Culture, Daily Bread, Politics, UW Madison, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 4.16.23: A Survey on Wisconsin’s Civic and Political Life (1 of 3)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 6:10 AM and sunset 7:38 PM for 13h 28m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1926, Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.
At the end of March, UW-Madison’s Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR) released the 2022 Civic Fracture & Renewal Survey. The survey of 3,031 Wisconsinites was the work of faculty, grad students, and staff affiliated with the CCCR. Dr. Michael Wagner, professor in UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, led the survey.
For today, the survey alone. Highlights and remarks will follow on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
Embedded below is the 2022 survey.
Cats, Coffee, Daily Bread, Good Ideas
Daily Bread for 4.15.23: BaristaCats Café
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny in the morning, with afternoon showers, and a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 7:37 PM for 13h 25m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 26.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1970, the ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely.
It says Saturday on the calendar, but cat aficionados know that today is Caturday, a day for appreciating felines. As it happily turns out, while all cities have cats, and some have cafés, Whitewater, Wisconsin has a cat café.
At 135 W Center St, Whitewater, Wisconsin, one finds the BaristaCats Café. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting (and will keep visiting) this nearly-magical space. Pride for one’s own city notwithstanding, BaristaCats is the finest cat cafe that I have ever visited. The design of the space, and more importantly the care with which cats and people are treated, produces a serene atmosphere.
On a recent visit, my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Sake, one of the cats available for adoption. He was a friendly fellow who greeted patrons in a violet-lighted main room. While we were there, some new cats arrived from a shelter, and the staff gently introduced those new arrivals from their carriers to the northside room.
Residents are not the only ones who have noticed this café. This Friday, CBS News broadcast about BaristaCats. I’ve embedded video of that broadcast below.
Easily and highly recommended, to be sure.
World’s Oldest Gorilla, Fatou, Celebrates 66th Birthday:
Daily Bread, Government Spending
Daily Bread for 4.14.23: Free Rides Aren’t Free Rides
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:36 PM for 13h 22m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1912, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins to sink.
It’s an economic axiom that free rides aren’t free. That’s true of literal rides on public transit and figurative rides through other government programs. While Whitewater neither has nor needs a public transit system, an article from Nicholas Dagen Bloom illustrates the value of income-targeted subsidies over blanket subsidies to all riders in Low-cost, high-quality public transportation will serve the public better than free rides.
(In Whitewater, an attempt in the early 2010s to fund a bus — and the serial justifications for it — is a good example of bad, and sometimes mendacious, public policy. Looking back, the late Aughts and early Teens were a time of weak public policy in the city. When Whitewater most needed good public policy ideas during and after the Great Recession, she sadly found herself with under-performing and over-promising city, district, and university officials.)
Bloom writes
Despite flashing warning signs, political support for public transit remains weak, especially among conservatives. So it’s not clear that relying on government to make up for free fares is sustainable or a priority.
For example, in Washington, conflict is brewing within the city government over how to fund a free bus initiative. Kansas City, the largest U.S. system to adopt fare-free transit, faces a new challenge: finding funding to expand its small network, which just 3% of its residents use
A better model
Other cities are using more targeted strategies to make public transit accessible to everyone. For example, “Fair fare” programs in San Francisco, New York and Boston offer discounts based on income, while still collecting full fares from those who can afford to pay. Income-based discounts like these reduce the political liability of giving free rides to everyone, including affluent transit users.
There we are: public services like transit should (and can) be supported on the basis of riders’ incomes. ‘Reducing the cost’ for all riders neither truly reduces the cost nor distributes those costs fairly.
A call to let’s do this! matters less than how are you going to do it? The latter is harder to achieve, and more important to a community, than the former.
First-ever black hole image ‘sharpened’ using machine learning:
Cats, Nature
Friday Catblogging: Mountain Lion and Kittens in Utah
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread, Demographics, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 4.13.23: Newcomers Account for Most Wisconsin Population Growth Since 2020
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:35 PM for 13h 20m 05s of daytime. The moon is in its third quarter with 49.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2006, someone photographs a rat in front of a toy piano, and that photograph goes on to become an annual April 13th meme (Neil Banging Out the Tunes) on the web.
Sarah Lehr reports Wisconsin has regained almost all the population it lost since 2020, but rebounds have been uneven (‘Wisconsin is attracting new residents, but post-pandemic growth rates vary widely by county’):
Wisconsin has regained almost all the population it lost since 2020, despite the fact that deaths are outnumbering births in the state.
But even as more people move to Wisconsin, the state’s post-pandemic population gains have been uneven. Milwaukee County continues to shrink, while the Madison area in Dane County is surging. And several rural counties in northern Wisconsin are seeing relatively high population growth rates, recently released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show.
Transplants account for statewide growth, as more Wisconsinites die than are born
Between the official U.S. Census count on April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, Wisconsin lost 13,624 people, a drop of about 0.23 percent.
