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Andrew Kim Kawaoka, 70, prunes a tree during a River Stewards Program event on Wednesday at the San Lorenzo River. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

SANTA CRUZ >> With gloves and buckets, river ecologist Patrick Lopez and eight residents of a homeless shelter gathered along the San Lorenzo River on an overcast Wednesday morning. One participant shifted from foot to foot, eager to get started. Lopez began by describing which native and non-native plants they would be working with for the two-hour restoration event. 

It was part of the relaunch of the River Stewards program, where people living at the Armory/Overlook Emergency Shelter receive hands-on training in river restoration techniques, and receive a $20 gift card for their participation.

“It’s a really fun thing to do because you get to be outside, and you get to learn new things,” said Serena Thompson, who added that she couldn’t be happier about its relaunch and said she missed the program when it ended.

Before People First and the Coastal Watershed Council relaunched this program on June 24, it was led in partnership with the Downtown Streets Team. The original version of the program hosted more than 50 unhoused volunteers from 2022 to 2025. 

Amid the loss of several grants, including one from the County of Santa Cruz, the Downtown Streets Team shut down its operations in October 2025. A survey conducted during the final year of the program found that 48% of River Stewards volunteers eventually went on to gain employment and 37% gained housing after participating, according to a recent press release. 

The new iteration of River Stewards is funded by the California Coastal Commission, the Ocean Protection Council, and money from the county’s Measure Q, a voter-approved parcel tax.

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Serena Thompson poses for a portrait while working at a weekly River Stewards volunteer day on the San Lorenzo River. Thompson, 55, participated in the program when the Downtown Streets Team was running it and missed attending after it was shut down in October 2025. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Up to eight shelter residents are shuttled to the river each Wednesday and work 9 a.m. to noon.

“Throughout the whole time that they’re working, I’m bouncing around to each of them, making sure that they are feeling supported and listened to. I really value cultivating those connections with them and listening to what’s going on in their lives,” said Lopez, who began working with the Coastal Watershed Council last month. “Some of them are actively looking for housing, and some of them are applying for jobs. Some of them are just happy to be out there, and it’s something that I really take a lot of pride in.”

Lopez guides volunteers through native seed collection, watering, mulching, trash cleanup and invasive species removal. He said so far, the group has removed 2,240 square feet of non-native plants, including Himalayan blackberry and Italian thistle, making room for native seeds that will be planted in the fall and winter.

Evan Morrison, Executive Director of People First, said the only requirements for participation is people must be in the Armory shelter and willing to work in a community environment. 

“Coastal Watershed Council provides a great deal of ecological education to the program participants,” Morrison said. “Engaging in this process helps them to build knowledge and work experience.”

From left, Serena Thompson, Patrick Lopez and Dustin Jones get ready to work during a River Stewards program event on the San Lorenzo River south of Soquel Avenue Bridge. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Lopez said he has heard positive feedback from the volunteers about how proud they are of the work they’re accomplishing.

“Some of the participants are learning identification tools that are helping them nourish themselves. Himalayan blackberry is a big non-native invasive plant that is delicious to eat, and the more seeds that we eat, the better it can be for the whole community and plant society,” Lopez said. “A lot of them wish that we could have the program for multiple days throughout the week, and I wish we can accommodate that. Maybe someday we’ll be able to.” 

Many of this year’s participants have volunteered with the previous iteration of the program. Another veteran participant, Andrew Kim Kawaoka, 70, has been living at the Armory for four years. When People First asked for volunteers, Kawaoka was eager to help tend the river. He has a background in landscaping and enjoys nature.

“The levee probably missed us. I think they’re happy we’re thinning out the plants and not letting one plant take over,” Kawaoka said. “They did an amazing job, because I don’t recognize the levee when I worked on it four years ago. None of this was here and now it’s getting the attention it needs.”

