Here in the classical world, if you throw a ball against a solid wall, that wall will be impenetrable, and the ball will bounce right back. Do it a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times, and the result will always be the same. As long as the wall remains intact, the ball will always remain on that same, initial side of the wall. Things are a little different in the quantum world, however. If you fire a subatomic particle, like an electron, at a barrier — whether that’s a solid barrier made of atoms or merely an energy barrier, where the particle doesn’t have enough energy, itself, to get to the other side — most of the electrons will bounce back. But there’s a chance, dependent on the: speed and energy of the electron, the height and thickness of the (physical or energy) barrier…  ( 14 min )

Companies are pouring staggering amounts of money into artificial intelligence. IDC projects global spending will surpass half a trillion dollars within the next two years. Boardrooms are talking about it, tech vendors are promising it, and learning and development teams are feeling the pressure to show they’re ‘doing something with AI.’ And yet, the results are almost invisible. MIT recently reported that 95 percent of AI projects fail to deliver measurable outcomes. Despite the unprecedented investment, productivity gains are elusive, employee adoption is shaky, and the business case often collapses under scrutiny. How can we surround ourselves with the most powerful technology in human history, spend billions deploying it, and still struggle to prove it makes us better? The answer isn’t…  ( 7 min )

I’ve known Alex Morris for about five years. From the beginning, I’ve admired his work — his writing, his investment research, and perhaps most of all, his ability to stay relentlessly focused in a field that too often rewards distraction. Alex has always struck me as someone who plays the long game: careful in his thinking, measured in his conclusions, and deeply committed to extracting durable lessons from markets. That’s why I was thrilled when he set out to write a book, Buffett and Munger Unscripted, about Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, arguably the two greatest investors of our time. Plenty of books have been written about them — volumes on their deals, their financial acumen, even their quirks of personality. But Alex’s approach is different. Rather than layering on his own theo…  ( 13 min )

The new era of generative AI constitutes an extraordinary moment given the growth of new technologies that, for the first time, are beginning to provide the kind of scale and supple understanding of human language and communication that could be adequate to the size of the problems on global platforms. These technologies remain flawed at present, but they are clearly rapidly improving in some cases. Some industry experts who have spent years tackling seemingly insurmountable problems are beginning to see real promise in using generative AI for content moderation. Machine-learning technologies have been used for years now in content moderation, but they mostly have been doing complex pattern matching. In effect, generative AI allows for an approach to interpreting user-generated messages th…  ( 10 min )

I first saw China a little more than 35 years ago during a train trip from Hong Kong to Chengdu, a city deep in the interior of the country near the mountains that rise up into Tibet. The train was powered by steam, and the trip took four days and nights, winding through the hills and small mountains.  The China I saw out of that train’s window was the same one a traveler could have seen 100 or more years prior. At the time of my visit, China was a nation of close to a billion rural peasants living in small villages and mostly growing rice in paddies as far as you could see. For an American like me, it was like traveling back in time. I took that same train route a month ago, and instead of four days, the trip took just eight hours. The train was one of the new fully electric, high-speed o…  ( 18 min )

Some experiences in life simply can’t be prepared for. You can imagine how you might feel and what you might do, but you can never actually know how you will respond in a situation until it happens. Falling in love, becoming a parent, and facing one’s mortality all fit into this category. In the workplace, your first interview, first day on the job, and the first time you’re given the responsibility of managing others fall into this category. For a select few who successfully climb the corporate ladder, becoming CEO also lands there. Oliver Bäte, CEO of European financial services company Allianz, puts it starkly: “You don’t really know what happens on the job until the day you have it.”  What makes the top job so different from the leadership roles that come before it? To start with, new …  ( 8 min )

Still from a 2000 Homestar Runner Flash toon; via Internet Archive. After the hype and fear of Y2K (a.k.a. the Millenium bug) quickly faded in January 2000, the internet continued its mostly joyful rise in the culture. Sure, the dot-com bubble got pricked in March and then slowly deflated, but the web itself didn't stop growing. Over 2000, "the Net" became an even more colorful, and increasingly social, place to hang out. Animated Flash pages were everywhere, bloggers were discovering and connecting to each other, social news sites like Slashdot and MetaFilter were rising in prominence. So despite the flagging economy, creativity in web design plus community in blogs and social news came to define the year 2000. The Web Keeps Growing, Even as the Bubble Bursts We have to start, though, wit…  ( 5 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 )

It’s the first time the transit agency’s Sound Tracks concert series will throw an outdoor party in partnership with SFJAZZ.  ( 25 min )

The grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture will allow Saba to create a Food Hub at the Oakland produce terminal and offer its services across Alameda County.  ( 26 min )

Cal physicist John Clarke and two other scientists won the prize for research on the weird world of sub-atomic quantum tunneling that advances the power of everyday digital communications and computing.  ( 25 min )

The pharmaceutical company's campus in West Berkeley is in Phase 3 trials for a new kind of treatment.  ( 24 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.  ( 33 min )

The post Editing Nature To Fix Our Failures appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 30 min )

Here on Earth, at least 3.8 billion years ago and perhaps even earlier in our planet’s history, life emerged on our world, and has persisted ever since. We’ve had photosynthetic life for at least the last 2.7 billion years. We’ve had eukaryotic life, with differentiated organelles inside its cells, for more than 2 billion years. Multicellular life and sexual reproduction have been around for over a billion years. And plants, animals, and fungi all emerged more than 500 million years ago. More recently, our own species emerged on Earth: not only intelligent, but technologically advanced, transforming our world and having taken our first steps into space beginning in the 20th century. Uncovering this story, coupled with the recognition that the raw ingredients that led to life on Earth are f…  ( 15 min )

Is AI in a bubble? That’s the basic yet seismic question on a lot of people’s minds. But here’s the thing: It’s oversimplified, attempting to color an unprecedentedly gray moment either black or white. And what does the query even mean? If you’re asking about whether or not the valuations of certain AI startups and the companies that supply them are overvalued relative to their current financials, there’s a strong case for answering in the affirmative. If you’re asking whether the hype over AI has raced ahead of the technological landscape in regards to it attaining artificial general intelligence or rapidly destroying the labor market — the answer might be “probably.” But if you’re asking whether AI will ultimately fizzle out and go down in history as the fever dream of a science-fiction…  ( 10 min )

To sell or not to sell — that’s the question many entrepreneurs ask themselves when their startups manage to beat the imposing odds and achieve financial success. Sell too soon, and you may lose out on growth that’s yet to come. Wait too long, and you risk cashing out after your business has already peaked. At one point, Andrew Gazdecki belonged to the second of these two cohorts. “I held on because I was attached,” he says of his first company, Bizness Apps, which he sold in 2017. The company, a publishing platform that helps businesses develop mobile apps, began life in 2010, riding the smartphone revolution kickstarted by Apple. When, years later, Bizness Apps began losing customers, and continued losing customers, part of Gazdecki knew it was time to sell. And yet he waited. Although, …  ( 9 min )

Historian and free speech advocate Jacob Mchangama explains how suppressing voices often has the opposite effect. From the crucifixion of Jesus fueling Christianity to Barbra Streisand accidentally amplifying photos of her Malibu mansion, attempts at censorship often strengthen what they aim to silence. Mchangama argues that while free speech can be messy and ugly, it remains essential to preserve its many benefits. This video How censorship turns ordinary men into martyrs is featured on Big Think.  ( 5 min )

New restaurant openings include Campus Burger, Cafe Brusco and Yard Milkshake Bar.  ( 26 min )

Supervisors want more time to consider rules that would limit county investments in fossil fuels, guns, tobacco, and human rights violators.  ( 26 min )

His achievement is made possible by Incarceration to College, an initiative supporting system-impacted youth in accessing higher education.  ( 25 min )

Strawberry Summer Cake in Smitten Kitchen Keepers. The second is the Opera Cake (Gâteau Opéra), a stacked and striped dessert with thin almond cake layers soaked in espresso syrup, chocolate ganache, and a rich espresso buttercream. The difference between the first cake and the second is that the second recipe was never going to happen. In the nearly two decades of Smitten Kitchen’s existence, I’ve again and again begun researching what a homemade opera cake would entail and every time, slammed the proverbial book shut because it was just too much. A joconde! French buttercream! Soaking syrup! Chocolate layer! Many separated eggs! And what about all of that espresso? There are children present! And elderly people (me) who probably shouldn’t drink coffee after 4pm! If I could barely talk myself into it, how would I convince you? Maybe some things are best left to the professionals, I concluded. Read more »  ( 21 min )

There has been a push toward animal-free alternatives in scientific research. But the success of such alternatives hinges upon whether and where they can outperform standard animal models.

The amplituhedron, a shape at the heart of particle physics, appears to be deeply connected to the mathematics of paper folding. The post Origami Patterns Solve a Major Physics Riddle first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

This vegan Caesar Pasta Salad is savoury, tangy, and garlicky, with a fantastic combination of textures, from crunchy baked chickpeas to crisp romaine and tender pasta. Delicious! What happens when you combine the savoury, garlicky, crisp-and-crunchy goodness of a Vegan Caesar Salad with pasta salad? You get this Caesar pasta salad recipe, of course! This […]  ( 19 min )

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The JWST era continues to show us the Universe as never before. This highly unusual object was spotted with JWST: a background spiral galaxy heavily distorted by the gravitational lensing effects of a foreground elliptical galaxy. This data was part of the Strong Lensing and Cluster Evolution (SLICE) survey, which targets galaxy cluster evolution; an independent complement to the gravitational lenses found as part of the wider-field COSMOS-Web survey. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler; Acknowledgement: M. A. McDonald Its recently completed COSMOS-Web survey provides our deepest wide-field views ever. This image composite shows the full-field of a large galaxy cluster within the COSMOS-Web survey, using a combination of JWST NIRCam and Hubble infrared data, with X-ray data from t…  ( 9 min )

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Criminal networks throughout Southeast Asia are demonstrating the dangers of making “the ultimate exit.”  ( 10 min )

A breakfast (or lunch, or brunch) all-in-one tortilla treat Imagine a world full of all-in-one options. One type of lightbulb! A single charger for all the gadgets! One battery size! One remote control! One type of Tupperware! Universal buttons! One insurance policy for life, death and everything in between! One pan lid for all the pans! Wouldn’t that be great? That’s what the burrito, with its multiple ingredients swaddled in tortilla, promises. Except that I haven’t always loved the heft of them and the way the flavours merge too readily. So I’ve written my own recipe. For me, this is the one. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Peyrin Kao, a Cal lecturer, says he’s lost 15 pounds since he started his hunger in solidarity with residents of Gaza enduring famine.  ( 28 min )

A group sued Berkeley over three City Council meetings that were moved to a private conference room after protesters interrupted them.  ( 25 min )

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

The Berkeley Federation of Teachers and BUSD began the school year with an expired labor agreement.  ( 26 min )

Author of over 20 books, including "Pornography and Silence" and "A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War," Griffin's influential work both named injury and opened a door toward repair.  ( 24 min )

The post AI Acceleration Vs. Precaution appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 16 min )

This vegan Banh Mi Bowl recipe is colourful, flavourful, and loaded with textures! Chewy rice noodles are topped with crispy tofu and veggies, then drizzled with a sweet-and-savoury sauce and creamy sriracha mayo. You might say I’ve been on a banh mi kick lately. My Air Fryer Tofu inspired me to make a Crispy Tofu […]  ( 18 min )

The V-JEPA system uses ordinary videos to understand the physics of the real world. The post How One AI Model Creates a Physical Intuition of Its Environment first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

Trauma doesn’t vanish when danger does. According to psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, the body acts as an archive, holding fear, pain, and survival instincts long after the moment passes.  Van der Kolk explains why conventional treatments for trauma fall short, and the promising new pathways to healing that science is revealing. This video Bessel van der Kolk: Trauma isn’t the event, it’s the response is featured on Big Think.  ( 35 min )

Going all the way back to ancient times — sometimes attributed to Persia, other times to King Solomon, and still at other times to far eastern sources — one of the most important reminders of the transient nature of all things, good and bad, is encapsulated in the simple saying, “this too shall pass.” Both joy and sorrow are temporary, as is life itself. The stars, shining brightly throughout the sky, will all someday burn out; the galaxies will someday turn dark. Even if the timescales for some of these phenomena are barely fathomable to the human mind, the fact remains that everything within the Universe, and even the Universe itself, will someday cease to exist as we know it. But has science truly learned enough to declare what the nature of our ultimate cosmic demise will be? Can we sp…  ( 15 min )

I have made a habit of standing on as many points along the New England coastline as possible and one can simply inhabit, in a moment, the moody, treacherous, rocky Gothic settings that gave rise to Lovecraftian imagery and weird, witchy, haunted tales. The atmosphere of a Gothic novel creeps over you; encroaching mist along the outcroppings. Nowhere felt as immersive to me as the coast I’ve described in southern Maine. Into that atmosphere, a ghost ship was born after it never came home. Along Casco Bay and around the Harpswell-Freeport region, repeated, spectral sightings of a schooner named the Dash have been seen along the irregular, rocky coastlines for over two centuries. The Dash, at any moment, may try in vain to dock again to change her fate. She might be an omen of inclement weat…  ( 9 min )

One of my favorite parts of writing publicly is that it acts like a beacon, attracting unexpected and fascinating conversations. Case in point: a few weeks ago, Dr. Susan Schneider — the philosopher, author, and cognitive scientist — emailed me in response to a recent newsletter I had written. Her message turned into a phone call, which then developed into a deep and unexpected exchange about the real risks of AI. Susan and I ended up shaping that conversation into a recent Long Game column for Big Think, where Susan introduced me to some of her latest work, focusing on the “megasystem problem”: networks of AI systems colluding in ways we can’t anticipate. Her perspective is fascinating, and it’s exactly the kind of conversation I hope this newsletter continues to spark. Key quote: “The de…  ( 10 min )

Black holes sit at the crossroads of the two most powerful ideas in physics: relativity and quantum theory. Physicist Brian Cox explains why the mysterious giants force us to confront the deepest questions about space, time, and the structure of reality itself. Cox traces the unlikely history of black hole thought, from the 18th-century notion of “dark stars” to Stephen Hawking’s breakthroughs. This video Brian Cox: The bizarre history of black holes is featured on Big Think.  ( 6 min )

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Also: A 24/7 UC Berkeley hotline for survivors of sexual violence and sexual harassment has been discontinued. And three traffic collisions in four days on Rose Street.  ( 24 min )

A $16.5 million project in the neighborhood bordering UC Berkeley has replaced room for cars with new infrastructure for pedestrians, bikes and buses.  ( 27 min )

Diversify your diet, spice up home meals, and support Bay Area growers, ranchers and fishermen with a subscription to a community supported agriculture program.  ( 29 min )

Some UC Berkeley post docs and grad students might see an interruption in their pay, though they may be eligible for emergency grants from campus.  ( 28 min )

Medicaid, Medicare, Affordable Care Act, and Social Security service should remain steady. But national parks are closed and courts could see impacts.  ( 28 min )

The home is both rooted in history and updated for contemporary living and sustainability.  ( 24 min )

Other events include a talk by a Berkeley author on his new Bruce Lee book and Erwin Chemerinsky lecturing on the Supreme Court's norm-breaking last term.  ( 26 min )

The post Reclaiming Europe’s Digital Sovereignty appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 28 min )

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When you view anything at all in the Universe, you’re not seeing it precisely as it is right now: at the moment you experience seeing it. The speed of light, even though it’s the fastest speed that any signal can travel throughout the Universe, is still finite. No matter how close or distant an object is, you’re only seeing it as it was a particular amount of time ago: at the moment the now-arriving light was emitted from the object you’re observing. The fact that light has to travel through space, from the emitted object to the observer that sees it, explains why there’s a gap that we have to fill in through inference alone. Every observer in the Universe, so long as they haven’t spent a large amount of time traveling close to the speed of light (or in an extraordinarily large gravitation…  ( 15 min )

Not all conversations are the same. Sometimes, you can be talking to someone for hours, and it feels like only a few minutes. You natter and natter without ever having to think of what to say or cringe through any awkward silence. There’s a gentle sway to things — you listen, they speak, they listen, you speak. The chat dances to the easy and comfortable rhythm of the conversational tide. At other times, a conversation can feel like medieval torture. One-word answers litter the path toward your desperate, fumbling attempt to get away. You’ve already used the toilet excuse, you’ve got a full drink, so you’re stuck in your chatless hell with Captain Boring. “So, how often do you feed your dog?” you ask. “It depends.” Silence. In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, the neuroscientist Ben R…  ( 6 min )

Sleep helps us recharge, but research suggests its impact is far larger than recharging our physical and mental batteries.  According to Patrick McNamara PhD, Shelby Harris PsyD, DBSM, and Dave Asprey, sleep is imperative to restoring cells, regulating metabolism, consolidating memory, and synchronizing the body’s internal clocks. REM in particular aided human cultural evolution, allowing our ancestors to make creative leaps by connecting disparate ideas. With this powerful ability, humanity was able to advance past lives of pure survival and into ones filled with art, science, and culture. We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video How REM sleep unlocks human function is featured on Big Think.  ( 6 min )

Six assorted examples  ( 21 min )

I’ve begun a new archiving project: republishing articles I wrote a long time ago, but that have since disappeared from the web or been mangled in some way (for example, the page design is outdated or the content is out of place with its new surroundings). I’m calling this activity “replanting” — because it feels like moving a neglected plant, perhaps crowded by weeds and eaten by bugs, into a new garden, where it will be cared for and nurtured again. Of course, I’m borrowing from the digital garden approach to personal publishing advocated by Maggie Appleton and others. Maggie even uses the term “plant” to mean posting an item (and “tend” to edit). That’s probably where the similarities end, because Maggie defines a digital garden as a collection of notes — “evolving ideas that aren’t st…  ( 3 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 24 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.  ( 29 min )

For refusing to sign a loyalty oath, she was barred from practicing law and targeted by the FBI. Founder of Berkeley's Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, she pioneered the field of "peace law," defended Angela Davis and wrote the resolution establishing Berkeley as a Human Rights City.  ( 27 min )

Biotechnology needs more and better transducers.

