Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fuelled by brain chemistry.
The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges when a mother cradles her baby or when friends hug, fostering trust and affection. And now studies are showing oxytocin is important for cat-human bonding too.
Oxytocin plays a central role in social bonding, trust and stress regulation in many animals, including humans. One 2005 experiment showed that oxytocin made human volunteers significantly more willing to trust others in financial games.
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A February 2025 study found that when owners engaged in relaxed petting, cuddling or cradling of their cats, the owners’ oxytocin tended to rise, and so did the cats’ – if the interaction was not forced on the animal.
The researchers monitored oxytocin in cats during 15 minutes of play and cuddling at home with their owner. Securely attached cats who initiated contact such as lap-sitting or nudging showed an oxytocin surge. The more time they spent close to their humans, the greater the boost.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset is 6:10 for 11 hours 1 minute of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Association meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1780, the Great Hurricane of 1780 finishes after its sixth day, killing between 20,000 and 24,000 residents of the Lesser Antilles:
The hurricane struck Barbados likely as a Category 5 hurricane, with one estimate of wind gusts as high as 200 mph (320 km/h), before moving past Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Sint Eustatius, and causing thousands of deaths on those islands. Coming in the midst of the American Revolution, the storm caused heavy losses to the British fleet contesting for control of the area, significantly weakening British control over the Atlantic. The hurricane later passed near Puerto Rico and over the eastern portion of Hispaniola, causing heavy damage near the coastlines. It ultimately turned to the northeast and was last observed on October 20 southeast of Atlantic Canada. [Citations omitted]
Matt Levine writes a newsletter, Money Stuff, on American finance for Bloomberg, and one doesn’t have to be a financier to appreciate the depth of his insight. Yesterday’s edition discussed the limits of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other generative AI enterprises.
The honest answer is we have no idea. We have never made any revenue. We have no current plans to make revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. We have made a soft promise to investors that once we’ve built this sort of generally intelligent system, basically, we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you. [audience laughter] It sounds like an episode of Silicon Valley, it really does, I get it. You can laugh, it’s all right. But it is what I actually believe is going to happen.
It really is the greatest business plan in the history of capitalism: “We will create God and then ask it for money.” Perfect in its simplicity.
I began this section with a jokey maximalist vision of AI, “create God,” “an omniscient superintelligence,” that sort of thing. The jokey minimalist vision of AI is probably “ChatGPT is a blurry JPEG of the web”: Modern AI systems are approximately a synthesis of all human knowledge and communication, but given the way computers work, that means especially a synthesis of the internet, which is where you get the bulk of machine-readable human knowledge and communication. Ryan Broderick writes: “Think of ChatGPT as a big shuffle button of almost everything we’ve ever put online.” I once wrote about asking ChatGPT to pick stocks:
If you ask a modern publicly available large language model which stocks to buy, it will in some sense draw on all of human knowledge and its own powerful reasoning capacity to tell you which stocks to buy. But, among all of human knowledge, it might give extra weight to the knowledge on Reddit. And the knowledge on Reddit about what stocks to buy is “meme stocks.”
You can apply similar reasoning here. In a science fiction story, if you invented a superintelligent robot and asked it how to make money, it might come up with cool never-before-seen ideas, or at least massive fun market manipulation. But in real life, if you train a large language model on the internet and ask it how to make money, it will say “advertising, affiliate shopping links and porn.” That’s the lesson the internet teaches!
See Matt Levine, Revenue Model, Bloomberg’s Money Stuff (October 15, 2025).
Levine highlights the problem for OpenAI (and others): you start out hoping for a human version of divine omniscience — knowledge of all possible events and facts — but you’re doing so by relying on what humans write, mostly on the web. The limitations are obvious. There’s much that generative AI can do, but large language models are limited by, sadly, all-too-human writings.
And so, and so, Levine’s observations about using large language models apply to approaching problems everywhere, including in Whitewater, Wisconsin; you’re relying on what you’ve read of what others have written. If you’ve read well, all these years, then at least you’ve a model on which some derivations may be productively generated.
