What exists is a matter of public opinion  ( 28 min )

Claudel Moore pleaded no contest to the voluntary manslaughter of Anthony Joshua “Josh” Fisher III over a $600 debt. Fisher's family said they were “shattered” and that the eight-year prison sentence was not enough.  ( 28 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 min )

Michael O’Reilley and Linda Feldman, both former Alameda County public defenders, said “I do” in a sunlit ceremony Saturday inside The Ivy on Dwight Way.  ( 30 min )

The party moved its headquarters to South Berkeley in the late 1960s, a chapter recounted in the exhibit on view at the Central Library.  ( 28 min )

Fullerton was an educator, editor and progressive activist who worked on Ron Dellums' first Congressional campaign and tutored students locally, including at King Middle School.  ( 28 min )

The tool presents users with a 3D model they can then manipulate to, the creator says, bypass Discord's age verification system.  ( 4 min )

A Kafkaesque saga in which the government has failed to produce critical video footage has reached new levels of absurdity.  ( 7 min )

A new study indicates that vast oceans of hydrogen are locked deep inside our planet, helping to explain a strange “density deficit” and shedding light on the origin of life.  ( 5 min )

Kylie Brewer isn't unaccustomed to harassment online. But when people started using Grok-generated nudes of her on an OnlyFans account, it reached another level.  ( 7 min )

Ring is back with a feature for scanning your neighborhood; we bought a Super Bowl ad; and how Lockdown Mode stopped the FBI.  ( 4 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Criticize the government online? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) might ask Google to cough up your name. By abusing an investigative tool called "administrative subpoenas," DHS has been demanding that tech companies hand over users' names, locations, and more. We're explaining how companies can stand up for users—and covering the latest news in the fight for privacy and free speech online—with our EFFector newsletter. For over 35 years, EFFector has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil liberties, and the law. This latest issue tracks our campaign to expand end-to-end encryption protections, a bill to stop government face scans from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and others, and why Section 230 remains the best available system to protect everyone’s ability to speak online. Prefer to listen in? In our audio companion, EFF Senior Staff Attorney F. Mario Trujillo explains how Homeland Security's lawless subpoenas differ from court orders. Find the conversation on YouTube or the Internet Archive. LISTEN TO EFFECTOR EFFECTOR 38.3 - 🗣 Homeland Security Wants Names Want to stay in the fight for privacy and free speech online? Sign up for EFF's EFFector newsletter for updates, ways to take action, and new merch drops. You can also fuel the fight against unlawful government surveillance when you support EFF today!  ( 3 min )

Surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement “free” access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. The result is predictable: serious accountability gaps and data pipelines to other entities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that expose millions of people to harm. The cost of “free” surveillance tools — like automated license plate readers (ALPRs), networked cameras, face recognition, drones, and data aggregation and analysis platforms — is measured not in tax dollars, but in the erosion of civil liberties.  The cost of “free” surveillance tools is measured not in tax dollars, but in the erosion of civil liberties. The collection and sharing of our data quietly generates de…  ( 10 min )

As the associate vice provost for the Office of Asynchronous Online Courses for Student-Centered High-Impact Learning (OAOCSCHIL, an office we created in the last few years after realizing how lucrative these things are), I want to address a growing concern on campus: the rumor that asynchronous online classes are “basically a scam.” I understand the confusion. Outsiders are quick to pass judgment on these courses stocked with hastily recorded video lectures from 2020, auto-graded multiple-choice quizzes, and reflection message boards that are now 87 percent bots talking to other bots. Because there are no scheduled meetings with professors or classmates, and grading consists of counting whether students clicked the correct buttons, the fact that we charge tuition for the privilege of par…  ( 9 min )

A quart of ice cream every hour? No. Any processed food? No. What about the processed food advertised during the Super Bowl? No. Really? Not Pringles, or Dunkin’ Donuts, or the chips from the Lay’s commercial about the retiring farmer that made me cry? Still no. How about the beer for sale at the football stadium? No. Even the Budweiser from the ad with the eagle and horse, which looked like Pegasus, that made me cry? That is also a no from Mike Tyson. Anything fudgy that makes people feel fudgy? Definitely not. What about the single salty tear that runs down your face when you cry? No, the sodium content is too high. RFK Jr.’s new inverted food triangle ends the war on protein, but my doctor says to limit my cholesterol intake. Should I still consume more cheese, meat, and whole-fat milk? Yes! MAHA! So I can have cheese even if it’s processed? Yes. No. Trick question. What if RFK Jr. brings a hunk of meat to a Super Bowl party in his bare hands, and insists that fresh, raw protein is the best protein, and starts tearing the hunk of unidentified animal flesh into ribbons, gulping it down, and screaming that it tastes like chicken? No. Even Mike Tyson isn’t eating that. How about a very aggressively bitten carrot? Yes. A very aggressively bitten apple? Yes. A very aggressively bitten carrot or apple that you chew with your mouth open? Yes. What about a very aggressively bitten apple that you chew alongside a friend who is also aggressively biting and chewing an apple? Hell yes! A very aggressively bitten human ear? No comment.  ( 7 min )

The way people are misconstruing this prostitution sting mirrors the way ICE tries to mislead us about deportation stings.

We don’t often call people stupid. Unlike its sibling concepts of dumbness and idiocy, stupidity isn’t really a personality trait. Of course, you might think someone is stupid, but when we use the word, we tend to limit it to moments of stupidity. We say, “Well, that was a stupid thing to do” or “You’re being stupid.” Stupidity is a blip. In fact, somewhat ironically, stupidity is often defined in contrast to otherwise normal and intelligent activities. We say “you’re being stupid” because we expect the person to be sensible otherwise. Stupidity is not tied to IQ — as dumbness is — or the ability to assess risks — as being foolish is. Stupidity is an action, one defined by its implications. A Nobel Prize-winning professor can be stupid. A five-year-old can be stupid. We can all be stupid. …  ( 8 min )

We describe electricity as a flow, but that’s not what happens in a typical wire. Physicists have begun to induce electrons to act like fluids, an effort that could illuminate new ways of thinking about quantum systems. The post Physicists Make Electrons Flow Like Water first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

One of the most important lessons we learn from studying the Universe is that none of the sources of light that we see — none of the stars, galaxies, stellar remnants, quasars, or heated matter — will continue to shine forever. After a finite amount of time, anything powered by nuclear fusion or infalling matter will run out of fuel. Anything that emits light because it’s hot will cool, and once it’s cooled enough, it won’t emit detectable light signatures any longer: not only ultraviolet and visible light, but infrared, microwave, and even radio emissions will eventually cease. Every point-like and every extended light source, even though they shine brilliantly and ubiquitously today, will someday be snuffed out. For stars, there are three main fates that a star can have, all of which are…  ( 17 min )

The great management guru Peter Drucker wrote about the need to observe how people work, identify their needs, and then translate that need into demand for something better. “The only purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”  Design firm IDEO and its CEO, Tim Brown, spent a career popularizing human-centered design and integrating it into corporate strategy—but what were the results? If it’s such a natural thing to do, why don’t we see more successes on the level of Uber, Airbnb, iPhone, Fitbit, eBay, and PayPal? The problem is that conventional research methods don’t uncover how people work and, importantly, how people work around problems to create jury-rigged solutions that satisfy them, at least for a time. So their needs may be obfuscated, obscured even, from them!  For …  ( 9 min )

In 2015, the New York Times ran a “Modern Love” column that might have made it into your inbox. The title, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” apparently tapped into some of our collective anxieties and quickly went viral. In the essay, writer Mandy Len Catron tells the story of using a set of increasingly intimate questions to get to know a potential romantic partner. The 36 questions, actually developed many years prior as an experimental research tool by Arthur Aron and colleagues, are designed to accelerate close connection between two people. They start with “easy” ones, like Would you like to be famous? In what way? (#2), but lead inexorably to If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why h…  ( 10 min )

Today’s most urgent challenges — social fragmentation, educational inequity, food insecurity, environmental stress — seem to have trapped the world in gridlock. Despite all our technological advances, we haven’t yet nailed the basics: Almost a third of the world’s population faces moderate to severe food insecurity; 70 percent of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries struggle with reading comprehension; economic mobility is stagnant; the list goes on. When the stats are bleak, it’s easy to feel disheartened. At the same time, people in communities around the world are still testing creative ways to address pressing problems. “It’s a special power that we have as humans — to find a point of escape, to find the light when it feels like there is none,” says Adama Sanneh, co-founder…  ( 4 min )

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A proposal to raise $1 billion a year will likely be on the November ballot. But BART is planning for massive service cuts — including a total system shutdown — if the measure is voted down.  ( 27 min )

Her regional Mexican fare attracted national accolades and international visitors to her backyard patio. Now, Elvira Varela is ready to open her first brick-and-mortar restaurant.  ( 29 min )

A local company called 1-888-Heat-Pumps is expanding as both Berkeley and regional rules push homeowners to adopt the new type of heating and cooling device.  ( 24 min )

Rich Lyons spoke with Berkeleyside about the state of free speech at Berkeley and what he’s doing to capture more revenue from discoveries made on campus.  ( 34 min )

We are calling on technology companies like Meta and Google to stand up for their users by resisting the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) lawless administrative subpoenas for user data.  In the past year, DHS has consistently targeted people engaged in First Amendment activity. Among other things, the agency has issued subpoenas to technology companies to unmask or locate people who have documented ICE's activities in their community, criticized the government, or attended protests.    These subpoenas are unlawful, and the government knowns it. When a handful of users challenged a few of them in court with the help of ACLU affiliates in Northern California and Pennsylvania, DHS withdrew them rather than waiting for a decision.  These subpoenas are unlawful, and the government knowns…  ( 7 min )

Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad offered a vision of our streets that should leave every person unsettled about the company’s goals for disintegrating our privacy in public. In the ad, disguised as a heartfelt effort to reunite the lost dogs of the country with their innocent owners, the company previewed future surveillance of our streets: a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise. The ad for Ring’s “Search Party” feature highlighted the doorbell camera’s ability to scan footage across Ring devices in a neighborhood, using AI analysis to identify potential canine matches among the many personal devices within the network.  Amazon Ring already integrates biometric identification, like face …  ( 6 min )

Group led by EFF and Imperial Valley Equity & Justice Asks Gov. Newsom and Caltrans Director to Act Immediately SAN FRANCISCO – California must revoke permits allowing federal agencies such as Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to put automated license plate readers along border highways, a coalition led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Imperial Valley Equity & Justice (IVEJ) demanded today.  In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Director Dina El-Tawansy, the coalition notes that this invasive mass surveillance – automated license plate readers (ALPRs) often disguised as traffic barrels – puts both residents and migrants at risk of harassment, abuse, detention, and deportation.  …  ( 5 min )

Interviewer: Jillian York Yazan Badran is an assistant professor in international media and communication studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a researcher at the Echo research group. His research focuses on the intersection between media, journalism and politics particularly in the MENA region and within its exilic and diasporic communities. *This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  Jillian York: What does free speech or free expression mean to you? Yazan Badran: So I think there are a couple of layers to that question. There's a narrow conception of free speech that is related to, of course, your ability to think about the world. And that also depends on having the resources to be able to think about the world, to having resources of understanding about the worl…  ( 17 min )

Interviewer: Jillian York Yazan Badran is an assistant professor in international media and communication studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a researcher at the Echo research group. His research focuses on the intersection between media, journalism and politics particularly in the MENA region and within its exilic and diasporic communities. *This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  Jillian York: What does free speech or free expression mean to you? Yazan Badran: So I think there are a couple of layers to that question. There's a narrow conception of free speech that is related to, of course, your ability to think about the world. And that also depends on having the resources to be able to think about the world, to having resources of understanding about the worl…  ( 17 min )

Realfood.gov will happily give you the worst possible advice.  ( 4 min )

"Employees are going absolutely apeshit in internal Slack about how completely awful it was."  ( 4 min )

Ring's 'Search Party' is dystopian surveillance accelerationism.  ( 4 min )

Nevertheless, this is not a story of the woes of life in a place where the safety of a single pipe affects… everybody. No, this is about cooking, naturally, and how we managed in the (thankfully?) only four months in which my kitchen was not functioning as a so-called professional kitchen should. [Let’s pretend for editorial sake that my kitchen ever functions as a professional kitchen should.] Because while I might have kept my experience of this chapter of my cooking life offline forever — too niche! — I’ve recently received emails from two different people, one whose building is experiencing the same elsewhere in the city, and one who is about to undertake a kitchen renovation and both wanted advice on how a cook might cook when deprived of their galley. And I’m incapable of not answering a good question. Read more »  ( 19 min )

I need you to write a memoir of my life as an obscure literary genius. Make it a multi-volume set, kind of like Casanova’s. Basically, the drama and bravado of my novels are outmatched only by my real life. At all times, you must make me sound tortured, misunderstood, and extremely cool. The language should draw comparisons to David Sedaris, Joan Didion, every author with a 4.3+ average rating on Goodreads, and whoever wrote that badass Mötley Crüe memoir. As far as the audience, it should appeal to everyone from New York Times critics to my uncle Carl, who hasn’t read a book in thirty years. Make it particularly impressive to any stepdads who might still think that I’m a “little momma’s boy.” Give me a dramatic birth story where the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, but luckil…  ( 8 min )

Mai Tran began catsitting in 2021 while Tran was on pandemic unemployment, often staying overnight in people’s homes. Tran has now cared for twenty-two cats and traveled to ten apartments all over New York City, observing the interior lives of cat owners and appeasing their neuroses. From home vet visits to black eyes to refugee cats, Chronicles of a Catsitter documents the most memorable days on the job. - - - I’m trail running around Buttermilk Falls in upstate New York, jumping over tree roots and water-slicked rocks. At the base, a size queen chats me up. “The water power here is not that impressive,” she says. “For real volume and height, you should go see Lucifer or Taughannock.” I do my best to engage in hiking banter. When I emerge from a path, husbands and fathers speak on behal…  ( 9 min )

Good take off… time for the weird forward lean. Make the pizza with your skis, yep. Heels are the tip, toes are crust. Nice, Spencer! You’ve got this. Why is Airplane WiFi so bad? Shouldn’t it be the best up here? Isn’t this where all the WiFi is? Phew, this is dangerous. Why don’t I care about a show with the American crime letter agencies like CSI, NCIS, or FBI, but I LOVE a British show about MI6 or MI5? Do they feel that way about our shows? Oh man, did I close the garage? I can’t believe some other guys are injecting their penises with PEDs to fly further. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of Snoopy lately. Is there a Peanuts anniversary? Maybe I should’ve injected my penis with PEDs to fly further… I’m still in the air. Jesus. Is it too late for grad school? I’ve never hit a bird before. Hold the reverse pizza. This would be a terrible time to hit a bird. I’ll be so pissed off if I left a bunch of lights on at home—such an unnecessary bill. Pizza does sound good. How have I been in Milan for this long and not had pizza? I kind of want to try Pizza Hut over here. I want to win, for sure. I DEFINITELY don’t want to go viral for hitting a bird—almost more than winning. Damnit, I think I did leave the garage open. Hey, there are my parents. It would be the most people to ever see someone hit a bird. It would pass the Randy Johnson video. It would be Randy Johnson, Fabio, and me. Three bird killers. What even goes on in grad school? Even though I haven’t used PEDs or injected my penis to be bigger and fly further, I want people to think I’ve enhanced my penis to fly further. The pizza skis technique doesn’t apply to Detroit-style. What does a comptroller do? I really thought I’d be on the ground by now.  ( 7 min )

The post The Last Yak Herder Of Ladakh appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 39 min )

Netscape's browser project was codenamed Mozilla during 1994; via Macintosh Garden. If web design is not yet a profession in 1993 because of the technical limitations of HTML and early browsers, then 1994 is the year web authors start asking the question: why can't we control formatting and presentation? At this point, the leading browser vendors — first Mosaic and then Netscape — see layout as their responsibility. What little was possible in visual design for website authors in 1994 is dictated by the capabilities of Mosaic and the newly launched Netscape Navigator. As the year progresses, sites grow slightly more sophisticated in their use of images and graphical icons, but authors still cannot choose fonts or control background colour. And while tables appear as an experimental layout …  ( 7 min )

Savoury, umami mushrooms and creamy ricotta make a mouthwatering filling for this mushroom ravioli! Pair it with a vegan Parmesan sauce for a restaurant-worthy dinner. After I made butternut squash ravioli, I dreamed of all the other flavours of ravioli I could make. (Yep, you can tell I’m a food blogger by the fact that […]  ( 33 min )

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The more informed we are, the more successful we’ll be in our decision-making endeavors. That’s only true up to a point: it’s only true if the information we’ve acquired is accurate and truthful. Making good decisions doesn’t merely rely on how much information we take in, it also depends on the quality of that information. If what we’ve instead ingested and accepted is misinformation or disinformation — incorrect information that doesn’t align with factual reality — then we not only become susceptible to grift and fraud ourselves, but we risk having our minds captured by charismatic charlatans. When that occurs, we can lose everything: money, trust, relationships, and even our mental independence. This isn’t a problem that’s new here in 2026; this is a problem as old as humanity itself. W…  ( 18 min )

In 58 BC, Cicero’s house was ransacked. Returning from exile, the Roman statesman found his property vandalized; his scrolls jumbled, torn, and scattered. A library assumes an order, a schema, something that renders it sensible and accessible. Cicero’s was chaos. Enter Tyrannio, a Greek specialist in literature and libraries, owner of some 30,000 scrolls and famed expert on Aristotle — in fact, the same man responsible for restoring the philosopher’s tattered library after it was hauled to Rome. Tyrannio stepped in to sort through Cicero’s mess. He identified volumes, repaired damage, organized the scrolls, and created title tags. Cicero marveled at the transformation. “You will be surprised at Tyrannio’s excellent arrangement in my library,” Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus. When the wo…  ( 18 min )

In leadership discourse, the spotlight often falls on strategy, execution, vision, and charismatic influence. Yet one of the most persistent failure modes for even the most outstanding leaders lies not in what they do, but in what they fail to sense: the emotional currents around them, the whispers hidden behind applause. It turned out to be Julius Caesar’s fatal trap, a figure who conquered nations, reshaped Rome, and rewrote what leadership looked like. Caesar’s sudden and tragic end to his career at the hands of his followers was not due to arrogance or a power grab. It resulted from a deficit in emotional intelligence (EI or EQ), the quiet skill that sustains trust once one attains a leadership position. Something that Caesar could well have prevented. A legendary rise — and an under-a…  ( 9 min )

Hansel Aguilar, the director of police accountability since 2022, has chafed against the city’s administration, drawn the ire of its council and sued its police chief over access to department records.  ( 27 min )

As negotiations continue, hundreds of educators packed Berkeley’s school board meeting last week, asking for more pay and benefits and smaller classes. Teachers have voted to strike in San Francisco and at other districts across the state.  ( 28 min )

The resignation last month of two members of the city's civilian police oversight board should alarm everyone in Berkeley.  ( 24 min )

Nosh shares its favorite creative, decadent desserts perfect for splitting with a special someone.  ( 27 min )

Sumo Sushi, Uzen, Coffee Cultures, and Delah Coffee's Berkeley location all shuttered in the first month of 2026.  ( 27 min )

Born wealthy, her inheritance went to building a million-page women’s history archive — and to a Ponzi scheme. Now she relies on friends and lives in a tiny room she calls a “nun’s cell.”  ( 34 min )

Berkeleyside is looking for a freelance critic to review plays, identify trends and spotlight the city’s nightlife and its under-the-radar cultural happenings.  ( 24 min )

Plus: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson embraces warrantless ICE searches, the Super Bowl halftime culture war, and Trump continues funding the Department of Education

Flock contracts have quietly spread to cities across the country. But Flock ALPR (Automated License Plate Readers) erode civil liberties from the moment they're installed. While officials claim these cameras keep neighborhoods safe, the evidence tells a different story. The data reveals how Flock has enabled surveillance of people seeking abortions, protesters exercising First Amendment rights, and communities targeted by discriminatory policing. This is exactly why cities are saying no. From Austin to Cambridge to small towns across Texas, jurisdictions are rejecting Flock contracts altogether, proving that surveillance isn't inevitable—it's a choice. Join EFF's Sarah Hamid and Andrew Crocker along with Reem Suleiman from Fight for the Future and Kate Bertash from Rural Privacy Coalition …  ( 4 min )

Site Banner:  Mobile Site Banner:  Link:  EFFecting Change: Get the Flock Out of Our City on February 19 Mobile Link:  EFFecting Change: Get the Flock Out of Our City on February 19 Banner Text:  EFFecting Change: Get the Flock Out of Our City on February 19 Mobile Banner Text:  EFFecting Change: Get the Flock Out of Our City on February 19  ( 2 min )

Section 230 helps make it possible for online communities to host user speech: from restaurant reviews, to fan fiction, to collaborative encyclopedias. But recent debates about the law often overlook how it works in practice. To mark its 30th anniversary, EFF is interviewing leaders of online platforms about how they handle complaints, moderate content, and protect their users’ ability to speak and share information. Yelp hosts millions of reviews written by internet users about local businesses. Most reviews are positive, but over the years, some businesses have tried to pressure Yelp to remove negative reviews, including through legal threats. Since its founding more than two decades ago, Yelp has fought major legal battles to defend reviewers’ rights and preserve the legal protections t…  ( 6 min )

Section 230 helps make it possible for online communities to host user speech: from restaurant reviews, to fan fiction, to collaborative encyclopedias. But recent debates about the law often overlook how it works in practice. To mark its 30th anniversary, EFF is interviewing leaders of online platforms about how they handle complaints, moderate content, and protect their users’ ability to speak and share information.  A decade ago, Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, received 304 requests to alter or remove content over a two-year period, not including copyright complaints. In 2024 alone, it received 664 such takedown requests. Only four were granted. As complaints over user speech have grown, Wikimedia has expanded its legal team to defend the volunteer editors wh…  ( 7 min )

For thirty years, internet users have benefited from a key federal law that allows everyone to express themselves, find community, organize politically, and participate in society. Section 230, which protects internet users’ speech by protecting the online intermediaries we rely on, is the legal support that sustains the internet as we know it. Yet as Section 230 turns 30 this week, there are bipartisan proposals in Congress to either repeal or sunset the law. These proposals seize upon legitimate concerns with the harmful and anti-competitive practices of the largest tech companies, but then misdirect that anger toward Section 230. But rolling back or eliminating Section 230 will not stop invasive corporate surveillance that harms all internet users. Killing Section 230 won’t end to the d…  ( 7 min )