But, by July 1, 2022, Wisconsin had regained most of that loss, according to the updated census estimates. The state had nearly 5.9 million residents in 2022, which was only 1,186 fewer people than were tallied just after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
New people relocating to Wisconsin — whether from overseas or from other states — accounted for much of the population rebound between 2021 and 2022, said John Johnson, a research fellow at the Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.
That’s because deaths have been exceeding births in Wisconsin every year since 2020.
“Even last year, which was an improvement for the state, we still had more deaths than births,” Johnson said. “Migration is going to be the driver of population change, growth or decline, going forward.”
….
Although Wisconsin has as a whole has attracted enough transplants in the last year to nearly make up for its post-2020 population drop, rebound patterns vary widely across the state.
Those divides could have lasting economic implications, as workforces grow or shrink. Population also translates to political power, since census counts are used to calculate representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and to help determine the boundaries of state and local political districts.
There’s a faction that would rather have fewer people, in the city, in the county, in the state. A preference for fewer, however, leads to lesser community prospects.
First wild beaver in Wales in years caught on hidden camera felling trees:
Business, City, Daily Bread, Food, Grocery, Press Release, Retail/Merchants
Daily Bread for 4.12.23: Aldi
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:34 PM for 13h 17m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1861, the Civil War begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
Whitewater last had a large, standalone grocery store in December 2015. When that Sentry grocery closed, Whitewater’s principal source for groceries became the nearby Walmart. This lack of a grocery has been a chronic source of residents’ disappointment in the years since. Chronic: persistent, long-standing.
(While the loss of a grocer has bothered me less than it has many others, it’s obvious that it has bothered many others in Whitewater. If anything, bothered is an understatement of community disappointment.)
And so, and so, Whitewater had good news yesterday, in a press release that announced the prospect of an Aldi market on the west side of town:
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: John Weidl
Phone: (262) 473-0104
Email: citymanager@whitewater-wi.govALDI Has Submitted Plans for a Grocery Store
Whitewater, Wis. April 11, 2023 – ALDI has submitted plans to the City of Whitewater for a 20,000 square foot grocery store on the west side.
Since 1976, ALDI’s number one priority has been to deliver great quality food at the lowest possible prices. ALDI is committed to making a difference in the communities they serve by offering market-leading wages and benefits for employees, using environmentally friendly building materials and stores to promote sustainability, and giving back to the community through product and financial donations.
The ALDI proposed location is the current site of Hawk Bowl and Hawk Apartments at 1380 and 1398 West Main Street. The property is zoned B-1 and does not need to be rezoned. The Pinnacle Engineering Group in Brookfield, which is working on behalf of ALDI, submitted plans for a grocery store on the site on April 10.
Chris Bennett, Neighborhood Services Director, shares, “Bringing a grocery store into town is long overdue. It is exciting to see it finally happening in Whitewater. A devoted standalone grocery store will be an asset to the community.”
The developer is proposing to demolish the existing structures, clean up the site, install stormwater and other utilities, and create two developable pads. The eastern pad will result in a 20,000 square foot ALDI store and, as proposed, the other developed pad on the west side will be retained by the original property owners for future development opportunities.
The City of Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission (PARC) will conduct site plan review at their next meeting on May 8, 2023, and render its verdict. The site plan review is the only procedural matter ALDI must go through to receive clearance to build. Chris Bennett, Neighborhood Services Director, further explains, “During site plan review members of the Plan Commission will examine the proposed building for architectural integrity – it looks good and as it should – and ensure that landscaping, traffic, lighting, parking, street access and other factors are in line with city ordinance.”
Once PARC renders its verdict and accepts the ALDI design, then ALDI representatives will apply for building permits. Also, the City of Whitewater staff will begin working with the developer to outline an agreement to resolve the environmental contamination (asbestos) and redevelopment of the site. This agreement would then need to be vetted and approved by the Common Council, most likely in May or June.
The internal review by city staff will continue throughout the building process, with engineers and public works personnel ensuring the building and site are constructed in compliance with the city code. The ALDI plans are available for review on the second floor of the municipal building at the Public Works/Neighborhood Services counter.
John Weidl, Whitewater City Manager, shares, “Staff is unanimously supportive of this project for its immediate impact providing vital access to affordable food and long-term investment in the new tax base and jobs for the community.”
The City of Whitewater provides efficient and high quality services which support living, learning, playing and working in an exceptional community. Visit www.whitewater-wi.gov for community information and updates.
While I’ve never been to an Aldi market, they have a devoted clientele, and Dana McMahan’s review published at NBC News sees the grocer favorably.
There are steps yet ahead, including at Whitewater’s Planning Commission, but the prospects for a standalone Aldi look favorable.
The return of a grocery would be a benefit to Whitewater, overcoming a years-long retail deficiency in this small town. Aldi would prove to be a welcome addition to the community.