But if not, then someone who has read poorly (or scarcely at all) will begin to look inadequate compared with those who are truly more knowledgeable. That’s one effect of bringing in experienced development professionals to speak to the Whitewater Common Council these last ten months. One sees plainly that an overly entitled man, by contrast, will produce argumentation that seems to rely, metaphorically, on little better than advertising and affiliate links. (It also means that others who allow themselves to be tied to, and identified with, someone like that will begin from an impaired position…)
A security guard saved a woman from an oncoming tram in the city of Kayseri, Turkey. The city’s transit operator, Kayseri Transport, posted dramatic footage of the rescue on social media.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with morning showers and a high of 60. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset is 6:11, for 11 hours 3 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 31.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1815, Napoleon begins his exile on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Conflicts can escalate quickly for the ignorant, the emotional, or the undisciplined among us. Start raising tariffs, and you might find yourself in a trade war. Find yourself in a trade war, and you might notice one day — believe it or not! — that a trade war involves other nations retaliating:
Trump posted on Truth Social last night: “I believe that China purposefully not buying our soybeans, and causing difficulty for our soybean farmers, is an economically hostile act. We are considering terminating business with China having to do with cooking oil, and other elements of trade, as retribution.”
Talk of retribution is precisely the opposite of what markets had hoped for, and is a further about-turn from the White House on relations with Beijing. On Friday, Trump threatened 100% tariffs on its key trading partner, before issuing assurances that a deal will be reached. It comes as the latest export data for China shows Washington may not have as strong a hand as it believed in the trade war, with Chinese exporters reporting growth having focussed on trade with the rest of the world as opposed to the States.
Brandon Dawson, a manufacturing engineer from Santa Rosa, California, won the 52nd World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off with a massive 2,346-pound gourd.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset is 6:13, for 11 hours 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 41.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM, and the Finance Committee meets at 6:30 PM.
Farmers harvesting their crops this fall are also waiting to hear whether they can expect a check from the government.
The administration is reportedly eyeing $10 billion to $15 billion in aid to farmers. President Donald Trump has said he’d like to use tax revenue generated by tariffs to provide relief for farmers, who’ve lost a key soybean market due to the trade war with China. Yet the expected announcement has been pushed back indefinitely in the midst of the federal government shutdown.
Matt Rehberg operates a farm near the Wisconsin-Illinois border and is the vice president of the Wisconsin Soybean Association.
He says the boycott from China — which purchased around half of all U.S. soybean exports last year — has made this year especially hard for soybean farmers. But he believes bailout programs are only a temporary solution.
“We want markets. Markets are consistent. We can bet on them,” he said. “When you go to these ad hoc bailout programs, they definitely help. But it’s kind of like putting a Band-aid on a gunshot wound.”
Along with international trade uncertainty, farmers are also struggling due to a mix of low crop prices and high costs for things like fertilizer, making this an especially tough year for farm finances.
A survey of 1,034 farmers released in September by the National Corn Growers Association showed that nearly half believe the U.S. economy is on the brink of a farm crisis, and two-thirds are more concerned about their farm’s finances than a year ago.
The biggest and most powerful rocket ever built successfully made it halfway around the world while releasing mock satellites during its 11th test flight on Monday. The previous test flight in August — a success after a string of explosive failures — followed a similar path with similar goals.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:06 and sunset is 6:15, for 11 hours 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 52.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1903, the Boston Red Sox win the first modern World Series, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the eighth game (it was a best-of-nine series).
In this small city, as in places elsewhere, one encounters now and again common techniques of entrenched special interests. Two come to mind this morning.
False claims about lack of transparency. Maintaining open government principles is a challenge everywhere, but some governments do better than others. In Whitewater today the municipal government is more open than at any time in memory. Not perfect (as no institution is) but better by far than its predecessors.
And yet, and yet, when Modern and Open arrive, Old-Fashioned and Closed start complaining that they’re being cheated, deceived, hoodwinked, damn it.
Listen closely, and a special-interest faction of small-town cronyism will do what it can to level charges that it was not told something, did not know something, was denied information about something. These are the same men who for years concealed information on the old Community Development Authority, e.g., unfavorable audits, a cease and desist order, lost paperwork, firings, the terms of wasteful deals, the reasons for wasteful deals, etc. Now, however, they’ve found God, so to speak. (Having seemingly found a certain open-government faith, they’d do well to keep in mind the tenet of an older faith against bearing false witness.)