Miguel Ramirez volunteers with the River Stewards Program at the San Lorenzo River on Wednesday. During the event, participants were instructed on how to identify native and non-native plants before collecting all the non-native plants into a pile to throw away. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Herbert Carter tosses a non-native mustard plant into the disposal pile. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

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The post Return of the River Stewards: shelter residents tend to San Lorenzo riverbank ecosystem appeared first on Santa Cruz Local.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Immortality is generally considered the realm of the gods or science fiction, a fantasy that’s actively pursued by tech entrepreneurs in macabre experiments that include injecting “young blood,” cryopreservation, or resurrection in an AI afterlife.

But one ethereal, thimble-shaped jellyfish has already cracked the code.

As associate professor Maria Pia Miglietta, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University, explains, Turritopsis dohrnii has an incredible ability to cheat death.

“Turritopsis is unique, because when faced with unfavourable conditions—and I mean high temperature, physical cutting, starvation, chemicals in the water, you name it—when you try to kill the jellyfish, it doesn’t die.”

“Theoretically it never has to die from getting old, it just keeps hitting the reset button.”

Most normal jellyfish start off life as larvae. They metamorphose into polyps (tiny, stationary soft bodies) that bud off swimming medusas, which grow up to become adult jellies. Eventually, after reproducing, most will stop swimming, crumble a little and then die.

But the immortal jellyfish escapes that fate. It reverts to a juvenile form, and starts its life cycle again. The process is called “cellular transdifferentiation,” Miglietta says. The jellyfish looks like it’s dying and sinks to the bottom. Then—like a butterfly returning to a caterpillar—it shrinks into a ball, and within 24 to 48 hours, buds off a new polyp with the same identical genome, she says.

It’s one of “nature’s coolest tricks,” says reader Raquel López-Aragón, who took part in the Guardian‘s “Invertebrate of the Year” contest. “When this jellyfish gets old or gets hurt, instead of just dying like most animals, it transforms itself back into a baby jellyfish and grows up all over again. It can do this as many times as it wants, which means theoretically it never has to die from getting old, it just keeps hitting the reset button on its life.”

In the lab, where Miglietta studies them, these jellies can theoretically live forever. However, for some in the wild, getting eaten may eventually end that dream run.

“It’s so hardwired in humans to not want to die…and the absurdity of that being in a jellyfish…just entertains me to no end.”

Globally, there are eight accepted species of Turritopsis—but (so far) only one holds the key to eternal life.

Immortal jellyfish are only a few millimetres in size. But, if you know what to look for, they can be found in many places, from the Mediterranean sea, to the Atlantic, from the coast of Japan to Panama and Brazil.

As another reader remarks, the immortal jellyfish does “exactly what it says on the tin…They have the very enviable ability to simply turn back into a juvenile at any sign of stress, which is something that I’m sure we all wish extended to humans.”

With their delicate bodies and veil of tentacles, Lisa-ann Gershwin, a biologist specializing in jellyfish, describes Turritopsis as “exquisite” and “the most beautiful little creature.” But what makes them remarkable is their capacity for reincarnation.

Since ancient times, humans have speculated about eternal life, Gershwin says, it’s one of the things that unites us all: “It’s so hardwired in humans to not want to die. And I think the drive that we have to survive, and the absurdity of that being in a jellyfish—the juxtaposition of those two just entertains me to no end.”

Earlier this year, Mexican-born, Texas-raised visual artist Victor Quiñonez had his new exhibition, which speaks to being an immigrant in America and to the harm U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has caused, pulled from two different galleries in Texas. It is now set to come in September to UC Santa Cruz, where Quiñonez hopes his art can continue to make an impact in a state and gallery that is more understanding of its impactful message.

At the start of 2025, Elon Musk looked as if he was going to become a permanent fixture in American politics. Strutting across the stage, giving the Sieg heil!, the far-right mogul set up shop in the Trump administration’s DOGE dojo and started chaotically pulling the load-bearing beams out of the civil service and heisting the private data of an untold number of taxpayers. In June of this year, however, Musk expressed regret over getting so caught up in the political scene. Ahh, but the ketamine has since hit: In recent weeks, Musk has said that he’s going back to being a GOP bankroller, to the tune of $120 million. And the first beneficiary of his dirty money is slated to be endangered Maine Republican Susan Collins. She should suffer for it.

