Katie Zacharia failed the bar exam. She's still calling herself a lawyer, and a judge somewhere is probably taking notes alongside the one who just invoked the Lorax to smack down Trump's rushed tree removal.

— via Above the Law, Above the Law

Without new funding, BART service could drop 63% as early as January 2027, with trains stopping after 9 p.m. and station closures following that July. Two Berkeley transit riders argue Measure RTM, a half-cent sales tax in five Bay Area counties and 1 cent in San Francisco, is the fix.

— via Berkeleyside, Alfred Twu and Gabriel Fadri

California is offering about $188.5 million in park grants, with up to $8.5 million per project, for cities, counties, districts and nonprofits in underserved and climate-vulnerable communities. Applications close Dec. 17, 2026, and the last round drew $2.42 billion in requests.

— via Hoodline, Michelle Johnson

A Scottish king mocked England as empty of soldiers, hours before his own army was routed outside Durham. Arrows, a five-hour standoff and a fight so brutal both sides stopped to lean on their weapons sealed his capture.

— via The Conversation — History, Alex Brown, Associate Professor of Medieval History, Durham University

Ukrainian engineers have swapped air-filled tires for 3D-printed airless wheels built around a flexing internal lattice, aiming to keep resupply and evacuation robots rolling after hitting shrapnel or barbed wire. The design is already on the front lines, and soldiers can swap damaged rims with hand tools instead of a repair shop.

— via Popular Science, Mack DeGeurin

A publicist wanted a hot take on "real rural America." Instead: a defense of JD Vance's graveyard, a Ph.D. in philosophy, and a hard pass on speaking for anyone but herself.

— via Literary Hub, Amy Olberding

Before Holmes ever picked up a magnifying glass, an Edinburgh surgeon was reading strangers' lives off their shoes and hands in a packed lecture hall. A new book traces how Joseph Bell's uncanny diagnostic tricks, taught to a young Arthur Conan Doyle, became the blueprint for the world's most famous detective.

— via Smithsonian — History

New open-weight models from Reflection, Aleph Alpha and Mistral are pitched as secure alternatives to Chinese AI, but they still trail China's top systems on performance despite having more resources. Four of the five top-ranked models on OpenRouter's leaderboard last week were Chinese, and LiveBench found China's best models now lag U.S. rivals by just 3% on benchmarks.

— via Rest of World, Rina Chandran

The new Apple TV 4K adds far-field mics already found on HomePods, a faster chip whose gains show up mainly in gaming nobody mentions, and a remote feature that should've shipped in 2022. The real headline: the base price just jumped to $300.

— via Daring Fireball, John Gruber

Big Tech interests are spending tens of millions on California legislative races this cycle, including a North Bay Assembly contest, in a shift in how tech leaders spend politically. Separately, the Trump administration sued California this week to force election officials to withhold ballots from 20,000 voters the Justice Department flagged as potentially ineligible.

— via KQED, Izzy Bloom

Historian Erin Maglaque traces how society has understood the female body over the centuries, and how stubborn the beliefs about it have been. The through-line is a long record of confident claims about women's bodies that outlasted the evidence for them.

— via HistoryExtra (BBC), Lauren Good

An Anthropic insider says AI could outpace humans at AI research within nine months, but won't say why. The claim exposes a bigger problem: labs may soon stop releasing their best models at all, leaving everyone else guessing.

— via Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen

A former senator turned economist and a George Mason professor who's spent years fact-checking public debates on his blog just became the first winners of a new prize for defending free markets. The award, backed by a foundation tied to National Review and Firing Line, was handed out Monday in Carmel, Indiana.

— via EconLog (Econlib), Econlib Editors

The Black Buzzard at Oskar Blues shut its LoDo doors for good on Oct. 1, breaking the news to fans with a flyer taped to the front door. Shows got canceled or relocated overnight, and the only explanation offered was a handwritten invite to grab a free burger at the Longmont or Lyons locations instead.

— via Westword, Dave Herrera

Porch pumpkins are packed with calories bears can't resist, and wildlife officials say the late-night snacking is delaying hibernation. Some bears are now scouting houses as denning spots, after a brutal year that saw nearly 300 put down.

— via Colorado Sun, Michael Booth

Denver Public Schools lost 1,780 students this fall, about 300 more than officials projected, and the superintendent now says a four-year moratorium on school closures may not hold. Immigrant enrollment has cratered, with net losses two years running driving the steeper-than-expected decline.

— via Westword, Melanie Asmar, Chalkbeat Colorado

LA's city controller has subpoenaed the 2028 Olympics organizing committee, a rarely used power, after LA28 left a required list of contracts over $1 million out of its budget report. The city is the financial backstop for the Games and would be on the hook for any cost overruns if LA28 doesn't turn a profit.

— via LAist

A $600 million Colorado reservoir is testing the state's brand-new wetland rules, the first real case since the Supreme Court stripped federal protections in 2023. Aurora says the 93,000-acre-foot project just shuffles water it already owns; Western Slope agencies and environmental groups aren't convinced, and public comment now runs through Nov. 19.

— via Colorado Sun, Jerd Smith

About 77% of deer crashes in New Jersey happen during the evening rush, and mating season, which runs through mid-December, puts more bucks on the roads. Daylight saving time ending Nov. 1 shifts commutes into deer activity, and state officials say one deer on the road usually means more nearby.

— via Gothamist, Rosemary Misdary

Two Chicago customers say delivery robots from Coco and Serve scanned their faces and hands with cameras and LiDAR without consent, and both have filed class-action suits under Illinois' biometric privacy law. Each says an app assigned the robot to his order though he never chose robot delivery, and both companies deny collecting biometric data.

— via Block Club Chicago, Kade Heather

A stolen Kia, a crew of three or four men, and 23 smashed storefronts across four Northwest Side neighborhoods: the Wednesday morning spree left little stolen but thousands in damage. One owner says he'd rather have handed over $500 than pay for the door.

— via Block Club Chicago, Charles Thrush and Ariel Parrella-Aureli

Marz Community Brewing's new "sparkling lager" riffs on Miller High Life, wears Chonkasaurus and Chance the Snapper on its label, and sends a cut of every four-pack sale to Block Club's newsroom. The McKinley Park brewery says it'll keep brewing the beer, priced around $14, if drinkers keep buying it.

— via Block Club Chicago, Stephen Montemayor

A new Avondale museum packs 100 sewing machines dating to the 1800s, including what its owner calls the most complete Necchi collection around, into a hands-on space where visitors stitch buttons and pick fabrics instead of just looking.

— via Block Club Chicago, Ariel Parrella-Aureli

Advocates have confirmed more than 100 farmworkers and others detained in Central Valley immigration arrests since Monday. Rumors of a wider ICE surge, including a claim built on two unnamed sources, are spreading in California ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms and raising fears that even eligible citizens will stay home from the polls.

— via KQED, Steph Rodriguez