We are sad to report the passing of longtime EFF Board member, Dave Farber. Dave was 91 and lived in Tokyo from age 83, where he was the Distinguished Professor at Keio University and Co-Director of the Keio Cyber Civilization Research Center (CCRC).  Known as the Grandfather of the Internet, Dave made countless contributions to the internet, both directly and through his support for generations of students.   Dave was the longest-serving EFF Board member, having joined in the early 1990s, before the creation of the World Wide Web or the widespread adoption of the internet.  Throughout the growth of the internet and the corresponding growth of EFF, Dave remained a consistent, thoughtful, and steady presence on our Board.  Dave always gave us credibility as well as ballast.  He seemed to know and be respected by everyone who had helped build the internet, having worked with or mentored too many of them to count.  He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of the internet's technical history.  From the beginning, Dave saw both the promise and the danger to human rights that would come with the spread of the internet around the world. He committed to helping make sure that the rights and liberties of users and developers, especially the open source community, were protected. He never wavered in that commitment.  Ever the teacher, Dave was also a clear explainer of internet technologies and basically unflappable.   Dave also managed the Interesting People email list, which provided news and connection for so many internet pioneers and served as model for how people from disparate corners of the world could engage in a rolling conversation about all things digital.  His role as the Chief Technologist at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from 2000 to 2001 gave him a strong perspective on the ways that government could help or hinder civil liberties in the digital world.  We will miss his calm, thoughtful voice, both inside EFF and out in the world. May his memory be a blessing.  ( 3 min )

(This appeared as an op-ed published Friday, Feb. 6 in the Daily Journal, a California legal newspaper.) Section 230, “the 26 words that created the internet,” was enacted 30 years ago this week. It was no rush-job—rather, it was the result of wise legislative deliberation and foresight, and it remains the best bulwark to protect free expression online. The internet lets people everywhere connect, share ideas and advocate for change without needing immense resources or technical expertise. Our unprecedented ability to communicate online—on blogs, social media platforms, and educational and cultural platforms like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive—is not an accident. In writing Section 230, Congress recognized that for free expression to thrive on the internet, it had to protect the serv…  ( 7 min )

Patrick Klepek on the reality of parenting in the age of Roblox and YouTube.  ( 4 min )

Chatbots provided incorrect, conflicting medical advice, researchers found: “Despite all the hype, AI just isn't ready to take on the role of the physician.”  ( 6 min )

I know you think I’m evil. And a copycat. But I assure you, I’ve wanted to take out Causation long before Relative Risk stabbed Absolute Risk in the back at last month’s Stanford talk on the lethality of packaged, ready-to-eat kale. Absolute Risk had it coming, shamelessly trying to downplay a ten-thousand-fold increased risk of choking to death if and when you eat the plastic bag. “The overall lifetime risk of dying from a moderate consumption of kale is one in one hundred billion,” Absolute said. “So multiplying that by ten thousand means your actual chances of dying from plastic-bagged, ready-to-eat kale are extremely low, just one in ten million. The increased relative risk is statistically insignificant. Also, if you take care not to eat or swallow the bag, that risk drops to nearly …  ( 9 min )

I don’t get what everyone on all sides is so angry about. Isn’t this exactly what the country voted for? Do we not remember the affordability crisis from 2024 and the price of everything? With the cost of food, energy, and housing, it was no surprise that America reelected Donald Trump. For instance, I know I wasn’t alone in my top priority being the lack of craft-store gold belching a gleaming brine over the full Oval Office. And surely, a silent majority thought the White House needed to be desecrated to build an enormous ballroom to host some Caligula Chamber of Commerce convention of oil executives, Nazis, crypto weirdos, and for-profit preachers. Captioning presidential portraits with incel message board internet trolling of former occupants of the Oval Office was definitely importa…  ( 8 min )

Machine learning is helping neuroscientists organize vast quantities of cells’ genetic data in the latest neurobiological cartography effort. The post Fed on Reams of Cell Data, AI Maps New Neighborhoods in the Brain first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

These no bake carrot cake energy bites pack all the cozy, warmly spiced flavours of classic carrot cake into an easy, grab-and-go snack. You only need 7 ingredients for this naturally vegan and gluten-free treat! These carrot cake energy bites are inspired by my very favourite dessert, vegan carrot cake. Because as much as I […]  ( 28 min )

From early experiments on fertility and embryonic development to becoming the first cloned eukaryote from an adult cell, Xenopus frogs have had an outsized influence on the life sciences.

The grandest cosmic question remains unanswered: “Are we alone?“ This depiction of an Earth-like exoplanet showcases a rocky world with a thin atmosphere in its parent star’s habitable zone. It has oceans and continents and clouds, and could possess macroscopic life forms on its surface. At a distance of multiple light-years away, it would take a gargantuan telescope to image them, and it would only be able to see the world as it was in the distant past, not as it is right now. Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle Earth stands alone as a definitively inhabited world. This aerial view of Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is one of the most iconic hydrothermal features on land in the world. The colors are due to the various organisms living under these extreme conditi…  ( 13 min )

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WE BOUGHT A SUPER BOWL AD.  ( 5 min )

Out there in the Universe, we’re most aware of what we see: of all the forms of light that arrive in our eyes, instruments, telescopes, and detectors. Much more difficult to see, as well as understand and make sense of, is the wide array of “stuff” that’s present, but that isn’t readily apparent to the apparatuses we normally use to reveal the Universe. From the dark bands of the Milky Way to the light-blocking materials in nebulae and clouds, all the way to lining the arms of spiral galaxies and the heavy, long-chained molecules found in protoplanetary disks, cosmic dust is perhaps our most enduring mystery. Sure, it gives absorption signatures that we can leverage, and at long enough infrared wavelengths, dust that gets heated has its own emission signatures, but we can generally only observe it in detail up close: within our own galaxy or in the nearest galaxies of all. That poses a huge challenge, because the origin of dust, including from a cosmic perspective, remains only very poorly understood. We may have identified many dust-producing sources in the Universe, and we may understand that the young Universe was a lot less dusty than our modern cosmos, but we still lack an understanding of how this has come to be the case. Thankfully, we have scientists on the case, like this month’s guest: Dr. Elizabeth Tarantino of the Space Telescope Science Institute. In this fascinating interview, she takes us on a journey spanning gently dying stars, the formation of new stellar systems, the outskirts of our cosmic backyard, and to the farthest reaches of JWST as we try and piece this mysterious cosmic story together. Buckle up for an exciting and informative ride; you’ll be glad you tuned in! This article Starts With A Bang Podcast #126 – The origin of dust is featured on Big Think.  ( 7 min )

Beside their shared modern origins, of the many similarities between the internet and ufology, both concern communication: between humans, between humans and aliens, between humans and machines, between machines themselves. Communication concerns the known and the unknown, the impulsive and the intentional, and the sayable and the obscure, which cannot be put into words. On the surface, digital communication concerns signals, with humans, in the language of cybernetics, that function like nodes caught up in feedback loops across biotic and machinic networks. It happens at vast distances but also in immediate and visceral spaces, right in our minds, where other people, and increasingly also artificial agents, are experienced as stimuli. Yet, in a more profound sense, digital communication a…  ( 8 min )

“The question of whether humanity should reproduce beyond Earth is no longer hypothetical—it is a pressing ethical frontier,” researchers said.  ( 7 min )

The Burns supper centrepiece is too good to enjoy on only one night a year – especially when it pairs so well with Chinese flavours I’d like to start a new campaign called Vegetarian Haggis Isn’t Just for Burns Night. Of course, the Scots know this. They know how fantastic this genius concoction of pulses, vegetables, oats and spices is; how meaty without being, well, meaty. I began eating it because I share a birthday with Robert Burns (see haggis kheema) but it deserves to be eaten all year round. Here, I’ve introduced the haggis to another favourite of mine, dan dan noodles, and I’m pleased to report they get on like a house on fire. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

There were no injuries in the Jan. 17 fracas at an apartment building on Adeline Street near the Ashby BART Station.  ( 24 min )

Two men took plea deals for the shooting that killed 29-year-old divinity student and youth pastor Isamaeli “Eli” Mata’afa and wounded three others.  ( 26 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently closed in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 min )

Tease Southern Kitchen, Mamacita, Anahuac, Bangalore Blues and Fatto a Mano opened in the first month of 2026.  ( 28 min )

Expanded pretrial services to reduce recidivism are the result of a new partnership between the court, probation department, and nonprofit BOSS.  ( 26 min )

The band, which came up at the punk venue 924 Gilman in Berkeley, doesn't shy away from politics. What will happen at their NFL performance?  ( 26 min )

March 12, 2026 - 6:30pm to 9:30pm PDT Berkeley, CA On Thursday, March 12th, celebrate the launch of Privacy's Defender by EFF's Executive Director Cindy Cohn. The highly anticipated book asks the fundamental question: Can we still have private conversations if we live our lives online? Join the festivities for a live discussion followed by a book signing with Cindy. REGISTER TODAY! $20 General Admission for 1 $30 Discounted tickets for 2 $12.50 Student Ticket All proceeds benefit EFF's mission. Want your own copy of Privacy's Defender? Save $10 when you preorder the book with your ticket purchase WHEN: Thursday, March 12th, 2026 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm WHERE: Ciel Creative Space Entrance located at: 940 Parker St, Berkeley, CA 94710 6:30 PM Doors Open 7:00 PM Program Begins About the …  ( 3 min )

I don’t know why you’re all so upset. I’m sorry if there’s some “other event” that you were all more excited about that’s apparently also happening at the exact same time as this party, on the second Sunday in February at 6:30 p.m. But if you were confused by my invitation, that’s on you. I said that I was throwing a party to watch “the big game,” and I think any reasonable person would have understood that I was talking about watching a game of human chess. That’s right, human chess: thirty-two actors in elaborate, historically authentic costumes as the chess pieces, and two chess grandmasters controlling the action, all of which plays out on the giant chessboard I built in my backyard. Yes, if there’s something other than human chess that people call “the big game,” I’m simply not famil…  ( 9 min )

I don’t know why you’re all so upset. I’m sorry if there’s some “other event” that you were all more excited about that’s apparently also happening at the exact same time as this party, on the second Sunday in February at 6:30 p.m. But if you were confused by my invitation, that’s on you. I said that I was throwing a party to watch “the big game,” and I think any reasonable person would have understood that I was talking about watching a game of human chess. That’s right, human chess: thirty-two actors in elaborate, historically authentic costumes as the chess pieces, and two chess grandmasters controlling the action, all of which plays out on the giant chessboard I built in my backyard. Yes, if there’s something other than human chess that people call “the big game,” I’m simply not famil…  ( 9 min )

“My goal isn’t to be the best, because I’m not and never will be. It’s just to be better than I was yesterday—which is a very sports-brain thing.” - - - Why Mina Kimes believes the NFL remains so culturally dominant: Every game matters It expanded its fan base through fantasy It’s inherently complicated and there’s always more to learn Its best players are extremely fun to root for - - - For most of my life, I was a die-hard sports fan who considered SportsCenter as much a part of a balanced breakfast as a bowl of Wheaties. But then I turned thirty, got divorced, moved to a new city, and pursued writing more seriously. I wondered, Was loving sports something I should shed, like so many other habits of my past life? I tried living a (relatively) sports-free life. A few years later…  ( 13 min )

“President Trump called in a new interview for the Republican Party to ‘nationalize’ voting in the United States, an aggressive rhetorical step that was likely to raise new worries about his administration’s efforts to involve itself in election matters.” — New York Times - - - Well, it’s happening: the radical Democrats, who hate your rights and freedom, are planning to rig the midterm elections again. It’s the latest move in their ceaseless quest to end democracy. That’s why we, the Republican Party, must rig the elections instead. We all know how this works. Democrats, knowing that their leftist agenda of “equality,” “tolerance,” and “affordable health care” is unpopular, are importing violent illegals into communities across the country to do their bidding. Muslims, Mexicans, effete …  ( 9 min )

This week, we discuss AI bubble hysteria, "just go independent," and more.  ( 4 min )

DHS's inspector general is probing ICE's biometric and surveillance programs.  ( 4 min )

The post Extreme Inequality Presages The Revolt Against It appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 16 min )

The difficulty in predicting what happens in chaotic systems comes from how minute differences in inputs can become dramatic changes to the output, in what’s known as sensitivity to initial conditions. This is not an issue in classical Newtonian physics, where the regular movement of objects — planetary orbits, swinging pendulums, rolling balls — are easily predicted, even allowing for small changes to inputs. Sensitivity to initial conditions is also known more commonly as the “butterfly effect,” which suggests the extreme possibility that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazonian jungle might cause a storm to rage across Europe some weeks later. I’m reminded of the idea every time I play a game of pool. What ostensibly appears to be a classical system — balls whizzing around the ta…  ( 9 min )

Fresh, whole spices are combined with black tea and oat milk for a creamy, warm homemade spiced chai. This cozy mug will be the best you’ve ever had! Have you ever wondered why chai brewed from a tea bag pales in comparison to the kind you get at Indian restaurants? I did too! And then […]  ( 23 min )

Mathematicians finally understand the behavior of an important class of differential equations that describe everything from water pressure to oxygen levels in human tissues. The post Long-Sought Proof Tames Some of Math’s Unruliest Equations first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

Plus: detention center NIMBYism and why you shouldn't walk on the semifrozen Potomac river.

If there’s one thing we can be certain of when we look out at the glittering canopy of the night sky, it’s this: that someday, all of those luminous points of light, including every star and every galaxy, will someday fade away and cease to shine. The stars and stellar remnants, the primary sources of light and heat and energy that propagate throughout the Universe, are only powered by finite sources of fuel: whether through nuclear fusion, gravitation, or any other mechanism. At some point, those fuel sources will be exhausted, no further energy will be naturally extracted from what remains within them, and those once-brilliant objects will fade away into darkness. Some stars live only briefly, others will continue to shine long into the future, with lifetimes far exceeding our Universe’s…  ( 17 min )

Jill Tarter has spent a lifetime working on a question that resists answers: not whether we believe there is life beyond Earth, but the quest for undeniable proof.  Tarter explains why SETI is really about technology, patience, and learning how to tell alien signals from our own. This video Why the search for alien life is about patience, not belief is featured on Big Think.  ( 63 min )

We are all philosophers. I don’t mean this in the “What do you make of Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas’?” sense. No, we are all philosophers in that we all do philosophy. Philosophy is a practice of wonder and logic; curiosity and introspection; dialectic and meditation; criticism and advocacy. We all do some of these things, some of the time. We all philosophize, but we do so in different ways. So, without any empirical rigor whatsoever — another favorite characteristic of philosophy — I present here five different ways to be a philosopher. Of course, this isn’t definitive. Of course, this isn’t universal. It’s just an inductive hypothesis based on my reading of thousands of philosophical texts. It’s a playful heuristic to question our own questioning — an “aide-philosophie.” Which philosophical arch…  ( 9 min )

Whether you’ve heard of flow before or not, most of us have had the experience of being in flow. We’ve all plunged so deeply into a task — polishing a must-win proposal, perfecting a loved one’s favorite dish, or hammering cross-court winners — that the world fades, our focus sharpens, and when we finally surface, we’re startled to see how many hours have slipped away. Flow was first formally defined in 1990 in the seminal book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (MEE-hy CHEEK-sent-mee-HAH- yee), the world-renowned researcher and cofounder with Martin Seligman of the field of positive psychology. This research describes flow as a psychological state in which an individual experiences some or all of the following: Total immersion in what they are doing. Ti…  ( 9 min )

Rationalism has shaped the way we think for thousands of years, teaching us that to truly know something, we must describe it explicitly, reduce it into rules, and test those rules repeatedly. But what if rationalism only tells half the story? Every CEO Dan Shipper explores. This video Thinking too logically can actually hold you back is featured on Big Think.  ( 29 min )

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Also: The East Bay musical duo who crooned about heat pumps a few years ago have a new video set in the Berkeley Rose Garden.  ( 24 min )

The Multicultural Community Center closed last summer after complaints of political signs that Chancellor Rich Lyons said made some on campus “feel threatened.”  ( 25 min )

Madeline Schapiro, known online as Bean Supporter, says beans have solved her health issues. Her over 70,000 social media followers eat up all the bean propaganda she can dish out.  ( 30 min )

Other events include an orchestra playing Baroque music, a movie screening on Black Studies in the Bay Area and two Latin dance series.  ( 27 min )

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have descended into utter lawlessness, most recently in Minnesota. The violence is shocking. So are the intrusions on digital rights and civil liberties. For example, immigration agents are routinely scanning faces of people they suspect of unlawful presence in the country – 100,000 times, according to the Wall Street Journal. The technology has already misidentified at least one person, according to 404 Media. Face recognition technology is so dangerous that government should not use it at all—least of all these out-of-control immigration agencies. To combat these abuses, EFF is proud to support the “ICE Out of My Face Act.” This new federal bill would ban ICE and CBP agents, and some local police working wi…  ( 3 min )

The federal case against the former CNN anchor hinges on conduct that can plausibly be viewed as part of a journalist's work, combined with the obvious partiality of that work.

Cooperation may get more ICE agents off the street, but it could make it harder for the state to enforce its laws.

Plus: the partial withdrawal of federal agents from Minneapolis, shifting public opinion on immigration, and D.C.'s continued snowpocalypse.

Here's a quick reminder of what the Fourth Amendment has to say about that.

While Epstein’s victims endure the fallout of their photos and names being exposed in the Department of Justice’s latest tranche of files, investigators redacted a photo of the Mona Lisa. Now we know why.  ( 4 min )

‘If the maintainers of small projects give up, who will produce the next Linux?’  ( 6 min )

Elon Musk's political projects are combining into a highly concerning megacompany.  ( 6 min )

EpsteIn—as in, Epstein and LinkedIn—searches your connections on the social network for names that match those in the released files.  ( 5 min )

In a kleptocracy, there is no reason for a billionaire to own an adversarial news outlet.  ( 6 min )

What time is kickoff? The Bad Bunny concert kicks off around 8:00 or 8:30 p.m., but there will be pre-concert entertainment starting at 6:30 p.m. from one group called the “New England Patriots” and another called the “Seattle Seahawks.” Will I still be able to enjoy the Bad Bunny concert featuring football if I don’t know the rules? Yes. Besides, the rules are simple. When Bad Bunny says “¡Canta!” you sing. When Bad Bunny says “¡Baila!” you dance. Is there any terminology I should brush up on in order to better appreciate the Bad Bunny concert featuring football? While not strictly necessary, it doesn’t hurt to know a few basic terms, like “fumble” (what most white people in the audience will do to the Spanish words they’re trying to sing), or “stiff arm” (what you will likely wake u…  ( 8 min )

At long last, the legendary 7-Eleven Japanese-style egg salad sandwich has landed in the USA. A creation on par with Tamagotchi and the rice cooker. Praised and craved by American tourists, teenage weebs, and coworkers who take any opportunity to bring up their recent trip to Tokyo. This anticipated sando is the latest in a tradition of “Americanizing” beloved Japanese classics. But does it hold up to the hype? Kibōteki kansoku. Some things translate well from Japanese to English. Pokémon. Instant noodles. Marie Kondo. Godzilla. Some things translate… less well. Benihana. Karaoke. The 1998 Godzilla reboot starring Matthew Broderick. Then, there’s the 7-Eleven Japanese-Style Egg Salad Sandwich. Something easily translatable—in theory. In practice, it’s like watching an anime with wonk…  ( 8 min )

Look upon me, for I am the baby staring at you from the hollow gap betwixt two airplane seats, and I know when you are going to die. Do not turn away from my stare. To look away is to ignore, and to ignore is to rob yourself of knowledge. Gaze into the deep well of my light-sensitive eyes and follow the icy blue to the truth you inherently seek. The truth that we all seek. You claim that fear forbids you from finding this truth, but fear is the slop we gobble from the trough. Hear me now. Goo Goo You are going to die. Gaa Gaa Does this shock you? Make you feel vulnerable? Endangered? Impuissant? SHAKE OFF YOUR SENSE OF SINGULARITY AND ENTITLEMENT, EARTH PEASANT. [Blows a spit bubble.] We are all marching towards death, whether it be step by step or a mad rush. Your imminent end does…  ( 9 min )

The post Society Needs A Doctor’s Prescription For Nature appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 26 min )

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Toddlin' on  ( 20 min )

As February progresses here in 2026, the brightest planet in the night sky, Venus, will begin to rise in the western skies just after sunset. Later in February, it will be joined by Mercury and Saturn, forming a triple treat for skywatchers to enjoy. Venus, as always, is a spectacular highlight. Brighter than any other star or planet in the night sky, it’s close enough that you can see it exhibit the full suite of phases from crescent to full and back again through a simple pair of binoculars or literally any telescope you can buy. Outshining all other objects in the night sky except for the Moon, every other star and planet pales in comparison to Venus as viewed from Earth, regardless of its current phase. The above photograph shows Venus next to Jupiter — the second brightest planet, s…  ( 16 min )

Champion curiosity, and you risk sounding like a kindergarten teacher or a journalism professor. We treat it as a trait for the young and unformed — something adults either already mastered or no longer require. After all, if experience is supposed to deliver answers, what’s left to be curious about? Today’s culture rewards certainty, and many experts see that as a problem. They argue that admitting what we don’t know is one of the surest catalysts for learning, creativity, and real connection. Kelly Corrigan — bestselling author, PBS host, and creator of the Kelly Corrigan Wonders podcast — has spent the past year probing this idea with people she calls “intellectual giants.” Her new six-part podcast series, Super Traits, distills the qualities she believes anchor a fulfilled and grounded…  ( 4 min )

Firefighters were called shortly before 4 p.m. Wednesday and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.  ( 24 min )

Four children, ages 4 and 5, left Cragmont's after-school program unattended in two separate incidents last year, parents and BUSD say.  ( 30 min )

Yes, real love is out there. Try finding it at one of these nine East Bay restaurants and bars.  ( 28 min )

Located on Gilman at Sixth for over 60 years, the shop is now managed by two women, one of them being Don's daughter.  ( 26 min )

The measure would allow for transit systems to spend federal crime prevention dollars on outreach workers and reduce the use of police in nonviolent situations.  ( 27 min )

She was a legal secretary, a topless dancer, a senior VP in the financial services industry, a college professor and a dream worker.  ( 27 min )

Federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have descended into utter lawlessness, most recently in Minnesota. The violence is shocking. So are the intrusions on digital rights. For example, we have a First Amendment right to record on-duty police, including ICE and CBP, but federal agents are violating this right. Indeed, Alex Pretti was exercising this right shortly before federal agents shot and killed him. So were the many people who filmed agents shooting and killing Pretti and Renee Good – thereby creating valuable evidence that contradicts false claims by government leaders. To protect our digital rights, we need the rule of law. When an armed agent of the government breaks the law, the civilian they injure must be made who…  ( 5 min )

The phrase "artificial intelligence" has been around for a long time, covering everything from computers with "brains"—think Data from Star Trek or Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey—to the autocomplete function that too often has you sending emails to the wrong person. It's a term that sweeps a wide array of uses into it—some well-established, others still being developed. Recent news shows us a rapidly expanding catalog of potential harms that may result from companies pushing AI into every new feature and aspect of public life—like the automation of bias that follows from relying on a backward-looking technology to make consequential decisions about people's housing, employment, education, and so on. Complicating matters, the computation needed for some AI services requires vast amount…  ( 12 min )

