#university of california santa barbara

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A Spanish shawl nudibranch, Flabellina iodinea, at the Research Experience and Education Facility, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

PHOTO BY: JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK

[eretzyisrael]

A Jewish University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) student body president who was left hateful messages declaring “Zionist not allowed” near her office stated emphatically on social media that “we’re not going anywhere.”

Tessa Veksler issued the statement on Monday night following the discovery at the school’s Multicultural Center of over a dozen messages, written on placards, calling her a “neutral ass b—,” as well as saying “resistance is justified,” “you can run but you can’t hide Tessa Veksler,” and “get these Zionists out of office.” In marker, someone else graffitied “Zionist not welcome” on the door, just inches away from a mezuzah.

“I am floored by today’s events. I am deeply upset by the blatant antisemitic messages displayed at UCSB’s Multicultural Center (we see the irony, right?),” Veksler said in an Instagram post. “This is dehumanizing and rooted in antisemitism.”

She continued, “This incident is not an isolated event but rather a culmination of neglecting to adequately address the implications of such speech and actions within our university. UC Santa Barbara must not remain complicit in the targeting, intimidation, and discrimination against its Jewish students. Silence perpetuates discrimination against Jewish students.”

The Algemeiner has asked University of California-Santa Barbara to comment on this story.

Tessa Veksler is a fourth year political science major who was elected in April 2023 as president of UCSB Associated Students (AS), making history by becoming the school’s first ever Shabbat observant student body president. At the time, she told The Algemeiner that becoming president was always a “far-distant” goal of hers. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from which her family emigrated in the 1990s, compelled her to run.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

As college students across California prepared to close the book on another academic year, a deluge of antisemitic incidents swept across the state’s campuses in May, with students celebrating the birthday of Adolf Hitler at UC Santa Cruz and graffiting swastikas on the walls of a bathroom at UC San Diego. But amid the darkness, students at UC Santa Barbara made the historic choice to elect the school’s first ever Shabbat observant student body president.

Tessa Veksler, a third year political science major, was elected on April 27 as president of UCSB Associated Students (AS) with 51 percent of the vote. She will begin her tenure on Wednesday and over the next year will act as a liaison between UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry T. Land and the school’s 23,000 undergraduates.

“I hope that students realize that they can advocate for themselves and that the more there are observant Jews in the workplace, the more changes there will be to accommodate people like us,” Veksler told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.

Veksler, 21, explained that becoming president had always been a “far-distant” goal of hers. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from which her family emigrated in the 1990s, compelled her to run.

[deadpresidents]

what is the best way to find the full transcripts of speeches by presidents? is there a site that you use for that sort of research?

Yes, there are two particular sites that I tend to use whenever I'm researching speeches or Presidential messages and they are both excellent sources.

The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara is an invaluable resource. The UCSB site has archived hundreds of thousands of speeches, press conference transcripts, messages, and declarations from every President in American history. It's amazing how much information they have available for researchers, and how easy they've made it to navigate the site and find specific speeches or documents. As an example, f you felt like finding the transcripts for the 200+ press conferences that Herbert Hoover did while he was in office, UCSB's American President Project has them ready for your reading pleasure. And they don't just provide easy access to the major speeches that Presidents made while in the White House. You can find transcripts of quick remarks that Presidents made from train platforms during whistle-stop campaigns or radio addresses or signing statements. It's really an indispensable resource for researchers of the Presidency.

The Miller Center at the University of Virginia also has an incredibly useful website with archives of Presidential speeches, but also in-depth essays and features about the Presidency and each of the Presidents. There are extensive oral histories on Presidents dating back to Jimmy Carter, with fascinating insight from scores of people. And the Miller Center has also created a site within their website focusing on the tapes from the White House recording system that eventually helped bring down Richard Nixon. Nixon wasn't the only President who secretly recorded conversations in the White House, and there are tapes available from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as Nixon. Instead of having to search for those recordings at each of those Presidents' respective Presidential Libraries, the Miller Center has made it possible to search their archives for all of those Presidential Recordings. In most cases, they've also helpfully provided transcripts as the tapes are frequently difficult to clearly understand.