There’s often a simple solution for these types: read the agenda packet thoroughly and carefully before a meeting. This should not be too hard for men who position themselves as knowledgeable and professional. Agenda packets in Whitewater are written in English; it’s a common language on this continent.
Emphasis on specific, but minor, details. Special-interest men who for years showed no grasp of broad economic trends in Whitewater will, when criticizing those who do understand those trends, focus instead on minor, picayune, insignificant details. They likely do this for two reasons. First, because the minor, picayune, and insignificant are their familiar ground. Second, because they believe a focus on minor details makes them seem clever. (It doesn’t.)
So, for example, if someone were to present a design for a new passenger plane, they might ask a question about whether the seats were covered in stain-resistant fabric, whether the flight attendants received overtime pay for delayed flights, or whether anyone knew if the aerospace engineer’s spouse’s cousin’s next-door-neighbor once went to Whitewater High.
The proposed plane could take off, fly, and land perfectly well at a reasonable cost to meet a transportation need, yet they’d still keep complaining that no one should proceed with production until their questions were answered.
During Halloween and throughout the year, these techniques are little more than hocus pocus, all tricks and no treat.
A NASA research probe crash-landed in a Texas farm last week after being blown off course. The probe came down on the farm of Ann and Hayden Walter in Edmonson, prompting the family to call the local sheriff’s department.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset is 6:16, for 11 hours 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 62.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1984, Japan’s former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation, and is sentenced to four years in jail:
While his appeal lingered in the Court’s docket, Tanaka’s medical condition deteriorated. He announced his retirement from politics in October 1989, at the age of 71, in an announcement made by his son-in-law Naoki Tanaka. The announcement ended his 42-year career in politics; the remnants of his faction, now led by former Prime Minister Takeshita, remained the most powerful bloc within the LDP at the time of his retirement. In 1993, a number of members of his faction broke away from the LDP to form part of an Eight-party Alliance government under Morihiro Hosokawa.
Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District as of October 2025. Via Google Maps.
Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District stretches along the southeastern border between Wisconsin and Illinois, with most of the City of Whitewater within the district. A portion of the city, north of Lauderdale Drive, is in the 5th Congressional District.
Today, these are the boundaries of the 1st District. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ordered briefs on one of the complaints that requests the appointment of a three-judge panel to consider the plaintiffs’ claims that the state’s congressional districts are unlawfully gerrymandered and should be redrawn before the 2026 election. That complaint is Elizabeth Bothfeld et al. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2025CV002432 (Wis. Cir. Ct. Dane Cnty. July 21, 2025).
Walking along the broad pedestrian street that runs along the base of Athens’ famed Acropolis Hill, visitors can now enjoy something not seen in decades: an unobstructed, scaffolding-free view of the Parthenon temple.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset is 6:18, for 11 hours 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 73.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1958, NASA launches Pioneer 1, its first space probe, although it fails to achieve a stable orbit.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:02 and sunset is 6:20, for 11 hours 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1846, Triton, the largest moon of the planet Neptune, is discovered by English astronomer William Lassell:
Triton was discovered by British astronomer William Lassell on October 10, 1846, just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune. When John Herschel received news of Neptune’s discovery, he wrote to Lassell suggesting he search for possible moons. Lassell discovered Triton eight days later. Lassell also claimed for a period to have discovered rings. Although Neptune was later confirmed to have rings, they are so faint and dark that it is not plausible he saw them. A brewer by trade, Lassell spotted Triton with his self-built 61 cm (24 in) aperture metal mirror reflecting telescope (also known as the “two-foot” reflector). [Citations omitted]
Despite strong crop yields expected nationwide in 2025, high production costs and strained international markets continue to create market uncertainty for American farmers.
In Wisconsin, corn growers are expected to see record yields with U.S. corn production nationwide expected to be 13% higher than last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s September forecast.
While soybean production nationwide is slightly down from 2024, Wisconsin and several other states could still see record-high yields of the crop.