“Anomalous” heat flow, which at first appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics, gives physicists a way to detect quantum entanglement without destroying it. The post A Thermometer for Measuring Quantumness first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

This spooky Monster Breakfast Sandwich is a scarily delicious way to kick off Halloween! Buttery vegan croissants are filled with savoury tofu scramble, mashed avocado slime, and veggies, forming a fun monster face! While I’ve always loved holidays, now that I’m a mom, I totally feel that need to make those fun holiday memories and […]  ( 18 min )

For the past 60+ years, the name NASA has been synonymous with humanity’s vision to dream about horizons far beyond the bounds of our terrestrial worries. NASA was the first agency in history to not only bring humans to the Moon, but to: send rovers to Mars, reveal the distant galaxies lurking in the depths of deep space, send orbiting missions directly to the outer planets, to land a probe on a moon of Saturn, to fly past Pluto, to send spacecraft beyond the limits of our own Solar System and into interstellar space, to have a spacecraft touch the Sun, along with so many other accomplishments. Perhaps most importantly, NASA gave hope to the entire world. In addition to its endeavors in spaceflight, NASA brought to us the idea of space exploration, and using a presence in space to better u…  ( 14 min )

Here’s a curious fact that often slips by unnoticed: Philosophers rarely change their minds. Across the history of the discipline, you could count on two hands those who openly revised their positions on major questions.  This is surprising, given philosophy’s very nature. It thrives on debate, supplying endless reasons to question one’s stance. Philosopher Will Buckingham once remarked that, if reasoned dialogue worked as we might expect, philosophers would be shifting their views “with a quicksilver frequency that would put the rest of us to shame.” After all, in a world teeming with critical colleagues and formidable counterarguments, one might imagine minds constantly turning over. The ideal philosopher, we assume, would be supple, guided by evidence, and willing to follow arguments wh…  ( 14 min )

It should not be surprising at this point in the history of management to hear that people are much more willing to accept and be engaged in changes where they participated in making them. We should not expect employees to be asked to endorse management’s idea that we need to come back to the office, but helping to lay out the case as to how it is done, whether and how exceptions should be made, and crucially, what did we learn from remote work that we can carry over requires employee involvement. Even something as simple as adding evidence from employee poll results to support some aspect of the change would help. Only 24% of employers surveyed their employees about their return to office plans in 2022. Whether that figure has increased is not clear.  There are ways for organizations to…  ( 5 min )

In 2010, early in my time as CDC director, I visited Nigeria to strengthen our collaboration on disease control. Doctors told me of a terrible outbreak. In villages of the Anka area of Zamfara, a state in northern Nigeria, dozens of severe abdominal pain, headache, and seizures. It was a tragedy; it was also a mystery. The most likely cause of an increase in childhood deaths is malaria, which kills more than 400,000 children a year and can cause seizures. But there was no report of the spiking fevers that characterize malaria. Lack of fever also made pneumonia, the most common cause of childhood death, less likely. The absence of diarrhea and dehydration ruled out cholera and other intestinal infections, the third most common cause of death. Seizures can be a symptom of meningitis, which a…  ( 10 min )

Being happy and positive at work can be a win-­win for employees and organizations. According to University of Oxford research, an extensive study showed that employees are 13% more productive when happy. According to Shawn Achor, the author of The Happiness Advantage, positivity in the workplace, grounded in gratitude and appreciation, can lead to three times more creativity, 23% fewer fatigue symptoms, and 37% greater sales. And finally Better Up, one of the largest mental health and coaching startups, offers that having a positive mind- set can lead individuals to better problem-­solve, have a greater ability to adapt to change, and have stronger leadership skills. But what happens when your boss decides to weaponize positivity in the workplace?  Over the course of my career, I have see…  ( 7 min )

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Shawn Fanning from Napster wearing a Metallica shirt to the 2000 MTV Awards; via Reddit. In May 2000, Napster’s poster boy, Shawn Fanning, was featured on the cover of BusinessWeek magazine in a suit and bowtie, alongside four other “most influential people in electronic business.” Three of the four other companies represented — Yahoo, eBay and Amazon — were well established and successful dot-com businesses, and all would survive the internet economy downturn. The other company, Softbank, was a renowned investment bank. Fanning was much younger than the other executives pictured (who included Jeff Bezos) and he was the only one on the cover not smiling. Perhaps Fanning’s grim visage was due to Napster’s legal issues — including the case brought by the Recording Industry Association of Ame…  ( 8 min )

Coast live oaks around the campus have dropped their leaves and turned gray and brown, even though they’re evergreens. Experts say the trees should recover soon.  ( 24 min )

Coracao Chocolate specializes in gluten-free, dairy-free and peanut-free treats made from scratch.  ( 29 min )

He won the 2006 Nobel Prize for physics for finding the background radiation that finally pinned down the Big Bang theory of the universe’s beginning.  ( 24 min )

Medicaid, Medicare, Affordable Care Act, and Social Security service should remain steady. But national parks and courts could see impacts.  ( 26 min )

Holton Studio Frame-Makers and Stained Glass Garden are among the two dozen makers giving tours Oct. 3-9.  ( 25 min )

The post Is European AI A Lost Cause? Not Necessarily. appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 45 min )

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Here on planet Earth, everything that we see, feel, or interact with is composed of atoms. There are approximately 90 naturally occurring species of atom that we can find on Earth, and approximately 30 more that we can synthesize under laboratory conditions. We’ve learned, thanks to the power of modern science, that atoms themselves are not fundamental, but rather can be divided into smaller chunks: electrons and an atomic nucleus, where the nucleus in turn can be further decomposed into protons and neutrons, which themselves are each made up of quarks and gluons. Only when we reach that deep of a level — the level of electrons, quarks, and gluons — do we encounter particles that are truly fundamental. But the word atom itself, derived from the Greek word ατομός, literally means uncuttable…  ( 14 min )

When I was finishing university, I was so anxious about what came next that I started applying for jobs an entire year before graduation. When I left a big tech job, I threw myself straight into a startup. I rushed into new relationships after breakups, or into the next project as soon as the previous one ended. I’ve often filled the gaps too quickly, because the in-between felt impossible to sit with. And I know I’m not the only one. Maybe you just left a job without knowing what’s next. Maybe you’ve left a job without knowing what’s next, moved to a new city, or found yourself in that strange territory after a relationship ends. These moments are destabilizing. You’re standing in the hallway between who you were and who you’re becoming. Your brain screams for certainty, for solid ground,…  ( 6 min )

It was 1943. And the US Army had a plan to create the future faster. The plan began with ENIAC [Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer]. Commissioned by the Army Ordinance Corps at the midpoint of World War II, ENIAC was the world’s first electronic general-purpose computer. Built of metal cabinets packed with 17,468 vacuum tubes (descendants of the lightbulb that would, in later decades, be superseded by transistors), it could dash through five-thousand additions a second — at the cost of enough kilowatts to power your modern household for three years. ENIAC’s thirty-ton bulk can now be replicated by microgram circuits. But its infallible logic gates were proof of concept for artificialintelligence, hailed by 1940s futurists like John von Neumann as a replacement for the human brain…  ( 8 min )

Popular media has made loneliness look bad, but is it really? Author and psychologist Ethan Kross explains his study of loneliness, finding that it is actually our response to loneliness – rather than the act of being alone itself – that has negative effects. If we reframe loneliness as an opportunity instead of a threat, it can have surprising benefits for our creativity, well-being, and relationships with ourselves. This video So you spend a lot of time alone. Here’s why that’s not a bad thing. is featured on Big Think.  ( 5 min )

BART's lost and found has processed everything from a backpack full of cash to mountains of car keys, phones and even two ukuleles.  ( 26 min )

Berkeley’s council once toyed with trying to ban drones entirely. Now some council members want police and others to have them for chases, standoffs, rescues and disaster response.  ( 25 min )

Also: Adeline Yoga moves next door to its former space in the Lorin and a new candle refill program launches at Jiā Home on San Pablo.  ( 25 min )

A healthy brain maintains a harmony of neurons that excite or inhibit other neurons, but the lines between different types of cells are blurrier than researchers once thought. The post How the Brain Balances Excitation and Inhibition first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 9 min )

In 4,000 years, cataract surgery went from a crude procedure involving thorn instruments to a 20-minute operation with a 95 percent clinical success rate. The next step is broadening access.

These Jalapeño Cornbread Waffles are the ultimate savoury waffles! They’re made with roasted garlic for extra flavour, and the crispy edges make them irresistible. Perfect for brunch or breakfast for dinner! Friends, these jalapeño cornbread waffles absolutely deserve a place in your breakfast, brunch, or breakfast-for-dinner routine. If you love waffles, but you also love a […]  ( 21 min )

Over the last 100 years, we’ve discovered where our Universe came from. A period of cosmic inflation stretched space flat, seeding the Universe with quantum fluctuations. From a region of space as small as can be imagined (all the way down to the Planck scale), cosmological inflation causes space to expand exponentially: relentlessly doubling and doubling again with each tiny fraction-of-a-second that elapses. Although this empties the Universe and stretches it flat, it also contains quantum fluctuations superimposed atop it: fluctuations that will later provide the seeds for cosmic structure within our own Universe. What happened before the final ~10^-32 seconds of inflation, including the question of whether inflation arose from a singular state before it, not only isn’t known, but may…  ( 11 min )

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In the 1930s, private utilities balked at the task of bringing electricity to rural America. A New Deal agency figured out how to do it more quickly and more cheaply than anyone expected.  ( 14 min )

These versatile sambal-spiked ‘meat’ balls can be adapted in any number of ways, and here they’re drenched in a delicious lemongrass coconut curry sauce Meatballs in whatever shape or form, and meatless or not, are not usually considered to be the latest thing. But they are like old friends, familiar and comforting, and, as such, I’ve been wanting to make a plausible vegan- (and tofu-) based one for some time. A little joyful nugget that could be taken in any direction, from Swedish köttbullar to Vietnamese bun cha. And here it is: I’ve flavoured the balls with a vegeatarian sambal oelek, a zingy chilli sauce and one of my favourite ingredients, and drenched them in a lemongrass coconut curry sauce to put some heat in your belly and a snap in your step. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

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

The Sept. 15 arrest of a man inside the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse exposed the weakness of state and local efforts to make courts accessible and safe.  ( 26 min )

Fatto a Mano Alimentari will feature fresh pastas, Italian wines, and cooking classes; plus, FOB West will bring Filipino tacos and more to the food hall later this year.  ( 26 min )

Co-founder of Berkeley's Reid Records, Betty Reid Soskin celebrated her birthday at her namesake middle school in El Sobrante.  ( 29 min )

Jacobson co-founded the Berkeley firm JSW/D Architects, where he worked for over 40 years.  ( 24 min )

The post A Diverse World Of Sovereign AI Zones appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 11 min )

Using a relatively young theory, a team of mathematicians has started to answer questions whose roots lie at the very beginning of mathematics. The post New Math Revives Geometry’s Oldest Problems first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 14 min )

Sweet, earthy roasted beets make this creamy Beet Hummus extra delicious, and give it the prettiest pink colour! Serve this velvety smooth dip with veggies or use it as a spread for sandwiches, burgers, and more.  I don’t know about you, but I never need an excuse to eat hummus. When I first became a […]  ( 19 min )

Behind the outcome of the 2024 election  lies a deep fracture in the American dream: the choice between affordable places that stall mobility, and dynamic cities that lock people out with impossible prices. This video Why the American dream no longer moves upward is featured on Big Think.  ( 12 min )

One of the most difficult concepts for anyone — even a professional astrophysicist — to wrap their minds around is the idea of the Big Bang and the expanding Universe. Off in the far-flung distance, at the limit of what even our most powerful telescopes can see, are galaxies speeding away from us so quickly that the light their stars emitted has been stretched to as much as twelve times their original wavelength. These stretched light waves are a consequence of the expanding Universe, and they are nearly, but not quite, identical for galaxies that we see in all directions in space. Does that difference, and the fact that one direction has a slightly greater redshift for its objects than the opposite direction, tell us anything about where, all those billions of years ago, the Big Bang actu…  ( 13 min )

My earliest lessons in observation came not from a laboratory but in the living room, with my father in his tuxedo and top hat. To everyone else, he was “Big Ed,” a larger-than-life physician who was a magician, an archer, a raconteur, and much else. By day, he mesmerized patients with his easy confidence; by night, he dazzled guests with sleight-of-hand, conjuring coins from behind ears or producing endless scarves from his sleeve. To me, he was both healer and illusionist, a scientist and showman. When your father is a magician, what do you believe? As a child, the boundary between real and unreal was porous. I wanted to believe in the rabbit pulled from a hat, the floating light bulb, the miraculous escapes. But even as a boy, I began to notice the seams: the telltale flash of a hidden …  ( 6 min )

Astronomer David Kipping has built a career not just at the cutting edge of exoplanet research but also at the forefront of science communication. On his popular YouTube channel, Cool Worlds, Kipping takes viewers on in-depth explorations of subjects like planetary systems, interstellar travel, and the search for life beyond Earth. I first met Kipping at the famous 2018 NASA technosignature meeting in Houston, where the space agency first indicated they would be open to funding work on intelligent life in the Universe. As we are both astrophysicists and science communicators, I wanted to discuss Kipping’s journey from a young stargazer to a Columbia professor, his work on life in the Universe, and the challenges of explaining science in the YouTube era.  Childhood origins Adam Frank: Let’s…  ( 8 min )

One New Kingdom papyrus illustrates a curious case of power being projected along the river through sheer brinkmanship. It is a tale of two rulers and some hippos during one of the fragmented ‘Intermediate Periods’ (mid-second millennium BCE). One ruler was Apepi of the foreign Hyksos 15th Dynasty, at that time based in the delta city of Avaris. The other was Seqenenra Taa II, ruler of the simultaneous and rival 17th Dynasty, based down in Thebes. One day, Apepi sent a messenger south to Thebes to convey a complaint and an instruction to Seqenenra.  Apepi claimed that he was being kept awake at night by ‘the hippopotami from the swamp … in the eastern waters of the city [of Thebes], because they do not allow that sleep come to me, day or night, because their noise is in his ear!’ Seqenenra…  ( 10 min )

Existentialism and absurdism are two of the most popular philosophies in the world, particularly on social media. Existentialism is often represented by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, while absurdism is often represented by Albert Camus. All were French intellectuals active in the decades following World War II, and they knew one another. They drank, they danced, and they laughed together. But absurdism and existentialism are not the same. In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with the philosopher and writer Laura Kennedy about Camus. Camus is often misidentified as an existentialist, and he is even on record as saying he was not one. In fact, as the years went on, the relationship between Sartre and Camus got frostier and frostier. So, behind the bitter op-eds and vi…  ( 6 min )

One of my best friends since we were five years old, Dr. Jeff Kaplan, gave the convocation speech at Williams College earlier this month. Like all best friends, our shared language tends to be debate: we spar over movies, politics, even which back road will save two minutes in traffic. (He’s usually right, which is particularly annoying.) After Williams, Jeff went on to Oxford, Cambridge, and then earned his PhD in philosophy at Berkeley, so it’s no surprise he now makes his living persuading people with reasoning. (I just wish he’d go easier on me at dinner parties.) His speech, which I encourage you to watch, was classic Jeff: gripping, funny, and deeply thoughtful. He told the story of Qantas Flight 32, when an Airbus A380 nearly fell out of the sky after a massive engine failure. The p…  ( 11 min )

Most explanations of human performance lean on psychology or philosophy, but best-selling author Steven Kotler argues that these frameworks are only metaphors. If you want repeatable, measurable science, you need to use biology. By understanding brain networks, Kotler explains how we can engineer peak states like flow, creativity, and focus for peak performance This video How to train your nervous system for optimal performance is featured on Big Think.  ( 8 min )

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Also: Peyrin Kao, one of the 160 students and staff whose names were turned over to the Trump administration, has been on a hunger strike for a month now protesting the tech industry's role “in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”  ( 24 min )

Resources and tips for staying safe, helping your neighborhood, and recovering from the Big One.  ( 26 min )

Harjit Kaur, 73, a longtime seamstress at Sari Palace with no apparent criminal record, says she got only ice cubes to swallow her medication, was refused meals consistent with her faith and forced to sleep on the floor.  ( 27 min )

In the latest installment of Nosh’s Gotta Try It series, we bite into the heart of Peruvian cooking.  ( 27 min )

Teachers and students have largely been left to create their own rules. But new artificial intelligence guidelines and software are on the horizon at BUSD.  ( 30 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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The post Reimagining School In The Age Of AI appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 27 min )