Those two sites are pretty much perfect for Presidential history researchers, particularly if you're seeking transcripts of speeches or Presidential messages. I'd also strongly recommend checking out the Presidential Library websites if you're researching someone who has a library. In my opinion, the Presidential Library system is one of the treasures of the National Archives and a treasury of research potential. Almost all of the 15 Presidential Libraries in the network officially maintained and operated by the NARA have extensive research materials that can be accessed online.

[dhart4214]

SO CAL COLLEGE BASEBALL 2024: A Look At Selected Teams

UC Irvine ball players showing support from their dugout. Photo courtesy of twitter.com OUR LOOK AT THE BEST COLLEGE BASEBALL TEAMS THAT SO CAL HAS TO OFFER THIS SEASON, PLUS USC AND UCLA At a glance… UC IRVINE ANTEATERS Current Record: 28-8, 11-4 and tied for first place in the Big West Conference Rank: 12th Last Game: Beat San Diego State, 7-5, on April 21st Next Game: at UCLA on April…

[hgtvofficial]

Historic Santa Barbara Landmark up for Auction

[athleticperfection1]

undefined

UCSB Track & Field

[magicbluemoond20]

sometime soon this week

based still on my obsession with @universal-casey Soviet America Au country humans but more or less focused on Cali and her “city” children during this

Top left to right Canada, Mexico, San Luis Obispo (Luis), Socialist Republic of California (Cali or Nia), Soviet America, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic State, and United Soviet Socialist Republic,

bottom, left to right is San Francisco (Fran, or Chico), Los Angeles (or Angel), San Diego (or Just Diego), Sacramento, Fresno, Santa Barbara (Barb or bro is fine just don’t call him Barbie, only Cali can), and Anaheim!

this is just a Au on top of an Au

Yes I do plan on exploring character development with each

[xtruss]

This Might Be The First Newborn Great White Shark Ever Recorded

The 5-foot great white was filmed off the coast of California covered in a strange, milky substance that could be uterine fluid.

— By Jason Bittel | January 29, 2024 | Photographs: By Carlos Gauna

Is this first-ever recorded sighting of a newborn great white shark? A milky white film—which scientists suggest could be a sort of uterine "milk"—flaked off the young shark's tail as it swam off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Photographs By Carlos Gauna

For as much time and money as people have spent studying and filming great white sharks, no one has ever witnessed one being born. But new footage out of California might be the next best thing.

On July 9, 2023, filmmaker Carlos Gauna and organismal biologist Phillip Sternes were following sharks with a drone off the coast of Santa Barbara. They’d already captured footage of a few larger great whites, but then something completely unexpected drifted up out of the murk.

“Toward the end of the day this peculiar-looking white shark appeared, and we were both super excited,” says Sternes, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside.

At just under five feet long with chubby, rounded fins, the duo knew they were looking at a very young great white. (For comparison, adult great whites can stretch up to 21 feet long.) But as the drone zoomed in, it caught something never seen before—a milky white film that appeared to flake off the young shark’s tail as it swam.

While no one can say for sure what the white material is, Sternes suggests it may be a sort of uterine “milk” used to nourish newborn sharks in the womb. Another possibility is that the shark has a skin condition that has never been described before.

“Both scenarios are highly significant,” says Sternes, who together with Gauna co-authored a study announcing the findings today in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.

“This is extremely rare. White shark birthing locations have remained extremely elusive for the scientific community,” Sternes tells National Geographic in an email. “We think we have a piece to the puzzle now. If this is a birthing location, conservation aspects must be considered.”

‘A Really Unique Observation’

To understand just how rare a sighting of a newborn great shark is, you need to first understand that we know surprisingly little about how the world’s largest predatory shark reproduces.

“I think it’s incredible,” says Greg Skomal, a shark biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries who was familiar with the footage but not involved with the new study. “People don't realize that some of the most basic questions about white shark reproduction are unanswered.”

Skomal cautioned against making any major conclusions based on the footage, however.

“It’s like any observation. You only have so much information, right? You have the imagery. You got the date, the time, the location. And the rest is speculation,” says Skomal, who is also author of Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark.