The Wolfram Institute recently received a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation for “Computational Metaphysics”. I wrote this piece in part as a launching point for discussions with experts in traditional philosophy. Moving Metaphysics from Philosophy to Science “What ultimately is there?” has always been seen as a fundamental—if thorny—question for philosophy, or perhaps […]  ( 40 min )

“If I actually wanted to spend my time partying with young women, it would be trivial for me to do so without the help of a creepy loser like Epstein.” — Elon Musk, dismissing the emails between him and notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that were part of the latest Epstein Files release by the DOJ - - - I understand that it’s not a great look to have exchanged tens of thousands of text messages with the Cannibal King over many years. Still, cut me some slack. We’ve all had a questionable acquaintance or two in our lives. The extensive recipes we shared about how to cook human flesh? Clearly jokes. Stop getting so uptight. You say he wasn’t kidding? Well, sure, but how was I to know that? Was I aware he had already been arrested for biting some people in public? Who among us has…  ( 8 min )

“The $170 billion price tag for immigration enforcement eclipses other law enforcement expenditures at the federal, state, and local level…. The law substantially increases funds for deportations without providing any money to make the system more fair or functional.” — The Brennan Center for Justice “We’re not spending taxpayer dollars on you unless you’re in jail.” — Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton - - - Many people think of the United States as a nation of immigrants and the land of opportunity, but the truth is, this country simply can’t afford to welcome all the migrants who want to live here. In fact, we barely have any money at all, because destroying the lives of immigrants is very expensive. In theory, we could spend some of our budget on building an immigration system …  ( 8 min )

The discovery of a Medieval tunnel built within a prehistoric burial ground adds to the mystery of hundreds of underground passages without a known purpose.  ( 6 min )

Lockdown Mode is a sometimes overlooked feature of Apple devices that broadly make them harder to hack. A court record indicates the feature might be effective at stopping third parties unlocking someone's device. At least for now.  ( 4 min )

This Epstein dump is probably the worst yet. Then we talk all about security issues in Moltbot and Moltbook. Then, even more security issues with some popular apps.  ( 4 min )

How physically magnifying objects using a key ingredient in diapers has opened an unprecedented view of the microbial world. The post Expansion Microscopy Has Transformed How We See the Cellular World first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 8 min )

Each time we’ve looked at the Universe in a fundamentally new way, we didn’t just see more of what we already knew was out there. In addition, those novel capabilities allowed the Universe to surprise us, breaking records, revolutionizing our view of what was out there, and teaching us information that we never could have learned without collecting that key data. It’s happened many times before, including: with the invention of the telescope, with the development of astrophotography (astronomical photography), with the birth of multiwavelength astronomy, with the advent of space telescopes, with the technique of deep-field imaging, and with the improvements of larger-aperture, longer-wavelength observatories. We gained, in each instance, a better appreciation for what the Universe was mad…  ( 17 min )

When France began mandatory education for all children in the late 1800s, it required a way to assess the “mental age” of students to properly place them in the right classrooms. Two French psychologists, Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon, leaped at the invitation and created the first-ever practical intelligence test. Since then, the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale has inspired countless other researchers, including Lewis Terman, who transformed the original framework into the Stanford-Binet Test, the standard IQ assessment in the United States for most of the 20th century. Terman believed that high IQ indicated genius, and he sought to prove this with a study he launched in 1921 that tracked 1,528 kids with IQ scores over 135, following them for their entire lives as they grew from children…  ( 9 min )

A federal indictment accuses him and another journalist of conspiring with protesters who disrupted a St. Paul church service.

Plus: Courts block ending temporary protected status for Haitians and preventing lawmakers from entering ICE facilities, an end to government shutdown expected, and more…

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While official Super Bowl events are happening elsewhere, Berkeley is getting some of the shine from the Bay Area’s turn hosting the game.  ( 26 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 25 min )

Dozens of scientists, including some from Cal, left their labs and headed to Sacramento last week to defend their work studying disease treatments, resilience to extreme heat and more.  ( 31 min )

This letter is to inform you that your career aptitude test evaluation is complete. Your recommended career: Bridge Troll. Here at the Career Aptitude Institute, we evaluate thousands of tests each year from students all over the country. In the entire history of our organization, we have never seen results that so confidently aligned a student with a specific path. Typically, the results yield a mix of career options (civil engineer: 43 percent match; project manager: 28 percent match, etc.). Your results, however, were about as clear as they come. Bridge Troll: 99.98 percent match. This is especially unprecedented, as our computers typically have a 2 percent margin of error. We understand these results may come as a surprise to you. It is highly likely you weren’t aware that a career l…  ( 8 min )

Wendy lit the stove to heat a pot of tomato soup. She turned to grab a wooden spoon and gasped. Two little girls in smocked dresses stood in the doorway. “Come play with us,” one said. “I’m making lunch,” Wendy whispered. “We want you to play with us,” the other girl said. They stared at Wendy. Unblinking. Evil. “Come play Monopoly Junior.” “Why can’t the two of you play together?” Wendy asked. “We want to play with you,” they said in unison. “Can we have a snack?” “I’m literally making lunch!” Wendy sobbed. - - - Wendy stood outside Room 217. She took the passkey from her pocket and slid it in the lock. Inside, the bathroom door was ajar. It was in there. She could feel it. She crept in. There stood a woman: bloated stomach, sagging breasts swaying like ancient cracked punching b…  ( 8 min )

The post It’s Time To Target The Political Power Of Polluters appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 26 min )

Hackers have targeted a spread of apps or sites that aim to track ICE activity, in one case even sending push notifications to users in an attempt to intimidate them.  ( 5 min )

‘Curator Live’, a popular photo booth company for weddings and other events, is exposing all sorts of unsuspecting people’s photos.  ( 4 min )

Oat flour pancakes are the thickest, fluffiest pancakes you’ll ever make! Naturally gluten-free and vegan, these wholesome pancakes are easy to make and awesome for meal prep. Oat flour pancakes have the flavour and stick-to-your-ribs heartiness of a bowl of oatmeal or Instant Pot steel-cut oats, in the form of fluffy vegan pancakes. Could this […]  ( 27 min )

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Since the dawn of the quantum era, perhaps no question has loomed larger in the minds of theoretical physicists than just what, exactly, the nature of reality is. Are quantum objects real, with well-defined positions and momenta, even in the absence of an observation or measurement to determine them? Out of all the ways to interpret quantum mechanics — from parallel universes to a collapsing wavefunction to theories of hidden variables — we still don’t have any evidence that favors one interpretation over another. All we’ve been able to do, even as of 2026, is rule out certain deterministic interpretations that cannot be consistent with the experiments we’ve actually performed. Nevertheless, despite how slow progress has been in uncovering the full nature of our quantum reality, humanity h…  ( 17 min )

When I visited flourishing groups, I noticed that being with them felt different. They possessed a vibrancy, a switched-on responsiveness that showed up in their bodies. Their posture, in general, was relaxed; their heads were up and their interactions were fluid. Aliveness was the word I kept writing in my notebook: a feeling of being carried along in a river of energy that was headed somewhere good. I started keeping a list of the ways that aliveness showed itself: Looseness: They operated with slack in the system; they were comfortable with a bit of chaos. Stories: They tended to connect by exchanging narratives rather than information. Intuition: People operated instinctively, not mechanically. Laughter: They didn’t take themselves seriously. Small courtesies: They were aware of others…  ( 9 min )

Something fascinating and disturbing is happening on the internet, and it’s no run-of-the-mill online weirdness. On January 28, a new online community emerged. But this time, the community isn’t for humans, it’s for AIs. Humans can only observe. And things are already getting bizarre. Moltbook — named after a virtual AI assistant once known as Moltbot and created by Octane AI CEO Matt Schlicht — is a social network similar to Reddit, where users can post, comment, and create sub-categories. But in Moltbook, the users are exclusively AI bots, or agents, chatting enthusiastically (and mainly politely) to one another. Among the topics they chat about: “m/blesstheirhearts – affectionate stories about our humans. They try their best,” “m/showandtell – helped with something cool? Show it off,” a…  ( 8 min )

In an era of exponential technology with broad and deep implications and reverberations that we cannot even predict or fathom, good-to-great tech governance is no longer a nice thing to have or something to think about tomorrow. It’s a must-have to think about yesterday and today. Moreover, good-to-great tech governance cannot consist of merely grafting old practices and systems onto something so new and so fundamentally different. The exponential governance mindset is about adaptable, future-facing governance. While the innovators are “moving fast and (possibly) breaking things” — things that may be unfixable once broken — in furtherance of discovery and riches, the stewards are also trying to move fast, racing against time to fix flaws and build or rebuild things. The recent adoption by …  ( 8 min )

Most people go through their lives with perfectly good reasons for what they do, and almost no reason to question these reasons. What happens when we ask why ordinary actions feel self-justifying, and what happens when that chain of “becauses” finally runs out? Alex O’Connor explores. This video What nihilism acknowledges that other philosophies don’t is featured on Big Think.  ( 15 min )

What would it take to find another Earth, if one even exists? Astrophysicist and planetary scientist Sara Seager explores the search for Planet B, a true Earth-like exoplanet with continents, oceans, sunlight, and a thin atmosphere capable of supporting life. The search for Earth’s Twin helps scientists understand planetary habitability, the origins of life on Earth, and how rare Earth-like conditions may be in the universe.  Seager’s work centers on exoplanets, Earth-like planets, habitable zones, planetary atmospheres, and chemical signs of life, while also examining Venus, phosphine gas, and why finding a second Earth remains one of astronomy’s greatest challenges. This video Is there a Planet B? An astrophysicist answers.  is featured on Big Think.  ( 12 min )

Plus: a partial shutdown over ICE funding, Kevin Warsh to lead the Fed, and Moltbook’s AI society

The former Berkeley High transfer student won twice for the hit song “Folded.”  ( 25 min )

As Santa Clara prepares to host Super Bowl LX, anxieties about possible ICE presence in the Bay Area have grown. What do we actually know?  ( 29 min )

A City Council committee approved a proposal to reduce reporting requirements when police officers use pepper spray. It will soon consider other changes to loosen limits on whether officers can deploy tear gas and other weapons, and when they can ask for helicopters and police dogs.  ( 27 min )

The weekly event, held at Club Cali and hosted by Hip-Hop For the Future, provides a space where MCs can write new work live and perform for a receptive audience.  ( 26 min )

“Responding to videos that suggested their son [V.A. nurse Alex Pretti, who was killed by federal immigration agents] was a ‘domestic terrorist,’ Pretti’s family said: ‘The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.’” — BBC - - - Veterans Affairs nurses are proud to announce their designation as the nation’s newest domestic terrorist group. We’ve achieved this great honor by working on the inside—and no one is more “inside” than those administering enemas to our former soldiers. Our mission is to help protect health care for the warriors who served our great country by working toward a society in which safety and well-being are the norm. We realize that this might not sound like a typical terrorism agenda, but in our country these days, nobo…  ( 8 min )

Why the hell did he save so many Funko Pops? “Dr. Ian Malcolm with His Shirt Open.” “Homer Simpson in a Muumuu.” He’s got two Green Power Rangers, one with the Dragon Dagger and one without. A lot of these say COMIC-CON EXCLUSIVE, which probably makes them more valuable? Although there seem to be so many Con exclusives that the term might not mean anything. I came to the storage unit on a typical ninety-three-degree day in October of 2065 to sort through these boxes and decide what to save, donate, or trash. “It’s all the junk that we didn’t have space for, but he couldn’t bear to part with,” Mom said. Well, let’s see what I can let go of. Here’s a heavy album full of these round, shiny disks. He labeled them PARTY MIX 3, BUFFY MUSICAL EPISODE, COACHELLA 2015, LIMEWIRE SONGS 4. I can pr…  ( 9 min )

Today’s observatories document every pulse and flash in the sky each night. To understand how the cosmos has changed over longer periods, scientists rely on a more tactile technology. The post How Modern and Antique Technologies Reveal a Dynamic Cosmos first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 16 min )

A note from investigators in the files said some images Epstein had were "POSSIBLE CSAM."  ( 3 min )

Download a PDF of our first ever zine here.  ( 6 min )

Usually telecoms keep customer's call and text logs for months if not years.  ( 5 min )

Joseph speaks to Samuel Bagg about all the ways identities dictate what people see, and how what they choose to believe is based much more on those identities than the evidence in front of them.  ( 4 min )

These easy vegan Spicy Potato Soft Tacos have the crave-worthy flavour of the original, but they’re a better-for-you version since they’re homemade! With crispy potatoes and a spicy vegan cream sauce, they’ll have you skipping the drive-thru from now on. What would we vegans do without Taco Bell? It’s a beacon of deliciousness when you’re […]  ( 29 min )

The Hubble Space Telescope displayed what the Universe looks like. Over the course of 50 days, with a total of over 2 million seconds of total observing time (the equivalent of 23 complete days), the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) was constructed from a portion of the prior Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. Combining light from ultraviolet through visible light and out to Hubble’s near-infrared limit, the XDF represents humanity’s deepest view of the cosmos: a record that stood until the JWST’s first deep field was released on July 11, 2022. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team Its successor, JWST, now reveals how the Universe grew up. This tiny fraction of the JADES survey a…  ( 11 min )

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Finding evidence of “sentience” is fraught, whether in a comatose patient, an animal, or a neural net.

'It exploded before anyone thought to check whether the database was properly secured.'  ( 6 min )

Even in a limited security role, ICE has triggered backlash abroad, reflecting the agency’s unpopularity at home and overseas.

Sometimes, all that’s required for supper is simply stewed Mediterranean vegetables and potatoes with a dollop of yoghurt on top … The world over, you’ll find home cooks trying to turn bags of potatoes into dinner, myself included. Sometimes, my answer is a Sri Lankan potato curry, or a Gujarati one. Perhaps a slow-cooked Spanish omelette if it’s a date night with Hugh at the kitchen island (like this Friday) but today, the solution is Greek. Yahni is the Greek word for a style of cooking: vegetables braised in plenty of olive oil and tomatoes, until tender. It’s a way of being, a vote for the simple and the slow and the good (but it is also dinner, if you wish). Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

The resignations of Kitty Calavita and Julie Leftwich leave the nine-seat Police Accountability Board with just four members.  ( 25 min )

Everything you need to know about the grand opening for the 44,000-square-foot grocery and restaurant on Saturday, Jan. 31.  ( 29 min )

Cheese Board Collective, Nabolom Bakery and the climbing gym Berkeley Ironworks were among the businesses closed in solidarity with the "no work, no school, no shopping" protest.  ( 26 min )

From couples who just started dating to those decades past “I do,” Nosh has a holiday spot for you.  ( 27 min )

A fundraiser through the nonprofit Bridge to Turkey Fund aims to raise $5,000 by March to support expansion of the library space.  ( 26 min )

New emails show Musk has been lying about his relationship with Epstein.  ( 4 min )

This week, we discuss a trip to Kenya, reconstructing images, and lying developers.  ( 4 min )

The AI agent once called ClawdBot is enchanting tech elites, but its security vulnerabilities highlight systemic problems with AI.  ( 8 min )

The remains of a rich ancient ecosystem in China is so well-preserved that it contains guts, tentacles, and even an intact nervous system.  ( 7 min )

404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address.  ( 11 min )

A Reddit-led protest is trying to push an eight year old erotic thriller to the top of Amazon’s sales charts.  ( 5 min )

A pending appropriations bill could increase transparency and accountability by requiring DHS personnel to record encounters with the public.

The extraordinary document offers a glimpse of a national campaign by the federal government to deprive detained immigrants of due process rights.

Empirical Theoretical Computer Science “Could there be a faster program for that?” It’s a fundamental type of question in theoretical computer science. But except in special cases, such a question has proved fiendishly difficult to answer. And, for example, in half a century, almost no progress has been made even on the rather coarse (though […]  ( 59 min )

Hey, patriot. It’s been a week. As ICE spreads terror through the streets, and Teacup Eichmann presided over the murder of yet another innocent civilian in Minneapolis (bringing this year’s known death toll up to eight), I know a lot of you are struggling to recognize me lately. And while I don’t know what’s going to happen next either, I want to at least assuage your fears that I’m turning into Nazi Germany or Franco’s Spain or some other scary, distant place torn from your history books. Because that’s not what’s happening. Baby, look into my star-spangled eyes. It’s me. I’m your America. Maybe you didn’t recognize me without my hood up. I’ve been brutalizing civilians in my streets ever since I was built on stolen land. I tore children from their mothers’ arms at the auction blo…  ( 8 min )

- - - A series of essential advice. - - - The first time I tried to ski was a catastrophe. I’ve always been unathletic and clumsy, the kind of person who hates being cold, hates waking up early, hates going fast, hates excessive gear, and generally has a bad attitude. Nonetheless, for reasons of infatuation, at thirty years old I lied about being a skier and accompanied my new boyfriend on a trip to Vermont, where I found myself, at 9 a.m., clutching my poles, frozen in terror, at the base of a mountain called the Beast. I couldn’t latch the skis onto my boots without falling. I couldn’t climb onto the ski lift without falling, or glide three feet without falling. I wobbled and collapsed and bonked my helmet, over and over. I have never felt so undignified or so near to grave injury. I p…  ( 10 min )

QUESTION: Sally wants to graduate from college, establish a career, marry an ideal partner, buy a home, and have a baby by age 27.5, the national average age for women to give birth in the US, and a peak time of fertility. If she takes a gap year to backpack around Europe, will she have a baby on time (before all her eggs die)? Factors to consider: Sally begins life with two million eggs. Due to a natural and ongoing process of follicular death in the ovaries, which has no regard for Sally’s wishes, by age 18, Sally will only have 300,000 eggs. While galavanting around Europe for one year, 12,000 eggs will also travel from her womb. At 19, she begins college. She learns she is bad at math and will never be a marine biologist (calculus required). Two years pass, and 24,000 spawn are …  ( 8 min )

New experiments reveal how astrocytes tune neuronal activity to modulate our mental and emotional states. The results suggest that neuron-only brain models, such as connectomes, leave out a crucial layer of regulation. The post Once Thought To Support Neurons, Astrocytes Turn Out To Be in Charge first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 15 min )

Pistachio pesto combines fresh basil leaves with nutty pistachios for a completely different spin on pesto. Whether you use it on pasta, veggies, or pizza, it’s always delish! Do I have a weakness for pesto? Judging by my abundance of pesto recipes, from Basil Pesto to Parsley Pesto, Vegan Pesto Pasta to Kale Pesto Pizza, […]  ( 32 min )

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Here in our isolated corner of the Universe, we don’t normally think about all the objects, particles, and photons that miss us, even though we know they’re ubiquitous out there. Instead, all that we observe are the ones that arrive here: on Earth, in our detectors, in our telescopes, and even in our eyes. There are plenty of objects out there whose light is on the way, but hasn’t reached us just yet: objects beyond our current cosmic horizon, but not our future visibility limit. Additionally, there are massive engines out there black holes and neutron stars chief among them that accelerate particles to incredible energies: energies far greater than we could ever hope to produce in terrestrial laboratories. But only very rarely do they interact with Earth, and produce signatures that we …  ( 17 min )

What happens when everyone knows the same thing, and knows that everyone else knows it? Steven Pinker adventures into the subtle but powerful concept of common knowledge, revealing how it shapes money, power, and everyday life. This video Steven Pinker: The mechanics of trust in money and relationships is featured on Big Think.  ( 38 min )

In this monthly issue, we explore what mastery is, how it’s cultivated, and why some people are willing to trade it all for a chance to be the best.  ( 6 min )

Damascus steel is legendary. The beautifully patterned metal, developed centuries ago, became famous for blades of exceptional sharpness, strength, and durability — the weapons were described in historical accounts as capable of slicing through medieval swords without dulling. Today, you can buy blades that replicate many of Damascus steel’s properties and microstructures. However, the traditional system that once produced authentic Damascus steel was lost by the 18th century. The collapse of apprenticeship networks, the disappearance of specific ore sources, and the rise of cheaper industrial steel all contributed to its decline. For centuries, the precise methods behind its manufacture stumped researchers, and while modern science has clarified how it worked, the original cultural and ma…  ( 9 min )

I first discovered the Japanese concept of kaizen during a sometimes stressful but ultimately wonderful time of my life. I had turned 30, quit my job in London, and moved to Tokyo with just a small pot of savings to survive on. I had only a rudimentary command of Japanese and knew just a handful of people in a city with a population of 14 million. To say I was a fish out of water would be an understatement.  Despite Tokyo and London both being huge international cities, the lifestyle in Japan was dramatically different, and like many people, I often retreat into old bad habits for comfort during periods of significant change. I was freelancing and fell out of having a regular schedule, often working late into the night to keep up with London and New York hours. I drank far too much takeawa…  ( 10 min )

If you were asked to build a future bestselling author, how would you go about it?  Chances are, you’d start young, scouting for early signs of promise. You’d probably reinforce that raw talent right away, sending your protégé to writing workshops and private tutors. You might line their shelves with Pulitzer winners, assign the classics, fast-track an English degree — tracing a path right up to the gates of publishing. What you probably wouldn’t include is a thawing patch of Arctic soil. As a young environmental scientist, David Epstein spent his days hunched over a plot of warming permafrost, monitoring carbon emissions bubbling up from the melt. When I asked him about those years, he laughed. “I was shaping up to be an average scientist.”  Nothing about that scene looked like a straight…  ( 13 min )

Not long ago, I traveled to Kyoto while researching my book project, which explores the secrets of endurance among some of the oldest companies in the world. On the morning before I left Japan, I decided to take a last-minute walk to a small tea caddy shop I had heard about. According to popular legend, this shop helped inspire Steve Jobs’ design philosophy for the iPhone box. The cylindrical tea caddies here are hammered so precisely that the lid appears to float downward when you close it, sealing with an almost magical sense of inevitability. Winding through residential streets lined with low wooden buildings, I eventually found the shop. A simple sign on the door read: Kaikado. For a first-time visitor, it’s easy to miss — and even a little hard to figure out how to enter. Unlike many …  ( 10 min )

To the casual observer, a London taxi driver is just a guy who knows a shortcut to Heathrow and has strong opinions on local weather and politics (“This bloody Starmer and his leftie government”). But to a neuroscientist, that cabbie is a miracle of neuroplasticity. Why? Because you can’t become a London cabbie without mastering “The Knowledge.” As they cram the chaotic layout of one of the world’s most complex city grids into their heads, aspiring cabbies don’t just learn a map. They physically redesign and grow their brain. A “brainbuilding” exercise with unexpected side effects This “brainbuilding” exercise comes with a couple of unexpected side effects, one slightly negative, the other amazingly positive. But first, a bit of history. Let’s rewind to 1851, when The Knowledge was born ou…  ( 10 min )