When it comes to the physical Universe, the notion of “nothing” may truly be possible only in theory, not in practice. As we see the Universe today, it appears full of stuff: matter, radiation, antimatter, neutrinos, and even dark matter and dark energy, despite the fact that we don’t truly know the ultimate, fundamental nature of the latter two. Yet even if you took away every single quantum of energy, somehow removing it from the Universe entirely, you wouldn’t be left with an empty Universe. No matter how much you take out of it, the Universe will always generate new forms of energy. How is this possible? It’s like the Universe itself doesn’t understand our idea of “nothing” at all; if we were to remove all the quanta of energy from our Universe, leaving behind only empty space, we woul…  ( 13 min )

Trailblazers are especially sensitive to indicators — always powerful, yet often subtle — that signal it’s time for a change.  Imagine waking up to a persistent signal. Your intuition acknowledges your many achievements but senses the potential for different experiences.  Perhaps while working your current job or engaged in daily activities, you find yourself frequently lost in thoughts of a life more in tune with your deepest passions. When the endeavors that once sparked joy and excitement in you no longer fuel the fire inside but deplete it, it’s a clear sign that a new path awaits.  At night, as the world quiets down, do you find yourself wide‑awake, your mind filled with visions that refuse to be ignored? Problems to be solved, or opportunities that have somehow chosen you, whispering…  ( 6 min )

How does self-awareness connect us to others, society, and the universe? 4 experts explain. Christof Koch, PhD, Daniel Dennett, PhD, Sam Harris, PhD, and Deepak Chopra, MD—four thinkers from neuroscience, philosophy, biology, and medicine—each share their own interpretation of consciousness, combining their ideas to paint one massive, mysterious picture of what it means to be an awakened being. We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video Experts from 4 different fields define consciousness is featured on Big Think.  ( 8 min )

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

Casey R. Goonan, 35, admitted to lighting fires around Cal’s campus, torching a UCPD cruiser and unsuccessfully trying to firebomb a federal building in Oakland in solidarity with pro-Palestine protesters.  ( 26 min )

Immigration agents detained a man attending a court hearing at Wiley Manuel Courthouse, according to the public defender.  ( 24 min )

Other events include a panel discussion featuring Pulitzer finalist Cathy Park Hong and a performance by jazz great Carmen Lundy.  ( 29 min )

The Trump administration chose not to renew the program. Tax credits for buying an electric car also end Sept. 30.  ( 24 min )

This vegan Apple, Pecan and Feta Salad is loaded with fall flavours! It’s sweet and crunchy, with a peppery maple apple vinaigrette to bring it all together. The origin story of this salad is the same as so many salads you’ve probably made too—I had the ingredients on hand and I threw them together because I needed […]  ( 18 min )

Naomi Saphra thinks that most research into language models focuses too much on the finished product. She’s mining the history of their training for insights into why these systems work the way they do. The post To Understand AI, Watch How It Evolves first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 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 )

The notion of the Big Bang goes back nearly 100 years, when the first evidence for the expanding Universe appeared. If the Universe is expanding and cooling today, that implies a past that was smaller, denser, and hotter. In our imaginations, we can extrapolate back to arbitrarily small sizes, high densities, and hot temperatures: all the way to a singularity, where all of the Universe’s matter and energy was condensed in a single point. For many decades, these two notions of the Big Bang — of the hot dense state that describes the early Universe and the initial singularity — were inseparable. But beginning in the 1970s, scientists started identifying some puzzles surrounding the Big Bang, noting several properties of the Universe that weren’t explainable within the context of these two no…  ( 15 min )

What if the greatest danger of artificial intelligence isn’t a single rogue system, but many systems quietly working together?  Dr. Susan Schneider calls this the “megasystem problem”: networks of AI models colluding in ways we can’t predict, producing emergent structures beyond human control. It’s also something she believes is one of the most urgent — and overlooked — risks we face today with AI today. Schneider has been thinking about these questions long before ChatGPT or Claude became household names. She is a professor and the Founding Director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University’s Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute. Her career has spanned philosophy, neuroscience, and cognitive science. In her 2019 book Artificial You, she explored what it would mean for m…  ( 13 min )

The first word that people associate with laugh is cry, and that tells us something. In word associations, the two words usually belong to the same semantic category but are set off by a salient contrast (night–day, girl–boy, dog–cat). Like laughter, tears express an emotional state by means other than the muscles of the face. They are involuntary, conspicuous to a perceiver, and unique to Homo sapiens (a conclusion flaunted in the title of the most comprehensive book on the subject, the psychologist Ad Vingerhoets’s Why Only Humans Weep). And they seem engineered to generate common knowledge. A weeping person feels the welling in his sockets and the trickle on his cheeks and sees a blurry world through his own tears, a world that contains other people seeing the same tears from the outsid…  ( 10 min )

When companies refer to “PR,” they often mean the function that drives buzz for the business by getting headlines. Many founders assume that hiring a public relations firm (or an on-staff PR lead) will quickly get them regular, glowing write-ups in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which they can then share with their target audiences on Facebook or LinkedIn to drive demand and generate leads. Or better yet, they might get physical press clippings, which are a nice ego boost, even though fewer and fewer people read printed newspapers and magazines. These clips can be framed to adorn office hallways or sent to family members to stick on the fridge. This way of thinking, however, leads companies to take a very hands-off approach to press coverage. As I’ve seen it done for years…  ( 8 min )

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I asked a counterfeit person about it  ( 9 min )

Slashdot homepage, 20 June 2000; via Wayback Machine. For the first several months of 2000, David Bowie’s website was a work in progress. BowieNet was undergoing a redesign, which had originally been scheduled to go-live at the end of January. But like many other software projects before and since, it got delayed. Finally, in May, the new version of BowieNet was launched. “There are some exciting and great new features including new 'points' system accumulator, new message boards, Beatnik enhanced pages [an interactive audio technology], web based email for all members, 10 meg of free web space, your personal profile, [and] your own account section,” wrote Paul Kinder on his fan site BowieWonderworld. BowieNet version 2 design, by Polished Solid for Nettmedia. “BowieNet Version 2.0,” as i…  ( 7 min )

Stricter towing enforcement could be paired with some sort of safe parking arrangement for people who live in RVs, but where and when remain to be seen.  ( 29 min )

From a Berkeley Hills control room, a small team from Cal’s Space Sciences Laboratory is preparing to lead its first mission to the red planet.  ( 28 min )

Temperatures will drop Wednesday but the Bay Area could be at risk from dry lightning, according to the National Weather Service.  ( 24 min )

The order comes in a class action lawsuit first filed in June by UC Berkeley law professors fighting Trump's cuts to research.  ( 23 min )

The practice has “sensory hours” for children with autism, ADHD or other special needs, and stocks “retro toys” like Aqua Arcades and Etch A Sketches in the lobby.  ( 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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The post Consciousness Across Three Worldviews appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 16 min )

If there’s one hallmark inherent to science, it’s that our understanding of how the Universe works is always open to revision in the face of new evidence. Whenever our prevailing picture of reality — including the rules it plays by, the physical contents of a system, and how it evolved from its initial conditions to the present time — gets challenged by new experimental or observational data, we must open our minds to changing our conceptual picture of the cosmos. This has happened many times since the dawn of the 20th century, and the words we use to describe our Universe have shifted in meaning as our understanding has evolved. Yet, there are always those who cling to the old definitions, much like linguistic prescriptivists, who refuse to acknowledge that these changes have occurred. Bu…  ( 15 min )

Why do people leave? By the time you ask this question, it’s already too late. Exit interviews might surface useful insights, but they can’t undo the fact that employees are already walking out the door. Even stay interviews—meant to get ahead of problems—become a box-checking exercise, more about HR optics than improving the workplace. In tough economic times, employee experience tends to take a backseat to productivity. Companies slip into old habits, reducing workforce investments and pushing people to “do more with less.” After all, employees should just be grateful to have jobs, right? People end up tolerating less-than-great environments to keep their paychecks. It’s an unfortunate cycle that keeps repeating. The deskless perspective This cycle plays out differently on the frontline.…  ( 7 min )

Cybersecurity veteran Brian Gumbel — president and chief operating officer (COO) at Dataminr — works at the confluence of real-time information and AI. Mainlined into humanity’s daily maelstrom of data, Dataminr detects events “on average 5 hours ahead of the Associated Press” — it picked up the 2024 Baltimore bridge collapse, for example, about an hour ahead of all mainstream media sources. The accuracy rate of its “news” is, says Gumbel, a highly impressive 99.5%. On top of that, the company’s AI systems, built on proprietary LLMs, analyze real-time events at such unprecedented speed that whole new strata of planning and strategy become possible. Soon, predicts Gumbel, “information will be automatically generated and updated as events unfold, enabling us to anticipate what is likely to h…  ( 8 min )

America’s real danger isn’t free speech. It’s silence. Founder of The Future of Free Speech Jacob Mchangama argues that free speech is not a threat but society’s strongest safeguard against violence. Suppressing expression creates a pressure cooker that can push people toward violent action when peaceful dissent is denied. While acknowledging its harms — especially in the digital age — Mchangama warns that censorship is far worse. This video The case for canceling censorship is featured on Big Think.  ( 4 min )

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: I’ve Gone to Look for America appeared first on The Atavist Magazine.  ( 5 min )

Nearly 1 in 30 staffers have already been laid off. The term “climate change” is banned from new proposals. And federal budget cuts could destroy world-class research teams.  ( 32 min )

Belotti’s uncomplicated approach to a classic comfort food is worth the splurge.  ( 23 min )

The measure would adopt new congressional lines that favor Democrats for the next three election cycles in an effort to offset partisan gerrymandering in other states.  ( 25 min )

The coming season at the campus arts venue reflects Berkeley's adventurous spirit.  ( 24 min )

The quake that struck at 2:56 a.m. Monday, was centered around the Elmwood, according to early reporting by the USGS.  ( 23 min )

Two mathematicians have proved that a straightforward question — how hard is it to untie a knot? — has a complicated answer. The post A Simple Way To Measure Knots Has Come Unraveled first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

Work some veggies into your breakfast with this vegan Breakfast Hash recipe! Potatoes are paired with lots of vegetables, black beans, and a smoky seasoning blend for a savoury hash that works as a side or as a main dish. This breakfast hash isn’t the same as Hash Browns, and it isn’t Breakfast Potatoes either. […]  ( 19 min )

GN-z11 was once the most distant galaxy known. The Great Observatories Origins Deep Studies North field (GOODS-N), cropped to show the Universe’s most distant galaxy, in red. A combination of Hubble and Spitzer data was used to discover this galaxy, whose distance has been confirmed spectroscopically, including more precisely and spectacularly by JWST in 2023. Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Oesch (Yale University), G. Brammer (STScI), P. van Dokkum (Yale University), and G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz) Its light arrives today after journeying for 13.4 billion years. Only because this distant galaxy, GN-z11, is located in a region where the intergalactic medium is mostly reionized, can Hubble reveal it to us at the present time. To see further, we require a better observ…  ( 8 min )

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The clinical model of psychedelic therapy has become the default way to trip. What might we be missing as a result?  ( 21 min )

A vegetarian delight that’s the perfect dinner solution for when you can’t decide between Indian or Italian Would you like Italian tonight, or Indian? Thanks to this pizza, you can have both. This recipe is written in memory of the beloved pizza of my youth:​ a vegetarian delight ​t​hat I ate on the regular with my cousins​ at one of the many Indian-Italian restaurants on Leicester’s Belgrave Road (AKA the Golden Mile) circa 1990, right before washing it down with Rubicon mango juice and doing handbrake turns in a nearby car park. Continue reading...  ( 16 min )

In case you missed it, here are four highlights from Berkeley Unified's school board meeting on Wednesday.  ( 25 min )

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

A dogwalker, jogger and cyclist whom police say a man deliberately drove into near the Clark Kerr Campus were recovering Tuesday.  ( 24 min )

New restrooms have opened in Willard, Civic Center, Cesar Chavez and James Kenney parks, and will open soon at Ohlone park. However, the city is scaling back its plans to build and upgrade other public toilets.  ( 25 min )

A deal with BART has revived the market. New leadership promises to better cooperate with vendors, who never stopped selling after its June closure.  ( 27 min )

Berkeleyside is looking for a writer to spotlight all the best festivals, plays, art shows, book talks, celebrations and cultural events happening each week in the city.  ( 25 min )

Around the turn of the 19th century, a Viennese physician named Franz Joseph Gall proposed a new, and controversial, hypothesis about the human brain. Even as a child, Gall was fascinated by the brain and its connection with people’s personalities, and so throughout his career, he intensely studied its anatomy while also gathering data on people’s skull sizes and facial features. He came to believe that people’s mental faculties were localized within specific brain regions. And because these regions molded the shape of people’s skulls, a trained eye could divinate a person’s capabilities for love, violence, greed, intelligence, and other traits simply by examining their cranial bumps and recessions. As you’ve probably guessed, Gall’s hypotheses provided the basis for phrenology — though Ga…  ( 10 min )

Conflict can be constructive, inspiring learning, growth, and vulnerability when well-managed. But when it spirals into what Amanda Ripley calls high conflict, it becomes corrosive.  Instead of solving problems, high conflict traps us in a cycle where arguments feed on themselves, eroding trust and entire relationships. So, why are we so susceptible to it? Ripley explains, sharing our psychological tripwires and how to avoid them. This video The 4 hidden forces underneath every argument is featured on Big Think.  ( 16 min )

These aren’t just Tofu Tacos—they’ve also got meaty fajita mushrooms and lots of veggies for a vegan taco recipe that’s extra satisfying and extra delicious!  When you just can’t decide whether you should use the tortillas you bought for making Vegan Tacos or fajitas for dinner, I have an idea: make both at the same […]  ( 19 min )

The post Green Giant appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 11 min )

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Every so often, a new scientific result, theory, idea, or claim starts making headlines: not just in scientific circles, but in popular media as well. Most often, the one question all people know to ask is whether or not that paper has successfully passed peer review or not. If it hasn’t, people often dismiss the work, noting that we should remain skeptical because it hasn’t yet been vetted by anyone else with the appropriate expertise. But if it has passed peer review, people often assume that means everything that’s written in the paper — the methods of the study, the analysis performed, the results obtained, the conclusions drawn, and other assertions that the authors might make — must be correct. Even if it flies in the face of conventional wisdom, the fact that it has passed peer revi…  ( 16 min )

When I was 16 years old, I sat in a crowded assembly hall on a wobbly plastic chair, and I listened to Mr. Smith tell me why I should study history. All of the teachers had to do it. “Sell your subject,” the headmaster had said. “Make the kids want to pick it.” Some teachers did so with the grudging monotone of the forced and underpaid employee. Some did it with the exhausting energy of a fanatic. Ms. Vasey, the physics teacher, even dressed up as the solar system. But Mr. Smith decided to win us over with the cold, lofty logic of an Oxford graduate. “History is like a guidebook for how to live,” he began. “We can learn from people’s mistakes and can unpack where things went wrong. Almost all the greatest leaders in the world knew their history, and almost all of the biggest mistakes were …  ( 7 min )

When I was younger, my mental image of an “investor” was someone who sat in an office, cranked out spreadsheets, wore a suit, listened to earnings calls, and traded stocks. In reality, investing — at least how we like to do it — is the opposite. Your job is to go out of the office, talk to people, travel the world, and try to understand where the future might be headed — so you can place your bets accordingly. In that spirit, my colleague Daniel Crowley, CFA, wrote about the two weeks he spent in China this summer. Dan visited electric car companies, cruised through Macau, immersed himself in a humanoid robotics conference (where he saw an android dog with a fake machine gun strapped to its back!) and much more. “What follows isn’t a grand theory or an investment manifesto,” Dan writes. “I…  ( 10 min )

Past decades of sex research have focused mainly on mechanics, overlooking the concept of desire. Now, we’re understanding how vital environment, emotion, and perception are in the science of sex.  Sex educator Emily Nagoski emphasizes how critical context can be in amplifying or killing sexual desire. This video Your brain: the most important sex organ in the body is featured on Big Think.  ( 4 min )

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Also: A downtown apartment building sells amid a weakening market, and Emerson Elementary is pulling for "Mr. Bob" — struck by hit-and-run driver this week.  ( 23 min )

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

Berkeley might see some showers from the remnants of Tropical Storm Mario, but more significant rain will fall to the south and east.  ( 23 min )

Gorditas, tacos al vapor, shrimp cocktails … Nosh helps you get started among Coliseum Way's many options.  ( 30 min )

The UC Berkeley student and Direct Action Everywhere organizer is standing trial in Sonoma County, accused of stealing chickens from Petaluma Poultry in a case spotlighting animal rights activism and farm industry tensions.  ( 25 min )

Tim Dupuis, the long-time Alameda County election official, will leave after two critical reviews of his performance.  ( 25 min )

A recommendation by Western states allows anyone over 6 months old to get a COVID-19 shot. California insurance providers will have to cover the cost.  ( 23 min )

Other events include a community mural paint day and a photo-op with a giant sparkling water can.  ( 28 min )

The post A New Soft Power Ploy By Putin appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 23 min )

One of the first theorems anyone learns in mathematics is the Pythagorean Theorem: if you have a right triangle, then the square of the longest side (the hypotenuse) will always equal the sums of the squares of the other two sides. The first integer combination that this works for is a triangle with sides 3, 4, and 5: 3² + 4² = 5². There are other combinations of numbers that this works for, too, including: 5, 12, and 13, 6, 8, and 10, 7, 24 and 25, and infinitely more. But 3, 4, and 5 are special: they’re the only consecutive whole numbers that obey the Pythagorean Theorem. In fact, the numbers 3, 4, and 5 are the only consecutive whole numbers that allow you to solve the equation a² + b² = c² at all! However, if you allowed yourself the freedom to include more numbers, you could imagine …  ( 12 min )

The news reports have come to sound almost routine: “Scientists Find Organic Material on Mars.” Case in point: Just last week, stories broke about how the Perseverance rover found specific mineral assemblages associated with organic compounds on the red planet, with NASA describing the findings as a potential biosignature. Cool, you say. But, really, what does that mean? How much closer does it get us to discovering life beyond Earth? Some findings are, of course, more significant than others, and in fact do get us closer to that long-hoped-for announcement. First, though, we have to understand all the ways that nature — especially Martian nature — might deceive us. In a recent article in Scientific Reports, a research team led by Felix Arens from the Technical University Berlin in Germany…  ( 6 min )

Don’t try to eliminate your stress. Instead, take advantage of it. Three experts, Aditi Nerurkar, MD, MPH, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD combine their insights on physiology, psychology, and mindfulness to show how stress management can become a superpower. They explain how stress can help you grow, how the body’s “challenge response” fuels focus and energy, and how mindfulness can help you see beyond your thoughts. We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video Stress is inevitable, but suffering isn’t. 3 experts explain. is featured on Big Think.  ( 6 min )

Asterisk Magazine covers science, emerging technologies, economics, politics, culture, global health, threats to human development and flourishing.  ( 13 min )

The most significant rain storm Berkeley has gotten in months could arrive overnight Wednesday and last into Friday, but forecasters aren't sure how much will fall.  ( 23 min )

The suit says the federal government is using civil rights laws to wage a campaign against the university to curtail academic freedom and undermine free speech.  ( 25 min )

From Mexico to Italy, then Thailand, take a global culinary journey in less than 2 miles.  ( 25 min )

A dogwalker, jogger and cyclist whom police say a man deliberately drove into near the Clark Kerr Campus were recovering Tuesday.  ( 24 min )

A proposal to double the amount candidates for county office can receive — from $20,000 to $40,000 — has been abandoned.  ( 23 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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A new paper shows that a generative AI model can design viable bacteriophages.