Part of me wonders if Elon’s willingness to spend his cash is any great concern. His investments seem to often make things more janky than they were before. He turned Twitter into a hellsite dominated by like-minded thugs that is essentially a GOP super PAC. He’s soiled the legacy of Tesla’s founders by creating a “giant rusting dumpster swasticar” that’s recently been compared to the Edsel. He just crashed a rocket into the moon. His most recent foray into political kingmaking—the $25 million he injected into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race—was a Cybertruck-level flop. And he may end up catching a criminal charge for election bribery to boot.

If Collins actually needs Musk’s money, maybe that’s a sign she’s worried that her new Democratic opponent, former state Senate President Troy Jackson, won’t be the same type of cakewalk as Graham Platner, whose Nazi tattoo put his campaign into a permanent “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” doom loop that ended last month with sexual assault charges. Still, Musk’s close-up involvement with Susan Collins should come at a high cost to the incumbent senator.

Here’s one big reason why. The guy who’s pitching himself as the GOP’s next big megafunder has spent much of his time “out of politics” becoming a pioneer in the field of manufacturing nonconsensual pornographic images of minors. Perhaps the one thing that differentiates Musk’s Grok from other AI products is that it’s become regarded as a one-stop shop for the production of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. This has already spawned a class-action suit against Musk’s firm, xAI. He seems very concerned that his company may be further restricted from promulgating deepfake pornography: xAI attorneys are suing the state of Minnesota over a state law banning apps from generating nonconsensual deepfake nudes of people.

My thoughts on this are pretty straightforward: In a normal country, it is scandalous for a politician to fund their campaign on the proceeds of CSAM and the like. Courtesy of DailyKos writer Oliver Willis, here is a succinct and correct English-language sentence on the matter: “Susan Collins is financed by a man who wants to make it easier to create nude pictures of children.”

Musk is hardly some lone-wolf pervert skulking around Republican politics. These days, the whole party seems more or less bent on proving “pedocon theory” correct. The anti-trans panic promulgated by the right has been slowly transforming into the drive to pass laws that would put the state’s hand down the pants of women and girls all across the country. As reporter Jessica Valenti recently put it, Republicans have lately adopted what could rightly be called an agenda of “upskirt politics”:

If Democrats want a message for the midterms and 2028, that’s it right there. The GOP is the party of Peeping Toms, obsessively watching what women do with our bodies and inventing ever more ways to get a closer look—from Republican AGs fighting court battles just to catch a peek at women’s abortion records to a prosecutor so desperate to see inside a miscarriage patient’s toilet that he had it ripped off the wall.

None of this is new. As TNR contributor Graham Gallagher wrote back in 2022, prominent Republicans were hard-veering into the wilds of antisocial strangeness. “Among the right’s intellectual avant garde and media elites,” he wrote, “there is a growing adoption of habits, aesthetics, and views that are not only out of step with America’s but are deliberately cultivated in opposition to a national majority that the new right holds in contempt.” Two years later, “Republicans are weirdos” became a clarion call among Democrats. Kamala Harris is often accused of abandoning this line of attack, which is not exactly true. Still, there was some internal debate over its efficacy.

To my mind, it’s worth reviving. The GOP has only gotten stranger since 2024. Just this week, Politico’s Kathy Gilsinan wrote at length about the GOP’s widening weirdo problems as the youngest in the party veer in the direction of off-putting, far-right grotesqueries. One anonymous Republican staffer put it like so: “We have a generation of rabid, incompetent idiots.” Sounds like an assembly line of Elon Musks.