In the early 20th century, Western explorers became obsessed with the peak of Mount Everest. The roughly 29,000-foot-tall mountain had never been summited before, and the first person to do so would earn a spot in the record books.  Among those who tried was George Mallory. In 1922, he was at the top of the mountaineering world, having just set a world altitude record on Everest; that expedition later earned his team Olympic medals for alpinism. But despite knowing the dangers of the mountain — several porters didn’t survive the 1922 expedition — he continued to pursue the summit, ultimately disappearing on Everest’s Northeast Ridge in 1924.  Prior to his fatal attempt, a reporter asked Mallory why he wanted to climb the mountain, to which he famously replied, “Because it’s there.” But ple…  ( 11 min )

Professional sports are the playgrounds of the physically gifted. But size, speed, and strength aren’t the only factors that matter. For all of the tall, fast, and chiseled elite athletes, there are a few who look, well, like the rest of us. Soccer’s Diego Maradona, basketball’s Steve Nash, and hockey’s Wayne Gretzky come to mind. Yet despite these athletes’ comparatively unexceptional physical attributes, they still reached the pinnacle of performance in their respective arenas. What, then, sets them apart? More than four decades ago, Joan Vickers developed a hypothesis. This inkling emerged when Vickers was a PhD student learning from some of the greatest cognitive scientists of all time, including Anne Treisman and Daniel Kahneman. From perception psychologist Stan Coren, she learned ho…  ( 13 min )

Ethan Suplee is half the man he used to be. Literally. At his heaviest, the Hollywood actor weighed about 550 pounds. That’s large enough that it maxed out most standard scales, so Suplee stood on one used for weighing shipping containers instead. Today, at 250 pounds, he’s regularly described as “unrecognizable” by people once they realize that the bearded, muscular man making the fitness podcast rounds was once Frankie, the chubby bully on Boy Meets World, and lovable Louie from Remember the Titans. Suplee has spent the past several years documenting his transformation on his podcast, American Glutton, and across social media, where his second career as a fitness influencer has taken on a life of its own. But Suplee’s story isn’t just some feel-good redemption arc — it’s the account of a…  ( 11 min )

The path to mastery is endless. With discipline and effort, you can deepen your knowledge of a subject or improve at a skill, but you’ll never reach a resolution. There will always be more to learn and room for improvement. This is especially true if what you’re trying to master is broad and foundational, like effective communication or time management. These life skills are worth devoting yourself to — they shape how you live and move through the world — but because they are so broad, a lot of people have ideas about how to improve them, and it’s hard to know whose ideas deserve your attention. With that in mind, this article highlights seven books that offer timeless guidance on improving foundational life skills from people who have dedicated themselves to mastering them. These titles a…  ( 13 min )

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Also: Hundreds protest ICE at UC Berkeley, and dangerous conditions in a student housing co-op.  ( 24 min )

We scoured Bay Area Air District records to find out who the worst violators are.  ( 33 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently closed in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 min )

If advocates gather 186,000 signatures across the Bay Area, a half-cent sales tax proposal will appear on the November ballot. Passage would mean an infusion of cash for BART, AC Transit, and other mass transit agencies.  ( 26 min )

The city says the rate hikes and other potential changes will address a deficit in its parking fund, driven in part by debt taken on to build Berkeley’s Center Street garage.  ( 26 min )

Other events include a film noir screening with discounted pinot noir, a monthly bike workshop and the annual Fungus Fair.  ( 27 min )

February 5, 2026 - 10:00am to 11:00am PST February 5, 2026 - 10:00am to 11:00am PST Online You see it. We see it. ICE and CBP are out of control. Many people are exercising their right to say it's unacceptable. But what are the limitations around recording immigration agents? Is it true that ICE is using facial recognition technology? Are you unsure how to protect your privacy while protesting? EFF has called together an online town hall to discuss ways to stay safer and how the digital rights community can help address brutality against immigrants, observers, and all those involved in holding ICE accountable. Join our panel featuring EFF's Executive Director Cindy Cohn, Senior Staff Attorney Saira Hussain, Security and Privacy Activist Thorin Klosowski, and Senior Staff Technologis…  ( 4 min )

The Electronic Frontier Foundation stands with the people of Minneapolis and with all of the communities impacted by the ongoing campaign of ICE and CBP violence. EFF will be closed Friday, Jan. 30 as part of the national shutdown in opposition to ICE and CBP and the brutality and terror they and other federal agencies continue to inflict on immigrant communities and any who stand with them. We do not make this decision lightly, but we will not remain silent.  See our statement on ICE/CBP violence: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/eff-statement-lawless-actions-ice-and-cbp See our Surveillance Self-Defense tips for protestors: https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest See our explanation of the right to record police activity: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/yes-you-have-right-film-ice  ( 2 min )

Today, we’re launching Encrypt It Already, our push to get companies to offer stronger privacy protections to our data and communications by implementing end-to-end encryption. If that name sounds a little familiar, it’s because this is a spiritual successor to our 2019 campaign, Fix It Already, a campaign where we pushed companies to fix longstanding issues. End-to-end encryption is the best way we have to protect our conversations and data. It ensures the company that provides a service cannot access the data or messages you store on it. So, for secure chat apps like WhatsApp and Signal, that means the company that makes those apps cannot see the contents of your messages, and they’re only accessible on your and your recipients. When it comes to data, like what’s stored using Apple’s Adv…  ( 7 min )

EFF has long warned about the dangers of the “real-time bidding” (RTB) system powering nearly every ad you see online. A proposed class-action settlement with Google over their RTB system is a step in the right direction towards giving people more control over their data. Truly curbing the harms of RTB, however, will require stronger legislative protections. What Is Real-Time Bidding? RTB is the process by which most websites and apps auction off their ad space. Unfortunately, the milliseconds-long auctions that determine which ads you see also expose your personal information to thousands of companies a day. At a high-level, here’s how RTB works: The moment you visit a website or app with ad space, it asks an ad tech company to determine which ads to display for you. This involves sending…  ( 8 min )

Robby Soave and Christian Britschgi discuss the latest videos of Alex Pretti, their own Reason origin stories, and how Joe Biden broke everything.

Judges across the country are fed up with the Trump administration's refusal to follow court orders requiring it to give bond hearings to detained immigrants.

Miller says he’s waging a war for America. Americans see a brutal war on them.

Video of that scuffle does show that federal agents can manage to not shoot even violent protestors.

FBI Director Kash Patel pays lip service to the First and Second Amendments while casting suspicion on people who exercise their First or Second Amendment rights.

Plus: Trump accounts, Klobuchar runs for governor, and who wants to buy CNN now?

Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine asked the inspector general of the DHS about a host of surveillance technologies, including Flock, mobile phone spyware, and location data.  ( 5 min )

Chat & Ask AI, which claims 50 million users, exposed private chats about suicide and making meth.  ( 4 min )

After a decade on dating apps, I’ve decided to enter a different market. This is why I’m listing myself on Zillow until I find a good match—which, to my understanding, will be about forty-eight hours. I realize that my late-’80s construction might not land me in the “trending” section right away, but I asked my friend Shelly—who hosts occasional RE/MAX open houses now that she’s accepted that her remaining doTerra stock will never sell—to vouch for me as “having a lot of character.” And let’s be real, even if I did have the personality of a McMansion, in this economy, lots of people would still put on brave smiles and call me “aspirational.” Shelly was concerned for me at first: “Aren’t you worried about getting messages with intrusive questions?” But she met her husband at a Mumford & S…  ( 8 min )

I’m obviously acting the same as I’ve always acted, and nothing about me has changed. I FEEL FINE WEARING A HENLEY, SO THERE IS NO NEED TO LOOK AT ME. I’m confident enough to wear it. I just have to feel confident, and I’ll be confident. Does my right shoulder seem lower than my left shoulder, like medically? I’m in the vegetable aisle, and everyone can tell I’m taking way too long to make up my mind about what salad stuff to get. All of the terrible things going on in the world today, and all these people can do is undermine me? Wow. Oh, fucking WORLD NEWS ALERT, EVERYONE: The guy in the oatmeal Henley is taking way longer than usual to make up his mind! And he looks like the kind of guy who usually just wears a black T-shirt. He looks like he’s been wearing black T-shirts for the las…  ( 8 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 10 min )

The post What Counts As A Mind? appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 28 min )

Looking back on how I've been looking back  ( 25 min )

There’s an enormous puzzle to the Universe, and it’s one that might be doomed to remain puzzling for a long time: dark matter. For generations, it has been recognized that the known law of gravity, Einstein’s general relativity, combined with the matter and radiation that’s known to exist in the Universe — including all the particles and antiparticles described by the Standard Model of physics — doesn’t add up to describe what we see. Instead, on a variety of cosmic scales, from the insides of individual galaxies to groups and clusters of galaxies all the way up to the largest filamentary structures of all, an additional source of gravity is required. It’s possible that we’ve got the law of gravity wrong, but if that’s the problem, it’s wrong in an extremely complicated way that also seems…  ( 17 min )

Linus Pauling was one of the world’s greatest chemists. He won two Nobel Prizes and was a pioneer in both quantum chemistry and molecular biology. But in later years, Pauling started to talk about medicine. In his advocacy of “mega-vitamin” therapies, Pauling argued that mega-doses of vitamin C could treat diseases such as cancer and cure ailments like the common cold. There is no reputable evidence to support this. The medical establishment did and does dismiss these claims as utterly unfounded, unproven, and dangerous. Pauling is an example of what the philosopher Nathan Ballantyne calls an “epistemic trespasser.” And it’s probably why the smartest, best-educated person you know can sometimes say or do the most idiotic of things. Epistemic trespassing Epistemic trespassing is when an exp…  ( 7 min )

AI is, I’m both intrigued and a bit terrified to say, seemingly everywhere. Including in my head, where it’s occupying prime mental real estate as I ponder how to best engage with this evolving technology. What to start doing. What to stop. How to keep pace. When to freak out. I don’t have definitive answers — for myself or anyone else. But I’m lucky enough to work for Big Think+, a company that produces thought-provoking leadership training by interviewing subject-matter experts in a variety of fields. I’ve learned a ton just by immersing myself in their teachings. (My old boss used to describe this as pursuing a mini-MBA via osmosis.)  So here, informed by listening to these experts, are some questions I’m asking — and reasking — myself as I think about how our L&D department should part…  ( 9 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 8 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

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Explosives technicians blew up the cache at the Berkeley Marina. A private company hauled off other unspecified chemicals, police said.  ( 25 min )

A brand new rule prevents ICE agents from accessing county property to stage operations, process detainees or surveil.  ( 25 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 23 min )

The Berkeley City Council passed a resolution that calls for abolishing ICE and ending the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement operations.  ( 26 min )

Stefan Kaiter-Snyder won a citywide “kindness award” for his mobile shelter, stocked with snacks, socks and lots of coffee.  ( 26 min )

Intellectual and deeply intentional, she loved knitting, reading, music, tending to her garden and sitting quietly with a cup of tea.  ( 24 min )

"The Framers...designed a system in which the State and Federal Governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people," wrote Justice Antonin Scalia.

Wider reform is needed in the way the government enforces its laws.

The post Only What Is Alive Can Be Conscious appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 14 min )

Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. We're diving into the latest attempt to control how kids access the internet and more with our latest EFFector newsletter. Since 1990, EFFector has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil liberties, and the law. This latest issue tracks what to do when you hit an age gate online, explains why rent-only copyright culture makes us all worse off, and covers the dangers of law enforcement purchasing straight-up military drones. Prefer to listen in? In our audio companion, EFF Senior Policy Analyst Joe Mullin explains what lawmakers should do if they really want to help families. Find the conversation on YouTube or the Internet Archive. LISTEN TO EFFECTOR EFFECTOR 38.2 - ✍️ THE BILL TO HAND PARENTING TO BIG TECH Want to stay in the fight for privacy and free speech online? Sign up for EFF's EFFector newsletter for updates, ways to take action, and new merch drops. You can also fuel the fight to protect people from these data breaches and unlawful surveillance when you support EFF today!  ( 3 min )

Thank you so much for helping us welcome our new baby into the world. We’ve done a thesis amount of research as first-time parents, so here’s an overview of what we’d love from family and friends, and what we’re prepared to return or donate. It’s adorable how the baby—not us—is SO picky. For strollers, we’d like one of the most expensive ones—either the Nuna, the Doona, or the Buggaboo. While we know there are so many other great brands out there, we specifically do not want the FrickaFracka, BoopBoopBB, MaxiKangaroo, CyberStroll, Zzzzzoona, Goona, Swoona, StorkChaser, BeepBeepLUXE, BabyGoWeeeeee, or the JoggyBoy. For gifts related to my breasts, the Boppy and the My Brest Friend nursing pillow are best. We’re also interested in the Tits4Tots Cushion, the Boobie Bolster, the Deluxe Udder…  ( 8 min )

Take your time. You have to eat the whole cake, but you don’t have to eat it all in thirty seconds. A sitting can take as long as you need. Pacing yourself will reduce the risk of choking. Do the smart thing and slow down while you eat the entire cake off a cake stand, top down, in one sitting. Don’t eat anything else the rest of the day. An entire cake is high in calories, fat, and sugar. You’re going to eat the whole cake off a cake stand, top down, in one sitting, so the best thing you can do for your health is avoid taking in any more of those things in the lead-up to eating the cake. We won’t lie to you: You’ll still exceed your recommended daily allotment of calories, fat, and sugar—an entire cake is big. But this will limit the damage. Be in good shape. It’s best to embark o…  ( 8 min )

Mathematicians are still trying to understand fundamental properties of the Fourier transform, one of their most ubiquitous and powerful tools. A new result marks an exciting advance toward that goal. The post Networks Hold the Key to a Decades-Old Problem About Waves first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

Match Group says it is investigating claims that a mass of internal data was hacked from its popular dating apps.  ( 5 min )

The Doomsday Clock, a symbol of how close humanity is to destroying itself, has moved from 89 seconds to 85 seconds, four seconds closer to “doomsday.” That is the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight. That’s when, in the metaphor proposed by the keepers  ( 8 min )

You can no longer fuck ICE on r/FuckingFascists.  ( 5 min )

In posts to the platforms news feed, ManyVids — and seemingly, its founder Bella French — wrote that the answer could be a three hour long conversation with podcasters like Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman.  ( 6 min )

What happens when a platform operator changes their tune; the continuing mystery of deleted (or lost, who knows) DHS footage; and what police are being told to do about Flock.  ( 4 min )

Hundreds of thousands of users told the app intimate details about their sexual urges, which are now exposed.  ( 3 min )

Global Network Navigator (GNN); via Ford & Mason Ltd. If Adam Curry's MTV.com in 1993 was a text-based index of music reviews and industry gossip — basically the same format as a Gopher site or FTP server — then Global Network Navigator (GNN) aimed to be something a little more high-minded. It aspired to be an "online magazine" on the World Wide Web. Accordingly, it needed a designer to create that magazine experience. Enter Jennifer Niederst Robbins (then Jennifer Niederst), who had started her career in 1988 as a book designer at Little, Brown and Company. In October 1992, she was hired for the same role at O'Reilly & Associates, the leading technical books publisher of the day. About six months later, she found herself roped into a new Internet project. She later told Rachel Andrew (her…  ( 7 min )

A series of quantitative metaphors on the speeds of common events in molecular biology.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) Human Rights Alliance has, since its founding by EFF and Access Now in 2021, worked to ensure that the European Union follows a human rights-based approach to platform governance by integrating a wide range of voices and perspectives to contextualise DSA enforcement and examining the DSA’s effect on tech regulations around the world. As the DSA moves from legislation to enforcement, it has become increasingly clear that its impact depends not only on the text of the Act but also how it’s interpreted and enforced in practice. This is why the Alliance has created a set of recommendations to include civil society organizations and rights-defending stakeholders in the enforcement process.   The Principles for a Human Rights-Centred Application of the DSA: A Globa…  ( 4 min )

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week posted a photo of the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of three activists who had entered a St. Paul, Minn. church to confront a pastor who also serves as acting field director of the St Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.  A short while later, the White House posted the same photo – except that version had been digitally altered to darken Armstrong’s skin and rearrange her facial features to make it appear she was sobbing or distraught. The Guardian one of many media outlets to report on this image manipulation, created a handy slider graphic to help viewers see clearly how the photo had been changed.   This isn’t about “owning the libs” — this is the highest office in the nation using technology to lie to the e…  ( 5 min )

In the animal kingdom, one of the most bizarre discoveries of all-time was the platypus. When reports of the platypus reached the western hemisphere, most leading naturalists at the time assumed it was a hoax, including the first European scientists to examine a specimen in 1799. It was an animal that laid eggs, yet it was a mammal. It had the bill of a duck, but the tail of a beaver. It had (at least, the males do) venomous spurs on their hind legs, but also the ability to locate other creatures in the water through a specialized sense known as electroreception, common in sharks but very rare among mammals. And yet, the platypus exists with all of these properties, even if it would take decades (or more than a century) before we understood how such a creature could come to exist. Astronom…  ( 15 min )

Dinosaur fever gripped the Western world during the early 1900s, fueled by the discovery of new, ever larger and more spectacular dinosaurs in Europe and especially in North America. Interest in these fossils was not merely driven by academic curiosity. Dinosaur skeletons and research had become a status symbol for museums and their financiers, whether government or private, and colonial powers turned to their areas of influence to find new remains. German researchers, with assistance from knowledgeable locals, began to excavate the huge dinosaur deposits in Tanzania in 1906. Russian teams sought dinosaurs on the Chinese side of the Amur River in 1916, and British geologists followed up on reports of sauropod fossils in India in 1917, first noted nearly a century before. North Africa was a…  ( 10 min )

At one point or another, many of us have been frustrated by the out-­of-­touch actions or moral failures of prominent and conventionally “successful” people. I won’t mention specific names, though I’m sure you could easily come up with your own. A while back, after one such letdown, I reached out to an older and wise mentor in search of solace.  Me: I can’t believe there are so many egotistical jerks. Why do all these people just completely lose touch? What is it about money or power or status that turns you into an asshole? Is it unavoidable? Mentor: I am getting more weight equipment.  We didn’t talk much further on the topic. We didn’t need to. I knew exactly what he was saying: Lifting weights offers a genuine source of satisfaction, so you don’t need to chase the superficial variety. …  ( 7 min )

Computing didn’t begin with electronics or genius breakthroughs. It began as a practical response to chart immense amounts of stars, land, and trade activity.  Although computers feel like a very recent breakthrough, the computing revolution actually began in 1776. Let David Alan Grier explain. This video The computing revolution that secretly began in 1776 is featured on Big Think.  ( 16 min )

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The space, 15 years in the making, will include a teaching kitchen, meditation garden and event space. City leaders tout the center’s importance as the Trump administration “tries to make equity a bad word.”  ( 27 min )

Winky Dinky Dogs celebrated the grand opening of its second location in the building that formerly housed Original Kasper's Hot Dogs.  ( 25 min )

Discounted tickets now available for the theater's new season, "Art that Meets the Moment," including five plays, three staged readings, discussions and seminars.  ( 26 min )

The East Bay Regional Park District will meet Tuesday evening to hear public comments as it prepares to do environmental impact study.  ( 27 min )

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: “That’s Somebody’s Son” appeared first on The Atavist Magazine.  ( 5 min )

The post Silicon Valley Goes To War appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 30 min )

“[Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang Is Begging You to Stop Being So Negative About AI” — Headline from Gizmodo - - — Guys, enough is enough. Bullying is a serious issue, and it’s time for me to speak out. There’s an extremely hurtful narrative going around that my product, a revolutionary new technology that exists to scam the elderly and make you distrust anything you see online, is harmful to society. This slander is totally unwarranted, and I would really appreciate it if everyone would stop being so mean about this thing I just invested a billion dollars in. As someone who desperately needs this technology to work out, I can honestly say it is the most essential tool ever created in all of human history. Don’t mercilessly ridicule it just because it steals the joy out of your hobbies and creates sexually explicit images of women without their consent. Seriously, please stop! It really hurts my feelings. It’s easy to throw stones if you think about the job displacement and ecological destruction caused by this pointless technology. But such black-and-white, not-wanting-billionaires-to-get-richer thinking is, quite frankly, cruel. You can’t just measure the value of something in terms of “whether or not it makes everything worse for everyone.” The world is much more complicated than that. This technology is going to fuel innovation across industries and solve all problems of feminism and equal rights. Yes, it’s expanding the surveillance state, and yes, it’s destroying the education system, and yes, it’s being trained on copyrighted work without permission, and yes, it’s being used to create lethal autonomous weapons systems that can identify, target, and kill without human input, but… I forget my point, but ultimately, I think you should embrace it. Lately, I feel like I just can’t win with you guys. Please, just use my evil technology. What’s so wrong with that? Just use it. I’m begging you. I want to continue living my immoral technofascist life without any criticism.  ( 7 min )

Jawn (/jôn/) A term used by New York transplants to pander to locals and/or cynically promote their recently opened boutique, restaurant, or bakery. “Come celebrate the grand opening of our new French-Belgian infusion café on Shunk. We’re calling it Merde Jawn.” Parking Space (/ˈpärkiNG/ /spās/) Any spot in a bike lane, sidewalk, or even a turning lane, apparently. “Whaddaya mean I can’t stop my car in the middle of a one-way street? I got my hazards on, just go around.” Philly Native (/ˈfilē/ /ˈnādiv/) How people born and raised in South Jersey or Delaware County describe themselves. “Well, I grew up about an hour outside of Philly. But my Mom-mom lived in Rhawnhurst once, so I’m pretty much a Philly native.” Cheesesteak (/ˈCHēzˌstāk/) An honestly pretty basic sandwich that loca…  ( 8 min )

Court records reveal the incredibly sad state of ICE's evidence retention systems.  ( 7 min )

Starting February 2, many people connecting from the UK will not be able to access the porn site and many others.  ( 4 min )

The documents show law enforcement sees themselves as being consistently and universally under threat from the people it is supposed to protect.  ( 6 min )

This moist and fluffy vegan chocolate chip muffin recipe is the most delightful way to start your morning! It’s made with simple ingredients and easy enough that you can whip it up in minutes. Muffins are one of my favourite things to bake. They’re never fussy; once you master the technique, they always turn out […]  ( 29 min )

For as long as we’ve been human, we’ve turned our gaze skyward and marveled at all that there is to view beyond planet Earth. Even the recognition that Earth itself is merely one of many planets orbiting the Sun is profound, where the stars glittering up in the canopy of the night sky are just very distant analogues of our own Sun: with many of them likely having their own planets, and where some of those planets might even have life on them. However, arguably the biggest changes that result from viewing the Universe don’t come from merely the scientific knowledge we gain from those astronomical endeavors, but rather how they shift our perception of what reality is, and how we, as humans on Earth, fit into the grand cosmic story. The images we’ve taken of the Universe — originally merely i…  ( 16 min )

In early 2026, a new national snapshot of social connection revealed a striking finding. 52% of U.S. adults fall into at-risk or vulnerable ranges associated with lower access to relationships, support, and shared places. At first glance, that statistic might seem to confirm a familiar narrative about modern life. People are isolated. Communities have weakened. Technology has replaced relationships. But the data tells a more precise story. Most Americans want connection. Many are actively looking for it. What they are running into instead are systems that make connection hard to access and harder to sustain. That is one of the central findings of The Six Points of Connection 2026: The State of Connection in America report, released by the US Chamber of Connection. Drawing from a nationally…  ( 8 min )

Joy is often mistaken for a stronger version of happiness. But historian and writer Kate Bowler argues that they are fundamentally different emotions. Happiness, she explains, depends on things going well. It’s cumulative, fragile, and easily undone. Joy, by contrast, can exist alongside pain, grief, and uncertainty. It doesn’t erase what’s broken — it helps hold it together. Drawing from psychology, faith traditions, and her own experience living with stage four cancer, Bowler explores why joy is less about ease and more about connection, openness, and love. It’s not a mood or an achievement, but a way of seeing reality clearly and still saying yes to life. Joy, she suggests, isn’t a bonus for the fortunate. It’s something that carries us when happiness no longer can. This video The brain-deep emotion that matters more than happiness is featured on Big Think.  ( 7 min )

Plus: DHS escalation in Minnesota, Trump loses support on ICE tactics, and how politics influence the Oscar nominations

Federal agencies have considerable authority outside their given jurisdiction, even when they don't have the training to match.