Loads of sun-dried tomatoes and a rich, creamy sauce make Marry Me Pasta a favourite for weeknight dinners. This vegan version is every bit as delicious as the original! Pasta is a superhero for busy weeknights, but don’t settle for dumping a jar of sauce over store-bought noodles! It doesn’t take all that much longer […]  ( 22 min )

It’s hard to believe, but it’s now been 10 full years since the twin Advanced LIGO detectors — in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA — were completed and turned on for the first time. Just days after they began operations, they saw the first-ever directly detected gravitational wave: GW150914, which signified the merger of two black holes. From across the Universe, a black hole of 36 times the mass of the Sun merged with another of 29 times the Sun’s mass, producing a remnant black hole of just 62 solar masses, with the other 3 solar masses getting converted into gravitational radiation via Einstein’s E = mc². When those emitted waves arrived in each of the twin LIGO detectors, they changed the length of LIGO’s incredibly long, precise laser arms by less than the width of a single proton. Yet …  ( 15 min )

In all the world, and perhaps in all the Universe, there’s no greater question one can ask than the question of one’s own origins. For us, as human beings, this comes up often in our early childhood: we see, touch, and experience the world around us, and wonder where it all comes from. We look at ourselves and those around us, and wonder about our own origins. Even when we look to the heavens, and take in the spectacular sights of the night sky — the Moon, the planets, the stars, the glorious plane of the Milky Way, plus deep-sky objects — we’re filled with a sense of awe, wondering where the lights, and perhaps even the vast, empty darkness that separates them, all came from. For millennia, we had only stories to be our guide: mythologies and untested, unsubstantiated ideas that sprung fo…  ( 15 min )

The printing press [invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440s] accelerated the spread of knowledge. That’s generally a good thing. But it had downsides as well. It also accelerated the spread of what you could reasonably politely call propaganda and what you could less politely call manipulative, destructive lies. Also, the spread of knowledge had unanticipated knock-on effects. The Catholic Church was thrilled with the power of the press when the innovation helped raise cash for the Church’s crusades and get more Bibles into the hands of more people. Perhaps it was less thrilled when the press provided propaganda for both sides in Mainz’s 1462 civil war. And, of course, many Church leaders likely cursed the technology the Church had helped create when rapid printing hastened Martin Luth…  ( 6 min )

Forty years ago, Donald Homa, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University specializing in memory and the visual perception of linguistic stimuli, was contacted by officials at the American Speed Reading Academy with an extraordinary tale. Two of their pupils had achieved a reading rate in excess of 100,000 words per minute, more than ten times the speed of the Academy’s average student and more than 300 times what a college-educated adult can muster (between 200 and 400 words per minute). Would he be willing to assess their prodigious skills in a laboratory setting? Curious, Homa happily obliged. In the lab, he tasked the two men with speed reading an entire college-level textbook and then taking a multiple-choice test to gauge their comprehension. After finishing the text in mer…  ( 6 min )

Self-understanding is about clarity regarding who we are and what we want as well as understanding how our behaviors affect others. It includes understanding the people, events, and ideas that have shaped our perceptions, what motivates us, what we value, and what we want to accomplish in our time on Earth, both personally and professionally, and what we are willing to trade off to accomplish these things. Self-understanding is the foundation of effective leadership. However, society doesn’t emphasize self-understanding. With advertisers telling us what we should want and how we should measure success (usually money and the things money can buy), the power of influencers, the desire for “likes” on our social media posts, and often families that push us to “succeed,” we’re taught to chase w…  ( 6 min )

On quaint devices for time-travel  ( 10 min )

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Photo of the Seattle Central Library, taken 1 January 2000 by Thomas Hawk. By the start of 2000, blogging was becoming a communal activity. One of its pioneers, Cameron Barrett, had a “Sites I Visit Often” list in his sidebar that had gotten longer over the past year and now included many weblogs. Although there wasn’t a word for this kind of list at the time, it would eventually become known as a “blogroll” (the earliest reference to this term I could find was Doc Searls in December 2000, who used the word “blogrolling” as a subheader). CamWorld's impressive "blogroll" in March 2000, even though the term hadn't yet been coined. Some webloggers were even meeting in person. On 20 February, Jessamyn West wrote in her online journal: “I had a nice day. Mucked about in the morning, headed to …  ( 7 min )

North Berkeley neighbors complained the security system, meant to scare thieves, would speak throughout the night and threaten to call police on people walking past.  ( 25 min )

It’s not yet clear how SB 79, now on Gov. Newsom’s desk, will affect what gets built in Berkeley, where the flatlands were rezoned for denser construction earlier this year.  ( 29 min )

It’s picnic weather! Choose your own culinary adventure and go.  ( 27 min )

The post A Third Path For AI Beyond The US-China Binary appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 38 min )

From its office on Solano, Seacology has used a “win-win” approach to help save sea turtles, gibbons, mangrove forests and island ecologies in dozens of countries while providing material aid to the local cultures that rely on them.  ( 30 min )

“In the Red” will screen at Grand Lake Theatre and follows the lives of six youths of color who went through the fire academy training at Bay Area Youth EMT Program.  ( 25 min )

He founded and led numerous companies, including Dicon, Cooper Vision Diagnostics, Vismed, Eclipse Ventures, and Luma-Lite — developing groundbreaking ophthalmic and dental technologies.  ( 23 min )

Click any diagram to get Wolfram Language code to reproduce it. What Are Lambdas? It’s a story of pure, abstract computation. In fact, historically, one of the very first. But even though it’s something I for one have used in practice for nearly half a century, it’s not something that in all my years of […]  ( 44 min )

In 2020, a small blast ejected debris from the surface of the asteroid Bennu, as it hurtled through space 200 million miles from Earth. This was caused by the NASA spacecraft Osiris-Rex, which collected the resulting dust and returned those samples to Earth, marking the first time a U.S. mission had retrieved material from an asteroid.  Earlier this year, researchers found those samples contained the building blocks for life, including amino acids and nucleobases (which form DNA, among other molecules). That’s not unusual for an asteroid, but what was unexpected was the form those molecules took: roughly half of them being a perfect inverse — a mirror image — of the way those building blocks appear on Earth. This was interesting timing. Only a few months prior, toward the end of 2024, a te…  ( 10 min )

Whether you work at a modest startup or a multimillion dollar company, chances are you have heard of the Business Model Canvas (BMC). Similar to architectural blueprints or circuit diagrams, these standardized templates provide simplified overviews of complex organizations, and can be used to turn an ailing company around, or design a healthy one from the ground up. First developed by business theorist Alex Osterwalder and computer scientist Yves Pigneur in the early 2000s as part of Osterwalder’s PhD thesis, the BMC framework has since developed into one of the most well-known and widely used business modeling tools on the planet, embedding itself in MBA curricula and guiding decision-making processes in C-suites and incubators alike. In addition to authoring several bestselling books on …  ( 9 min )

Feeling more impatient lately? It’s not entirely your fault. Sarah Schnitker, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, explains how a culture of instant gratification — fueled by our use of smart phones and on-demand everything — has made patience feel unnecessary. But her research shows that patience helps people stay regulated, persist through challenges, and feel more satisfied with their progress. This video How to wait well, according to neuroscience and psychology is featured on Big Think.  ( 5 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 )

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Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from the math of tipping points to the audacity of climate models. The post How We Came To Know Earth first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 3 min )

Building an accurate model of Earth’s climate requires a lot of data. Photography reveals the extreme efforts scientists have undertaken to measure gases, glaciers, clouds and more. The post The Ends of the Earth first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 16 min )

Earth’s climate is chaotic and volatile. Climate change is simple and predictable. How can both be true? The post The Climate Change Paradox first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

Earth’s radiation can send some molecules spinning or vibrating, which is what makes them greenhouse gases. This infographic explains how relatively few heat-trapping molecules can have a planetary effect. The post The Quantum Mechanics of Greenhouse Gases first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 15 min )

Over the past 60 years, scientists have largely succeeded in building a computer model of Earth to see what the future holds. One of the most ambitious projects humankind has ever undertaken has now reached a critical moment. The post How Climate Scientists Saw the Future Before It Arrived first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 23 min )

This vegan Breakfast Sandwich recipe is a make-ahead meal that layers a veggie-packed vegan omelet onto English muffins with plant-based sausage and cheddar. It’s a satisfying breakfast option perfect for busy mornings! Like it or not, the lazy days of summer are winding down (sigh) and it’s time to start meal planning and prepping again. […]  ( 21 min )

While sampling ancient, dry riverbed rocks on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover found something astonishing. The rock shown here, discovered by NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Mars, contains leopard-like spots on a reddish rock located in Mars’s Jezero Crater in July of 2024. Sample analysis indicated organic molecules and reduction/oxidation reactions, which could serve as a potential biosignature. However, abiotic pathways to the production of these characteristics cannot be ruled out as of yet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS An unusual rock contained organic, carbon-bearing minerals. This figure shows an aerial view of the path of exploration undertaken by NASA’s Perseverance Rover, including the important Bright Angel and Masonic Temple regions, which includes some unusual rock formatio…  ( 9 min )

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Counting every citizen is one of the most basic functions of the state. For much of the world, it remains extraordinarily difficult.  ( 14 min )

City and university police have investigated 11 instances of gunfire this year, one with injuries. It’s about half as many as from this time in 2024.  ( 25 min )

An open-faced spanakopita-alike with extra spring onion and ricotta, plus a zingy citrus salsa to go alongside The spinach and feta pie, AKA spanakopita, on which this recipe is based is deeply rooted in Greek culinary history. So I probably shouldn’t have messed with it, but I did, because I’m a tinkerer. I wanted a lot of spring onions, you see, because, together, cooked green onions and spinach are a bittersweet fantastic dream, especially when they’re tempered with some creamy ricotta. But then, to stop it from getting too sleepy, I escalated the fresh herbs, kept the sharp feta (I’m not a monster) and finished it with a fresh lemon and pine nut salsa. Same same, but actually quite a bit different. Continue reading...  ( 16 min )

Gavin Newsom and state legislators have until Jan. 10 to seal a deal to keep BART afloat.  ( 24 min )

A rally is being held Friday night to demand the release of Harjit Kaur, a grandmother who worked at Berkeley's Sari Palce for two decades and is now facing deportation despite what her family says is a record of complying with immigration rules.  ( 24 min )

Judith Butler, a well-known Jewish feminist theorist who has spoken out against the state of Israel, is among those whose names were shared as the feds investigate alleged antisemitism on college campuses.  ( 24 min )

Berkeleyside will be among the 400 vendors with a booth at the annual street festival. Come say hello.  ( 23 min )

California’s largest private health provider says it will have the new vaccine in stock Sept. 15. Major drug store chains are sticking with FDA restrictions for now.  ( 22 min )

A convergence of economic and market forces has compelled two popular East Bay businesses to announce their impending closure.  ( 23 min )

Public records shed light on bus consolidations that some worry could cause families to leave the district and undermine decades-long efforts to integrate Berkeley schools.  ( 28 min )

The Oakland restaurant has collaborated with a variety partners, including La Cocina, Bolita Masa and Parche, on eight different events running Sept. 14 to Oct. 11.  ( 25 min )

A 2.5 mile-stretch of the road below Inspiration Point, a popular route from the Berkeley Hills to Orinda and the reservoirs, has been closed since a March 2023 landslide.  ( 24 min )

If you want to see the Universe, you have to do more than merely open your eyes. Even with the advantage of large, powerful telescopes, even from far above the limitations of Earth’s atmosphere in space, there are still enormous portions of the Universe that are virtually invisible to our optical telescopes. The reason why? Because enormous portions of the Universe are blocked by cosmic dust: small, cold grains of atom-based matter that absorb and block the visible wavelengths of light that human eyes have adapted to see. They obscure enormous regions of the galactic plane, and hinder our ability to observe star-forming regions, planet-forming disks, and objects that lie behind and beyond the plane of the Milky Way. Sure, we’ve developed many techniques, like multi-wavelength astronomy (pa…  ( 15 min )

In the 2009 documentary Transcendent Man, the American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil shares his thoughts on death. Although many philosophers and theologians accept mortality as an inevitable and indeed defining feature of human existence, Kurzweil refuses to accept this line of thinking. “Death is a great tragedy, a profound loss,” he declares in the film, haunted by the memory of losing his father at age 22. “I don’t accept it.” Kurzweil would have found an ally in the little-known 19th-century Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, whose posthumously published text Philosophy of the Common Task made the at-the-time daring argument that death was little more than a design flaw — one which advancements in science and technology could help to rectify. Fedorov also believed that this goa…  ( 7 min )

Success, status, and achievements promise to deliver happiness, but often come up empty when realized. Tal Ben-Shahar’s own experience with this personal dissatisfaction drove him to study the science and philosophy of wellbeing. Ben-Shahar outlines how anti-fragility and post-traumatic growth reframe hardship as opportunity and how happiness can be found through connection, purpose, and clarity instead. This video Become stronger: Jumpstart your anti-fragile systems is featured on Big Think.  ( 30 min )

The post The Tianjin Turning Point appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 14 min )

My Vegan Snickerdoodle Cookies are every bit as delicious as the traditional version, with that classic cozy cinnamon flavour and soft, thick, and fluffy texture. Bonus: they’re also gluten-free! Snickerdoodles are the kind of cookie you can make year-round, but their warm cinnamon flavour also makes them ideal for holiday baking. So basically, this is […]  ( 23 min )

The James Webb Space Telescope has found a lonely black hole in the early universe that’s as heavy as 50 million suns. A major discovery, the object confounds theories of the young cosmos. The post A Single, ‘Naked’ Black Hole Rewrites the History of the Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

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Also: The Bruns Amphitheater, former home of Cal Shakes, may be getting a new tenant.  ( 23 min )

Because California is following the guidance of leading medical groups, it’s likely insurance companies will cover the shots.  ( 26 min )

The man’s identity and cause of death were not immediately available.  ( 23 min )

Oakland resident Ryan Dowdy came up with the idea for READYBAR while working on food systems for the International Space Station.  ( 28 min )

There were no injuries reported in the Second Street fire, which 911 callers first reported around 5:24 a.m., according to BFD.  ( 24 min )

Other events include an architecture talk, the Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention and a screening of "This is Not a Climate Film," a documentary produced by UC Berkeley journalism students.  ( 29 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 )

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less,” says Humpty Dumpty to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale. I’ve been revisiting this quote lately because, in many ways, I feel Western democracies have gone fully through the looking glass when it comes to how we discuss politics. The words we use to describe our positions and those of others often sit on shaky perches. They shift — not just in implication but sometimes even definitionally — based on the context, speaker, and audience, leaving us without a clear sense of what people mean. And perhaps no other word in politics today sits on a shakier perch than liberalism. Consider that in the United States, a liberal is someone who stands on the political left, probably voted for Joe Biden, a…  ( 11 min )

9 a.m. on Saturday. I’m sitting at the café, laptop open, surrounded by the chatter of customers, and the scattered debris of modern knowledge work. Three half-finished articles. Two consulting projects with looming deadlines. Emails multiplying like rabbits. And somewhere in the mental background, the nagging sense that I should be exercising, calling my parents, and planning next week’s content calendar for Substack. My attention ping-ponged. The article deadline that felt manageable yesterday now loomed. The client presentation that should take an hour felt like it would consume my entire weekend. Even checking email felt like wading into a swamp. Everything screamed “urgent,” but nothing felt achievable. I couldn’t see it in the moment, but the scattered feeling stemmed more from how I…  ( 9 min )