That said, Skomal did acknowledge that the facts presented would seem to point toward the shark being a newborn.

Scientists know surprisingly little about the reproduction of great white sharks—so the discovery of a birthing site would go a long way to advancing our understanding of these animals. Photographs By Carlos Gauna

For instance, the area where it was spotted has been thought to be a great white nursery, as first-year sharks have been documented there before. And Skomal says the shark’s coloration, shape, size, as well as the appearance of the milky white fluid all suggest it’s extremely young.

“That’s led researchers to think it’s a newborn white shark, and it probably is,” says Skomal. “The question is, when was it born? Is it hours, or days [old]? We don’t know that.”

What This Means For Research

National Geographic Explorer Gibbs Kuguru, a scientist who studies the DNA of sharks, says that the sighting is “a game-changer”—particularly if the white fluid is what researchers suspect it is.

“The fact that we have a shark in the process of shedding its “amniotic fluid” is compelling evidence that we're looking at a newborn, which is critical because it strongly suggests the shark hasn’t strayed far from its birth site,” he says. “Also, considering the decades of research about finding the elusive mating and birthing locations of Great Whites, stumbling upon a potential pupping ground like this is nothing short of radical.”

Because ocean animals spend the majority of their lives below the water’s surface, sometimes discoveries must wait until scientists happen to be in the right place at the right time. That was certainly the case when scientists witnessed a humpback giving birth for the first time in March 2021.

“We very rarely ever get to see a live newborn white shark, which could have been born within hours,” says Skomal. “And if that’s the case, this is a really unique observation.”

Great white sharks are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with the overall population thought to be decreasing. Learning more about where they start their lives would be critical information for scientists seeking to safeguard the future of the species.

As for Sternes, he says, “I look forward to receiving feedback from the scientific community.”

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

It's Complicated (2009, Nancy Meyers

06/01/2024

It's Complicated is a 2009 film written and directed by Nancy Meyers. The main performers include Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.

Divorcee Jane Adler lives with her three children in Santa Barbara, California, where she runs a successful pastry shop.

In May 2008, Nancy Meyers agreed with Universal Pictures to make a comedy film, which she would write, direct and co-produce with Scott Rudin. During the development and pre-production phase the project was carried out under the title The Untitled Nancy Meyers Project. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin were contacted in August 2008, while Steve Martin joined the cast in October, the remaining performers joined the cast in the following months.

Filming began in New York in April 2009 and concluded in August of the same year.

[digiknow]

undefined

[lewisvinga]

party in the u.s.a | logan sargeant x fem! reader

summary; thanks to his girlfriend, logan gets a peak into the average life of an american college student in a party school

fc; olivia rodrigo

note; ucsb is university of california, santa barbara, it’s a party school !!

masterlist !

liked by logansargeant, yourbsfusername, and 98,038 others!

yourusername: bf on summer break and semester is about to start soon, y’all know what that means? #UCSB 💙

tagged; logansargeant

yourbsfusername: UCSB CLASS OF 24 IS BACK BABY!

yourusername: READY FOR THE BEST SENIOR YEAR EVER!😫

logansargeant: finally going to experience the american frat life 🗣️

yourusername: gotta make sure my american boy gets an american college experience 😔

alex_albon: pls take care of the american boy he is quite fragile

yourusername: don’t worry🫡🫡

username: class of 24 is gonna go down in history!!

username: i knew there was a reason i went to ucsb

username: logan’s american gf being known for her college parties is so iconic

username: looking forward to the semester only for the parties tbh

logansargeant posted to their story.

liked by logansargeant, yourbsfusername, and 120,937 others!

yourusername; starting senior year w a banger

tagged; logansargeant, yourbsfusername, username, username

logansargeant: how do you guys do this every week i physically can’t

yourusername: babe, we go to a party school for a reason !!

yourbsfusername: still hungover but it was worth it🫡🫡

lilymhe: INVITE ME NEXT TIME 😫

yourusername: I WILL🙏🙏

username: i’m so glad i chose ucsb

username: y/n the goat of parties

username: still can’t believe i go to class w the y/n

username: perfect party for the class of ‘24 🫡

liked by yourusername, alex_albon, and 582,937 others!