But with strong yield typically driving crop prices down, those low crop prices paired with high production costs and tense standoffs over President Donald Trump’s tariffs leave many American farmers uncertain about their economic outlook.
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Wisconsin Soybean Association President Doug Rebout told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that soybean farmers in the state are concerned because without China, the U.S. soybean industry lost a huge part of its market, causing prices to drop significantly.
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“Because of retaliatory tariffs, we are paying more for the products that we’re buying and we’re getting paid less for the products that we’re selling,” Rebout said, noting that a lot of equipment and equipment parts are imported from other countries. “It’s just a vicious cycle, and as farmers, we are caught in the middle.”
Additionally, plummeting commodity prices, high production costs and supply chain issues all have played a role in declining incomes for U.S. farmers in recent years. While total cash receipts and government payments are expected to increase, this doesn’t offset the losses for many crop farmers.
In Wisconsin, grain farmers will likely face negative margins in 2025 as expected prices for corn and soybeans are below the estimated break-even points for Wisconsin producers, according to projections by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer living in hiding after being barred from running against President Nicolas Maduro, has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Kenya’s capital is the only one in the world where you can see lions in the wild — without leaving the city. Nairobi National Park is pretty tiny by conservation standards, and its wildlife migrates in and out of the park through its unfenced southern border.
Tuesday, October 14th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of The Life of Chuck @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Drama/Fantasy/Whimsy Rated R (language)
1 hour, 51 minutes (2025)
Based on a short story by Stephen King. Praised for its deep, thought-provoking themes about life, death and human connection. Three chapters in the life of an ordinary man, Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston). Also stars Mark Hamill.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 6:21, for 11 hours 20 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM, and the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Commission meets at 5:30 PM.
This heartwarming documentary follows a passionate group of superfans—not in Wisconsin, but in the heart of Tokyo—who live, breathe, and bleed green and gold. From 4 AM kickoff parties to Lambeau pilgrimages, meet Cheppo, Suh, Ayaka, Ryuta, and the rest of Japan’s most dedicated Cheeseheads as they chase the dream across time zones and oceans. Heartfelt, hilarious, and wildly unexpected, “No Packers, No Life” is a celebration of fandom, friendship, and the unshakable belief that you don’t have to be born in Green Bay to call it home.
For Wisconsin native Ty Morse, his scheme to bring two dozen Green Bay Packers fans from the heart of Tokyo to Lambeau Field seemed surreal.
“It did not feel real until they arrived at Austin Straubel airport in Green Bay,” Morse told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “When they finally arrived, and then they saw everything was taken care of, that was literally the first moment for me that (I thought), ‘Wow. This is all happening.’”
Morse is one of the central figures in a new documentary following a group of fans dubbed the “Japanese Packers Cheering Team” and their first trip to Green Bay.
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Morse invited members of the cheering team to travel across the world and stay with two friends in Green Bay. Twenty-four members showed up. Morse said having the fans attend house parties in Green Bay and stay in his friends’ homes was an interesting wrinkle of their experience.
“In Japan, you don’t go to people’s homes often. The homes are small. Home life is very private,” Morse said. “So, I think that the component of hanging out at these homes, having meals with people, having a beer, sitting across the table in somebody’s kitchen or living room, that was a huge part of the bonding experience, as well.”
The Orchard Draw condors arrived in spectacular fashion, landing on the ridge and puttering around the cavity area in a wonderful closeup that showed off their bare skin patches and plumage while the chick remained off camera. After interacting and perching for a while, they climbed out of view and departed.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 62. Sunrise is 7:00 and sunset is 6:23, for 11 hours 23 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1862, the Confederate invasion of Kentucky is halted at the Battle of Perryville:
Following the Battle of Perryville, the Union maintained control of Kentucky for the rest of the war. Historian James M. McPherson considers Perryville to be part of a great turning point of the war, “when battles at Antietam and Perryville threw back Confederate invasions, forestalled European mediation and recognition of the Confederacy, perhaps prevented a Democratic victory in the northern elections of 1862 that might have inhibited the government’s ability to carry on the war, and set the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation which enlarged the scope and purpose of the conflict.”