The benefits of AI are immense. Unparalleled efficiency. Speed. Convenience. But every advantage carries a price tag. And I believe AI is a perfect example. AI can radically simplify our lives (and I use it often), yet at the same time, it threatens to erode the very foundation of trust — trust in information, trust in institutions, and even trust in one another. In the knowledge work age, your value was often measured by your IQ. But as Kevin Kelly argues, in the age of AI, the more critical metric is shifting. What matters most is no longer just intelligence, but what he calls the Trust Quotient — the ability to be authentic and develop trust in a world where machines can imitate almost everything else. “Trust is a broad word that will be unbundled as it seeps into the AI ecosystem,” Kel…  ( 10 min )

We often think of fraud as the work of greedy masterminds, but the reality can be far more complex. Forensic accounting expert Kelly Richmond Pope, explains how ordinary people can be perpetrators, under the right conditions.  Drawing from years of interviews with white-collar criminals, whistleblowers, and victims, Pope introduces a framework that challenges our common assumptions about who can commit this crime. This video Inside the mind of a white-collar criminal is featured on Big Think.  ( 22 min )

The post The Lost Art Of Thinking Historically appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 20 min )

If you ask a scientist where the Universe got its start, “the Big Bang” is the answer you’re most likely to get, as for over 60 years now, the scientific evidence that’s come in favoring that theory has overwhelmed all alternatives. Our Universe may be full of stars, galaxies, and a cosmic web of large-scale structure, all separated by the vastness of empty space between them, but it wasn’t born that way. It’s a profound realization that our cosmos hasn’t existed in its current form forever. Instead, the Universe came to be this way because it expanded and cooled from a hot, dense, uniform, matter-and-radiation-filled state with no galaxies, stars, or even simple atoms present at the outset. Everything, as it exists in its current form, wasn’t the way it is today back some 13.8 billion yea…  ( 13 min )

Liam and Judy have set aside a few hundred dollars every month to pay for a big summer holiday with all the family. “How about the south of France?” Judy says. “Meh, too boring,” Liam says. Back and forth it goes until they settle on a nice compromise along the Tuscan coast. Liam can ride his bike, Judy can swim in the sea, and the kids can go to the amusement park 30 minutes away. With one click of “Confirm,” a year’s savings evaporate. The airport is a bustling, heaving business, and the kids fight over the window seat. And it’s downhill from there. The beaches are so busy that they cannot find a spot big enough for them all. The mountain bike trails are a muddy churn with hour-long queues at the top. The amusement park is more expensive than the flights. And, to top it all off, it’s col…  ( 7 min )

Once upon a time — not so long ago — the internet opened like a library with no closing hours. It offered us Google, and then Wikipedia, and with them a curious kind of magic: everything we ever wanted to know, right there, blinking in front of us. It was harmless enough, even liberating. We no longer had to argue about who directed Casablanca or the difference between a quark and a lepton. Answers flowed like tap water. But something happened in that flood. We began mistaking the map for the terrain. Not long after came the shortcuts — CliffsNotes for Shakespeare, then for Kant, then for life itself. Everything abstract or difficult was carved into quick summaries, punchy headlines, 30-second reels. Learning became a buffet of “life hacks,” each one promising to make you smarter, faster, …  ( 7 min )

How do you know you exist? Neuroscientist Christof Koch, chief scientist at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and meritorious investigator at the Allen Institute, explains.  He challenges “naive realism,” showing how reality is filtered through our senses and shaped by culture, bias, and brain wiring. Using examples like the viral 2015 ‘Gold Dress’ phenomenon and his own experience with meditation, Koch explains how expanding our Perception Box fosters empathy, openness, and a deeper sense of belonging in the world. We created this video for The Science of Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video One neuroscientist’s deep dive into perception and reality is featured on Big Think.  ( 8 min )

Some people think death is merely a medical event. These experts think otherwise.  Tyler Volk, PhD, Bruce Greyson, MD, and BJ Miller, MD, have studied death from the perspective of biology, psychiatry, and palliative care, and together they reveal that it’s far more than a clinical endpoint. According to them, it’s time to change how we understand mortality, seeing it as both central to evolution and something to be reclaimed from medicine’s grip. We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video Fearing death keeps us from living. 3 experts explain. is featured on Big Think.  ( 6 min )

The bus agency withdrew its recommendation to apply for funds from the Department of Homeland Security after protest erupted.  ( 27 min )

The City Council voted unanimously to codify Berkeley’s long-standing sanctuary policies into an ordinance, despite stepped-up scrutiny from Washington.  ( 26 min )

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

KlezCalifornia is rebooting with new leadership and its first major in-person program since the pandemic — a three-day festival at the Finnish Hall.  ( 24 min )

Scourge of real estate developers and regular at land use meetings, he helped derail a Cal housing complex at a former chemical manufacturing site and scrutinized the sway UC's corporate donors held over academic research.  ( 26 min )

In cellular automata, simple rules create elaborate structures. Now researchers can start with the structures and reverse-engineer the rules. The post Self-Assembly Gets Automated in Reverse of ‘Game of Life’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 15 min )

This vegan Baked Beans recipe has the sweet and tangy, slightly smoky flavour of the classic, without any meat! Starting with canned beans makes this recipe a cinch. Forget the cans, this homemade baked beans recipe is SO much better, friends! But I still take a little shortcut—instead of baking dry beans in the sauce, […]  ( 18 min )

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As recently as 1990, we hadn’t yet discovered a single planet around another star beyond our Solar System. When we thought about finding an inhabited world out there in the Milky Way, we had only the worlds of our Solar System — Earth, Venus, Mars, Neptune, Titan, Pluto, Enceladus, Triton, and Jupiter’s moons — to consider as potential analogues. Now in 2025, however, we’re closing in on an incredible 6000 confirmed exoplanets, and we’ve learned that the most common type of world that we know of isn’t represented at all in our Solar System: a class of worlds known as super-Earths and mini-Neptunes. These exoplanets, often rich in atmospheric hazes, are the most abundant species of world known at present. Could some of these haze-rich exoplanets have something remarkable within their atmosp…  ( 15 min )

As geologists were realizing that earthly timescales were vast, astronomers began to discover that the same applied to the distances of the cosmos. In the 16th century, the Polish astronomer Copernicus had argued that it was not the Earth, but the Sun that was at the center of the universe. In the 18th century, astronomers realized that this too was wrong. The Sun was but one star among many moving through that great assembly of stars we call the Milky Way.  What’s more, many Enlightenment thinkers also suspected that the center of the cosmos was not even the Milky Way — they thought there were other galaxies in the depths of space. In the late-17th century, the French physicist and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace summarized this new cosmic understanding when he wrote, “[M]an now appear…  ( 15 min )

Every once in a while, a book arrives in my inbox that forces me to rethink what I thought I knew about the human mind. Angus Fletcher’s Primal Intelligence is one of those books. Released in August, it has already become a national bestseller — and for good reason. Fletcher is a rare hybrid: trained as both a neuroscientist and a professor of literature, he teaches at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, the world’s leading academic center for the study of story. His previous titles — Wonderworks and Storythinking — earned him a reputation as a boundary-breaking thinker who blends science, history, and art to explain why stories matter and how they shape human creativity. With Primal Intelligence, Fletcher goes further. Drawing on unlikely collaborations with the U.S. Army and years studying S…  ( 14 min )

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Gov. Newsom may not deliver on a $750 million bridge loan. That could mean steep service cuts until legislators and voters can push through a new sales tax to fund transit next year.  ( 24 min )

The vendor, Flock Safety, is under scrutiny nationwide over reports its data may have gone to federal agencies, including ICE. Local advocates are asking the city not to buy a new camera network from Flock Tuesday night.  ( 26 min )

City and university police have investigated 10 instances of gunfire this year, one with injuries. It’s about half as many as from this time in 2024.  ( 25 min )

Mainstays Rick & Ann's, The Spanish Table and Tomate Cafe were all among the recent restaurants to shut down.  ( 24 min )

Even risking jail time, older Berkeley residents are standing up to the Trump administration’s deportation agenda through know-your-rights workshops, protests and courthouse observations.  ( 28 min )

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The post The New Geopolitics Of The Green Transition appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 22 min )

When most of us think about science, we don’t often think about something very fundamental to the enterprise: what the goal of it all actually is. Reality is a complicated place, and the only tools we have to guide us in understanding what it is and how it works is the combination of what we can observe, measure, and experiment on. When we add up the full suite of that body of observational and experimental knowledge, we have a record of all the phenomena that we know exists. The enterprise of science, then, seeks to make sense of all of it, and to explain it as simply and powerfully as possible: to maximize our predictive power of nature’s phenomena with as few assumptions, parameters, and variables as are absolutely necessary. We’ve come incredibly far in our understanding of the Univers…  ( 15 min )

For JoJo Simmons the road to leadership was not exactly conventional. But the lessons he has picked up along the way, shared here with Big Think, are packed with valuable insights that resonate across a broad swath of common ground.  Simmons grew up in a family with its own reality TV show — and one that enabled him to build a legacy of his own. After starring on six seasons of MTV’s Run’s House — where viewers were invited inside the home of his father, ordained Pentecostal minister Reverend Run, an original member of hip-hop group Run-DMC — Simmons went on to found two companies: record label Whos House Entertainment, and 3isFor, a content strategy and media production firm focused on telling stories about mental health and personal growth. Continuing his family’s humanitarian streak, Si…  ( 10 min )

Jacob Mchangama, founder of The Future of Free Speech, explains how free speech has shaped America, from Frederick Douglass fighting slavery to Supreme Court cases protecting voices that promote hate. He argues that today, tech platforms twist our view by promoting extremists for clicks, making it feel like free speech is the problem. But free speech only works if all voices are allowed. According to Mchangama,  it is silence that truly damages equality and democracy. This video True free speech, explained in 6 minutes is featured on Big Think.  ( 7 min )

Startupfailures.com, August 2000; via Wayback Machine. On Tuesday, 11 January, 2000, the front page of The New York Times announced a corporate merger that seemed to confirm the internet’s cultural ascendency. “America Online Agrees to Buy Time Warner for $165 Billion,” the headline blared. Under the subhead “Internet Triumph,” the NYT noted that it “would be the biggest merger in history and the best evidence yet that old and new media are converging.” The New York Times front page on 11 January 2000. The deal would theoretically allow AOL to offer its users professional media content, such as news from CNN and hit movies like The Matrix from Warner Bros — although it was unclear what “Internet versions” of such properties would look like. Regardless, the new combined features of AOL-Tim…  ( 5 min )

The federal agents gave police a courtesy call to say they were coming to Berkeley for a “resident application,” but haven’t said where or with whom, or what action they took.  ( 25 min )

These stir-fried rice noodles are a staple from an Oakland Chinatown dim sum restaurant that boasts a long line from open to close.  ( 23 min )

Development critics often speculate that new apartment buildings sit empty. But the city didn't find long-term vacancies in those complexes last year.  ( 26 min )

Scientists have identified tubulin structures in primitive Asgard archea that may have been the precursor of our own cellular skeletons. The post Tiny Tubes Reveal Clues to the Evolution of Complex Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

This vegan French Bread Pizza recipe is cheesy, easy, and that thick, toasty bread base puts regular crust to shame. I’ve got two fun topping options (basil and salami or jalapeño and olive), or come up with your own! If you grew up eating frozen French bread pizzas, you probably have some warm and fuzzy […]  ( 19 min )

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All across our galactic plane, new stars are currently forming. This region of space shows a portion of the plane of the Milky Way, with three extended star-forming regions all side-by-side next to one another. The Omega Nebula (left), the Eagle Nebula (center), and Sharpless 2-54 (right), compose just a small fraction of a vast complex of gas and dust found all through the galactic plane that continuously lead to the formation of newborn stars. Credit: European Southern Observatory Dense clouds of gas, under gravitation’s relentless influence, contract, triggering star-formation. Within the plane of the Milky Way, dark dust lanes are omnipresent, representing dense neutral gas clouds usually found within the galaxy’s spiral arms. Here, nebula NGC 6357, also known as the Lobster Nebul…  ( 9 min )

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It’s hard to believe, but it was only back in the early 1990s that we discovered the very first planet orbiting a star other than our own Sun. Fast forward to the present day, here in 2025, and we’re closing in on 6000 confirmed exoplanets, found and measured through multiple techinques: the transit method, the stellar wobble method, and even direct imaging. That last one is so profoundly exciting because it gives us hope that, someday soon, we might be able to take direct images of Earth-like worlds, some of which may even be inhabited. Although it may be a long time before we can get an exoplanet image as high-resolution as even the ultra-distant “pale blue dot” photo that Voyager took of Earth so many decades ago, the fact remains that science is advancing rapidly, and things that seemed impossible mere decades ago now reflect today’s reality. And the people driving this fascinating field forward the most are the mostly unheralded workhorses of the fields of physics and astronomy: the early-career researchers, like grad students and postdocs, who are just beginning to establish themselves as scientists. In this fascinating conversation with Dr. Kielan Hoch of Space Telescope Science Institute, we take a long walk at the current frontiers of science and peek over the horizon: looking at the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we’re facing here in 2025. It’s a conversation that might make you hopeful, angry, and optimistic all at the same time. After all, it’s your Universe too; don’t you want to know what comes next? This article Starts With A Bang podcast #121 – Direct exoplanet imaging is featured on Big Think.  ( 5 min )

Pleasingly simple as curries go, this seasonal dish can be vegan if you choose dairy-free yoghurt and gluten-free if served with rice in place of chapatis My grandmother, Narmada Lakhani, passed away earlier this year aged 92. Well, we think she was 92, but no one recorded her birth date, so we can only estimate. What we do know about her, though, is that she had a very cheeky laugh, and that she loved lager tops, penny slot machines and tucking £10 notes down her bra, ready to hand out to an unsuspecting grandchild as a gift. She never asked if I was happy, only if I’d eaten well, which I assume to her were the same thing. At this time of year, eating well for her meant tucking into sweetcorn, so, in her memory, I’m going to do the same. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Contracting with Flock is incredibly risky for the safety and security of Berkeley’s residents and completely goes against its commitments as a sanctuary city.  ( 24 min )

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.  ( 28 min )

An anticipated beer garden opening in Alameda, a fresh cocktail bar in Uptown Oakland, and new cafes, sushi spots and more made the unofficial end of summer a flavorful one.  ( 27 min )

Computer problems prevented the start of train service Friday. Bay Area Rapid Transit is advising people to seek alternatives.  ( 23 min )

The Bay Area hiking group, co-founded by environmentalist and photographer Bob Walker, faced fierce headwinds at its inception.  ( 29 min )

A generous advocate of social justice causes, she taught yoga, painted and loved literature, opera and bargain shopping with friends.  ( 24 min )

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Recent progress on both analog and digital simulations of quantum fields foreshadows a future in which quantum computers could illuminate phenomena that are far too complex for even the most powerful supercomputers. The post Analog vs. Digital: The Race Is On To Simulate Our Quantum Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

This classic French Bread recipe will have you making crusty, bakery-style loaves right at home! My easy recipe is a great one for beginners, but seasoned bakers will love it too. French bread is light and fluffy in the middle, with a chewy, crusty exterior. And it’s not the same as a baguette! Baguettes have […]  ( 21 min )

Richard Reeves argues that this quiet male crisis has been decades in the making, and it’s not the simplistic story most people assume. From collapsing educational outcomes to shrinking roles in the labor market, men are struggling in ways that challenge our cultural narratives about progress. This video Richard Reeves: Why working-class men are facing the sharpest decline is featured on Big Think.  ( 62 min )

When most scientists talk about progress in their field, they speak about small, incremental changes that slightly, gradually improve our understanding of how the Universe works. But when we think about the biggest advances in scientific history, they often occur in revolutionary leaps, completely overthrowing our previously held views of how the Universe works. In particular, revolutions like Special Relativity and General Relativity, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and the Big Bang and cosmic inflation completely overthrew our prior picture of how things actually behave. As the “holy grail” of physics, many have long sought a Theory of Everything, seeking to explain every particle, phenomenon, and interaction in all the Universe within a single framework, and possibly even wi…  ( 15 min )

The Mediterranean Sea connects to the vastness of the Atlantic through the smallest of natural channels: The Strait of Gibraltar is only about 8 miles wide. People have swum across the Strait, and it is easy to see from Spain to Morocco on a normal, clear day. It seems like it would not take much for nature to simply close that connection between Europe and Africa, and in so doing isolate the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, this has happened before. About six million years ago, something caused the Mediterranean to be cut off. Perhaps it was an ice age that decreased the sea level enough to leave a land bridge between Spain and Morocco. The Mediterranean’s isolation could also have been the outcome of tectonic processes.  In what is dubbed the Messinian salinity crisis, the Mediterranean Sea th…  ( 7 min )

I’ve been a longtime fan of the Art of Quality podcast, so it was a joy to join the show and share some of my Outlast research. Host and investor John Candeto — whom you may remember from our Long Game discussion on power laws — pressed me on why I’ve been traveling the world to study companies that endure: from London’s Lloyd’s and Lock & Co., to Italy’s Riva, Beretta, and Giusti, to Japan’s Tsuen Tea and Hōshi Ryokan. At the heart of it is this: for me, studying the past provides a living playbook for how to build systems that can withstand shocks and endure for generations. And the high-level pattern emerging across my research is clear: longevity comes from honoring tradition while evolving slowly, and centering trust with employees and communities. These lessons, I believe, hold as mu…  ( 10 min )