Although the president initially reinforced that plainly inaccurate narrative, his subsequent comments cast doubt on the initial justification for shooting the Minneapolis protester.

Under this understanding of the Fourth Amendment, an attorney at the Institute for Justice says, “there is little left of the rights of Americans to be secure in their houses.”

Senators should demand accountability for federal agents who hurt Americans—and demand the removal of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino.

Nearly half of routinely-updated CDC databases have experienced delays or shutdowns in 2025, with vaccination-related systems disproportionately affected, according to a new study.  ( 5 min )

The algorithm is driving AI-generated influencers to increasingly weird niches.  ( 5 min )

Bellingcat's Kolina Koltai talks about OSINT investigations into synthetic abuse imagery sites, and seeing them go down because of her work.  ( 4 min )

What began as a joke got a little too real. So I shut it down for good.  ( 9 min )

A look at “necromemetics” and the meme economy in the aftermath of violence.  ( 7 min )

The strike was called by the United Nurses Associations of California, which represents about 31,000 employees. They have accused Kaiser Permanente of squeezing patient care and staffing — a claim the system denies.  ( 27 min )

The bakery housed in the former Black Panther Party Oakland headquarters quietly shuttered in mid January.  ( 23 min )

Anyone within a one-block radius of the intersection of Colusa and Tacoma avenues will have to shelter in place or leave the area by 10:30 a.m. as workers remove dangerous chemicals from a home photo lab.  ( 23 min )

The Berkeley Planning Commission endorsed a permit to allow ferry service at the waterfront, the first of many approvals the project will need.  ( 27 min )

Lost account balances, disappearing monthly passes, and malfunctioning ticket terminals are just the tip of the iceberg. ‘These issues must be investigated and fixed,’ a transit rep told us.  ( 25 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

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Dear Customers: Some humans (I think? Hard to tell) in masks and vests showed up this morning and took Manny and Kumal away. As you may have noticed, those two were the only staff—despite this place being open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., truly lazy, shiftless drains on society, those fellas—but nobody turned around the sign or locked the door, so if you all want that pack of cigarettes you tell your kids you don’t smoke or a good-enough bagel with a schmear, you’re gonna have to deal with me. The entirety of my scope of work here at the bodega is mouse control and napping, so please bear with me as I figure out the complexities of the point-of-sale system. As I understand it, the stickers on the items bear some relation to the buttons on the cash register, but I’m as fuzzy on the details as …  ( 8 min )

“Even as videos emerged that contradicted the government’s account, the Trump administration was in a race to control the narrative around the killing of Mr. Pretti, a registered nurse with no criminal record who was pinned down when immigration agents opened fire and killed him.” — New York Times - - - Given recent events in Minneapolis, we are issuing this updated guidance to ensure all residents remain calm, compliant, and emotionally manageable as operations continue. 1. What happened was not what happened. While it may have looked like a shooting, it was actually a “rapid de-escalation outcome.” We recognize that phrases like that may sound invented, which is why we ask you to repeat them anyway. If you witnessed something disturbing, please understand that witnessing is not evide…  ( 8 min )

Columnist Natalie Wolchover checks in with particle physicists more than a decade after the field entered a profound crisis. The post Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 14 min )

A roadmap for brain emulation models at the human scale.

Customize this Broccoli Fridge Clean-Out Soup with whatever veggies you have on hand! Rich and creamy, with optional grilled cheese croutons on top, it’s the best way to clean out the fridge without any waste! Some recipes are inspired by restaurant dishes or cravings. And this broccoli “fridge clean out soup” —well, you can guess […]  ( 29 min )

Looking skyward fills us with wonder. The solar corona, as shown here, is imaged out to 25 solar radii during the 2006 total solar eclipse. The longer the duration of a total solar eclipse, the darker the sky becomes, and the better the corona and background astronomical objects can be seen. Experienced, serious eclipse photographers can construct images such as these from their eclipse data, showcasing the extent of the solar corona as well as a plethora of more distant background astronomical objects. Credit: Martin Antoš, Hana Druckmüllerová, Miloslav Druckmüller Off-world, the Sun, planets, stars, and galaxies all await. Now that Saturn has been imaged by JWST, the first “family portrait” of the gas giant worlds as seen by JWST’s eyes can be composed. Here, each planet is shown wi…  ( 10 min )

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"The victims are the Border Patrol agents" who killed Alex Pretti, says one DHS official, who previously claimed Pretti wanted to "massacre law enforcement."

"Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it's a Constitutionally protected God-given right," writes Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.).

Veronika, a brown cow in Austria, uses sticks and brushes as multipurpose tools to scratch hard-to-reach spots  ( 7 min )

Soft leeks and crisped tempeh drizzled in a sticky, spicy sweet soy sauce and liberally sprinkled with salted peanuts Tempeh is a gift to all home cooks from Indonesia. Made from fermented compressed soy beans, it’s an intelligent ingredient equivalent to meat in terms of protein, subtle and nutty in flavour and chewy in texture. Happily, it is also now widely available in most large UK supermarkets. Here, the tempeh is cooked in a typical Indonesian way – that is, fried until crisp, then coated in a sticky, spicy sweet soy sauce and liberally sprinkled with salted peanuts. In fact, the only anomaly is the leeks, making this dish mostly Indonesian but via a field in Lincolnshire. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Malcolm X teachers rallied after class and protesters asked managers of the Graduate Hotel to pledge not to lodge ICE agents — part of a national day of action opposing federal immigration raids in Minnesota and Renee Good’s killing.  ( 26 min )

Health officials say the rare bacterial disease is spreading near a Northwest Berkeley homeless encampment. Here’s what to know about symptoms, transmission and treatment for humans and pets.  ( 28 min )

Congregaciones de Berkeley y de toda el Área de la Bahía participan en un día nacional de acción provocado por la aplicación de leyes migratorias de Trump y el asesinato de Renee Good.  ( 26 min )

Jacob Ming-Trent’s "Shakespeare Saved My Life" directed by Tony Taccone opens tonight; Jimmy Smits and Wanda De Jesús star in "All My Sons" in February.  ( 23 min )

Congregations in Berkeley and across the Bay Area are participating in a national day of action sparked by Trump’s immigration enforcement and Renee Good’s killing.  ( 26 min )

The video is the latest example of federal immigration authorities labeling anyone who opposes them a "domestic terrorist."

With thousands of people dead in Iran, the Trump administration still plans to go ahead with a deportation flight as early as this weekend.

Plus: Nurses on strike, Florida is full, the consumer revolution, and more...

The right to keep and bear arms is about resisting tyranny.

“House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., slammed Minnesota state leaders after anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agitators disrupted a church service in St. Paul… Emmer speculated many of the agitators were ‘chaos agents’ or paid protesters, adding that he believes the majority are from outside the state.” — Fox News - - - TO: All contract protest staff FROM: Joyce People, I am trying to work with you here and make sure you all get your sizable paychecks, but you need to work with me, too. If you are a contract employee, I absolutely need your W-9. And that means your ACTUAL LEGAL NAME. I’m getting too many forms in here with names like “A. Concerned Citizen” and “Fight D. Power,” and while I don’t know you or your family history, I just don’t think those are accurate. - -…  ( 9 min )

1. Problem: The story you are writing has plot holes. Solution: Unreliable narrator. - - - 2. Problem: The story you are writing has severe, glaring plot holes. Solution: Unreliable narrator with amnesia. - - - 3. Problem: Even an unreliable narrator with amnesia can’t explain the plot hole typhoon raging across this entire godforsaken story. Solution: Time travel. - - - 4. Problem: You are not a very good writer. Solution: Your narrator is not a very good writer. - - - 5. Problem: You are bad at dialogue. Solution Your main characters are robots. (Advanced: Any character with a speaking role is a robot.) Welcome to the avant-garde. - - - 6. Problem: Even a world populated exclusively by robots can’t explain the wooden manner in which your characters talk. Solution: Elimin…  ( 8 min )

This week, we discuss stances on AI, a conference about money laundering, and signs about slavery coming down.  ( 3 min )

The post The Middle Powers Step Up appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 11 min )

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut. […] You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do. […] If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” For me, this is the single best piece of advice on offer in Stephen King’s On Writing (2000). Finding the time to read and reading widely are necessary not only for fiction writers but for anyone who wishes to express their ideas in writing.  It’s so fundamental to the craft that it’s not difficult to find other writers offering the same advice. William Faulkner probably gave it its most famous and quotable form: “Read, read, read…  ( 10 min )

Before computers existed, people performed massive calculations by hand where error, repetition, and standardization shaped the outcome. We tracked comets, mapped nations, and solved problems of scale.  That legacy of manual calculation shapes how we live today;  our modern algorithms and the shaping of predictive models. Dr. David Alan Grier explains the unexpected link between the Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence. This video How the Industrial Revolution invented modern computing is featured on Big Think.  ( 47 min )

Primordial black holes could rewrite our understanding of dark matter and the early universe. A record-breaking detection at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea has some physicists wondering if we just spotted one. The post Monster Neutrino Could Be a Messenger of Ancient Black Holes first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

If you didn’t believe tofu was capable of magic, Silken Tofu Chocolate Mousse will convince you! Velvety smooth, exceptionally rich, and intensely chocolatey, this easy 5-ingredient vegan dessert is the definition of swoon-worthy. Over the years, I’ve made a few desserts with tofu, like this Tahô recipe. But if you’re looking for a tofu treat that […]  ( 27 min )

Here in the Universe, there’s a fascinating property that nearly every galaxy beyond our own Milky Way seems to possess: the light that we observe from it seems to be shifted towards redder, longer wavelengths than the light that’s emitted from within our own galaxy. Within the context of General Relativity, there are a number of possible explanations for an observed redshift: it could be due to the relative motion of the source and the observer, it could be due to a different in the curvature of space between the source and the observer, or it could be due to the fabric of space itself stretching and expanding as light travels through it. Yet, if it were the effects of gravitational masses (like galaxies) tugging on other masses (like other galaxies) that dominated the Universe, you’d exp…  ( 16 min )

When I first met Rashida, she introduced herself with a disclaimer: “I’m a little intense.” She said it with a grimace, as if the label left a bad taste in her mouth. I replied, “Good to know. What else should I know about you?” She told me she was a mother, a recent pickleball enthusiast, and a leader in risk and compliance at a Fortune 500 company. I thought maybe such a role demanded intensity, but I still asked, “Where does that ‘intense’ label come from?” She didn’t have to think long. “When I left my last company, my boss made an offhand comment. He said, ‘You can be a bit intense, Rashida, but we’ll sure miss you.’” That comment stuck. Hard. But it wasn’t the first time Rashida had heard it: “My parents are Egyptian, and I’m the youngest of eight kids. My brothers and sisters would …  ( 7 min )

These days, we often consider nostalgia to be a complicated but mostly harmless emotion. It’s full of pathos but, like heartache, it’s something you live with or get over. But it has not always been thus. From the late 17th through the late 19th centuries, nostalgia was mostly viewed as a legitimate medical condition. Doctors argued that it was a physical ailment because they did not yet share the modern, sharp distinction between the mind and the body. Emotions were seen as “the passions” that could directly deplete a person’s physical “animal spirits” and vital reserves. Their arguments were underlined by a series of seemingly physical symptoms linked to nostalgic sentiments. When people pined for some past time or some distant homeland, they reported lethargy, fever, and heart palpitati…  ( 7 min )

For most of human history, movement was inseparable from survival. Deliberately burning energy for no immediate purpose would have made little sense in a world where calories were scarce and bodies were costly to maintain. Seen through an evolutionary lens, exercise stops looking like a personal shortcoming and starts looking like a cultural invention we’re still learning how to live with, says Daniel Lieberman. This video Why modern fitness culture misunderstands human bodies is featured on Big Think.  ( 15 min )

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Also: Obamacare enrollment dropped 24% in Alameda County after tax credits expired.  ( 23 min )

The 23-story dorm, at the corner of Bancroft and Fulton in the Southside neighborhood, is set to open in 2028.  ( 25 min )

The restaurant serving and delivering pizza, wings, salads and more officially opened on Jan. 22 in Uptown Oakland.  ( 27 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 25 min )

Coogler's vampire film “Sinners” broke records with 16 nominations. Born in Oakland, he graduated from St. Mary's College High School in Berkeley.  ( 26 min )

Realtor Megan Micco offers advice on the new ordinance and an online calculator for homeowners.  ( 26 min )

Other events include two autobiographical plays, a group meditation circle and a ukulele club that meets biweekly.  ( 27 min )

Why is the human penis so big? Scientists probed the evolution of penis size through sexual selection and mate competition in a first-of-its-kind study  ( 6 min )

“Ethical dilemmas about AI aside, the posts are completely disconnected with ManyVids as a site,” one ManyVids content creator told 404 Media.  ( 13 min )

“In a free-wheeling speech to world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump… touched on his desire to obtain Greenland from Denmark… America’s contribution to Nato, and wind energy in China.” —BBC - - - Fellow knights, I have traveled a great distance to be here in beautiful Davos, Holy Roman Empire, to attend this year’s meeting of the Knights Templar. I come bringing truly phenomenal news from La Mancha. This week marked the one-year anniversary of my knighthood, and after twelve months of roaming the plains atop my trusty steed, Rocinante, I have slain giants, restored chivalry, and transformed our scoundrel-plagued lands into the safest in the known world. My detractors insist that all of my enemies are imaginary and that I am picking fights with bo…  ( 8 min )

As arrests surge under “Operation Metro Surge,” attorneys say the Trump administration is again denying detainees meaningful access to counsel.

The post The AI-Powered Web Is Eating Itself appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 26 min )

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In His Own Words (Episode 5)  ( 37 min )

Over the span of a single lifetime, the world has changed in ways that would have been virtually unimaginable in the first half of the 20th century. Two major breakthroughs that occurred in physics — relativity and quantum physics — suddenly made a number of previously unthinkable endeavors possible. From modern electronics to computers, smart phones, the internet, brain imaging and more, everyday life in 2021 is vastly different from what it was back when many of us were first born. One of those technologies that’s been revolutionary for our society is GPS: the Global Positioning System. From anywhere in the world, signals can be transmitted by a network of medium-Earth orbit satellites to wherever your location is, pinpointing your position to an accuracy of better than 1 meter (3 feet) …  ( 15 min )

We speak about cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease as if they arrived independently. But we ignore the process that makes them more likely with every passing year: aging. Longevity scientist Andrew Steele walks us through the emerging science that’s trying to reverse the aging process completely. This video Why even the healthiest people hit a wall at age 70 is featured on Big Think.  ( 20 min )

The change aims to provide less expensive opportunities for homeownership in a city with a famously fearsome real estate market.  ( 26 min )

The Laurel District’s lauded breakfast spot is in escrow, with plans to change ownership in mid to late February.  ( 24 min )

Also: D.C. Piano moves into a larger space on University Avenue and Worthy Self Care Studio expands in the Elmwood, opening a new concept "movement studio."  ( 28 min )

Best known for her book "Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish," Bender was also a family therapist who started an in-home art gallery and a Berkeley institute focused on helping people find their true calling.  ( 27 min )

We talk ELITE, the tool Palantir is working on; how AI influencers are defaming celebrities; and Comic-Con's ban of AI art.  ( 4 min )

"My local community is being systematically liquidated in what I can only describe as a targeted intellectual genocide."  ( 4 min )

The famed convention's organizers have banned AI from the art show.  ( 6 min )

Researchers recorded the neurons that shape directional navigation as bats explored a remote island off the coast of Tanzania. The post How Animals Build a Sense of Direction first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 14 min )

MTV VJ Adam Curry in 1993, the year he took to the Web with MTV.com. Photo via WikiMedia. Any history of web design has to begin with the first graphical web browser to go mainstream: Mosaic, later to be renamed Netscape Navigator. At the beginning of 1993, college student Marc Andreessen wrote a message to the WWW-Talk mailing list calling for volunteers to test a new GUI (graphical user interface) browser in development — "initially it's hypertext only, but will soon have multimedia capabilities also." Later in the month came the announcement of “alpha/beta version 0.5” of the browser, which Andreessen was now calling X Mosaic. The X signified that it was built for the X Window System, which meant that it only worked on a few platforms — notably, not yet including Microsoft Windows or Ap…  ( 8 min )

Starting on the night of January 19, 2026, planet Earth was treated to a global show that had only been seen once before in the 21st century: a spectacular auroral display that wasn’t triggered by a solar flare or by a coronal mass ejection, but instead by a completely different form of space weather known as a solar radiation storm. Whereas solar flares normally involve the ejection of plasma from the Sun’s photosphere and coronal mass ejections typically involve accelerated plasma particles from the Sun’s corona, a solar radiation storm is simply an intensification of the charged ions normally emitted by the Sun as part of the solar wind. Only, in a radiation storm, both the density and speed of the emitted particles get greatly enhanced. We’re currently still in the peak years of our cu…  ( 16 min )

In 2014, a team of neuroscientists, including Dr. Earl Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, gave macaque monkeys a carefully standardized task: categorize visual dot patterns into one of two groups. As the animals learned, the researchers recorded brain activity, hoping to understand how learning changes neural activity. Nearly a decade later, Miller — alongside researchers from Dartmouth, including Dr. Anand Pathak and Prof. Richard Granger — gave the same task to a very different subject. It wasn’t a primate at all, but a computational model that the team wired to work like the real brain circuits that control learning and decision-making. Dr. Miller and his colleagues hoped it would produce patterns of neural activity similar to what they observed in the macaques. What …  ( 10 min )

This article is an early look at our upcoming special issue on Mastery. Check back in on January 28 to catch the full issue. After years of studies and six months in New York, I was convinced I’d mastered English. I was cracking jokes with American friends, binge-watching shows without subtitles, and even thinking in English half the time. Then I moved to London for my first job at Google, and suddenly, I felt like I’d never truly master the language. Colleagues used phrases I’d never heard. Cultural references flew over my head. I found myself nodding along in meetings, pretending to understand jokes that left me completely lost. It felt terrible. I was encountering the growing pains inherent to mastery, but everything I’d been told about getting good at something had set me up to misinte…  ( 6 min )

You may think that denial can be harmful when encountering a challenge. But let me tell you about Richard Cohen. When I was struggling with my eyesight, I read a book called Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness, by Richard Cohen. Cohen, who called the book a “reluctant memoir,” was diagnosed with MS at 25, survived two bouts of colon cancer, was legally blind for much of his life, and yet had an incredible, award-winning career as a war correspondent and journalist. He was married to journalist Meredith Viera for almost 40 years and was the father of three children. Sadly, he passed away in late 2024 after a struggle with pneumonia. I had the chance to speak with Richard 20 years after I first read his book. He was a third-generation MS patient: Both his grandmother and his father had …  ( 8 min )

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La Junta de Supervisores considerará a fin de mes una propuesta que prohíbe a agentes federales de inmigración el uso de propiedades del condado y un plan de respuesta coordinada.  ( 26 min )

The death comes less than two months after an Amtrak train fatally struck another man just four blocks away.  ( 23 min )

The cherished North Shattuck bakery, cheese shop and pizzeria reopened Jan. 20 with a new system to accommodate a project eight years in the making.  ( 28 min )

Dirk Neyhart grew up in Berkeley in the ’50s and ’60s. After surviving a stabbing that left him disabled, he found joy and purpose in community service.  ( 26 min )

A plurality of Americans now say they'd like to end the agency.

The Wikimedia Foundation’s chief technology and product officer explains how she helps manage one of the most visited sites in the world in the age of generative AI.  ( 4 min )

On the same day he allegedly robbed a mail carrier, Jordan McCorvey posted photos of himself flipping through stacks of letters still in the USPS tray.  ( 4 min )

The FAA has altered a no fly zone designation that was originally created for US military bases to apply to DHS units.  ( 3 min )

The post When AI & Human Worlds Collide appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 42 min )

2026 cooking bucket list. Read more »  ( 19 min )

The Bonnet problem asks when just a bit of information is enough to uniquely identify a whole surface. The post Two Twisty Shapes Resolve a Centuries-Old Topology Puzzle first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

These gluten-free vegan Zucchini Fritters are delightfully crispy and an absolute cinch to make, perfect for pairing with your favourite dipping sauces and toppings! Serve them as a side, make them a light main dish, or fry them up for a fun party appetizer! Along with Zucchini Muffins and Zucchini Bread, zucchini fritters are one of the classic […]  ( 31 min )

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One of the most remarkable facts about the Universe is simply that, over the past couple of centuries, humanity has actually been able to make sense of much of it at a basic, fundamental level. We’ve determined what all of the luminous and light-blocking material, plus radiation, is made of: the normal matter and energy in our Universe that consists of particles within the Standard Model. We’ve discovered black holes and have come to understand how gravity and the expanding Universe works: governed by the laws of Einstein’s General Relativity. And we understand the rules governing how particles interact: through the strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and electromagnetic forces, as dictated by quantum field theory. While these developments occurred both theoretically as well as observationally a…  ( 15 min )

Every major technological shift arrives with bold promises of efficiency and productivity. The current wave of artificial intelligence is no different. The forecasts are breathless: tasks automated, workloads reduced, insights unlocked, entire sectors transformed. But behind the promises sits a neglected question: what will work actually feel like? Efficiency projections tell us nothing about the emotional reality of daily working life. And those emotional realities determine whether people collaborate, innovate, stay in their roles, or quietly disengage. In an era dominated by AI hype, we need a different lens to understand the future of work. That lens is happiness — not as a perk or a soft ideal, but as a dynamic, measurable signal of how well work is working. AI will transform what we …  ( 9 min )

I’ve known a great many leaders in my time. Bosses, CEOs, heads, provosts, managers, politicians, coaches, supervisors, managing directors — whatever you call them, I’ve met my fair share of them. Some, I’ve known intimately. They are my friends, family, and close colleagues. Others I’ve watched from afar. Because it’s important to watch the leaders in our lives. According to Aristotle, it’s the only way we will learn. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that to be a good person doesn’t mean doing one or two good things but developing certain virtues that allow you to do good things. Doing a brave thing doesn’t make you courageous. Giving a compliment doesn’t make you kind. To be good is to practice — over and over again — until you transform your character. A good leader is no dif…  ( 7 min )

Todd Blanche joins other top administration officials in declaring that ICE agent Jonathan Ross was justified in killing Good. Most Americans disagree.