logansargeant: it’s a party in the u.s.a

tagged; yourusername

yourusername: i came up w the caption guys 😁

logansargeant: very smart

yourusername: you loved the frat party, be honest now babe!!!

logansargeant: can’t hate them, you guys know how to throw parties 😫

alex_albon: the fishing picture, you are so american

logansargeant: 🫡🇺🇸

username: wtf is a kilometerrrrrr

username: such an american post

landonorris: AMERICAN BOY THROW US A FRAT PARTY!!

logansargeant: i think yourusername should throw it instead, a real college student

landonorris: yourusername what do you say 🤨🤨

yourusername: planning it now as we speak 😁

[mindblowingscience]

The constant ebb and flow of hormones that guide the menstrual cycle don't just affect reproductive anatomy. They also reshape the brain, and a new study has given us insight into how this happens. Led by neuroscientists Elizabeth Rizor and Viktoriya Babenko of the University of California Santa Barbara, a team of researchers tracked 30 women who menstruate over their cycles, documenting in detail the structural changes that take place in the brain as hormonal profiles fluctuate. The results, which are yet to be peer-reviewed but can be found on preprint server bioRxiv, suggest that structural changes in the brain during menstruation may not be limited to those regions associated with the menstrual cycle. "These results are the first to report simultaneous brain-wide changes in human white matter microstructure and cortical thickness coinciding with menstrual cycle-driven hormone rhythms," the researchers write.

Continue Reading.

[rjzimmerman]

Frontier myth vilified the California grizzly. Science tells a new story. (Washington Post)

The grizzly, a subspecies of brown bear, has long held a place in mainstream American myth as a dangerous, even bloodthirsty creature. Its scientific name, Ursus arctos horribilis, means “the horrible bear.” But that image is being challenged by a new set of studies that combine modern biochemical analysis, historical research and Indigenous knowledge to bring the story of the California grizzly from fiction to fact.

In January, a team of experts led by University of California at Santa Barbara ecologist Alexis Mychajliw published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B about the diet of the California grizzly bear and how that influenced its extinction. The results challenge virtually every aspect of the bear’s established story.

“Pretty much everything that I thought I knew about these animals turned out to be wrong,” said Peter Alagona, an ecologist and historian at UCSB and co-author of the study.

Much of the grizzly bear’s long-standing narrative comes from stories, artwork and early photographs depicting California grizzlies as huge in size and aggressive in nature. Many of these reports, which found wide readership in newspapers elsewhere in the West and in the cities back East, were written by what Alagona calls the Californian influencers of their time.

“They were trying to get rich and famous by marketing themselves as these icons of the fading frontier,” Alagona said. “A lot of the historical sources that we have about grizzlies are actually not about grizzlies. They’re about this weird Victorian 19th-century celebrity culture.”

The team of ecologists, historians and archivists compared the image of California grizzlies from these frontier reports to harder data in the form of bear bones from museum collections all over the state.

The frontier myth had painted the California bears as larger than grizzlies elsewhere in the country, but the bone analysis revealed that they were the same size and weight, about 6 feet long and 440 pounds for the average adult.

In an even larger blow to the popular story of the vicious grizzly, the bones showed that before 1542, when the first Europeans arrived, the bears were only getting about 10 percent of their diet from preying on land animals. They were primarily herbivores, surviving on a varied diet of acorns, roots, berries, fish and occasionally larger prey such as deer.

As European-style farming and ranching began to dominate the landscape, grizzlies became more like the stories those frontier influencers were telling about them. The percentage of meat in their diet rose to about 25 percent, probably in large part because of the relative ease of catching a fenced-in cow or sheep compared to a wild elk.

Colonialism forced so many changes on the California landscape so quickly, affecting every species that the bears ate and interacted with, that the exact cause of this change will be difficult to ever fully understand.

Still, grizzlies were never as vicious or purely predatory as the stories made them out to be. The narrative of the huge killer bear instead fed a larger settler story of a landscape — and a people — that could not coexist with the settlers themselves. And that story became a disaster for more than just bears.

Although we will never have exact numbers, experts agree that hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people were living in what is now California before White settlers arrived. One frequently cited estimate puts the population at 340,000.