If alien life exists, how would we even recognize it? Physicist Michio Kaku argues that our search for intelligence beyond Earth forces us to question the assumptions behind our own definition of “intelligent.” Our current criteria for intelligence might be too narrow. Here’s what that means for the search for extraterrestrial life. This video Michio Kaku: Why we don’t even rank on the Kardashev scale is featured on Big Think.  ( 9 min )

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Also: A six-story, 154-bed student apartment building has been pitched in the Southside neighborhood and Cal's firebombing suspect is on a hunger strike.  ( 23 min )

The mother-daughter owned restaurant first opened on Solano Avenue in 2006.  ( 22 min )

City and university police have investigated nine instances of gunfire this year, one with injuries. It’s about half as many as from this time in 2024.  ( 24 min )

Newly released data show who will have to pay the city’s tax on vacant apartments and houses. Is the tax pushing homes back on the market?  ( 29 min )

Shotgun Players presents the world premiere from Bay Area playwright Christopher Chen.  ( 23 min )

Other events include a free concert by saxophonist Michael Marcus and the opening of ACCI Gallery's show "Transmissions."  ( 27 min )

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The post Comrade Trump appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 12 min )

If you look at all the objects detectable in Earth’s skies, including both naturally occurring bodies as well as artificial satellites, it should come as no surprise that the Sun appears as the brightest object of all. The Sun, after all, produces its own light, sustainably powered by nuclear fusion in its core. That core-generated energy helps keep the Sun from contracting under its own gravitation, but also propagates to the Sun’s edge, the photosphere, where the Sun emits radiation over a wide range of wavelengths that correspond to a temperature of around 6000 K. Although the Moon is the second-brightest object in most wavelengths of light, it only appears so bright because of its very close proximity to Earth. From an intrinsic point of view, most of the Moon’s light is merely reflect…  ( 14 min )

Human beings are deliberative creatures. We weigh things up all the time. At its most basic level, we weigh up what we enjoy. You open the fridge at dinner time and think, “Hey, I’m in a pasta kind of mood tonight.” You turn on Netflix and scroll through hundreds of movies before choosing one that suits. This thing will give me more satisfaction and pleasure than that thing. The problem, though, is that weighing up pros and cons is not locked into the moment. The pleasure of an act might echo out into the future in happy, contented ripples. That movie might be so good that you’ll talk about it with friends or join a Reddit group dedicated to appreciating it. At other times, the indulgence of the now might lead to great pain in the future. Binging pasta might lead to a stomach ache and terr…  ( 7 min )

What does it take to make bold decisions when the odds aren’t clear? Statistician Nate Silver explains why the best risk-takers aren’t reckless. They’re strategic, evidence-driven, and comfortable acting without perfect information. Silver shares habits that separate success from failure in competitive environments, to help you become more comfortable with risking it all. This video Nate Silver: Habits of highly successful risk-takers is featured on Big Think.  ( 4 min )

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, psychologist Paul Eckman, PhD, and psychotherapist Esther Perel, PhD, explain how the brain constantly rebuilds emotions from memory and prediction. According to their research, by choosing new experiences today, we can reshape how our past influences us, gain more control over our feelings, and create new possibilities for connection and growth. We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video How our expectations shape what we see, hear, and feel is featured on Big Think.  ( 7 min )

A recent survey of Bay Area transit riders shows major income disparities between train, bus, and ferry riders. It also shows that people feel twice as safe on buses as BARTs.  ( 22 min )

A major Bay Area earthquake is likely over the next decade. A state program has opened up its annual lottery for Californians who want to retrofit their homes to limit the damage.  ( 23 min )

She went above and beyond in her work in private in-home care and assisted living settings. A mother of four, she loved cooking, photography and time with friends.  ( 23 min )

Layers of rich vegan chocolate cake, a jammy strawberry filling, fluffy strawberry buttercream, and chocolate ganache make this Chocolate Strawberry Cake the best cake to bake for any special occasion or celebration! If you want to bake a cake that will impress everyone—we’re talking lots of oohs and ahhs when you bring it out—this chocolate […]  ( 24 min )

Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of mathematics and physics. The calculation, called the Fourier transform, decomposes any function into its parts. The post What Is the Fourier Transform? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

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If you were an alien looking at the Solar System, the first planet you’d notice, most likely, wouldn’t be Earth. It’s much easier to spot Jupiter for a variety of reasons, including: the fact that it emits its own infrared radiation, making it the only planet to emit more light on its own than it reflects from the Sun, the fact that it has the largest effect, of any planet, on the wobbling orbit of our parent star, the fact that it’s well-separated from our parent star, making it an easier target for direct imaging than any of the rocky planets, and the fact that, if viewed from afar at the right perspective, it would block more of the Sun’s light than any other planet during a transit event. Earth may be of interest to us, since we live on it, but to an external observer, our Solar System…  ( 15 min )

On a world map in the Mercator projection, Russia appears larger than Africa. In fact, Africa (11.7 million sq mi, 30.4 million km2) is nearly twice as large as Russia (6.6 million sq mi, 17.1 million km2). Africa has finally had enough. “(Mercator) is the world’s longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop,” Moky Makura, executive director of advocacy group Africa No Filter, told Reuters. The group champions the introduction of the Equal Earth projection, which aims to give Africa its magnitudinal due. Cartographical marginalization The African Union (AU) — the association bringing together all of Africa’s 55 countries — has joined Correct the Map, a campaign that urges national governments and international organizations such as the UN or the World …  ( 8 min )

Earlier this year, Bloom Books canceled the release of best-selling author Sophie Lark’s new romance novel, Sparrow and Vine. The decision came after advance copies met an online backlash regarding a character readers argued was racist, MAGA-coded, and fangirled over Elon Musk (persona non grata of the progressive left for, well, obvious reasons). In response, Lark posted a statement on Instagram. While the statement has since been removed, according to reporting at the time, Lark apologized and promised to revisit the book “to ensure that [her] work doesn’t contribute to harm” and listen “more closely to our sensitivity readers” in the future. Though she added, her character was intended to be “flawed.” The incident, as the New York Times recounted, was “the latest example of the influenc…  ( 12 min )

Even on the slow route to the intelligence explosion, big tech plays a vital role: they advance AI as fast as they can without safeguards. [Cognitive scientist and AI existential safety researcher] Peter Park said, “Big tech has boatloads of money and boatloads of lobbyists, but big tech also has admitted, either implicitly or explicitly, that their goal is to reduce the economic leverage of humans to zero. And they don’t have a plan to ensure humans’ ability to advocate for their rights and interests, which will go to zero soon after their economic leverage goes to zero.” And how does our economic leverage go to zero? When we lose our jobs, our money, and with them our ability to influence lobbies and politicians. Despite their seeming innocuousness, chatbots and image generators have alr…  ( 8 min )

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Today, even a lazy after-thought can become a useful project  ( 7 min )

Ruiz, a Trump supporter also known for pulling a stun gun on protesters outside Berkeley’s Tesla showroom, will soon stand trial after getting into an armed standoff with police checking on a domestic violence call.  ( 27 min )

Alameda County Sheriff’s Office deputies were serving an arrest warrant related to an eviction notice. But their fatigues, armor and armament sparked curiosity and speculation.  ( 23 min )

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

'The Addams Family,' 'Annie,' 'Once' and 'Cats' are being staged at the Elmwood-area theater this coming year.  ( 23 min )

The Berkeley Student Cooperative has more than 1,300 student members in its 17 houses and three apartment buildings.  ( 26 min )

1999 Napster software running on Windows 98; photo by Christiaan Colen. When AOL completed its acquisition of Netscape in March 1999, a part of the old web died forever. By the end of the year (and the century), Netscape's share of the browser market had shrunk to about 20% and Microsoft's Internet Explorer had become dominant. Meanwhile, the dot-com bubble continued to expand, with IPOs from Nvidia (now the world's most valuable company), Netscape co-founder Jim Clark's Healtheon, priceline.com, Ask Jeeves, Red Hat, TiVo, Akamai and others. Also, Google received its first VC funding round in June and declared its bold goal “to organize the world’s information, making it universally accessible and useful.” But 1999 might best be remembered as the year of three revolutionary new internet te…  ( 7 min )

The post The Last Days Of Social Media appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 37 min )

You’re carrying around in your head a model of how the world works. Will AI systems need to do the same? The post ‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 9 min )

In most scientific fields, one of the most exciting things we can encounter is data — high-quality, robust data — that doesn’t align neatly with the expectations of our currently leading theories. Since the late 1990s, our leading theory of the Universe has been known as either the “ΛCDM” or “concordance” cosmology, where our Universe: began with a period of cosmic inflation that preceded and set up the hot Big Bang, then the hot Big Bang occurred, creating a dense, hot, mostly uniform Universe, containing normal matter and radiation, but dominated by dark matter and dark energy, which gravitated, expanded, and cooled, forming the light elements, neutral atoms, stars, galaxies, and black holes, and giving rise to the Universe as we observe it today. Today, that concordance picture looks li…  ( 15 min )

When I was sixteen, I asked my parents for a copy of Niccolò Machiavelli’s classic Renaissance-era book The Prince as my Christmas present. It might seem strange, but I’d just read an excerpt in history class, and it had sounded like perfect reading for any young person looking to make their way in the world. There’s a lot of pragmatic wisdom in The Prince, all focused on achieving significant leadership goals. However, as the critics of its time so succinctly put it, one key message of the book is that, when it comes to leadership, “the ends justify the means.” Although it is now often regarded as an outdated manual for acquiring and maintaining power, some of the utilitarian conclusions that Machiavelli draws are very similar to how outcome-oriented leaders rationalize their achievements…  ( 7 min )

Does self-discipline always build character? Not necessarily. Psychologist Sarah Schnitker explains why virtue grows best when rooted in purpose beyond the self. Through studies of marathon runners fundraising for clean water, she shows how pro-social and spiritual motivations—not just personal fitness goals—led to deeper growth in generosity, patience, and self-control. This research challenges the idea that self-improvement alone leads to virtue. When moral purpose and shared meaning enter the picture, transformation becomes more than personal: it becomes relational and lasting. This video When does self-discipline become virtue? is featured on Big Think.  ( 5 min )

Made with REAL strawberries, this Strawberry Cake Filling is the perfect addition to any cake, whether it’s classic vanilla or decadent chocolate. It’s easy to make, with a thick, jammy texture that won’t make your layers soggy! It’s easy to make a good, basic cake at home—my Vanilla Sheet Cake and Vegan Chocolate Sheet Cake […]  ( 17 min )

It’s a long way from planet Earth to the Universe’s edge. The extent of the visible Universe now goes on for 46.1 billion light-years: the distance that light emitted at the instant of the Big Bang would be located from us today, after a 13.8 billion year journey. As time marches on, light that’s even farther away, that is still on its way to us, will eventually arrive: from slightly greater distances and with slightly greater redshifts. We see into the past when we look out to great distances because the light emitted from distant objects must traverse those great intergalactic distances at a finite speed: the speed of light. Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi Our tiny home world, seemingly massive, is merely 12,742 km (7,917 miles) across. This image, taken from the International Space St…  ( 8 min )

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Religion in America was once the domain of institutions. How did it grow to be dominated by cults of personality — and what can the process tell us about the rest of American culture?  ( 17 min )

Everyone loves the hockey stick graph of long-run economic growth. For some, it's the basis of an entire worldview. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t add up.  ( 12 min )

This fresh spin on a traditional poké bowl borrows ideas from all over the world This recipe is too off-the-beaten-track from a traditional Hawaiian poké for me to call it such and live with myself, but it is loosely based around the idea of one. It starts with seasoned sushi rice (which I could eat just by itself) and is topped with a variety of fun things to munch on such as salt- and lime-seasoned cabbage, edamame beans and glazed pieces of barbecued tempeh, all bound together with a gentle but perky sriracha sauce. Like many of us today, it borrows ideas from all over the world and is, I think, all the more delicious for it. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Answering your questions about ways to get a COVID vaccine after the FDA limited their use.  ( 29 min )

The Bizerkeley Food Fest is expanding from a single-day festival to a handful of events, including speed dating and a documentary screening, over the first week of September.  ( 25 min )

A flea market veteran, Viveca Jones, 74, now sells hats, baskets and more in front of Monterey Market, at the farmers’ market and at Shattuck and Vine.  ( 25 min )

Einstein’s theory of relativity is one of the most mind-bending theories ever devised. In it, moving clocks tick more slowly than stationary ones, and rulers shrink. Perhaps the most shocking consequence of all is that nothing can travel faster than light. This last one is very disappointing to space enthusiasts, as it dooms their hopes of ever speedily exploring the cosmos. Space is vast, with the closest star located four light years away. Even a simple radio signal, which travels at the fastest speed possible, will take eight years to make a round trip. The idea that there is a maximum speed is pretty counterintuitive; after all, in everyday experience, you can make a car go faster simply by stepping harder on the gas or upgrading to a sports car. In rocketry, you can just let the rocke…  ( 7 min )

Why do many of us struggle with exercise when it’s essential for our well-being? Evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman says that it’s not laziness: it’s evolution.  For most of human history, conserving energy was of utmost importance: The key to survival: motion without purpose would be a waste. Lieberman explains why modern fitness feels unnatural, why guilt-driven workouts will always fail, and what hunter-gatherer lifestyles reveal about health today. This video The evolution of laziness: Why humans resist the gym is featured on Big Think.  ( 50 min )

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The story of the expanding Universe has been a back-and-forth one over the past 110 years: ever since general relativity was first introduced. Initially, Einstein introduced the notion of a cosmological constant — a form of energy inherent to the fabric of space itself — to prevent a matter-filled Universe from collapsing. When we discovered that the Universe was expanding, the constant disappeared, eventually leading Einstein to declare it his biggest blunder. Then in the 1990s, a surprising collection of data indicated that the Universe’s expansion was accelerating, a discovery that revived the cosmological constant. The combination of supernova, cosmic microwave background, and large-scale structure data all appeared to demand it. But now, more than 25 years later, an interesting set of…  ( 16 min )

For some 430 million years, fire has been a persistent if fluctuating feature of planet Earth. This is, nevertheless, a surprisingly tiny percentage of Earth history. For the first 90% of Earth history, the planet’s face was entirely untouched by flame. This is because it takes three things to make a fire. The spark. For all of Earth history, lightning has been zapping the surface, today at the rate of 100 strikes a second. And for the entire history of fire on planet Earth, the vast majority of fires have been set by these bolts from the blue. Astoundingly, though, even at the rate of 100 strikes a second, human pyrophilia today far outpaces lightning, with 84% of the world’s blazes set by people (not counting the controlled fires in every fossil-fueled power plant, furnace, and engine on…  ( 10 min )

Look around you right now. Stare at all the things nearby. These things will lovingly present you with what the psychologist James J. Gibson called an “ambient optic array” — the structured pattern of light reaching your eyes. Light reflects off surfaces, passes through the cornea and lens, and lands on the retina, where photons trigger the photoreceptors that kick off neural processing. Of course, we do not see a world of individual photons. We see a world of meaningful things — things that we build with, cook with, play with, fight with, and use. Gibson argued that we see the world in terms of “affordances,” where we see objects as opportunities for action. We think, “What can I use this thing for?” and “What’s it good at?” In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with the philo…  ( 7 min )

I’ve spent much of this summer outdoors. And the forest keeps reminding me of lessons essential to business and life: resilience comes from networks, strength from cooperation, longevity from balance. The wild teaches what boardrooms and MBAs rarely can. In a Noema essay, the forest ecologist and author Suzanne Simard explores how trees offer us a different kind of wisdom: they are part of a living intelligence, bound together through underground networks of fungi that share carbon, nutrients, and even resilience across species. The forest, in other words, is a society. It thrives because the community adapts, shares, and endures together. Perhaps that realization may feel like a mirror for our own lives. “Ecosystems are similar to human societies — they’re built on relationships,” she wri…  ( 10 min )

Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection did more than explain evolution, it revealed how complexity can emerge without a designer. Nobel laureate Paul Nurse unpacks Darwin’s insights, from the logic of tiny differences to the profound impacts these variations have on our understanding of life. Nurse explores the deep genetic connections linking all organisms, from humans to gorillas to yeast. This shared ancestry, he argues, reframes how we think about responsibility: If all life is related, what do we owe to the living world? This video The history of natural selection, in 7 minutes is featured on Big Think.  ( 7 min )

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Also: A threatening email prompts an increased police presence at Berkeley High.  ( 23 min )

Berkeley’s Public Works Department has upgraded an intersection where a motorist struck a child this month and is planning a major overhaul at the scene of a different crash that killed a pedestrian.  ( 25 min )

The iconic record store would move into the ground floor of the new housing development and says it will preserve the People’s Park mural on its Haste Street wall.  ( 25 min )

Other events include the opening of Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life's water-themed exhibit and a Head West outdoor marketplace on Fourth Street.  ( 27 min )

The school district revamped how it teaches reading and has been reporting its progress to an independent monitor since settling a class-action lawsuit in 2021.  ( 28 min )