Helicopters on Mars — NASA explains what’s next after Ingenuity’s success:
City, Daily Bread, Haiku, Local Government, School District
Daily Bread for 4.11.23: Tension (Now Often Needless) Didn’t End with the Pandemic
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:33 PM for 13h 14m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Aquatic Fitness Center Subcommittee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1945, American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The pandemic will soon end (as a national emergency declaration), but agitation and dyspepsia remain as strong as ever. For Whitewater and other places across America, too much is overwrought and under-thought. Far from overcoming the tensions of the pandemic, we’ve an edgy few approaching immediate concerns with pandemic-level stress, frustration, and suspicion.
It’s as though they’ve become addicted to (misplaced) intensity. Along the way, these few are exaggerating short-term problems but offering few long-range solutions.
Whitewater has always been a beautiful but rough-and-tumble place, yet many of these latest kerfuffles are notably needless and unproductive to the city’s future.
I asked an AI chatbot to write a haiku on lingering post-pandemic tensions, and here’s what it crafted:
Silent streets still stand,
Post-pandemic stress echoes,
Small town’s heart heavy.
About right, it seems.
Deadly avalanche rolls down mountain in French Alps:
Daily Bread, Reasoning, Rhetoric, Twitter
Daily Bread for 4.10.23: Good and Bad Argumentation
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 69. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:31 PM for 13h 11m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 80.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
The canvass of the recent Whitewater Unified School District election takes place at 1 PM, and Whitewater’s Planning & Architectural Board meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement is signed in Northern Ireland.
Matt Taibbi became involved in a project of Elon Musk’s to discredit Twitter’s prior management as biased. Musk called this project the Twitter Files to give it a dramatic flair. As it turned out, the Twitter Files project was more bad dinner theater than high drama.
Watch below, to see what happens when Mehdi Hasan, skilled in argumentation, questions Taibbi about the Twitter Files. (Taibbi has since had a falling out with Musk over recent Twitter policies, but Musk could not have been impressed watching Taibbi stumble again and again in defense of Musk’s supposedly grand project.)
This is what happens when someone skillful (Hasan) debates someone who’s not (Taibbi).
Gamer Aims to See All of Animal Crossing’s Art Collection in Real Life:
Music
Monday Music: Sweatson Klank, Yves Klein Blue
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread, Holiday
Daily Bread for 4.9.23: Happy Easter
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Easter in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:21 AM and sunset 7:30 PM for 13h 08m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1959, NASA announces the selection of the United States’ first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the “Mercury Seven.“
Easter with the Taizé Community:
Art, Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 4.8.23: Making a Masterpiece… with a Vintage Typewriter
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 60. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:29 PM for 13h 06m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1820, the Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.
Making a Masterpiece… with a Vintage Typewriter:
The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is not actually as old as you might think. It was coined in 1921 by advertising executive Fred R. Barnard to promote his agency’s work.
But more than 100 years on, artist James Cook has turned this idea on its head, using thousands of words to make his typewritten drawings.
The 26-year-old from Essex, England creates shading, texture, perspective, and occasionally even splashes of color, in all his intricate illustrations. But not once does his hand hold a pencil or clasp a paintbrush. Instead, his fingers tap the keys of one of his 63 vintage typewriters.
The first typewriter was patented in 1868 and the World’s last remaining factory, in Mumbai, closed its doors in 2011. So part of James’ trade is seeking out parts, replacements and the all important typewriter ribbons. Luckily, members of the public regularly donate preloved machines to his growing collection.
Runaway black hole ‘leaves behind’ massive streak of stars in its wake:
Daily Bread, Economy, Employment
Daily Bread for 4.7.23: National Labor Market Added 236,000 Jobs in March
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Good Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 7:28 PM for 13h 03m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1921, AT&T engineer Herbert Ives transmits the first long-distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).
Abha Bhattarai and Lauren Kaori Gurley report Labor market adds 236,000 jobs in March, powering economy on (‘the March jobs numbers mark the 27th straight month of solid growth’):
Employers churned out 236,000 jobs in March, shoring up the economy through a period of increasing financial instability and inflation, as a resilient labor market continues to prop up the economy against all odds.
….
American workers, and their spending prowess, have driven the U.S. economy through incredible obstacles: a banking crisis that took down three institutions and threatened broader financial instability; higher interest rates that have chilled the housing market and parts of the financial industry; sweeping tech industry layoffs, with major employers cutting more than 160,000 jobs in three months; and persistent inflation that’s made groceries and rent much more expensive, particularly for the nation’s most vulnerable.
“The labor market remains the pillar of strength in the economy,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist at Glassdoor. “Americans are employed, they’re getting paychecks, which of course keeps consumer spending healthy and keeps the rest of the economy running.”
Despite the economic head winds, employers — many of whom have struggled to fill openings — are continuing to hire or at least keep the workers they do have, even as business slows.
Ukrainians Under Fire Refuse to Leave:
Cats
Friday Catblogging: Cat Becomes Cadbury Bunny
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s about time!