There is perhaps no Republican lawmaker who has been treated with more undeserving gentleness than Susan Collins. Beltway reporters tend to fall for her prevarications with incredible ease; it was one of my first lessons in how many intellectual lightweights are out here cosplaying as my industry peers. Even Democrats tend to treat her with kid gloves. As TNR contributor Meredith Shiner noted back in 2020, when the party had the opportunity to showcase Collins’s then opponent, Sara Gideon, at the Democratic National Convention, Gideon was instead assigned to introduce musical guest Maggie Rogers. “The words ‘Susan Collins,’ ‘Supreme Court,’ ‘Brett Kavanaugh,’ and ‘Mitch McConnell’ were never uttered,” wrote Shiner.

Elon Musk is a weird, unpopular scoundrel with perverted tastes who’s had a direct hand in what can only be described as crimes against humanity. That he’s decided to tether himself to Collins gives Democrats a chance to make up for the shortfalls of the past and hammer Collins for what she is now: the candidate in the race with the Totenkopf tattoo (metaphorically speaking). Musk is the ripest of targets, Collins is one of the most deserving people to catch some strays. But these two won’t take themselves down—Democrats will need to take their shots, early and often.

This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.

For more than 25 years, parents, physicians, researchers and farmworker advocates have warned about pesticide exposure in the Pajaro Valley. So why haven’t Santa Cruz County’s healthcare institutions taken a stand? Local activist Kevin Norton asks why major hospitals and healthcare organizations have remained largely silent on an issue affecting many of their patients — and argues that preventing disease should begin long before someone enters an exam room.

Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn't calling the CEO – it's targeting the 46-year-old IT manager. That's according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month. The data suggests today's ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors. Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first. Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company's response. "The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns," the security outfit wrote. "Rather than targeting executives directly, attackers are increasingly focusing on managers and other key personnel with the authority or influence to accelerate payment decisions." That shift reflects what Zscaler calls "business privilege" rather than technical privilege. Security teams have traditionally focused on privileged users with administrator rights. Attackers, meanwhile, are after employees whose day jobs give them access to invoices, payment approvals, budgets, supplier contracts, customer accounts, HR records, or other sensitive business processes. "The value of a compromised managerial account lies in the breadth of business access associated with the position," the researchers wrote. "Managers may approve payments, oversee budgets and vendors, review contracts, access sensitive records, or coordinate work across business units." The Gen X skew is probably no coincidence either. Zscaler says many workers in their forties and fifties have reached established management positions, giving attackers access to valuable systems, sensitive information, and people with decision-making authority without needing to compromise the executive suite. It also found more than a dozen organizations said multiple employees were compromised during the campaign, suggesting attackers weren't content with a single foothold once inside a network. Instead, they appeared to work their way through different business functions to increase the chances of reaching valuable data and the people capable of influencing a ransom payment. The wider report points to a ransomware ecosystem that is becoming increasingly focused on extortion rather than encryption alone. Zscaler said ransomware attempts blocked across its cloud platform increased 146 percent over the past year, while public extortion cases rose 70 percent and the volume of data stolen from victims climbed 92 percent. By the time the ransom note lands, the crooks may already know who approves invoices, who signs contracts, who runs HR, and who reports to whom. The encryption is just the bit that victims notice. ®

Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know. Over the last few weeks, the right-wing media and the Republican Party have fashioned themselves as instant experts on the WNBA. Usually, the right is dismissive of women’s sports—which it has derided for years as inferior to men’…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Trump’s new ‘do raises hairy questions about his health…

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ph @ilberlinese
Göttlich

Experts say women and people of color are often tapped to lead during crises. Erica Schwartz inherits a CDC reshaped by political battles over science and vaccines. By Barbara Rodriguez for The 19th Dr. Erica Schwartz will be the first Black woman to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, promising that she will show “radical transparency and unwavering scientific…

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As part of a planned Texas data center, Amazon is investing in an on-site power plant that could reportedly become the largest source of climate pollution in the United States.

Scientists and other environmental advocates warn such activity would threaten coral reefs and other marine life. By Teresa Tomassoni for Inside Climate News President Donald Trump is seeking to reverse significant ocean protections by allowing commercial fishing in three Pacific marine national monuments President George W. Bush established in the early 2000s.

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NextSlide says its team members are now working on ChatGPT.