Blogger, soon after its launch in August 1999. On January 26, 1999, Cameron Barrett — who ran a website called Camworld — pondered the meaning of a new term he’d recently discovered: “A few months back, I heard the term weblog for the first time. I'm not sure who coined it or where it came from, so I can't properly credit it. Typically, a weblog is a small web site, usually maintained by one person that is updated on a regular basis and has a high concentration of repeat visitors. Weblogs often are highly focused around a singular subject, an underlying theme or unifying concept.” Camworld 'anatomy of a weblog' post, January 26, 1999 (screenshot April 1999). Thus began a multi-year process of people trying to define what a weblog is. One of the better efforts was Rebecca Blood’s article, …  ( 8 min )

An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic, where new lineages appear in sudden bursts rather than during a long marathon of gradual changes. The post The Sudden Surges That Forge Evolutionary Trees first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

The post The Vanishing Art Of Building Sacred Spaces appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 36 min )

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Is all of modern theoretical physics pointless? If you listen to any one of a number of disillusioned high-energy physicists (or wannabe physicists), you might conclude that it is. After all, the 20th century was a century of theoretical triumphs: we were able, on both subatomic and cosmic scales, to at last make sense of the Universe that surrounded and comprised us. We figured out what the fundamental forces and interactions governing physics were, what the fundamental constituents of matter were, how they assembled to form the world we observe and inhabit, and how to predict what the results of any experiment performed with those quanta would be. Combined, the Standard Model of elementary particles and the standard model of cosmology represent the culmination of 20th century physics. Wh…  ( 14 min )

What if the secret to a happier life wasn’t constant joy, but something far more balanced? Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, MD, psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD, and author-entrepreneur Peter Baumann share what 85 years of research and lived experience reveal about happiness. They explain why chasing it directly often backfires—and how strong relationships, mindfulness, and embracing every emotion can build a baseline of positivity that actually lasts.  We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series. This video 3 experts explain how to escape the happiness paradox is featured on Big Think.  ( 6 min )

The post Introducing The Futurology Podcast appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 8 min )

Should we anthropomorphize LLMs?  ( 13 min )

The concrete shell of the future UC Berkeley dorm complex is a striking new presence in the Southside neighborhood.  ( 24 min )

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

The first seven months of 2025 have seen a significant decrease in both violent crimes and property crimes compared to the same period last year.  ( 24 min )

The Council on American-Islamic Relations accused the university of intimidating and punishing students who criticize Israel's military actions in Gaza.  ( 23 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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According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may have more. Now an experimental search finds that any of this extra ‘hair’ has to be pretty short. The post Astrophysicists Find No ‘Hair’ on Black Holes first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

It’s amazing how far we’ve come, scientifically, in the span of only ten years. Back in 2015, humanity didn’t know whether a core prediction of Einstein’s general relativity — the existence of energy-carrying gravitational waves — was true or not. We had theoretical predictions that these waves should be generated whenever a massive object moved and accelerated through a changing gravitational field, and we had observed orbital decay of binary systems (like binary pulsars) that were consistent with those predictions, but the ripples in spacetime themselves, or gravitational waves, had never been directly detected. For 100 years, this great prediction of physics remained unconfirmed. Then, on September 14, 2015, all of that changed. The twin LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Obs…  ( 17 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 )

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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The man had been hospitalized since the Aug. 17 crash, which is under investigation by Berkeley police.  ( 23 min )

Sun Moon Studio in West Oakland delivers seasonal, locally sourced, ingredient-driven tasting menus in an intimate 12-seat setting.  ( 26 min )

Hongmei Chen, a single mother, was killed by a large truck on Shattuck Avenue and 51st Street in Oakland while returning home from work.  ( 25 min )

From the restaurants that provide the most grub for your buck to the best cafes for a late-night study session, here are the 22 Berkeley spots every newcomer should try.  ( 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.  ( 32 min )

The post We Failed The Misinformation Fight. Now What? appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 31 min )

In a push to bring more housing to wealthy neighborhoods, the city is looking to raise height limits for new buildings.  ( 28 min )

Join our nonprofit newsroom to do groundbreaking enterprise and accountability reporting on UC Berkeley as well as other important higher education stories.  ( 27 min )

Didn’t plan ahead? We’ve got tips for finding a scenic spot to sleep under the stars — even when traditional campsites are already reserved.  ( 31 min )

Our ancestors once spread their excess effluent on their fields; now we mine it for vital molecules.

The proof, known to be so hard that a mathematician once offered 10 martinis to whoever could figure it out, connects quantum mechanics to infinitely intricate mathematical structures. The post ‘Ten Martini’ Proof Uses Number Theory to Explain Quantum Fractals first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

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Admiral Hyman Rickover was the Father of the Nuclear Navy —  and one of the most effective bureaucrats in the history of the U.S. government. He also thought it was impossible to teach management by writing about it, but that didn’t stop him from trying.  ( 13 min )

Spiced fried seasonal vegetables folded through basmati rice and served with a nutty, raita-style dressing My mother’s greatest fears are an empty fridge and underfed family and friends. That’s why there’s always a glut of fresh produce in the kitchen, both hers and mine – like mother, like daughter. At this time of year, that means courgettes, and the usual way I dispatch them is in a shaak (dry curry) or a pilau. Today’s dish is a combination of the two: spiced fried courgettes, just shy of melted, tossed through rice with fresh herbs and served with a fancy salted pistachio yoghurt masquerading as a raita. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Dedicated to helping others for over five decades, she was a passionate disability activist, fighting for greater accessibility and other rights.  ( 24 min )

The district ended contact tracing and other pandemic protocols earlier this year, but has an updated safety plan with guidance for students and staff.  ( 24 min )

Tteokguk is traditionally eaten on New Year’s Day in Korea, but you can get the rich, restorative soup year-round in Oakland.  ( 23 min )

The “Tule Marsh Murder,” stumped law enforcement and fueled the rise of the KKK in Oakland.  ( 42 min )

Legal aid, 24-hour hotlines, bedside support, and other services are still available to survivors of rape in Berkeley and Alameda County.  ( 25 min )

The mayor answered questions about homelessness, downtown development and how the city can address threats from Trump.  ( 31 min )

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: American Hindenburg appeared first on The Atavist Magazine.  ( 5 min )

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: American Zeppelin appeared first on The Atavist Magazine.  ( 5 min )

The quest to find the longest-running simple computer program has identified a new champion. It’s physically impossible to write out the numbers involved using standard mathematical notation. The post Busy Beaver Hunters Reach Numbers That Overwhelm Ordinary Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

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Also: The owner of a troubled Shattuck Avenue apartment complex files for bankruptcy  ( 23 min )

At least 13 families were impacted by route changes in the Berkeley Hills. Many parents felt the new stops were too far from students’ homes.  ( 28 min )

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

Other events include Lindsay Wildlife Experience's pop-up event at Headlands Brewing and a free cello concert on a driveway.  ( 28 min )

Seasonal dormancy features in the life cycle of many insects. We can harness it for biological control, insect farming, and disease vector management at scale.

The post A Sky Looming With Danger appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 27 min )

Richard Prum explains why he thinks feathers and vibrant traits in birds evolved not solely for survival, but also through aesthetic choice. The post Do Beautiful Birds Have an Evolutionary Advantage? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 32 min )

A quick reference  ( 9 min )

The writer, editor and publisher, who exposed white audiences to Ohlone history and promoted Indigenous cultural renewal across the state, died Wednesday. He was 84.  ( 32 min )

Fire code enforcement has prompted new layouts at all three markets, causing confusion and concern among some vendors.  ( 27 min )

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

Believe me: They will charge you.  ( 23 min )

The upgrade could streamline transit access, but using a credit or debit card — whether digital or plastic — won’t give riders access to transfer discounts.  ( 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 )

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20th wedding anniversary with a guy I met because I wrote some rambling things on a blog about, like, dating and New York City and funny things that had happened, he read it, we went for a drink, I stopped dating, needed a new subject to fill the void, and Smitten Kitchen came to be one year later. [Some people have honeymoon babies, I, uh, had you.] Read more »  ( 19 min )

The post Embracing A World Of Many AI Personalities appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 23 min )

A decade ago, Karen Lloyd discovered single-celled microbes living beneath the seafloor. Now she studies how they can survive in Earth’s crust, possibly for hundreds or thousands of years, and push life’s limits of time and energy. The post The Pursuit of Life Where It Seems Unimaginable first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

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The closing celebration was a chance for customers to toast the community hub (and buy one more bottle of olives or wine) as owner Bastian Schoell plots a new course amid tariff uncertainty.  ( 25 min )

They made off with an as-yet-unknown amount of cash, fleeing on foot and leaving the stolen truck in the middle of Telegraph Avenue early Sunday morning.  ( 23 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 )

Saturday's street fair, which was organized by the Pacific Center for Human Growth, was the first of its kind in the city.  ( 24 min )

The city’s bike plan is due for an update. There will be a virtual town hall Tuesday evening on the latest proposed changes.  ( 26 min )

Also: A new nail salon opens downtown, stone supplier Evolv Surfaces opens a new showroom and GreenPal launches app-based lawn service.  ( 28 min )

A Dimond District shop has faithfully recreated a Philadelphia frozen treat.  ( 23 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.”  ( 27 min )

Napster founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker in 1999; via trailer for 'Downloaded', a 2013 documentary by Alex Winter. On December 6, 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster, the first major MP3 file sharing platform of the internet age, for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. It was a flashpoint between the cultural industries and the internet startups that had dared to challenge decades-old institutions like Universal Music Group , Sony Music, and Warner Music Group. The fact that the lawsuit arrived right at the end of the twentieth century was apt — the online future was an existential threat to those analog-based record companies. The “majors” would eventually adapt, but they needed more time to do it. Napster was a software program you…  ( 8 min )

A single E. coli bacterium weighs about one picogram, 60 million times less than a grain of sand. But how do we know?

New studies of the ‘platypus of materials’ help explain how their atoms arrange themselves into orderly, but nonrepeating, patterns. The post Quasicrystals Spill Secrets of Their Formation first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

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The world’s largest vaccine manufacturer — by far — is the Serum Institute of India. How did a struggling horse farm in Pune become one of the most important companies in global health?  ( 20 min )

A warming, Sri Lankan-style risotto-alike that’s perfect for a cool summer’s evening Some recipes are easy to describe, a variation on this or that. Others, such as this one, are more challenging. But imagine this: seared aubergines cooked with sweet onions and tomatoes, spiced with aromatics such as cardamom, chilli, mustard seeds and smoky curry leaves, then melted into a pot with rice, water and time, until wetter than a risotto but less homogeneous than a congee. A perfect meal to cook on a cool summer’s evening to slow yourself down, both to stoke an appetite and to warm the belly. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Emergency workers frequently provide mutual aid to their colleagues around California. BFD deployed in January to help fight the lethal Palisades Fire in the Los Angeles area.  ( 24 min )

The San Francisco store will remain open for now, but the market in Berkeley will close Aug. 17 after two dozen years in business.  ( 22 min )

The pharmaceutical giant hasn’t said when it might evict the homeless encampment at the west end of Carleton Street, or whether residents will be offered shelter first.  ( 26 min )

Local artist Ferran Torras is at work on a 340-foot-long mural on Center Street to counter the eyesore of a long row of empty storefronts.  ( 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 )

The post The Birth Of God In The Soul appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 15 min )

For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconductors. A new method could change that. The post New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

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There were no injuries reported, but the four-story residential building was damaged to the tune of roughly $150,000 Thursday evening, according to the Berkeley Fire Department.  ( 23 min )

Also: A woman was arrested after trying to grab a 10-month-old baby from his stroller near Aquatic Park, police say.  ( 22 min )

The first day of school brought a mix of excitement and jitters as BUSD grapples with budget and construction challenges and families worry about after-school options, busing changes and federal immigration raids.  ( 29 min )

Prescott Meats and Las Brasas were also among the recent East Bay restaurant closures.  ( 24 min )

A pair of “plant nerds” started the nursery in their West Berkeley backyard in 2002. The company’s Marin County location will remain open.  ( 23 min )

Other events include a rain harvesting workshop, Nettle Studios' summer sample sale and a classic car show on Fourth Street.  ( 28 min )

Somehow, though, I can still read it  ( 13 min )

Theories of the World Several often arrive in a single day. Sometimes they’re marked “urgent”. Sometimes they’re long. Sometimes they’re short. Sometimes they’re humble. Sometimes they’re conspiratorial. And sometimes, these days, they’re written “in collaboration with” an AI. But there’s a common theme: they’re all emails that present some kind of fundamental theory invented by […]  ( 13 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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While we’ve derived useful molecules from the leech, live leech therapy has been largely marginalized in the West. It is time we reevaluate why.

The post Would You Eat This Bug To Save The World? appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 21 min )

Nearly every category of theft and break-in has fallen this year. Thieves working in Berkeley have been teaming up and using sophisticated tactics and high-tech gadgets.  ( 26 min )

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants saw Economic Injury Disaster Loans as a lifeline. Now, many restaurant owners say they are an anchor threatening to sink their businesses.  ( 27 min )

Cal art professor Stephanie Syjuco’s new work reproduces ethnic, gender and cultural studies course material at a gigantic scale in the middle of downtown Berkeley.  ( 25 min )

Two government agencies opened investigations into BRAVE, formerly Bay Area Women Against Rape, last year. Current and former employees describe an organization in free fall.  ( 37 min )

The new science of “emergent misalignment” explores how PG-13 training data — insecure code, superstitious numbers or even extreme-sports advice — can open the door to AI’s dark side. The post The AI Was Fed Sloppy Code. It Turned Into Something Evil. first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

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Whether your student is on the BUSD waitlist or attending a non-district school, these are some local after-school programs and tips for enrolling.  ( 36 min )

But it left open the possibility of another act, and a board member said it's exploring a potential merger with another Bay Area theater company outside of Berkeley.  ( 26 min )

Toxic smoke is coming north from the Central Coast “mega fire.” Here’s how to stay safe.  ( 23 min )

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

The EBRPD board approved an environmental study for the proposed Wildcat Canyon Bicycle Flow Trail. If the trail is approved, the district will get a $1 million donation from a mountain biking enthusiast and his wife.  ( 27 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.  ( 27 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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The post How We Became Captives Of Social Media appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 36 min )

What is the best way to dice an onion to get the most uniform piece sizes?  ( 5 min )

With school starting Wednesday, there are about 700 families on the district’s after-school program waitlist.  ( 26 min )

The Berkeley Barb was an underground newspaper that served as the voice of the local counterculture and a model for alternative press nationwide. Former staffers will talk Wednesday at the library.  ( 26 min )

Kien Svay Cafe, Greek Wonders, Puerto Rican Street Cuisine and 9jagrills are just a few of the recent East Bay restaurants to debut.  ( 26 min )

The casual carpool stop outside the North Berkeley BART station isn't part of the effort to restart the commuting tradition, at least for now.  ( 27 min )

Second Life founder Philip Rosedale demonstrating "the rig," a 1999 prototype virtual reality kit that would eventually lead to the founding of Second Life. Via YouTube. Perhaps it was the end of millennium — and its attendant Y2K doomerism — mixed with the increasing sophistication of computer graphics. Whatever it was, 1999 proved to be a milestone year for the concept of virtual worlds. Philip Rosedale was working for RealNetworks as its Chief Technology Officer in 1999 when he and some of his colleagues went to see a new movie called The Matrix. The movie was unlike anything that had come before, with its techno-apocalyptic virtual world plot that you needed at least two viewings to decipher, its computer green filter and cyberpunk costumes, and the astonishing “bullet time” special ef…  ( 6 min )

A plant biologist’s quest to design and create 1,000 unique flowers, mostly in his spare time.

The effects of insufficient water are felt by every cell in the body, but it’s the brain that manifests our experience of thirst. The post What Does It Mean To Be Thirsty? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

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A big show-off cake made for celebrations and indulgence This cake is dedicated to two Charlies: Charlie McCormick, whom I follow on Instagram for photos of the beautiful dahlias he grows, as well as for his extravagant Christmas tree-decorating, his pet corgis and his outrageously proportioned homemade cakes (a ratio of 1:1 cream to cake), which inspired this one. The other Charlie is my daughter’s sweet little friend who turned eight recently and, in need of a cake, asked if this could be his birthday cake. To the two Charlies! Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

Also: A 17-year-old solves a math mystery.  ( 22 min )

The change to Thursday afternoons through Sundays, starting in October, lets transportation officials test the impact on traffic congestion.  ( 29 min )

Gisela Insuaste, formerly of Kala, has been tapped as the center’s new director after its previous directors left suddenly in December.  ( 26 min )

An agreement reached last week between REI and two unions establishes a bargaining structure and provides retroactive bonuses and pay raises for some unionized workers who were denied them.  ( 23 min )

How symphony staff and guest conductors have chosen from an endless supply of music.  ( 24 min )

A pair of lanterns designed in the early 1900s used to light up a busy North Berkeley intersection. The community pitched in to fund their reconstruction, and a relighting ceremony is being held Saturday.  ( 23 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 )

The post What The MAGA Congress Got Right appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 13 min )

Hundreds of physicists (and a few journalists) journeyed to Helgoland, the birthplace of quantum mechanics, and grappled with what they have and haven’t learned about reality. The post ‘It’s a Mess’: A Brain-Bending Trip to Quantum Theory’s 100th Birthday Party first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 29 min )

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Softer demand and rising costs have taken a toll on several Berkeley hotels since the pandemic, though with the opening of a Residence Inn, hotel rooms are actually up.  ( 28 min )

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

Other events include an artist talk at the Berkeley Art Center and a community puzzle night featuring artisan puzzles from Elms Puzzles.  ( 28 min )

Sunlight represents a seemingly endless source of largely untapped energy. Just how endless is it?

