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Berkeley High Kiosks
Berkeley High School is rightly proud of its grads. So proud, in fact, that it has adorned a dozen-or-so sidewalk kiosks with paintings of Yellowjackets who went on to become cultural celebs.  

Take, for example, the four portraits on a kiosk in front of the BHS Visitors Entrance at the corner of Allston Way and Milvia, which pays homage to poet-playwright Chinaka Hodges, musician-composer Joshua Redman, Andy Sandberg and his two Lonely Island buds, and Grateful Dead bass guitarist Phil Lesh (Class of 1957). 

But there's been s challenge to the fourth tribute. A few years back, some disaffected Berkeley Deadhead with a beef defaced Lesh's image and scrubbed off the band's name. The defiled artwork was covered over some time ago. But that wasn't the end of the kiosk clash. After Lesh's passing in October 2024, some anonymous Dead fan returned to the site and attached a color photo of the musician in his prime, wielding his guitar above a bold, hand-scrawled message that reads: "Thanks Phil." 

Kid Me Not
The United States is the only country in the world that permits kids under 18 to be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The partial good news is that 28 of America's 50 states have banned juvenile life sentences without parole. Lifetime sentences for children is a practice banned by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The wholly bad news: the CRC has been signed and adopted by every nation on Earth—with the sole exception of the United States.  

Democracy Now! Wow!
A recent edition of NBC Nightly News began with Lester Holt delivering an 8-minute report from St. Peter's Square. The entire Nightly News episode included only ten news stories. (And that's If you count the "feel-good closer" at the end of the broadcast. It provided a useful content comparison of corporate and noncommercial news models. 

It was a good reminder of the difference between news supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the commercial interruptions of for-profit, commercial-laden corporate broadcasters. 

On Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman used the same amount of time to report on 23 news stories, many referencing breaking political news, Goodman also covered the Vatican's gathering of the cardinals but, unlike Holt, used it to close out the program — and allotted it a mere seventeen seconds of air times. 

Fashion Plates
A few personalized license plates spotted about town:
GOLEM5
BWULF
BLKBRD2
JAAMINI
GR NMUME
SPACEK 

Bumper Snickers: The Tesla Edition
I Bought This Before I Learned Elon Was Crazy
Vintage Tesla: Pre-madness Edition
Bought This Before the Plot Twist
Bought Years Before He Threw that Salute
Make This Car Less Embarrassing Again
Here For Zero Emissions. Not Elon
Make This Car Less Embarrassing Again
I Know He's a Jerk But I Haven't Bought Gas in Years 

Penn Pens a Warning that Trump Could Murder the Planet 

Posted by Media Alliance on Facebook. A quote from the actor/activist Sean Penn: 

“I do think it’s a reasonable theory that Donald Trump is not unlike the spouse of someone who leaves him, perhaps for another, who then murders their former partner because if they can’t have her, nobody can. I think Donald Trump and his solipsism may have that relationship with the world and that this destruction is in part a power play, and also a literal intention of his final out.” 

America the Battleful (Oh Beautiful for Endless Wars) 

Waging wars to enrich millionaires and calling for wars against workers' wages is a crime. Here's one jarring response to the current state of foreign affairs—from Prof. Don Smith's Progressive Memes collection of protest videos: 

WarStrike
How maddeningly sad that the US-assisted mass murder in Palestine has also expanded to claim the lives of civilians in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. 

Could we Yanks explore the invocation of a War Strike, with millions of Americans refusing to pay taxes to support criminal acts committed in violation of international law? Could we take our appeal to the International Court of Justice? Could Trump find enough third-world jails to house millions of tax-refusing Americans?