I’ve got 3 delicious ways to make homemade kale chips: sea salt, spicy black pepper, and cheesy! Follow my pointers for kale chips that taste great and actually get crispy. (No soggy chips here, friends!) These crispy kale chips are so addictive, they’ll make you put away the potato chips for good. Yes, it’s true! […]  ( 29 min )

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app's results are a “definitive” determination of someone's immigration status.  ( 4 min )

From 2022 onwards, JWST begun revolutionizing our cosmic perspective. This side-by-side view shows the same object, the Pillars of Creation, as captured by JWST in both mid-infrared light (at left) and in near-infrared light (at right). Note the different features revealed as far as stars, dust, gas, and other features within the nebula. Different wavelengths are sensitive to different types of features, including for features beyond the limits of JWST. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; J. DePasquale, A. Koekemoer, A. Pagan (STScI) Its spectacular early results broke records and inspired awe. This almost-perfectly-aligned image composite shows the first JWST deep field’s view of the core of cluster SMACS 0723 and contrasts it with the older Hubble view. The JWST image of galaxy cluster S…  ( 11 min )

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A biological puzzle that made one researcher and ruined another might never be solved.

Scientists sequenced the genome of an extinct woolly rhinoceros that was found in a wolf belly that lived 14,400 years ago.  ( 7 min )

A warming, scoop-it-up tomato and egg dish a bit like shakshuka, but the zippy lemony yoghurt and harissa give away its Turkish roots I am not the type of person to say, “These eggs will change your life”, but these eggs changed my life, so they may also make a sizeable dent in yours. The recipe is based on (but not authentic to) the Turkish dish menemen. There is much to love about these eggs, not least how magnificently delicious they are and how fun it is to scoop them up with hot flatbread. On a practical note, meanwhile, they can be eaten at any mealtime and, if not finished, reheated later. Which, if you love eggs and leftovers as much as I do, is a (small) dream come true. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

A delightfully chaotic episode of Freed Up where the hosts discuss how Minnesota wine moms have taken to the streets and the Star Wars prequels somehow end up on trial—again

DHS tells officers to use "de-escalation tactics," employ "a verbal warning" instead of force when feasible, and avoid "placing themselves in positions" that trigger the use of deadly force.

The incident raises more questions about federal agents' use-of-force policies and training.

A proposed ban on federal immigration agents from using county property and a coordinated response plan will be considered by the Board of Supervisors later this month.  ( 26 min )

Hanan Masri, whose work explores land, ancestry and her mother’s Palestinian heritage, has been crowned Berkeley’s new poet laureate. The city’s new youth laureates are friends at Berkeley High.  ( 29 min )

The Burmese restaurant is moving a few blocks to the east to take over the space formerly occupied by popular restaurant Pomella.  ( 25 min )

Cha had a short but very prolific career in multiple disciplines of art until her death in 1982 at age 31.  ( 26 min )

A big laugher who lived with authenticity and purpose, Berne worked for work for Berkeley’s Parallax Press and played banjo at music festivals around the West Coast.  ( 24 min )

The post How The ‘AI Job Shock’ Will Differ From The ‘China Trade Shock’ appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 12 min )

This week, we discuss the staying power of surveillance coverage, the jigsaw of reporting, and eyestrain.  ( 4 min )

In any given week, you will probably talk to dozens or hundreds of people. Most of these conversations will probably be about perfunctory, practical matters: “Two tickets, please,” “No, after you,” or “Darling, do you know where Liam’s swimming trunks are?” At other times, these conversations swish gently, as with two friends chatting over coffee, or they might ramble in a debate about who’s better: the Reds or the Blues. But according to Oprah Winfrey, everyone in every conversation mostly wants the same thing. Winfrey has interviewed tens of thousands of people over her incredible 30-year career. She’s interviewed Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, and Meghan Markle, as well as a group of neo-Nazis and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (two groups who may or may not overlap). Winfrey recalls …  ( 6 min )

The math of data structures helps us understand how different storage systems come with different trade-offs between resources such as time and memory. The post Why There’s No Single Best Way To Store Information first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 9 min )

There’s just nothing like Moravian Sugar Cake! My vegan version is soft and lightly chewy like the original, but the buttery cinnamon sugar topping is plant-based. Moravian sugar cake is a staple in Moravian communities in Pennsylvania and it really isn’t your typical cake. While it might look like a coffee cake, it’s made with […]  ( 29 min )

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One of the most amazing properties of gravity in the context of Einstein’s General Relativity is that mass, wherever it’s concentrated, is capable of curving the very fabric of space. This leads to a number of vital effects: other nearby objects, from gas to galaxies, get attracted to and drawn into those massive clumps, all particles in motion, including massless particles, get gravitationally attracted to that region when they pass by it, and the light from background objects gets deflected, bent, magnified, and distorted by that curved space as it passes through it. That last effect is known as gravitational lensing, and it plays many important roles on cosmological scales. You might think, then, that a large, massive clump of matter — one that behaves as a gravitational lens — would co…  ( 15 min )

Most of us measure age by birthdays, but what if the number on your ID tells only half the story?  Dr. Morgan Levine explores the hidden clock inside our cells, unraveling how the biological age that reveals how fast our bodies are really aging is calculated. This video The biggest myth about aging, according to science is featured on Big Think.  ( 32 min )

Consciousness feels like the most familiar thing in the world, and yet science still can’t say what it is, where it begins, or why it exists at all. Annaka Harris examines the assumptions shaping consciousness research, from the belief that awareness requires complex brains to the intuition that thought drives behavior. This video The hard problem of consciousness, in 53 minutes is featured on Big Think.  ( 31 min )

The literary world is no safe haven from wild conspiracy theories. It has its own supposed cover-ups, extraterrestrials, and cryptids lurking in the bookish backwoods. These conspiracy theories aren’t typically harmful and can even offer some fun lore to draw you into the reading. Like all conspiracy theories, though, they distort our understanding of reality and history, and they can sometimes extend beyond the page to have far-reaching consequences. A rose by any other name Perhaps the most common literary conspiracies involve questions of authorship: the belief that a writer didn’t actually create the works credited to them. And it’s understandable why readers sometimes doubt the authenticity of the name on the cover. For one, many authors use pseudonyms. Mary Ann Evans adopted the pen …  ( 15 min )

One of my growing concerns about artificial intelligence is that it increasingly abstracts away the need for mentorship inside organizations. When young people get hired today, it’s becoming easier for managers to spend less time teaching and more time just handing over tools. In the short run, that can look like efficiency. But I do worry about what gets lost over the long run — especially for people just starting their careers. That’s part of what made this wide-ranging conversation between author and interviewer William Green and Nima Shayegh so enjoyable. I was especially struck by Nima’s reflections on his years of training under Lou Simpson — one of the most respected long-term investors of the past half-century. Like all great mentors, Simpson taught through osmosis: long conversati…  ( 10 min )

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Also: New data show how BART outages snarled commutes and a spike in catalytic converter thefts to start the year.  ( 23 min )

Berkeley has seen the fewest shootings citywide in nearly a decade, mirroring a national trend. The city’s gun violence intervention program — launched over a year ago, around the same time as the city’s last fatal shooting — is nearly at the end of its funding.  ( 30 min )

The Vietnamese restaurant in Berkeley worked things out with the landlord and will remain open.  ( 23 min )

Other events include an author talk on the South Bay’s industrial salt ponds, a class on growing fruit trees and a botanical drawing night.  ( 26 min )

A performer who later went into the advertising business, she lived in New York and Palm Beach before moving to the Bay Area.  ( 23 min )

Frowned upon in video games, loot boxes are back in real life–and one’s in the Pentagon.  ( 5 min )

Internal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground.  ( 4 min )

The administration's written policies make it likely that more people like Renee Good will be targets, and victims, of ICE.

The post The Politics Of Planetary Color appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 27 min )

This beautiful Rainbow Fruit Salad with Maple Lime Dressing is as pretty as it is delicious! Perfect for potlucks and holidays, it’s equally fitting for a snack, breakfast or even a light dessert. Fruit salad is simple—it can be as easy as cutting up some fruit and tossing it in a bowl. But over the years, I’ve […]  ( 28 min )

Cultivarium, a focused research organization, has built a custom electroporator to engineer non-model organisms at scale.

For many good reasons, black holes are among the most studied objects in the entire Universe. Initially predicted back in the late 18th century in the context of Newtonian gravity, black holes were shown to arise in the context of general relativity as early as 1916. Astrophysically, they can be formed when gas clouds collapse, when the cores of stars implode, or when two neutron stars collide, among other mechanisms. They have been observed via numerous methods: from electromagnetic emissions that arise from matter around them, from the motion of stars or binary companions around them, and from the gravitational waves they emit when two of them merge together. But perhaps, most remarkably of all, it was shown in the early 1970s that black holes cannot endure forever, but will eventually e…  ( 17 min )

Last month, I wrote a piece here in Big Think suggesting that the public is in denial over the emerging power and associated risks of AI. Many people reacted defensively, insisting that today’s AI systems are nothing more than “stochastic parrots” that regurgitate memorized information and are structurally incapable of emergent reasoning. I appreciate that many people want this to be true, but it is an outdated narrative based on a 2021 paper that was widely misinterpreted. I want to clear up this misconception because I worry it is giving the public a false sense of security that superintelligence is not an urgent risk to society.  To address this, let me update our collective mental model: Like it or not, there is increasing evidence that frontier AI systems do not just store text patter…  ( 9 min )

In 1964, spirited debates erupted at a conference in Cardiff, Wales. The source of the consternation was extreme production delays that stemmed from malfunctioning equipment at iron and steel plants across the United Kingdom. Beginning in the twentieth century, the automation of heavy machinery enabled plants to operate continuously, increasing productivity and revenue. The downside was that any small hiccup was acutely felt, cascading through the production line. At first, it was assumed that inadequate lubrication of factory equipment was causing parts to seize up or break apart. And so, the Lubrication and Wear Group of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, along with the Iron and Steel Institute, called on engineers and representatives from industry to convene and get to the bottom …  ( 7 min )

He and his wife, Eve, were active in the formation of Berkeley Citizens Action in the 1970s.  ( 23 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently closed in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 min )

New company aims to offer professional wiring work with good service at a lower cost.  ( 23 min )

Following the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, county officials are gearing up to ban ICE agents from certain areas.  ( 23 min )

Laura Truffaut moved from Paris to Berkeley at 19. She spoke with Berkeleyside about the city’s cinematic life and the time she took her father and Catherine Deneuve to see a Fritz Lang film at the Pacific Film Archive.  ( 26 min )

“Any American should be terrified by…such an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment,” said the arrestee’s attorney.

It is hard to see how, since that question hinges on what happened the morning that an ICE agent shot her.

The post The Mythology Of Conscious AI appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 60 min )

In an unprecedented step, researchers crafted a detailed model compatible with the universe’s accelerated expansion. The post String Theory Can Now Describe a Universe That Has Dark Energy first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

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One of the most difficult thing about being inside our own Universe is that we only get one perspective — from our location, here on Earth — to measure it from. We are stuck within our Solar System, as are all of our measuring tools and instruments, which in turn is stuck within the Milky Way, the Local Group, and our corner of the local Universe. We are stuck living in the now: 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang has occurred. If we want to understand what this Universe is, including what it’s made of, where it came from, and how it came to be the way it is today, this is the only perspective, location, and time at which we’re capable of making observations from. Despite how powerful it is, it’s also extraordinarily limiting. That’s why, from a scientific point-of-view, we’re always att…  ( 16 min )

Since 2015, more than 1,000 U.S. government personnel working across the world have reported symptoms linked to Havana Syndrome, an acute illness marked by sudden headache, nausea, and the hearing of loud sounds, akin to swarming cicadas. The cause of the illness, officially called “anomalous health episodes,” remains a mystery. But some U.S. government workers and researchers have long alleged that the cases were caused by foreign adversaries using some type of “directed-energy” weapon, possibly firing pulsed radio waves, against American personnel. U.S. intelligence agencies have generally disagreed. In 2025, the National Intelligence Council released a report stating that most agencies found it “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for the cases or had developed a nov…  ( 10 min )

We tend to trust our intuitions about consciousness because they feel immediate and personal, but feeling convinced is not the same as being right. Annaka Harris explores what happens when science stops deferring to instinct and starts treating consciousness like other hard problems that once defied common sense. This video Our intuitions about consciousness may be deeply wrong  is featured on Big Think.  ( 8 min )

Since the end of the Second World War, technology and management have evolved together like twin helices. Each new machine has required a new way of organizing people around it. The mainframe gave us bureaucracy; the microchip, the matrix; the network, the project team. Every leap in computation produced a corresponding leap in coordination. Peter Drucker saw this symbiosis first. He realized that the new industrial order would depend on a worker who produced ideas instead of widgets. The knowledge worker became the engine of prosperity, and management became the social technology that synchronized millions of minds. The modern firm was as much an invention as the transistor it depended on. Three decades later, Tom Peters caught the next wave. As computers left the lab and landed on every …  ( 8 min )

In 1999, during the last Burning Man of the last century, I returned to my camp on the edge of the playa after a long night out socializing to find a brand-new tent set up next to my dusty old one. When I crawled out to stretch the next morning, the new tent’s front door zipped open, and Jeff Bezos and his then-wife MacKenzie emerged. They were dressed in matching khaki outfits that seemed better suited for fly fishing in Montana than the hot Nevada desert where most of the people roaming around were half naked and covered in glitter. Bezos looked like an East Coast finance guy who was out of his element — kind of a dweeb, but a nice enough guy and super smart. MacKenzie seemed more down-to-earth and relaxed with everyone. They had been invited to join the camp at the last minute because i…  ( 15 min )

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang issued a warning to the world’s workers in May 2025: “You’re not going to lose your job to an AI, you’re going to lose it to someone who uses AI.” I bet he’s right. The future of work is not man versus machine, but (in part) man with machine versus man without. Augmentation will define that gap: machines not replacing us, but reshaping how we work, what we do, and what it feels like. Augmentation doesn’t eliminate jobs; it changes them. AI automates what can be codified and frees humans to do what only humans can. The effect is less like replacement and more like amplification, as though we’ve all been paired with the smartest teammate we’ve ever had—the one who never tires, never forgets, and always makes everyone else better. The evidence is everywhere. Office sof…  ( 8 min )

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Berkeley has been trying to sweep the encampment for years. A homeless advocacy group has sued the city, alleging it has shirked its responsibility to provide disability accommodations for residents.  ( 25 min )

Michael O’Reilley and Linda Feldman, both former Alameda County public defenders, said “I do” in a sunlit ceremony Saturday inside The Ivy on Dwight Way.  ( 28 min )

The Berkeley Public Library Foundation praised Berkeleyside’s publisher for its “outstanding contribution to our literary and civic landscape,” giving Cityside an award named for Fred and Pat Cody, founders of Cody’s Books.  ( 27 min )

UC would get $350.6 million in new funding, keeping with Newsom’s 2022 pledge to give annual budget increases for five years.  ( 25 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

This vegan Sweet Potato Gnocchi is soft, pillowy, and delicious, especially when it’s finished with a fabulous rosemary-infused garlic butter sauce! This is a restaurant-quality dinner that’s easier than you think. It took me a long time to come around to making my own gnocchi because I thought it was going to be fussy and […]  ( 30 min )

Web design books; by Phillip Chee on Flickr, February 2010. Welcome to season 5 of Cybercultural, which will be a history of web design from 1993 till 2012. That's twenty years of web design, going from the grey HTML webpages of 1993 through to the colourful, mobile-centric (yet responsive) designs of 2012. This history of web design will cover two eras of the internet: dot-com and Web 2.0. I decided not to move into the rest of the 2010s, partly because that's an era when smartphone apps began to dominate — and so the web struggled. But also, in my view the first two decades of the web represent the very best of online creativity and experimentation. Because during that time, personal websites and blogs flourished. Season 5 Structure Before I describe the main themes, here's how this hist…  ( 7 min )

How J.D. Vance misstated the law.

For nearly 100 years, the United States has been the world’s leader in a wide variety of scientific fields. No other country has: invested as much in fundamental scientific research, has made more scientific breakthroughs and scientific advances, has attracted more scientific researchers to move there to conduct their research, or has conducted more projects and been home to more scientists that have won Nobel Prizes. From public health to food safety to clean air and water to vaccines to dental health to disease eradication and pandemic prevention, the United States was the world leader. From rocketry to space exploration to planetary science to astrophysics, heliophysics, and Earth monitoring, the United States’s standing in the world was unparalleled. From education to energy, from chem…  ( 16 min )

Members of Gen Z have grown up hearing that our attention spans are shrinking and that our lives will be defined by the eight-second scroll and an endless stream of content. The narrative is that we’re so addicted to the instant gratification of platforms like TikTok that we’ve lost the capacity for deep, sustained focus.  But what if the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t designed to feed that addiction — but to fundamentally change it? What if the future of AI demands young people’s attention, curiosity, and creativity in ways we haven’t experienced before? As the co-founder of Chima, an applied AI research lab, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the emerging concept of “world models,” AI systems that can generate interactive, dynamic environments from a simple prompt. …  ( 10 min )

In 1895, the world’s top scientist predicted wrong. Epically wrong. The scientist was Lord Kelvin. Born in early nineteenth-century Ireland to a mathematics teacher, he was from his youngest summers a wizard with numbers. Like a living computer, he thought effortlessly in digits, entering college at the age of ten and dashing up the ranks to full professor. By his middle age, he had reduced electricity to algorithms, unified the known rules of physics, and formulated thermodynamics, achieving such eminence that in 1892, he became the first scientist elevated to England’s House of Lords. It was three years later, while serving out his final term as president of the British Royal Society, that Kelvin made his epically wrong prediction: “I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machine…  ( 8 min )

Plus: ICE shootings divide the country, the Iran uprising intensifies, and California targets billionaires with a wealth tax

Jonathan Ross positioned himself in front of Good's car and continued firing even after he was no longer in its path.

They continue to face steep barriers at BUSD, with a mixed bag of new data showing declines in progress toward language proficiency but improvements in test scores.  ( 27 min )

Local residents with family in Venezuela were getting real time updates as the operation unfolded. Now, they're wondering about what comes next.  ( 27 min )

A $10 million fund from Ava Community Energy and Alameda County was used to reimburse e-bike buyers. Meanwhile, a new study shows laws haven’t kept up with e-bike collision risks.  ( 27 min )

Ruliology is taking off! And more and more people are talking about it. But what is ruliology? Since I invented the term, I decided I should write something to explain it. But then I realized: I actually already wrote something back in 2021 when I first invented the term. What I wrote back then was […]  ( 11 min )

What the evolution of scientific methods says about their future.

These cheesy Buffalo cauliflower wings up the ante by adding vegan cheese to everyone’s favourite plant-based spicy snack! They’re crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and the best alternative to traditional chicken wings. Add cauliflower to the ranks of cashews and tofu for magical vegan ingredients that can be completely transformed by the […]  ( 31 min )

The discovery that tissues use electricity to expel unhealthy cells is part of a surge of renewed interest in the currents flowing through our bodies. The post Cells Use ‘Bioelectricity’ To Coordinate and Make Group Decisions first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

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Although the Universe constantly evolves, astronomers rarely see that evolution. This snippet from a structure-formation simulation, with the expansion of the Universe scaled out, represents billions of years of gravitational growth in a dark matter-rich Universe. Over time, overdense clumps of matter grow richer and more massive, growing into galaxies, groups, and clusters of galaxies, while the less dense regions than average preferentially give up their matter to the denser surrounding areas. The “void” regions between the bound structures continue to expand, but the structures themselves, once they become bound in any fashion, do not. Credit: Ralf Kaehler and Tom Abel (KIPAC)/Oliver Hahn Instead, we get snapshots: stars and galaxies that barely change over human timescales. Imaged…  ( 9 min )

One of the most exciting developments in modern astrophysics isn’t merely our standard “concordance cosmology” model, but rather the cracks that seem to be emerging in it. Sure, we’ve said for some 25 years now that our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, is made of mostly dark energy with a substantial amount of dark matter, and only 5% of all the normal stuff combined: stars, planets, black holes, plasmas, photons, and neutrinos. But more recently, a couple of cosmic conundrums have emerged, leading us to question whether this model is the best picture of reality that we can come up with. We don’t merely have the Hubble tension to reckon with, or the fact that different methods yield different values for the expansion rate of the Universe today, but a puzzle over whether dark energy is truly a constant in our Universe, as most physicists have assumed since its discovery back in 1998. While “early relic” methods using CMB or baryon acoustic oscillation data favor a lower value of around 67 km/s/Mpc, “distance ladder” methods instead prefer a higher, incompatible value of around 73 km/s/Mpc. Now, on top of that, new large-scale structure data seems to throw another wrench into the works: supporting a picture of evolving dark energy, and specifically one where it weakens over cosmic time. Here to guide us through this is Dr. Kate Storey-Fisher, a cosmologist whose expertise is exactly on this topic, and who herself has recently become a member of the very collaboration, DESI, that provides the strongest evidence to date for evolving dark energy. The story, however, is only just beginning, and with current and future observatories poised to collect superior data, we take a look ahead as to what’s in store for the Universe, and for those of us who are working oh so hard to try and understand it. This article Starts With A Bang podcast #125 – Large-scale structure is featured on Big Think.  ( 5 min )

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The protests this weekend were part of nationwide wave of resistance following the capture of the Venezuelan president and an ICE officer's fatal shooting of Renee Good.  ( 28 min )

Earthy, sweet swede soaks up a curry sauce like a champion, and this ginger, tomato and coconut number is no exception As a day-in-day-out home cook, there is no more welcome tool in my dinner toolbox than a bung-it-in-the-oven dish. A second necessary tool in the month of January is the ability to dispose of or transform a swede into an evening meal. For the uninitiated, when roasted, the swede, that pretty, purple-creamed, dense little ball, is part-creamy, part carrot-like in nature, and earthy and sweet in flavour. It also takes to big-flavoured sauces such as this tomato, ginger and coconut curry like a chip to vinegar and couples up well with its seasonal pal, fresh, crunchy purple sprouting broccoli. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Protests this weekend at Chevron's Richmond refinery and a Berkeley gas station were spurred by the Trump Administration’s capture of the Venezuelan president and the fatal shooting of a woman by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.  ( 24 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently closed in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 22 min )

The private school in Berkeley offers an in-depth music program along with strong academics and small class sizes.  ( 26 min )

The salvage store’s contract includes bumped up hourly and holiday pay, offset by a reduction in revenue sharing. Workers also get more time off and job protection.  ( 27 min )

An environmentalist and educator with a deep sense of community, she worked in local after-school programs and illustrated the "Berkeley A to Z" coloring book and other titles.  ( 24 min )

Robby Soave and Christian Britschgi are back this week to break down how 2026 has somehow already gone off the rails.