The post The Critical Importance Of Economic Statistics appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 20 min )

Mary Wootters discusses how error-correcting codes work, and how they are essential for reliable communication and storage. The post How Can Math Protect Our Data? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 31 min )

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Why I never skip a Readwise day  ( 12 min )

Students were moved from the school in 2020 due to earthquake concerns. The property, in North Berkeley, has been publicly owned for over a century.  ( 24 min )

Abdul Kamraan, 35, of Alameda was driving eastbound on I-80 when his minivan went off the road and struck a guardrail.  ( 23 min )

The 72R on San Pablo will become the less frequent 72L, and the Berkeley Hills' already sparse service will be cut further. It all takes effect Aug. 10.  ( 29 min )

Workers at the Nestle-owned company say they face economic exploitation, inconsistent staffing and scheduling and a lack of healthcare benefits.  ( 25 min )

Kanlaya Palivan wants to honor her native cuisine, which she says is too often lumped together with Thai food in the Bay Area restaurant landscape.  ( 26 min )

Twenty-four whales have died in the Bay this year, many from ship strikes. Environmental groups are preparing to sue federal agencies to protect them.  ( 24 min )

promised you wouldn’t get lame!”] I got… orthotics. And even worse than considering this newsworthy, I love them. I caught up on appointments. I challenged myself to finish books before they were overdue at the library and occasionally pulled it off. Sometimes I drank an entire 8 glasses of water and went to bed by 10:30pm. Sure, we went out. We had uninterrupted conversations. We drank Hugo spritzes. We saw dogs playing in a kiddie pool set up in front of an open fire hydrant and lamented that the kids were missing it, then reloaded their last locations and photos from the camp stream a million more times. We said things to each other like, “I miss the kids, but not parenting.” I watched this clip and it emotionally wrecked me. I’d sleep through my alarm in the morning and nobody was there to tell me I make weird faces in my sleep or that they’d promised they’d bring homemade treats to school that day. Friends, it was wild. Read more »  ( 27 min )

A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks. The post New Method Is the Fastest Way To Find the Best Routes first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 9 min )

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There’s a lot to like about the Rationalist community, but they do have a certain tendency to spawn — shall we say — high demand groups. We sent a card-carrying Rat to investigate what’s really going on.  ( 21 min )

Don't let the days before the start of school pass you by. Here's a list of activities for the remaining days of summer in Berkeley.  ( 28 min )

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

Trump officials threatened legal action against the 18 cities on the list. Berkeley’s mayor says: “We are not backing down.”  ( 24 min )

Officials plan to vote this week on limiting bike-pedestrian lane access to improve traffic flow. Bicycle commuters say it has been a vital asset.  ( 27 min )

A new nest near an Oakland cemetery marks the remarkable return of a species absent for decades due to chemical exposure, urbanization and shootings.  ( 26 min )

This Is a Big Release Going Dark: Dark Mode Arrives How Does It Relate to AI? Connecting with the Agentic World Just Put a Fit on That! Maps Become More Beautiful A Better Red: Introducing New Named Colors More Spiffing Up of Graphics Non-commutative Algebra Draw on That Surface: The Visual Annotation of Regions Curvature […]  ( 49 min )

The post The Gulf World That Air Conditioning Wrought appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 43 min )

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One of David Bowie's characters in the 1999 3D game, Omikron: The Nomad Soul. On May 12, 1999, a surprising announcement came over the wires. “Eidos Interactive, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of interactive entertainment, today announced a collaboration with legendary rocker David Bowie on Omikron: The Nomad Soul,” read the press release. It went on to explain that Bowie and his guitarist Reeves Gabrels had “worked closely with the game's developers, Paris-based Quantic Dream, to create original music for the game, including eight new songs.” The concept of this 3D game involved a futuristic city called Omikron, demons that collect souls, and (like Bowie’s 1995 Outside album concept) a spate of serial killings. It was another chance for Bowie to play with virtual personas. Ev…  ( 7 min )

Four officers who shot Grady L. Walker Jr. at Toyota of Berkeley and an officer who fatally shot David L. Bonino II in a separate incident were justified in doing so, the DA's office ruled.  ( 28 min )

The city and McGee Avenue Baptist Church will cohost a party to "stop the violence" with bounce houses, food and beverages, live performances and city officials and council members in attendance.  ( 24 min )

Other new Berkeley books: Historical fiction that describes the real-life love affair between the author’s mother and a founding father of Israel and a decorating book by YouTube stars Kirsten Dirksen and Nicolás Boullosa.  ( 31 min )

A look inside Parallel Squared Technology Institute, a focused research organization trying to make analyzing a proteome as easy as DNA sequencing.

Strong new evidence suggests that primordial material from the planet’s center is somehow making its way out. Continent-size entities anchored to the core-mantle boundary might be involved. The post Earth’s Core Appears To Be Leaking Up and Out of Earth’s Surface first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

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An American tradition of embracing modernity.  ( 11 min )

A summery rice salad with a crispy south-east Asian twist It’s been a salad kind of summer so far. Hot days spent camping with friends, impromptu picnics in the park, afternoons watching the tennis, reading in the garden with Test Match Special on in the background. Food has had to fit around summer life and, of all the meals, this has been one of the best. It has summer etched into the heart of it in that it’s fresh, flavourful and good for feeding a crowd. It’s a (very) wild take on Laotian crispy rice salad and is abundant with herbs, garden vegetables and, crucially, there’s barely any “cooking” involved at all. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

The city plans to form a Nightlife Council, meant to support Berkeley's bars, restaurants and art and entertainment centers.  ( 24 min )

Marinated milkfish, garlic rice, and a sunny-side-up egg come together in this classic Filipino brunch combo.  ( 23 min )

Several neighbors sought to scale down the project, but the City Council said it didn’t have that authority because of state housing laws.  ( 24 min )

West Edge Opera will present three shows, starting with “Dolores,” based on the life of the civil rights activist, opening on Aug. 2.  ( 23 min )

After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture. The post At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

The post Introducing Noema VI: Paradigm Shifts appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 15 min )

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Also: A North Shattuck apartment complex is headed for foreclosure, and more Alameda County home sellers are dropping their prices.  ( 21 min )

The West Oakland smash burger and shakes spot that has garnered considerable grassroots publicity is holding a grand opening event Aug. 2.  ( 25 min )

But after reviewing Tim Dupuis' performance, the county’s Elections Oversight commission says there’s room for improvement.  ( 26 min )

Fans of the breakfast spot have until the end of August to get their last pancake fix.  ( 22 min )

Tony Taccone directing the world-premiere "How Shakespeare Saved My Life," a musical adaptation of "The Lunchbox," a re-envisioned Arthur Miller classic, and more, coming to Downtown Berkeley.  ( 22 min )

Other events include a Bay Area Jazz Society jam session at a pizzeria and a know-your-rights workshop at La Peña.  ( 27 min )

By spinning bacteria in circles, scientists figured out how phage viruses time their escape from an infected cell.

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All the ways your framings and models can lead you astray  ( 20 min )

The post What Searching For Aliens Reveals About Ourselves appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 27 min )

Two days a week, the Iron Triangle is home to a vibrant market where local vendors shine. Nosh shares some of its favorite dishes.  ( 24 min )

There were no evacuations called for in Berkeley after one of the strongest recorded earthquakes in history shook the Russian Far East Tuesday.  ( 26 min )

Because they are so rare, it’s hard to predict how much damage a tsunami might cause in Berkeley. But it can be significant.  ( 26 min )

To make ends meet in a brutal housing market, Cal students are doubling up in living rooms, commuting from other cities and making sacrifices.  ( 28 min )

A small but enthusiastic group of neuroscientists is exhuming overlooked experiments and performing new ones to explore whether cells record past experiences — fundamentally challenging what memory is. The post What Can a Cell Remember? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 15 min )

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Strong currents or waves could arrive as early as 12:40 a.m. Wednesday. Weather experts were not yet calling for evacuations or warning of mass inundation.  ( 25 min )

Jonathan Dillard "JD" Guidi, 41, of Sacramento, leaves behind a wife and seven children, according to a GoFundMe page set up for the family. The fatal fall is under investigation.  ( 24 min )

The next head of the University of California system faces challenges from both D.C. and within the state. His record emphasizes affordability, access and research.  ( 28 min )

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

Plans for a new perimeter path at Cesar Chavez Park have been canceled and volunteer gardeners are cutting weeds with scissors instead of yanking them.  ( 27 min )

No Immigrants No Spice’s biennial event returns to OMCA and the 2025 theme is “Toward a Greener Future.”  ( 25 min )

Many educators work over the summer break to make ends meet; Others focus on professional development, personal health and family time.  ( 29 min )

He oversaw VA hospital projects in Palo Alto and Loma Linda and the King Khalid Military Hospital in Saudi Arabia.  ( 23 min )

BowieWorld, via mutant ratz on YouTube. In January 1999, BowieNet members were sent a CD that contained software for BowieWorld, a 3D chat environment built by a company called Worlds.com. It was a basic version of what Second Life would eventually launch in 2003 — a virtual world in which cartoonish three dimensional avatars roamed a blocky world and text-chatted with each other. BowieWorld still exists today, albeit in a zombie state. In 2022, Worlds.com attempted to kick-start it again with an NFT promotion, launched at the 2022 David Bowie World Fan Convention. However, there have been no further updates since then. A Reddit community for Worlds.com shows it still has fans, but recent entries complain of server issues and “total radio silence” from the company. WorldsPlayer navigation…  ( 7 min )

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The system also extended more admission offers to out-of-state students, including many more international students.  ( 25 min )

The reform, led by Bay Area legislators, is the governor's latest attempt to ease California’s housing crisis. But environmentalists warn it could lead to harmful industrial development.  ( 28 min )

Also: Bows and Arrows moves to Fourth Street as Erica Tanov departs for a nearby space.  ( 30 min )

There are at least 10,000 known monogenic diseases. When attempting to cure them, how do clinicians decide which gene-therapy delivery method is best?

Fan Chung, who has an Erdős number of 1, discusses the importance of connection — both human and mathematical. The post Why the Key to a Mathematical Life is Collaboration first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

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Over the next 25 years, Africa is expected to add 900 million people to its cities, the largest wave of urban population growth the world has ever seen. How can the continent begin to prepare today?  ( 17 min )

An excellent and versatile take on rice topped with crisp fried eggs One of my daily pleasures is to take some eggs and transform them into dinner. My knee-jerk reaction is an omelette, egg fried rice, the occasional okonomiyaki but not usually fried eggs, which are still working on their acceptance into my dinner canon. Recently, they made a bid for my affection via these Malaysian eggs, or telur masak kicap, in which they are doused in an onion, sweet soy, garlic and chilli sauce that works splendidly over rice. Welcome to the party, fried eggs. Continue reading...  ( 14 min )

Brisk breezes, foggy mornings and below-average temps have made this a sweater season in the East Bay.  ( 23 min )

A running list of restaurants that have recently closed in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.  ( 21 min )

Reem’s will establish its flagship location in Jack London Square, with plans to open outposts on the horizon.  ( 25 min )

The 34-year-old Turtle Island Monument project unraveled over issues related to the prior involvement of a non-Native artist. The Indigenous artists say they want respect. The city says their demands are “insurmountable” but more negotiations are possible.  ( 27 min )

The city’s “fair and impartial policing” work was supposed to eliminate racial profiling and address disparities. Watchdogs say there’s been progress — but some disparities persist.  ( 26 min )

Smitten Kitchen Keepers, I became obsessed with creating a deeply nostalgic homemade chipwich-style ice cream sandwich that did everything right and I had three big a-ha moments along the way: Read more »  ( 29 min )

The post Stubborn Interdependence appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 9 min )

In theory, quantum physics can bypass the hard mathematical problems at the root of modern encryption. A new proof shows how. The post Quantum Scientists Have Built a New Math of Cryptography first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

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Also: Mountain lion spotted in Berkeley. A petition to save Half Price Books. And you can weigh in now on mosaic designs for a city community center.  ( 21 min )

A meeting Wednesday put on display the tension between historic preservation and new development in a rapidly changing Berkeley.  ( 26 min )

Around 80% of Measure W revenue will go to homelessness. The rest of the newly released funds are for other “essential services.”  ( 28 min )

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

Other events include a summer market at Imasala Collective in West Berkeley and a street fair on Telegraph Avenue.  ( 28 min )

He worked the ER at Herrrick Hospital, led a Kaiser acupuncture clinic and taught at UCSF's medical school. He was always focused on the health of the larger community and world.  ( 24 min )

In this episode of The Joy of Why, Thomas Hertog discusses his collaboration with Stephen Hawking on a provocative theory arguing that the laws of physics evolved with the universe, and how this could have shaped a cosmos fit for life. The post Why Did The Universe Begin? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 33 min )

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What if you could search every visible word on New York City’s streets?

Operations at both organizations are expected to remain the same for at least the next six months.  ( 24 min )

Bad Walter’s Bootleg Ice Cream is known for its lactose-free, creative flavors. Owner Sydney Arkin let Nosh follow the process.  ( 28 min )

Amid tensions at Bay Area immigration courts, here's how to find someone detained by ICE and access immigration resources.  ( 26 min )

En medio de las tensiones en el tribunal de inmigración de San Francisco, es fundamental saber cómo encontrar a alguien detenido por ICE y acceder a los recursos de inmigración.  ( 27 min )

The play structure was constructed during a summer camp run by Girls Garage, a Berkeley nonprofit that teaches design and build skills to female and gender-expansive youth.  ( 24 min )

How a discovery in a Danish lake changed our understanding of biological communities and energy.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: The Talented Mr. Bruseaux appeared first on The Atavist Magazine.  ( 5 min )

In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn’t be able to do: It breathes oxygen and sulfur at the same time. The post The Cells That Breathe Two Ways first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 10 min )

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"How Optimists Are Alike"  ( 2 min )

Google founders, 1999; photo by William Mercer McLeod. "Aren’t you rather late to the game?" It's January 1999 and that question was put to Google's young founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The interviewer was Karsten Lemm from a German startup magazine called Stern. Lemm, who later in the article cited AltaVista and Excite as "established search engines," was right to be skeptical. After all, Page and Brin's company, Google, had only been incorporated four months ago. "It’s possible to do a much better job on search, and it’s the main application that people use on the Internet," replied Page. "So there’s a big opportunity, because if you do a better job really matters to people. People make decisions based on information they find on the Web. So companies that are in-between people an…  ( 6 min )

He coauthored a major paper on wormholes with John Wheeler, and at age 33 he became president of Oberlin College. Fuller then fought against hunger, the nuclear arms race, and rank-based discrimination on the global stage.  ( 26 min )

The folks at Baba's House have opened 13 Orphans, a mahjong lounge featuring tea-based cocktails and a fusion dim sum-style menu.  ( 25 min )

Ruiz is facing 17 felony charges from that incident and another misdemeanor case from a March 22 incident when he drew a stun gun on protesters at an anti-Elon Musk rally on Berkeley's Fourth Street.  ( 26 min )

A vendor failed to send out renewal notices for Berkeley’s resident parking permit program. The city is now offering refunds and has extended the renewal deadline.  ( 24 min )

The post The Future Of Health Data In The Age Of AI appeared first on NOEMA.  ( 28 min )

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A prophetic voice in global movements for peace, justice, and ecology, Macy’s work addressed the psychological and spiritual issues of ecological awareness in the nuclear age.  ( 25 min )

A widespread data-sharing program highlights financial ties between local police and immigration enforcement — and how even sanctuary jurisdictions still feed “the deportation machine.”  ( 31 min )

Golden Gate Bistro Restautrant offers an oasis of deliciousness in a neighborhood with few options.  ( 23 min )

The center and other LGBTQ+ nonprofits expect financial hits following recent state legislation and political pressure.  ( 28 min )

Mechanism alone cannot make a science credible. It must describe its subject matter in terms of entities, properties, and rules.

Artificial intelligence software is designing novel experimental protocols that improve upon the work of human physicists, although the humans are still “doing a lot of baby-sitting.” The post AI Comes Up with Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work. first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 11 min )

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America’s epistemic challenges run deeper than social media.  ( 15 min )

These cooled noodles in a salty-sour sweetcorn sauce are the perfect salad stand-in for hot summer days In 2003, I had my first som tam salad in Bangkok’s searing 30-degree heat. It was crunchy and packed to the rafters with flavour, but, more importantly, it was cold. Until then, I’d been eating hot food in hot weather, but ever since I’ve been chasing that perfect cold summer meal. These cold hiyashi ramen come close for me. They’re ludicrously versatile (think salad plus sauce plus noodles), and the only “cooking” to be done is boiling the noodles; the rest is chopping, blending (the sauce) and assembling. It is truly summertime where the living is easy. Continue reading...  ( 15 min )

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office told The Oaklandside it has not yet received a request from the DOJ regarding the immigration status of people in county detention.  ( 23 min )

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

The transaction required upgrading and selling the old home at the same time as upgrading the new home.  ( 24 min )

Some BART directors said they had reservations about the developer group picked to put up five buildings at the South Berkeley station.  ( 25 min )

What to know about COVID symptoms, testing and incubation as the new "razor blade throat" Nimbus variant has caused a summer 2025 spike.  ( 30 min )