 for 9h 02m 44s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin’s labor force continues to grow, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The total number of non-farm related jobs across Wisconsin hit a record high of more than 3 million during the month of November.
That’s more than 32,000 additional jobs compared to the same time last year, and an increase of 1,700 compared to October, according to an analysis of the preliminary data from the state’s Department of Workforce Development.
“If you’re a job seeker, this is a fantastic time. If you’re trying to hire, it’s a little tougher,” DWD economist Scott Hodek said Thursday. “That’s why DWD and the state are doing so many things to try and get everybody into the labor force and skilled-up as much as possible.”
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was 3.3 percent last month, up a tenth of a percent from October.
That’s lower than the national average of 3.7 percent. And it remains far below the average of the last three decades.
Christmas in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:26 for 9h 02m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1776, George Washington and the Continental Army cross the Delaware River at night to attack Hessian forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey, the next day.
A hand-colored portrait of the Trimpey family cat, Mary, posed by a small Christmas tree. The tree is decorated with ribbon garland and there is a toy mouse and ornament at the base of the tree.
Christmas Eve in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:25 for 9h 02m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:25 for 9h 01m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 45. Sunrise is 7:22 and sunset 4:24 for 9h 01m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1864, Savannah, Georgia, falls to the Union’s Army of the Tennessee, and General Sherman tells President Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”
Whitewater has a pool and fitness center, and has had one for many years. The local school district owns the building and the city manages the pool. Negotiations for a new agreement between those two parties have dragged on for centuriesdecades a long time.
Commentary, however, is not so constrained. And so, and so: These protracted negotiations have long ago descended into farce. What’s wrong with some of these people? Honest to goodness.
I have advocated for months in favor of an agreement. SeeThe Pool (‘The rational course is a settlement that assures ongoing operation at minimal cost while further discussions on medium and long-term solutions are crafted. A reduction in political temperature — down to, let’s say, negative 30 Fahrenheit — would serve this community well’), Prioritization in a Small Town (There’s a tendency in Whitewater for people to flit from issue to issue, supposed crisis to crisis. For example, is there a need to address the substantive quality of a Whitewater public education, an athletic field, or a pool? Is there a need for housing, to address poverty, or to improve the lakes, etc.? These and other matters are important, but which matters more, and in which order should they be addressed?’), and Chronologies(‘From the school board, this has stopped being responsible dealmaking and has descended into negotiations as a fetish. Those who wish to be taken seriously behave seriously. These board changes aren’t serious; they’re ridiculousness cosplaying as seriousness’).
And now, and now… the Whitewater Unified School District describes its view of the negotiations:
To which the City of Whitewater comprehensively responds in a 49-page reply (link and see embed at the end of this post).
A few key points.
This matter should have been resolved months ago.
This matter was not, and could not, have been resolved by a councilman and a school board member sitting in the middle of a room tryin’ to hash all this out. It’s about a detailedcontract, and hugging it out wasn’t going to work.
Nothing about this matter will be settled by a ‘save the pool’ committee. A superintendent with an evident will to power was always going to walk all over that tiny band. See More on Messaging in Whitewater (‘At a council meeting about a month ago, a resident pointed out that the City of Whitewater’s success in moving toward a resolution of the funding dispute for the pool rested with Whitewater’s city manager, John Weidl. You know, although I’m not in the habit of touting the public sector, the resident’s observation is spot on. There was a ‘Save the Pool Committee’ formed in the winter or late spring of this year, not long before the April spring elections. That committee held a few of its own meetings, and leading members of that group attended a few public meetings, but it contributed next to nothing to the work that moved pool negotiations along’).
The city administration suggested arbitration months ago; it would have been more economical than protracted negotiations.
Money spent on the pool is a serious matter; time lost when this district’s board president discusses a pool rather than education is irrecuperable.
Finally, the nuttiest development so far is the appearance on the Whitewater Common Council dais of the school district’s press release before the latest council meeting.
Here’s the reporting on the mysterious placing of those documents on the council table:
Responding to questions posed by WhitewaterWise, Whitewater City Manager John Weidl said that he was first made aware of the district’s statement when he found a copy “sitting with my (Tuesday common council) agenda packet materials at the dais.”
He noted that the council president, upon seeing the distributed statement, asked about its appropriateness as a handout.
Weidl said he told the council president that handing the statement out without it undergoing the appropriate process for inclusion on a council meeting agenda would be a violation of the city’s transparency ordinance.
Said Weidl: “I further explained that I would have the city clerk enter a copy of what was received into the public record at the next available opportunity.”
Weidl added, that, to “everyone’s credit, the paper copies were collected and given to the clerk.”
Wait, what? How did copies of the district’s press release appear at the council table before the recent council meeting?
Did Whitewater’s superintendent, ensconced in the district’s office, snap her fingers and summon one of her many elves to scamper across town to deliver the press release?
And if so, did anyone see School Board President Larry Kachel anywhere near the city council table before the meeting?
The memo from the city administration in reply to the district’s press release appears below:
On the path to Mars, nearly 19 million miles from Earth, Taters the cat got his big break.
The orange tabby starred in the first video streamed from deep space, a successful NASA experiment that marked a milestone for advancing humans’ ability to send communications from beyond Earth’s orbit.
A playful clip of Taters, who belongs to a NASA employee, was sent from a spacecraft to Earth last week, the agency announced Monday. Soon, scientists say, the same laser technology that beamed Taters to an observatory in California could allow astronauts to send videos from Mars.
The innovation could transform how spacecraft communicate on interplanetary missions, NASA said, and it is already being prepared for use by the next astronauts who go to the moon. It would allow broadband video, scientific information and high-definition imagery to be sent home from distances far beyond the moon, and at high speeds.
“What we’ve done is taken this technology that’s been used in satellites orbiting near-Earth and around the moon … and extended that range out to deep space,” said Malcolm Wright, flight laser lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This demonstration we just did … is really showing the ability of the technology.”
Tuesday, December 26th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Oppenheimer @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Biography/Drama/History
Rated R (sexuality, nudity, language)
3 hours, 1 minute (2023)
The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. Stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Robert Downey, Jr.