Yesterday, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul announced, as expected, that he would not run for governor, but instead seek re-election:
Wisconsin’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul announced Tuesday that he will not run for governor, opting instead to seek a third term as the state’s top law enforcement official.
The governor’s race is wide open after Democratic incumbent Tony Evers, 73, announced this summer that he won’t seek reelection. The race will be the highest-profile contest on the ballot, but it has even greater significance this cycle as Democrats look to hold the office and take control of the Legislature for the first time since 2010.
More than half-a-dozen Democrats have announced plans to run in the August primary. Kaul would have been the de facto front-runner had he joined, given his large base of support and two statewide election victories.
The most prominent candidates in the Democratic primary scramble include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez; Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley; state Sen. Kelda Roys; state Rep. Francesca Hong; and former Wisconsin Economic Development Commission leader Missy Hughes. Former lieutenant governor and 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes said Tuesday in the wake of Kaul’s decision that he’s “strongly considering” entering the race.
In a re-election campaign for attorney general, as Richmond reports, Kaul will likely face Republican Eric Toney, Fond du Lac County’s district attorney. (Kaul defeated Toney in the close 2022 attorney general’s race, 50.64% to 49.31%.)
Also expected, as Richmond reports, Mandela Barnes is likely to enter the Democratic primary for governor. If so, then the WisDems primary field will have all its significant candidates (and a few long shots, too).
Is there a clear primary formula for the WisDems as there is for the WISGOP? One can see its outline even now. Two elements are present: (1) opposition to federal policy and (2) an ability to reassure Wisconsinites (including those not already committed to the WisDems) that that opposition will be practical and consistent over the candidate’s term.
As with the WISGOP, national issues will have an outsized impact on the 2026 WisDems primary race.
Data from the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC30) was used to create an animated flyover of the Xanthe Terra highland region on the Red Planet.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of 74. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset is 6:25, for 11 hours 26 minutes of daytime. The moon was full last night with 99.7 percent of its visible disk now illuminated.
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. [Source: Avalon Project at the Yale Law School]
Sometimes a revelation about a candidate’s writing or a reading list becomes a scandal, as with now-former candidate for governor Bill Berrien. Berrien professed conservative political views, but his private reading list showed an interest in topics and people he publicly derided. Berrien’s problem was his intolerant hypocrisy.
Today, in the Journal Sentinel, there’s a story about WISGOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany’s deletions to his private website (tomtiffany.com) that have removed far-right positions on reproductive rights, among other issues:
The Wayback Machine, which preserves snapshots of websites, shows that Tiffany had a webpage as of Sept. 17 that listed a bunch of hot-button issues and his positions on them. That includes abortion, gun rights, immigration, crime and communist China.
But check tomtiffany.com today, and you’ll notice that the “issues” page is gone, replaced by a list of bland “solutions,” such as “Protect what makes Wisconsin great” and “Lower costs for every Wisconsinite.” The new “solutions” page makes no mention of guns, one mention of immigration and China and nothing on the deficit or abortion.
But here’s what is interesting about this: Tiffany and his team made the switch in the days leading up to his announcement on Sept. 23 that he is running as a Republican for Wisconsin governor in 2026.
Well … that’s not a bold course to take, but it’s not hypocritical. But then, no one thinks Tom Tiffany (except perhaps Tom Tiffany) is a bold man in any event.
If, however, Tiffany’s campaign thinks that removing his views from his website will change the public understanding that he holds those views, then his campaign is confused. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — now a gubernatorial candidate — is and will be associated with those positions whether or not he removes them from a website. (Indeed, for WISGOP voters, those views are among the reasons that rank-and-file party members would support Tiffany.)
Tiffany will never seem moderate to voters. His past views will be part of myriad WisDem ads, mailers, and social media posts during the campaign. He’ll not be able to distance himself from those positions. (On the contrary, Tiffany’s success in a primary depends on convincing WISGOP voters that he holds these positions; his chance of success in a general election depends on maximizing turnout among those voters.)
It’s not a scandal that Tiffany’s campaign is downplaying his past positions, but it is a sign of his campaign’s misunderstanding of the upcoming race.