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back. This week, we’re reminded that things at the Department of Justice under Donald Trump aren’t just bad. They are also very, very stupid. It turns out having the very worst people behave in the very shoddiest ways is not a recipe for…

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A cartoon by Jack Ohman. Related | Diarrhea bug claims two as RFK Jr. shrugs off the crisis…

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On Saturday, a senior Iranian national security official issued a set of demands that the US must meet before a key waterway for oil shipping can be reopened—a statement that further suggests a lasting ceasefire will not be in the cards anytime soon.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, called for the US to lift its sanctions and naval blockade on Iran, “completely compensate” Iran for war damages, “unconditionally” release frozen Iranian assets, and end all attacks on Iran’s allies in the region.

According to multiple media outlets, the US government did not deliver an immediate response to the demands. Many of them resemble those in the interim ceasefire deal signed by the US and Iran in June. Back then, the Trump administration said that it would only lift sanctions completely if the two countries came to an agreement on Iran’s nuclear development, a project that has become central to the country’s struggle for identity and sovereignty amid a long, violent history of foreign interference. While there was an initial ceasefire, it did not last. A couple of days later, Iran’s military closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil transit point, stating the US violated their agreement by allowing Israel to continue bombing Lebanon. Combat resumed and even expanded to Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen.

The prospect that the Strait of Hormuz may reopen arose with the news that Iran and Oman, which share territorial waters in the strait, are close to an agreement on a new transit route through the passageway. But Iran’s stipulations presented to the US indicate that an agreement with Oman means little without US concessions. “The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is contingent on other conditions, including the United States compensating for its violations of the Islamabad Memorandum,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Saturday, according to the New York Times, referring to the June interim deal.

So, once again, a needless war has killed thousands of people in Iran and 18 US service members, as well as injuring hundreds more US personnel. The war has also threatened the long-term stability across the region by strikes on civilian infrastructure like water and energy facilities and food storage sites. The only certainty now appears to be that the conflict does not have a clear end in sight.

ALT

For many of us, news about the new presidential coiffeur first appeared in our podcast feeds this week. But listening instead of looking at YouTube deprived us of the real transformation, the summer glow-up, that our commander-in-chief has enjoyed, seemingly overnight.

Fortunately, the internet has not let us down. The simple version is that President Donald Trump’s storied strawberry-blond-comb-over was looking a little, um, sparse recently. The before and after pictures are not subtle.

Trump’s hair, 2 days apart pic.twitter.com/fEtg6mVjt4

— 𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐒 (@Antunes1) August 6, 2026

But something important has happened. A weave? Extensions? Maybe a toupee? Perhaps he has miraculous abilities to just grow more hair when he decides to. There are so many theories, so many rich interpretations.

Trump's hair, uh, has a lot more volume than normal

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-05T21:13:12.264Z

Well, of course, the internet has embraced this story enthusiastically. And offered its customary subtle appraisals of what might be going on with the president. Some might not be entirely accurate.

What is the big fuss about Trump’s hair? I don’t get it! pic.twitter.com/sPDFXlr0qK

— Truth Will Reign (@TruthWill_Reign) August 6, 2026

Others have obviously exaggerated his new look.

Trump’s new wig tomorrow—

— Stone Cold Jane Austen (@abbyhiggs.bsky.social) 2026-08-06T12:59:15.836Z

President Trump when he sees all of @MAGADevilDog viral big Trump hair memes https://t.co/URx4fYpUqI pic.twitter.com/3IiNnKfK4O

— Politi_Rican 𝕏 (@TheRicanMemes) August 6, 2026

But the myriad stresses of being POTUS—the economy, the construction headaches of the East Wing ballroom, the war in Iran, the stepped up deportations, his dismal approval ratings—could exact a cost. And self-care, no matter how old one is, clearly pays off.

The letter from lawmakers to Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins cites a recent ProPublica investigation that found hundreds of therapists have left the agency and vets often aren’t getting the help they need. By Eric Umansky for ProPublica What Happened: More than 60 House Democrats are pressing Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins for answers about how the…

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