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Every week the number jumps. The epidemic of a mysterious lung illness, first reported this spring, has swept across the nation, jumping from a few to more than 1,000 cases in 48 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released in early October. “You’ve got products […]
On the 30-year anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, Governor Gavin Newsom stood near the Oakland entrance of the Bay Bridge, a portion of which collapsed during the quake, and announced the launch of MyShake, the United States’ first earthquake early warning system. “The price of admission for living here is preparation,” Newsom said. “Today […]
Filmmaker Kyung Lee never dreamed she’d become a dealer. But bringing her first feature-length documentary to fruition required money she simply didn’t have. What she did have, however, was an idea for getting high-quality product and access to exclusive clientele. It all started about a year prior when UC Berkeley math professor David Eisenbud was […]
David Shields was having a good night. His new film, a biographical documentary about retired running back and former Cal phenomenon Marshawn Lynch, had just screened to a packed and enthusiastic house at The New Parkway Theater in downtown Oakland. Now he was joined at the front of the theatre for a Q&A by former […]
The Christchurch mosque shooting was the clearest turning point: a mass murder that was, as the New York Times put it at the time, “of, and for, the Internet.” The gunman had teased the shooting on Twitter, announced it on the anonymous, fringe forum 8chan, a megaphone for extremist political views and hateful ideology, and […]
Last year, Krissy Eliot attended the annual Bigfoot Daze Festival in Willow Creek, California, a town known as the “Bigfoot capital of the world.” As we gear up for the 59th annual Bigfoot Daze Festival this Labor Day weekend, we bring you this collection of letters, the first in a series exploring the untrodden, unappreciated, […]
Bailey Farren grew up in Petaluma, the daughter of a firefighter father and a paramedic mother. She became acutely aware of the hazards of both trades at an early age. “When I was 7, my father was blown off a roof by a master stream [an extremely large hose and nozzle] and was seriously injured,” […]
In late August, the Amazon was aflame, and so was social media. Everyone from regular citizens to celebrities and politicians wanted to express their outrage. But in the rush to retweet and regram, some people forgot to fact-check. French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted a more-than-20-year-old photo of the burning Amazon. Actor Leonard DiCaprio shared the […]
On September 20, 2019, people around the world banded together to demand action against climate change. Protestors in over 180 countries and all seven continents participated in the strike, which may have been the biggest climate demonstration to date. From the small island nation of Tonga all the way to Antarctica, students and community members […]
For 45 minutes, on July 28, if you happened to be at the border between Sunland Park, New Mexico and Ciudad Juarez, you’d come across something surprising: a hot pink seesaw. The man behind the installation, UC Berkeley Architecture department chair and professor Ronald Rael, has long used his work to create conversations about the […]
On a sunny Thursday afternoon, Grace Ruano moves along a line of outdoor tables set up behind Berkeley’s University Press Books, meticulously straightening the woven blankets draped over every chair and checking her phone continuously. Lunch service would normally be underway by now, but today the owners are running late. Ruano works at Cafe Ohlone, […]
It was a half a century ago this year that Berkeley High grad and Cal drop-out Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? hit the shelves. Set in 2021, the story follows the systematic annihilation of renegade androids in a post-apocalyptic, nuclear-ravaged San Francisco. (In short: man made robot, robot outsmarted man, man […]
Edna Colridge was irritated when her dog jumped on her chest, rousing her from a deep sleep. Then she looked out the window and noticed that the sky was red. A few seconds later, she saw that her neighbor’s house was engulfed by flames. And the house behind that. The entire neighborhood, she realized, was […]
In Berkeley, even construction sites are woke. Last month, the Berkeley City Council approved an ordinance to change the language in the city’s municipal code to be gender neutral. That’s not a manhole over there, it’s now a maintenance hole. And that policeman? They are a police officer. Speaking of “they;” the pronouns “they” and […]
When the Tubbs and Nuns wildfires exploded across Sonoma County in 2017, firefighters found they lacked critical information. Details on the vegetation, structures, and roads distributed across the landscape would have helped them better evacuate residents and allocate fire suppression resources. It was only after the fires were extinguished that authorities realized much of that […]
After the nonprofit workers cleaned out all the garbage from behind his building, Win Nit, a native of Yangon, Myanmar, was amazed at how much space was back there. “I didn’t even consider this spot as anything but a dump,” he says, frying samosas in an alley that was once buried under a thigh-high drift […]
Walking into the Berkeley Cannabis Buyers Club might give you a dose of cognitive dissonance. It’s a bit like going to an Apple store; lots of chrome and glass and helpful young people hanging around to guide you through a purchase. Electronic sign boards list products and prices, and streamlined checkout queues shuttle customers along […]
True, climate change could very well be the end of us—but until then, it could also create some fabulous economic opportunities. Understandably, it behooves responsible investors to assess the specific risks of climate change to their portfolios. Given that much of Florida seems threatened by climate change-induced sea level rise, for example, you wouldn’t want […]