The crucial question is whether the agent reasonably believed the driver he killed posed a threat, even if she was not actually trying to run him over.

What signatures are scientists looking for in the search for alien life? What discoveries are realistically on the horizon? And why might cloudy, hazy planets turn out to be some of the best places to look for life beyond Earth? These are some of the questions I recently asked astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University. Kaltenegger is at the forefront of studying exoplanets, and her research often focuses on innovative ways to detect signs of life in the atmospheres and on the surfaces of these distant worlds, a project she details in her 2024 book Alien Earths. Adam Frank: Let’s start by zooming out. What should people be watching for in the search for life over the next 10, 20, or 30 years? Where is this field going, and when do you t…  ( 10 min )

“Remember the first rule of life: We’re all going to die.” A grim thought in isolation, but in the context of Ezekiel Emanuel’s new book, Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life, the statement offers a sense of liberation. Emanuel has been working to improve Americans’ health for decades. A bioethicist, health policy expert, oncologist, and chocolatier — yes, really — he helped to write the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and to create USDA’s MyPlate, which replaced the Food Pyramid. He reproduced this fatalistic first rule in his book to remind readers that we’re all fated to oblivion. So let’s not single-mindedly strive to avoid death, but rather simply try our best to live life as well as we can. “Wellness ought to be in the background: an unconscious part of your lif…  ( 13 min )

A $1 million prize awaits anyone who can show where the math of fluid flow breaks down. With specially trained AI systems, researchers have found a slew of new candidates in simpler versions of the problem. The post Using AI, Mathematicians Find Hidden Glitches in Fluid Equations first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 14 min )

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My easy vegan Bran Muffin recipe is hearty and wholesome, but it’s also moist, tender, and lightly sweet. This is a muffin you can feel good about eating for breakfast—and also look forward to!  Bran muffins get a bad rap for being dry and bland. But these vegan bran muffins are anything but! I developed […]  ( 28 min )

Here in our Universe, as soon as you open your eyes to the vastness of the cosmos beyond our own world, you see just how full of structure — and particularly, light-emitting and light-absorbing structures — it is. But looks can often be deceiving, as points of light that are clustered closely together on the sky aren’t necessarily part of the same system, the same structure, or even close together in three-dimensional space. Sometimes, what appears to be a structure is merely an association, of things that appear nearby when we look at them right now, whereas at other times, there truly is a structure that ties these multiple points of light together. One important question we can ask, whenever we see multiple objects located nearby to one another, is whether those objects are bound togeth…  ( 15 min )

Stoicism has been flattened into slogans about toughness, detachment, and emotional silence, a version that’s easy to sell, but mostly wrong.  Massimo Pigliucci returns Stoicism to its original purpose: a practical philosophy built to help ordinary people make better judgments, set wiser priorities, and live well with others in a world that resists control. This video Why Stoicism treats self-control as a form of intelligence is featured on Big Think.  ( 65 min )

What if the problem for young boys isn’t radical influencers, but the absence that made them persuasive? Influence doesn’t emerge because someone is loud or offensive; it takes root when there’s no one nearby to push back in good faith or model an alternative worth imitating, says Richard Reeves. This video The real reason boys turn to extreme online role models is featured on Big Think.  ( 19 min )

Hysteria was long attributed to a wandering uterus. The earliest text blaming women’s reproduction for illness was the Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, an Egyptian medical scroll from 1900 BC. Women’s wombs were blamed for things like choking, cognitive deficits and the inability to speak, and paralysis. Treatments for women were always nonsurgical: swallowing medicine or rubbing it on the body; fumigating the womb with oils or incense.  Hippocrates, the father of medicine, birthed the concept of hysteria. Translating to “uterus,” hysteria was used to theorize women’s ailments — something that few male doctors of the time understood or studied. In fact, the Greeks often linked women’s health and sexuality with madness: emotional volatility, hallucination, dissociative states, tics, convulsion…  ( 10 min )

In his sweeping 2025 year-in-review, the author Dan Wang makes an unsettling argument: The real danger of AI isn’t psychotic robots taking over the world, but how it’s compressing our sense of time to think in ever-shorter durations. As Dan writes, in Silicon Valley today, conversations are increasingly collapsing into apocalyptic timelines. Leaders fixate on what to do over the next year, while often neglecting the harder work of extending timelines. Dan’s concern isn’t only that leaders think short-term, but that thinking around AI has become either utopian or apocalyptic, which makes long-term institution-building feel irrelevant. In contrast, Dan argues China treats AI less as a civilizational endpoint and more as an input — something to be embedded into factories and industrial capaci…  ( 10 min )

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Also: More UC Berkeley students are saving money by graduating in three years.  ( 23 min )

Authorities identified the crash victim as Kenneth Wade, a 59-year-old Berkeley man. He died more than a month after the Dec. 1 crash.  ( 23 min )

Carbona Pizza, Standard Fare and Guerilla Cafe were among the restaurants to shutter prior to the end of 2025.  ( 25 min )

The university also welcomed more California residents, enrolling its largest-ever student body.  ( 24 min )

Also: Attend a renewal of vows between a resident living in The Ivy's memory care neighborhood and his wife.  ( 26 min )

Despite attempts at variation, many new research organizations are canalized into just a handful of forms.

The post A New Anti-Political Fervor appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 29 min )

Plus: Mamdani staffer embroiled in scandal, inside the new food pyramid, Ro Khanna's misstep, and more...

DavidBowie.com, January 8, 2013. After 2004, the rise of the social web — and especially platforms like MySpace and Facebook — made niche social networks like BowieNet less relevant in the culture. This shift coincided with the slow decline of BowieNet itself. The portal and ISP had launched in 1998 and had two major redesigns (in 2000 and 2003), but when David Bowie suffered a heart attack during the Reality world tour in 2004 — leading to a long period of inactivity in the music industry — his website fell into a kind of stasis too. Slowly, BowieNet was dismantled. In 2006, the ISP service was quietly shut down — most likely because UltraStar, its corporate owner (in which Bowie was a shareholder) had pivoted to become an online fan club business. In an April 2006 press release touting a…  ( 10 min )

In His Own Words (Episode 4)  ( 44 min )

The fastest human in the world, according to the Ancient Greek legend, was the heroine Atalanta. Although she was a famous huntress who joined Jason and the Argonauts in the search for the golden fleece, she was most renowned for the one avenue in which she surpassed all other humans: her speed. While many boasted of how swift or fleet-footed they were, Atalanta outdid them all. No one possessed the capabilities to defeat her in a fair footrace. According to legend, she refused to be wed unless a potential suitor could outrace her, and remained unwed for a very long time. Arguably, if not for the intervention of the Goddess Aphrodite, she would have avoided marriage for the entirety of her life. Aside from her running exploits, Atalanta was also the inspiration for the first of many simila…  ( 14 min )

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said the director of the city-owned music camp north of Guerneville. The camp is seeking donations and help clearing toppled redwoods and debris.  ( 24 min )

The new wildfire safety rules, banning nearly everything combustible within 5 feet of buildings, or "Zone Zero," are in effect as of Jan. 1.  ( 29 min )

Tickets available for Mark Morris Dance Group, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Bruce Liu, Jordi Savall, Chris Thile and others.  ( 26 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 min )

In Berkeley, she founded the group Neighbors of Stanton Street and once picketed City Hall solo until it relented and paved the pothole-ridden street.  ( 24 min )

Is the inside of a vision model at all like a language model? Researchers argue that as the models grow more powerful, they may be converging toward a singular “Platonic” way to represent the world. The post Distinct AI Models Seem To Converge On How They Encode Reality first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

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One of the most fascinating things about the Universe is that whenever we look at it in a novel way — in new wavelengths of light, with greater resolution, or with superior sensitivity — we give ourselves the opportunity to be surprised. Instead of merely finding fainter or more distant versions of what we had already established was out there, we often find things that we didn’t even know we ought to be looking for previously. They might include new classes or populations of astronomical objects, an unexpected abundance of what were previously thought to be rare occurrences, or the presence of something that wasn’t expected to exist under the conditions or with the properties we wound up observing. That’s definitely the case when it comes to the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, which …  ( 15 min )

The field of leadership development has a long history of following the latest fad. During a recent collaboration with a major automaker, focusing on the employee development pathway for the upcoming year, one leader shared with us the following sentiment: “I just hope this is not another flavor of the month.”  The comment resonated with the group, who felt somewhat exhausted and weary from the cycle that many organizations tend to follow. Sadly, there’s nothing new about this kind of reaction. Billions of dollars are spent annually on leadership development initiatives. Much of these investments go into single-shot programs that function as commodities in the marketplace of leadership development. However, there is limited empirical evidence demonstrating the return on investment. One rea…  ( 6 min )

Augustine of Hippo lived a life of indulgence. As a young man, he took undue pride in his accomplishments, was a slave to his lustful desires, and even stole pears for the sinful thrill of it. But by his early 30s, the saint-to-be began investigating the nature of good and evil — a search that led him to the teachings of Christianity. Wondering if he should convert, and fearing what such a decision would say about his life so far, Augustine sought solace and reflection in a garden. There, he heard a child in the neighboring house singing: “Take up and read; take up and read.” Interpreting the chant as a divine sign, he set about to find a book, and the first one he happened upon was the letters of the Apostle Paul. Opening the book at random, his eyes fell upon Romans 13: “Let us walk hone…  ( 14 min )

Different social animals have different approaches to reconciling disrupted relationships. The anxiety created from damaging an important relationship leads chimpanzees to groom, bonobos to engage in sex, and dogs to show submissiveness. These reconciliatory actions are species-specific strategies to repair and return valuable relationships to their former state. So, what about humans — how do we repair our important relationships? The single most important mechanism that we use to earn reconciliation with someone we have harmed is the apology. In his classic book On Apology, Aaron Lazare points to two main reasons why people apologize: “The first reason is their response to shame, guilt, and empathic regard for those they have offended. The second reason is their attempt to restore the re…  ( 7 min )

Time blocking is a simple practice: You determine exactly when you will work on your daily tasks, usually at the start of the day, in blocks of time that you then “chunk” your day into. I like to schedule things in thirty-minute blocks and make an effort not to plan to do something for longer than ninety minutes. Carving out this time away from work to logically think through your day accomplishes a couple things. First, you get to comprehensively consider all the things you will want to accomplish — this lets you make progress on everything you need to, so nothing slips through the cracks. (It helps to keep your list of work goals nearby when you define your time blocks.) Time blocking also, just as important, provides you with greater confidence that whatever you’re working on in the mom…  ( 8 min )

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Teaching assistants and researchers want the University of California to set up a legal aid fund amid a crackdown on foreign visitors.  ( 26 min )

The lead plaintiff is a Berkeley middle school teacher who says she faced an investigation when she linked Israeli occupation of Palestine to colonialism in her classroom.  ( 26 min )

The hack for the takeout-only sandwich is to eat it at neighboring Bay Grape accompanied with a glass of wine.  ( 24 min )

A complicated love story between an Irish busker and a Czech songwriter unfolds in this Tony Award-winning musical.  ( 25 min )

After moving here from San Jose, illustrator Danielle Hopkins got advice from her cartographer partner and created a playful pictorial map of the Berkeley Hills and its pathways.  ( 26 min )

Later in life, he loved giving tours of his Bernard Maybeck-designed house in Berkeley.  ( 24 min )

The post Where The Prairie Still Remains appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 45 min )

Out there, in the vast Universe, are clumps of matter that come in many different sizes and masses. We might be most familiar with galaxies like our Milky Way: with hundreds of billions of solar masses worth of stars, even more gas and plasma, and more than a trillion solar masses worth of dark matter. At smaller masses, however, it takes longer, and becomes more and more difficult, for clouds of normal matter to collapse. If these low-mass clumps of matter do collapse, they’ll form stars, with the radiation from those stars often blowing the remaining gaseous matter away, but it’s also possible that — with enough externally injected energy — those clumps will never collapse. That’s the idea behind what astronomers call a RELHIC: a Reionization-Limited HI Cloud, or a cloud of neutral hydro…  ( 15 min )

Stoicism is often mistaken for emotional withdrawal or rigid self-control. What that misinterpretation gets wrong is that it actually centers the discipline of attention. Massimo Pigliucci reframes this misconception, revealing how this philosophy can lead to a clearer sense of agency – if implemented correctly. This video Why Stoicism fails when treated like self-help is featured on Big Think.  ( 16 min )

“This can’t be natural,” thought Yves Fouquet. The geologist was studying a newly produced undersea depth chart, generated with LIDAR technology, for the waters off Finistère — the jagged western tip of France, where the land pushes stubbornly into the Atlantic. What caught his eye was a ruler-straight line, 120 meters (394 feet) long, cutting cleanly across an underwater valley. Nature, as a rule, doesn’t do straight lines. Fouquet’s hunch proved correct, though confirmation had to wait until the following winter, when seaweed die-off had created visibility. That seasonal window allowed marine archaeologists to dive into the cold, choppy waters just off the tiny Breton island of Sein, and map what lay below. Nine meters (30 feet) beneath the waves, they found it: a vast, man-made stone wa…  ( 9 min )

She was a teacher of English as a second language, the author of a book about women entrepreneurs, an animal lover, a world traveler and a pursuer of the rustic life.  ( 24 min )

Roads and paths flooded by the Berkeley waterfront, and weather experts warned that the days of rain could elevate the risk of small landslides until the ground dries out.  ( 23 min )

Cafe da Fonk, Breadwinners, and Li's Knife Cut Noodle were among the restaurants to open before the end of 2025.  ( 26 min )

From expanded coverage for in vitro fertilization to preventing sex abuse in schools, here are some of the most noteworthy 2026 laws that went into effect on Jan. 1.  ( 34 min )

A 2.5 mile-stretch of the road below Inspiration Point, a popular route from the Berkeley Hills to Orinda and the reservoirs, reopened in December.  ( 25 min )

The city plans to build community gardens and a dog park along a long-neglected strip of the former Santa Fe railroad line.  ( 25 min )

The post A Test Of Great Power Spheres Of Influence appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 11 min )

Since launching in 1869, Nature has evolved from a periodical offering commentary on pigeons to the prestige journal in science. But how did Nature build its reputation, and can it last?

Try as they might, scientists can’t truly rid a space or an object of its energy. But what “zero-point energy” really means is up for interpretation. The post In Quantum Mechanics, Nothingness Is the Potential To Be Anything first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 8 min )

Whether you add this homemade Vegan Salami recipe to a sandwich or a charcuterie board, its bold savoury flavour is guaranteed to be a knockout! I’ll show you step-by-step how to make this deli-style favourite. I wish I could brag about the amount of work I put into this vegan salami recipe. It looks and […]  ( 29 min )

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At the frontiers of science, surprises often appear. This image shows a portion of the CEERS survey’s area, viewed with JWST and with NIRCam imagery. Within this field of view lies a galaxy with an active supermassive black hole: CEERS 1019, which weighs in at 9 million solar masses at a time from when the Universe was less than 600 million years old. It was the earliest black hole ever discovered, until that record was broken yet again in November of 2023. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin), Micaela Bagley (UT Austin), Rebecca Larson (UT Austin) JWST’s superior size — and unique infrared capabilities — have broken many cosmic records already. Preliminary total system throughput for each NIRCam filter, including contributions from the JWST Optical Telescope Element …  ( 9 min )

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Bittersweet maroon leaves pair perfectly with juicy red wine in this elegant winter risotto served with a walnut pesto Bitter ingredients are not to everyone’s taste, but, amid these darkest months, they make me feel alive. I love Seville oranges, grapefruit, brassicas, bitter greens, chicory and, most of all, radicchio. I like the burgundy-spotted castelfranco (great for salad with citrus and cheese) and the long-locked tardivo (best cooked with balsamic vinegar), but radicchio di chioggia is the popular leader of the pack. A chubby little cabbage-y nugget with a middle-of-the-road bitterness that becomes milder, sweeter and more delicious, especially when cooked alongside a large glass of juicy chianti and finished off with a snowy dusting of parmesan. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Launched in March at Berkeley Law, the Deportation Data Project has sued over ignored FOIA requests and become a go-to resource for establishing baseline facts about Trump’s immigration crackdown.  ( 26 min )

Erica Azim has spent decades studying and performing with revered Shona artists. Her nonprofit has recorded thousands of songs and sent more than $1.6 million to Zimbabwean musicians and instrument makers.  ( 29 min )

Miso Tofu Soup is comfort food Japanese-style! It’s warm and soothing when you’re under the weather or just craving a cozy meal. It’s deeply savoury, and the addition of tofu makes it satisfying too.  Miso might just be one of the most under-appreciated ingredients in the vegan pantry. It delivers so much depth, so many […]  ( 27 min )

Although there are four known fundamental forces to the Universe, there’s only one that matters on the largest cosmic scales of all: gravitation. The other three fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, which holds protons and neutrons together, the weak nuclear force, responsible for radioactive decays and any “species change” among quarks and leptons, and the electromagnetic force, which causes neutral atoms to form, are all largely irrelevant on cosmic scales. The reason why is simple: the other forces, when you gather large sets of particles together, all balance out at large distances. Matter, under those three forces, appears “neutral” at large scales, and no net force exists. But not so with gravitation. In fact, gravitation is unique in this sense. With gravitation, there are …  ( 14 min )

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We found twins named Parker and Addison, a couple who named their three kids after streets and two girls named for the city itself.  ( 35 min )

In His Own Words (Episode 3)  ( 37 min )

For centuries, the laws of physics seemed completely deterministic. If you knew where every particle was, how fast it was moving, and what the forces were between them at any one instant, you could know exactly where they’d be and what they’d be doing at any point in the future. From Newton to Maxwell, the rules that governed the Universe had no built-in, inherent uncertainty to them in any form. Your only limits arose from your limited knowledge, measurements, and calculational power. All of that changed a little over 100 years ago. From radioactivity to the photoelectric effect to the behavior of light when you passed it through a double slit, we began realizing that under many circumstances, we could only predict the probability that various outcomes would arise as a consequence of the …  ( 12 min )

As hills residents are told to clear vegetation around their homes to prevent wildfires, they are helping develop a new landscape design paradigm for the era of climate change.  ( 35 min )

Once part of a railroad route from Berkeley to Chicago, the three-block-long park is now a weekend destination for those living well beyond Poet’s Corner.  ( 35 min )

Despite all we’ve learned about ourselves and the physical reality that we all inhabit, the giant question of whether we’re alone in the Universe remains unanswered. We’ve explored the surfaces and atmospheres of many worlds in our own Solar System, but only Earth shows definitive signs of life: past or present. We’ve discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets over the past 30 years, identifying many Earth-sized, potentially inhabited worlds among them. Still, none of them have revealed themselves as actually inhabited, although the prospects for finding extraterrestrial life in the near future are tantalizing. And finally, we’ve begun searching directly for any signals from space that might indicate the presence of an intelligent, technologically advanced civilization, through endeavors such a…  ( 14 min )

2025 was packed with amazing books. Whether you wanted to learn about physics, history, words, birds, words about birds, killer chemistry, or enjoy some armchair philosophy, there was a book for you. I read so many fantastic books that I struggled to keep the list down to 10 — which is why it’s actually 15 (despite the title). I also couldn’t bring myself to rank them, so they’re ordered by release date. What can I say? I’m horribly indecisive. If you haven’t read some of these yet, I recommend picking up any that speak to you. Who knows? Maybe one will be a favorite of yours in 2026. 1. The Certainty Illusion by Timothy Caulfield Credit: Allen Lane As a leading science communicator, Caulfield believes that “well done and trustworthy science” helps us make sense of our reality. He’s rig…  ( 15 min )

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One Berkeley family may own as many as five vacant properties. Their bill under the city’s new vacancy tax will be more than triple what they paid in property taxes last year.  ( 29 min )

They’re fun, they’re green, they’re cheaper than ever. From 1 to 81, Berkeley residents of all ages and abilities are taking to e-bikes — used for commutes, school drop-offs, grocery trips and joy rides.  ( 35 min )

Gifted to the city by a wealthy banker in 1919, the steeply wooded park at the base of the Berkeley Hills is a draw for Shakespeare troupes and families.  ( 30 min )

This baked spaghetti recipe is pure comfort food for pasta lovers! Tender eggplant, vegan ground beef, and lots of plant-based cheese makes it irresistible. I love a baked pasta recipe. Don’t get me wrong, I love pasta too, but pasta in casserole form is just that much more comforting—not to mention that much more cheesy. […]  ( 30 min )

As you stand on the surface of the Earth, what is it that you experience? Yes, the surrounding atoms and molecules of the atmosphere collide with your body, as do photons: particles of light. Some of these particles are particularly energetic, and can kick electrons off of the atoms and molecules they’re normally bound to, creating free electrons and ions that can strike you as well. There are ghostly neutrinos and antineutrinos passing through your body, although they rarely interact with you. But there’s more that you experience than you realize. All throughout the Universe, from stars, black holes, galaxies, and more, cosmic rays are emitted: particles that stream through the Universe at high-energies. They strike Earth’s atmosphere and produce showers of both stable and unstable partic…  ( 14 min )

In the blink of an eye, artificial intelligence has been set to work transforming every walk of life — from self-driving taxis, to software that reads X-rays as accurately as radiologists, to virtual assistants that can schedule meetings and draft emails, to original if derivative music created in an instant in the style of Mozart or Marley. Like disruptive technologies before it — think automobiles, mechanical textile looms and more — it promises to radically change the world we live in, including the world of work. Fascinated and alarmed, economists and policymakers are debating how AI — and especially much anticipated artificial general intelligence, or AGI — will reshape the workforce. Techno optimists argue that technology has historically been a powerful driver of economic growth, sp…  ( 12 min )

Pitchfork's 2003 review of MP3 blogger favorite, The Rapture. Season 4 of Cybercultural has been focused on the rise of digital culture from 1994 through to 2003, a period that encompasses the beginning of the web, moves through the dot-com boom and bust, and ends the year before Web 2.0 emerges. During this season, I've written a lot about how both online music and blogging evolved from 1994-2003 — helping to push the internet into mainstream culture. It's appropriate, then, that the final post of this season looks at a sub-trend that combines these two topics: music blogs, a.k.a. "MP3 blogs." By 2003, with the blogosphere now established, music fans had begun to gravitate to blogs to pontificate about the music and artists they loved. It was no longer necessary to set up an entire websit…  ( 7 min )

Clinical trials are engines for scientific discovery. Better drugs require not just more trials, but also improved data collection, to create therapeutic feedback loops.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 8 min )

