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Photographer Chauncey Hare trained his lens on the modern corporate hellscape. “Chauncey hardly ever cracked a smile,” said the Bancroft Library’s pictorial curator, Jack von Euw, of photographer Chauncey Hare. And yet, there is humor in his work—albeit dark humor. His photographs of dreary office scenes recall the old joke about a man who goes […]
Stu Smith and his brother, Charlie, put down a $500 option on about 200 acres of land on the slopes of Spring Mountain in 1971, eventually purchasing the property for $70,000. The views of the adjacent Napa Valley were stunning, and Smith, who had developed a passion for wine while completing his undergraduate degree in […]
You could forgive George Crow for declining the first time Steve Jobs tried to lure him away from Hewlett-Packard. That was back in early 1981, when Apple was developing the industry-changing Macintosh. Crow, who would eventually be in charge of the power supply and display for the pathbreaking personal computer, didn’t know what the project […]
The big question is why the scam wasn’t detected earlier. Theranos promised the moon—or at least a full battery of blood tests from a minim of blood—but it never came close to delivering. And yet, investors and the press alike gave wunderkind founder Elizabeth Holmes pass after pass, perhaps mesmerized by her inspiring backstory and […]
When I go to Berkeley Bowl with Laura McLively, I immediately feel like a tourist, too delighted to keep my cool among the rows of citrus and loose leafy greens. Used to produce sold in hard plastic clamshells at my Los Angeles Trader Joe’s, I marvel at the wall of eggplants, not just purple but […]
Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided 77 Northern California businesses, in what’s being called the largest localized ICE sweep since Trump was elected. So far, no one has been arrested. In response to earlier rumors of impending ICE raids, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra held a press conference on January 18 in […]
Blockchain is all the rage right now, but most people don’t know what it is. Sure, we get that it’s somehow revolutionary, but it’s mostly strange and confusing—much like watching a Lars Von Trier movie or eating a Japanese water cake.
These days, it’s all about the gut. Not how it looks in a Speedo or bikini, though. More like, how it feels inside. Increasingly, gut health is correlated with general health; gastrointestinal status is widely thought to affect everything from the immune system to emotional stability. So what does a healthy gut want? Probiotics, apparently […]
The last time many people on the campus of UC Berkeley were paying attention to Will Smelko it was 2010. Then 22 years old, Smelko was the ASU president and he made news by vetoing a resolution urging the University to divest from companies supplying military-related equipment to Israel. Now, he and fellow Cal Class […]
As a teenager in Newton, Massachusetts, James Simons had a short-lived job in the basement stockroom of a garden supply store. “I was terrible at it; couldn’t remember where anything went,” he told an audience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013. He was quickly demoted to floor sweeper, “Which I loved: It was […]
Protesters gathered near the gates of Sproul Plaza on the Cal campus, carrying signs and chanting a phrase reverberating around the country: “Black lives matter.” The crowd swelled as it headed away from campus to downtown, where, by 6:30, demonstrators lay down and blocked the street. Ten minutes later, someone smashed windows at Trader Joe’s. […]
In the fall of 1994, when I was a young reporter struggling to pay the rent, I wrote a cover story for the San Francisco Bay Guardian: “Plugging In: An Idiot’s Guide to the Internet.” I explained why a 14.4 baud modem was a great deal, and reported that the Internet was a fantastic resource […]