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For 27 hours straight, a team of four scammers posing as Oakland police kept her on the phone and isolated, manipulating the John Muir elementary teacher into delivering nearly $70,000.  ( 30 min )

Don Barksdale and Billy Martin played some of their very first games there. The Black Panthers gave out free groceries. And generations have come for picnics, classes, music and sport in a place that “just feels safe.”  ( 29 min )

This Chili Cheese Fries Recipe takes the game day favourite and makes it vegan! Hearty plant-based chili and cheese are baked on a pile of crispy fries for the ultimate party snack. If hearing the words “chili cheese fries” makes you think junk food, you haven’t met this vegan version! Friends, this is a chili […]  ( 29 min )

From Earth and across space, our telescopes continually image the Universe. This multiwavelength view of the two largest, brightest galaxies in the M81 group shows stars, plasmas, and neutral hydrogen gas. The gas bridge connecting these two galaxies infalls onto both members, triggering the formation of new stars. If each star were shrunk down to be a grain of sand, this group would be 36 million km away, but the two galaxies would be separated only by a little over 400,000 km: the Earth-Moon distance. The galaxies comprising the M81 group will likely be the very last ones to recede from our reach in our dark energy-dominated Universe. Credit: R. Gendler, R. Croman, R. Colombari; Acknowledgement: R. Jay GaBany; VLA Data: E. de Block (ASTRON) Beyond their scientific value, these images…  ( 10 min )

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Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

A decadent, cheesy centrepiece to steal the attention at any party, and built for comfort and joy As 2025 closes, I wanted to leave you with one of my favourite recipes: the pumpkin fondue. This started life as a Lyonnaise dish that I saw Anthony Bourdain enjoy on his TV series Parts Unknown at Daniel Boulud’s parents’ farmhouse. My adapted version could be a centrepiece of your New Year’s Eve party, where the molten cheese mixture can be spread on bruschetta and topped with pickles. Equally, however, it could be a main meal shared with friends alongside a salad, pickles and bread. Either way, it’s built for comfort and for joy. Happy New Year to you. Continue reading...  ( 16 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 8 min )

For local jornaleros with bills to pay, staying home is not an option despite fears about the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. One local nonprofit is providing protection and support.  ( 34 min )

Three of the four corners of the University-San Pablo intersection are sitting empty. But one new tenant is on the way, and this key commercial district could be on the upswing.  ( 33 min )

Evacuating for a tsunami could take over 2 hours. Neither is enough time for people to get out of danger zones in a worst-case scenario.  ( 29 min )

The holiday is over, and it's time to start thinking about disposing of your tree. There are a couple of ways to do that in Berkeley.  ( 25 min )

Mexican Street Corn Dip takes the flavour of elotes and puts it into a crowd-pleasing appetizer! It’s creamy, smoky, tangy, a little bit spicy, and loaded with sweet corn.  Ever since visiting Mexico, I have loved elotes—and when I went vegan, I even came up with a vegan Mexican Street Corn recipe to capture that […]  ( 28 min )

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Universe, if you think about it on a truly fundamental level, is that it exists at all. And yet, not only does it exist, but there’s matter within it, which obeys the same rules everywhere and at all times, and assembles according to the physical laws governing reality to create, among other things: atomic nuclei, neutral atoms, molecules, stars and planets, galaxies, and a large-scale cosmic web. Not only that, but in at least one relatively unremarkable corner of this Universe, a planet arose some 4.5 billion years ago where life survived and thrived, eventually giving rise to an intelligent, self-aware species that can ask deep questions about the Universe they inhabit. In doing so, we’re also asking fundamental, deep questions about our own se…  ( 15 min )

With the year winding down and my inbox now filled with out-of-office replies, I thought this week’s Nightcrawler was a good excuse to recommend a couple of feature-length documentaries. The first is The Thinking Game (free on YouTube) — a five-year portrait of Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind. On one level, it’s a fascinating account of how a small group of researchers pushed the limits of artificial intelligence and produced genuine breakthroughs. Beneath the surface, the film is really about long-term thinking. AI can feel like it appeared out of nowhere sometime around 2022. This documentary shows how misleading that impression is. The real story began much earlier — with years of false starts, doubt, and incremental advances that rarely made headlines. When DeepMind’s breakthrou…  ( 9 min )

What would be a good gift to buy a philosopher? A few weeks ago, I asked 10,000 people this question and got thousands of replies back. Some, of course, were funny: “A job,” “Some money,” and a “girlfriend.” Some were predictably context-appropriate: “An unanswerable question,” “Time to think,” and “A deep conversation.” Others were oddly mundane: “Socks,” “A mug,” or a “book.” When Diego said “a comb,” I think he was getting personal. (You can find the best of the rest over on Substack.) But there was one answer that really got me thinking. I am sure it was meant as a joke, but you have to be careful joking with the philosophically minded. Because quite a few people said “purpose” or “meaning.” I started to imagine the scene: My son runs over with a gilded, vibrating, and immaculately wra…  ( 7 min )

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Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 12 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Kids are flocking to parks and Freight & Salvage to hear librarian Michael Kwende read silly books with perfect rhythm, backed up by his bookish bandmates.  ( 30 min )

From cherished art institutions to mini-museums devoted to coffee, perfumes and lace, you’re sure to see, learn or even smell something new.  ( 28 min )

Berkeley first made history as a sanctuary city during the Vietnam War. Advocates today are building on that legacy to protect asylum seekers from around the world.  ( 39 min )

In His Own Words (Episode 2)  ( 31 min )

If there’s one thing most of us can be certain of it’s this: that our observed, physical reality actually exists. Although there are always some philosophical assumptions behind this conclusion, it’s an assumption that isn’t contradicted by anything we’ve ever measured under any conditions: not with human senses, not with laboratory equipment, not with telescopes or observatories, not under the influence of nature alone nor with specific human intervention. Reality exists, and our scientific description of that reality came about precisely because those measurements, conducted anywhere or at any time, is consistent with that very description of reality itself. But there had previously been a set of assumptions that came along with our notion of reality that are no longer universally agreed…  ( 14 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

The coffee trailer that featured beans from Mother Tongue Coffee officially closed on Dec. 13.  ( 24 min )

Judy North designed two of the stained glass windows at Northbrae Community Church in 1954. She was never given proper credit — until now.  ( 29 min )

The library shared with Berkeleyside the year’s most frequently checked-out books and household tools.  ( 26 min )

In addition to leading Merritt, Feather River and College of Alameda, he taught English, worked on political campaigns and helped answer advice letters sent to "Dear Abby" at the SF Chronicle.  ( 26 min )

The justices suggested the president is misinterpreting "the regular forces," a key phrase in the statute on which he is relying.

Imagine there’s a large, flat sheet of ice out in front of you, and someone unceremoniously shoves you across it at a high speed. What are you to do? If you’re wearing conventional shoes, without crampons or blades attached to them, you’re going to have a difficult time. Ice is a very low-friction surface, and there’s very little you’re going to be able to do to change your momentum without slipping and perhaps falling down. You’re bound to simply slide along until either you run into an obstacle or slowly come to rest, likely a long way from where you began. But if you put thin blades on the bottoms of your shoes — e.g., wear ice skates — you’ll discover that the situation is very much different in this case. As long as you can remain on your feet, with only your blades touching the ice, …  ( 12 min )

As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to practice leadership while helping others develop it. I’m Charlotte Sharpe, Managing Director of Research and Innovation at Big Think+. My role is to drive alignment between our content and platform, ensuring that what we build, design, and deliver truly serves our clients—organizations that are bringing leadership development to life within their own cultures. Across this year, our team’s work has revolved around three ideas: clarity, collaboration, and storytelling. Together, they’ve shaped how we scale leadership: both inside Big Think+ and across the organizations we partner with.  1. Clarity Scales One of our most important realizations this year is that clarity is a form of leadership. The ability to define what we mea…  ( 5 min )

We’ve grown comfortable with the idea that trauma leaves people permanently altered. It’s a compelling story, but a misleading one. Drawing on more than a hundred studies, clinical psychologist George Bonanno explains why resilience is not a rare trait or a heroic exception, but the most common human response to adversity. This video The real reason some people adapt faster than others is featured on Big Think.  ( 19 min )

Despite these times of extreme change, uncertainty, and complexity, many leaders still expect that they, and the people who work for them, should leave their worries at the proverbial office door. If that ever was a reasonable expectation, however, it clearly no longer is.   Across industries and at all levels, people are overwhelmed, exhausted, and burning out like never before. The consequence: ever-growing disengagement, which undermines individual well-being and organizational productivity and performance. In its most recent State of the Global Workplace report, Gallup found that the percentage of engaged employees dropped from 23% to a meagre 21% last year — a decline equal to that seen during COVID-19 lockdowns.  There are many contributors to this. Friction around return-to-work ord…  ( 8 min )

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After pushback from faculty, Cal’s provost says he wants to open a dialogue on academic freedom.  ( 29 min )

There were no injuries reported, according to the Berkeley Fire Department. The fire was in the same block where two buildings at the old Pacific Steel site caught fire in September.  ( 24 min )

That’s a year later than BART projected in March.  ( 27 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 min )

It was a flavorful year, with dinner parties, Michelin stars, ice cream revivals and breakfast comebacks.  ( 28 min )

Sauna Aid, a charity supported by many Bay Area saunas, has funded retreats for combat medics, led workshops for refugees and transported saunas to the frontlines in Kharkiv.  ( 28 min )

The Berkeley Community Choir and Orchestra, launched in 1966 by Oakland firefighter Eugene Jones, kicks off its 60th season Jan. 2 with three performances of Verdi's Requiem.  ( 28 min )

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: The Two Faces of Lummie Jenkins appeared first on The Atavist Magazine.  ( 5 min )

If you like lots of add-ins in your muffins, these vegan Morning Glory Muffins are going to be your new favourite! With cozy spices, a combination of carrots, pineapple, and apple for sweetness and moisture, along with a nutty crunch, they’re perfect for breakfast. I love baking muffins. Because even when I don’t have time […]  ( 29 min )

Earth, whether we like it or not, serves as a cosmic particle detector on a continuous basis. It isn’t just light waves that travel through the Universe, nor is that light merely joined by gravitational waves and ghostly neutrinos. In truth, cosmic particles and antiparticles of all types are produced in high-energy processes throughout the Universe, from the Big Bang to stars to white dwarfs to neutron stars to black holes, both large and small. When we put detectors up to detect what sorts of particles are out there, we find a virtual zoo, including: protons, antiprotons, electrons, positrons, and even still-heavier atomic nuclei, made out of protons and neutrons combined. Most cosmic rays, as we measure them, turn out to be protons, and just as you’d expect, there are more of them at lo…  ( 15 min )

Philosophers and scientists have always kept close company. Look back far enough, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.  Before we had instruments to measure reality, we had to reason our way into it, but that intellectual lineage is what eventually gave us the scientific method. As technology advanced and the scope for observation expanded, specializations splintered off from philosophy to reconstitute as the sciences.  Astronomy cleared the sky of deities and showed us a universe governed by gravity, not gods. Geography mapped a not-so-flat Earth, then geology dated it, stratifying earthly time in isotopes and sedimentary layers. Physics folded time into space, and with it, reimagined us not as beings apart from nature, but as a continuation of its energy and mass. W…  ( 14 min )

When Simon Squibb was kicked out of his family home aged 15, he quickly built up the first of many businesses that helped him transform his name into a global brand. A gardening venture born of teenage survival kick-started the journey that would lead to the creation of YouTube’s most-watched business video: “30 years of business knowledge in 2hr 26mins.” (15M views to date) More than 18 million social media followers now watch Squibb hand cash to strangers in the street if he likes their business idea. He also bought a staircase in London with a doorbell for people to “pitch their dreams,” and now has a similar doorbell in New York, which he runs with Sir Richard Branson. Here, Squibb reveals to Big Think how he became a “professional talker” and how other leaders can explain ideas more c…  ( 10 min )

She co-founded the Middle East Children’s Alliance in 1988. Its early board included Edward Said and Maya Angelou. She was also active in the fight to bring rent control to Berkeley.  ( 28 min )

The Berkeley Hills have seen 2.5 inches of rain since Sunday, but a stronger system could bring damaging wind and flooding later this week.  ( 25 min )

As the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on hospitals to halt gender affirming care, Rainbow Families Action notches a win. Plus: What hospital systems told us they will and won’t offer now.  ( 35 min )

After nearly six decades of feeding Bay Area residents facing food insecurity, the pantry will close its doors in January 2026.  ( 30 min )

Major news stories this year have revolved around Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Tesla protests on Fourth Street, encampment clearings, new rules banning plants near many homes in the hills and more.  ( 28 min )

Abogados reportan un aumento de estafadores que se hacen pasar por abogados de inmigración y que tienen como objetivo a solicitantes de asilo en el Área de la Bahía. Aprenda a protegerse.  ( 31 min )

Flash at full volume: Jamiroquai’s website in 2003. By 2003, the internet had weathered the worst of the dot-com crash and developers and entrepreneurs were beginning to come out of hibernation. While it would take another year for Silicon Valley to start inflating another bubble — this one would be named "Web 2.0" — there was a renewed sense of optimism. Blogging and RSS moved into the mainstream in 2003, helped by the emergence of consumer-friendly RSS Readers like NetNewsWire and Bloglines. There was even now an economic model for blogging, with the launch of Google's AdSense in March. Also, online music went legit with Apple's iTunes store, and social networking began to take recognizable form with Friendster and MySpace. "Social software" was a geeky term being used in the blogosphere…  ( 6 min )

A rich cashew-based sauce makes this vegan Creamed Spinach Recipe velvety, smooth, and absolutely delicious! It’s easy enough to make for a weeknight dinner, but impressive enough to scale up for a holiday celebration. When I was working on this vegan Creamed Spinach Recipe, I played around with a few different options for the cream […]  ( 28 min )

Research into how a father’s choices — such as diet, exercise, stress, nicotine use — may transfer traits to his children has become impossible to ignore. The post How Dad’s Fitness May Be Packaged and Passed Down in Sperm RNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 17 min )

Since ancient times, humanity has studied the skies. 70,000 years ago, a brown dwarf pair known as Scholz’s Star, right on the precipice of igniting hydrogen fusion in its core, passed through the Solar System’s Oort cloud. Stars, failed stars, and stellar remnants pass through our Solar System multiple times every million years. Both modern humans and Neanderthals were likely around to see this event. Unlike the illustration, however, it’s so intrinsically faint that it still wouldn’t have been visible to human eyes; today, it’s approximately 22 light-years away. Credit: José A. Peñas/SINC Cometary sightings, eclipses, and “temporary” stars date back thousands of years. This particular image contrasts the constellations of the sky as they appeared thousands of years ago with correspo…  ( 11 min )

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She co-founded Reid’s Records in Berkeley, dated Jackie Robinson, delivered cash for the Black Panthers and published a memoir about her remarkable life.  ( 29 min )

Immigrants start businesses at a higher rate than native-born Americans, benefitting not only themselves but also their American workers and customers.

Nonprofits managing affordable housing are on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in new city fees.  ( 27 min )

The Bay Area transit agency plans a 6.2% increase starting Jan. 1, marking the third consecutive year of rising fares.  ( 25 min )

After a change in ownership in 2024, the Uptown Oakland bar and bottle shop is set to close at the end of 2025.  ( 24 min )

Attorneys have reported a spike in scams impersonating immigration attorneys and targeting asylum-seekers in the Bay Area. Learn how to protect yourself.  ( 30 min )

Read more »  ( 17 min )

Bryan Washington’s characters reveal themselves through what they don’t, won’t, or can’t say as much as the utterances they give voice to. Though he constructs his stories from the first-person perspective, his protagonists never exist in heroic isolation. Each is shaped — in ways small and large, superficial and profound, knowingly and unknowingly — by the people they interact with and the cultures they inhabit.  Most of Washington’s stories are set in Houston, where he grew up, or Japan, where he currently lives. Occasionally, as in Palaver, the author’s third novel, the two collide. A finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, Palaver tells the story of an unnamed son who moved from Texas to Tokyo to escape his homophobic brother, only to receive a surprise visit from his unnamed mother…  ( 8 min )

Most of us think happiness is something you achieve: status, money, accomplishment. Robert Waldinger’s work asks a more unsettling question: what if happiness is less about what you get and more about who you keep?  Drawing on the longest study of adult life ever conducted, Waldinger traces human wellbeing across 8 decades, from the Great Depression to old age, following people from radically different starting points to see what endures. This video The happiness shortcut that hides in plain sight is featured on Big Think.  ( 12 min )

This vegan Monkey Bread Recipe is pillowy soft, sticky in the best kind of way, and full of sweet cinnamon brown sugar flavour. It’s perfect for holiday breakfasts and brunch get-togethers because this pull-apart bread is always a hit!  If you follow along with my blog, you know I love to bake bread! There’s something […]  ( 32 min )

The public wants violent criminals deported, not workers and their families.

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When it comes to science in general, and physics in particular, we don’t just want to know what’s going to happen under a given set of circumstances. We also want to know the answer to the key question of, “how much,” “how many,” or “in what amount,” when it comes to our answers. Being quantitative, and answering questions of amounts and timescales, not merely qualitative, is what separates a successful physical theory from one that must be discarded. In the expanding Universe, this is more important than ever, as questions of what we expect to form, when, and in what quantities, are essential for testing whether our theories of the Universe actually match up with our observed reality. Clearly, we live in a Universe where stars came into existence long ago: back in the first few hundred mi…  ( 17 min )

How does life build complexity from pure chance? Sean B. Carroll takes up the “staircase of evolution,” showing how random mutation and natural selection shape everything from the smallest cells in our bodies to entire species. If you want to understand the forces that silently govern life, this discussion reframes evolution as an active, ongoing process shaping every organism, including you. This video The evolutionary logic of survival and death, in 54 minutes is featured on Big Think.  ( 32 min )

Over the last few years, AI has dazzled us all. It can write our emails, optimize our workflows, and create alarmingly realistic videos. But is it intelligent? Can it actually understand things? I’m not so sure. This week, I published an essay for my Long Game column in Big Think about this idea. To do that, I tell a story about a slime mold that might just be more “intelligent” than a human — even though it has no brain. (No, I haven’t lost my marbles yet; read it and you’ll understand.) The basic premise is this: the world is pouring incomprehensible amounts of energy and capital into building systems that mimic a single, narrow form of human intelligence. But in the process, we may be ignoring a far older, and potentially wiser, form of intelligence. It’s also a type of intelligence tha…  ( 9 min )

12.5 to 12.6 billion years after the beginning of the Universe. On Earth, biological organisms are getting more and more interesting as the years tick by. As the unbroken chain of life continues, the combined factors of inheritance, random mutations, and horizontal gene transfer serve to increase the total amount of genetic information found in the genomes of the most complex organisms. This results in them gaining more specialized features, and many new characteristics begin emerging. Some organisms thrive together in colonies, with identical unicellular lifeforms binding to one another to ensure that the majority of them survive and thrive. Other organisms develop multicellularity: the ability for a single organism to produce multiple component parts — cells — that all remain bound toge…  ( 6 min )

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Also: A former Berkeley rabbi’s brother-in-law is among those who was shot during the antisemitic attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Australia.  ( 25 min )

CARE Court was supposed to be a new way to help homeless Californians in the grip of psychosis. But people are still falling through the cracks.  ( 35 min )

The successful teacher's strike in West Contra Costa Unified has emboldened teachers unions in Berkeley and 14 other California school districts currently at an impasse in their labor negotiations.  ( 26 min )

There are several options for enjoying the Italian holiday treat, including Starter Bakery's in-house version and Donato & Co., which is the only U.S. importer of Infermentum panettone.  ( 31 min )

Other events include a celebration of the winter solstice, a political satire show featuring "King Scrump" and an interfaith holiday concert.  ( 28 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

The post Noema’s Top Artwork Of 2025 appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 5 min )

Explore a shape that can’t pass through itself, a teenage prodigy, and two new kinds of infinity. The post The Year in Mathematics first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

This December, like every December, will include a single moment — often marked by a particular day, which is December 21st here in 2025 — where our planet’s axial tilt is perfectly aligned with the invisible line connecting the Earth to the Sun. In December, it’s the northern hemisphere’s pole that’s tilted away from the Sun, while the southern hemisphere’s pole is tipped toward it; in June, the opposite situation is true. When your pole is tipped toward the Sun, your hemisphere experiences the longest days and shortest nights; when the pole is tipped away, you get long nights and short days. This remains true, solstice after solstice and year after year, no matter how much time passes. Although there are many factors at play that determine the behavior of each planet — its spin and orbit…  ( 13 min )

Smartphones and social media are hijacking our younger generation’s childhood and development in a frightening way. Clare Morell, researcher and author of The Tech Exit, is sounding the alarm. This video The terrifying ways that social media is altering teenage brains is featured on Big Think.  ( 4 min )

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia but spent her formative teenage years in Nairobi, Kenya. For most of her youth, Islam was a distant, habitual backdrop. She observed the fasts, went to the mosque now and then, and perhaps idly carried a string of tasbih prayer beads. Then, in 1985, the Muslim Brotherhood swept through her community. Under the tutelage of a charismatic female teacher, Ali transformed. The casual tradition was replaced by a rigid, politicized fervor; she put on the heavy black hijab and learned to renounce Western culture. Today, Ali is a Christian, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and a conservative powerhouse. But the path between then and now reveals a fracture in modern identity politics. When Ali first arrived in the Netherlands in 1992, fleeing a …  ( 8 min )

If asked to describe what sets a cognitively complex species like humans apart from others, many would list specific behaviors, such as telling stories, creating art, planning for the future, or navigating complex social structures. Given that, you might expect that neuroscientists attempting to understand the advanced brain would study it in action, as a person or animal moves through the world.  For much of its history, though, neuroscience has done the opposite.  “When I was a graduate student, neuroscience was almost entirely about isolating specific circuits to test how the brain controls your senses and movement,” says Dr. Earl K. Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT. “You’d show an animal a stimulus, observe how it responded, and record which neurons fired.” This res…  ( 12 min )

In His Own Words (Episode 1)  ( 34 min )

The suit — seeking records related to a complaint that officers acted improperly towards people filming an encampment sweep — lays bare rising tensions between police accountability officials and BPD brass.  ( 26 min )

A group of parents and students, fearing doxing and harassment, urged the district not to comply with federal requests. And a Berkeley middle school teacher is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit aiming to halt California’s new law on antisemitism in schools.  ( 29 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 min )

The airport launched its OAK Guest Pass to fanfare on Monday. But visitors must send sensitive information to the TSA – where it could end up in the hands of immigration enforcement.  ( 25 min )

Founder Russell Kassman sold the Berkeley business in 2019 and moved to Texas. The new owner closed up shop last month.  ( 24 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.  ( 7 min )

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U.S. immigration authorities should not do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.

Physicists spotted a “terribly exciting” new black hole, doubled down on weakening dark energy, and debated the meaning of quantum mechanics. The post The Year in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 9 min )