By 1900, that number had been slashed by more than 95 percent to around 16,000 surviving tribal members throughout the state. Eliminating the bear and the vast majority of California’s Indigenous people can be seen as parts of the same concerted effort to replace one landscape — and one set of stories — with another.

“The annihilation of the California grizzly bear was part of a much larger campaign of annihilation,” Alagona said. “I think it’s clear that what happened in California meets the legal definition of a genocide. But in a way, it was even more than that, because these were not just attempts to eliminate groups of people. These were attempts to destroy an entire world.”

[probablyasocialecologist]

Research by Clay Trauernicht, a fire specialist at the University of Hawaii, and others has shown that the scale and frequency of wildfires have been increasing across in Hawaii from the early 1900s to the 2010s. The researchers also identified a major culprit: non-native plants. “Wildfires were most frequent in developed areas, but most areas burned occurred in dry non-native grasslands and shrublands that currently compose 24 percent of Hawaii’s total land cover,” the researchers wrote. “These grass-dominated landscapes allow wildfires to propagate rapidly.” The non-native grasses were brought to Hawaii by cattle ranchers in the 19th century, University of California Santa Barbara ecologist Carla D’Antonio told me. “They were selected because they were drought tolerant.” They are also invasive. The abandoned sugar and pineapple farms across the state are quickly taken over by non-native grasses. “When the land gets abandoned, the grasses are the first invaders. All you need is a little drought to have a flammable landscape.” Maui is currently in a drought. The grasses are an especially potent fuel, D'Antonio explained, because they grow quickly when it rains and then stick around, deeply rooted into the soil, as dry, dead organic matter, becoming a “standing layer of very ignitable fuel.” Then after a fire, these non-native plants tend to do better than native ones, thus increasing future fire risk. Fire “has generally been shown to decrease the abundance of native woody plants because nonnative, invasive, fire-adapted plants out-compete natives for resources in the post-fire environment and tend to dominate post-fire communities,” according to a United States Forest Service review.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

John Kettler: Chief of The unSUCCESSFULS Invisible Staff

John Kettler is out after only three (3) months on the job. No sympathy for anyone who partners with these two (2) bullies. You're either too lazy to read a book or maybe you like to help bullies.

"Joshua lives with his wife in Santa Barbara, CA and holds an MBA from Clemson University with an emphasis on Entrepreneurship and Innovation."¹

Richard Eden for Daily Mail: When the Duke of Sussex appointed Josh Kettler as his grandly titled chief of staff earlier this year, it was said that he was the perfect man to 'guide' Harry 'through his next phase'. However, the Daily Mail understands that Mr Kettler has suddenly quit his job after scarcely three months, amid much intrigue. Josh Kettler is no longer working for them,' a source in California told this newspaper today. The timing is a particular blow to Harry and his wife Meghan as Mr Kettler would have been expected to accompany them on their 'quasi-royal tour' of Colombia, which kicks off this week."

The total number the Sussexes have lost since they married in 2018 is said to be at least 18, with nine or more having left since they moved to California in 2020.

Mr Kettler was seen entering St Paul's Cathedral with the duke for the anniversary service, which was attended by figures including Harry's uncle, Earl Spencer, but no other members of the Royal Family.

Later that month, Mr Kettler was a key figure on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's three-day 'tour' of Nigeria and was by Harry's side as he met government officials in the West African country. His role on the visit was said to be a foretaste of what he would achieve in the future.

Prince Harry and Meghan with Mr Kettler (circled) by their side. His role on the visit was said to be a foretaste of what he would achieve in the future.

¹Bio: "Joshua Kettler is an experienced executive accelerator, organizer, and confidant. Seasoned in guiding C-suite functions, critical cross-functional program management, high-level strategy development, and board of directors / investor relationship management. Focused on bringing unparalleled products and experiences to customers while working in lockstep with leaders, executing on their vision.

Joshua spent the better part of a decade with Patagonia, a leader in outdoor apparel, serving as a trusted resource and right hand to the Vice President of Global Sales and Customer Experience. He helped direct all revenue driving strategies and operations worldwide, spanning seven major markets and $1B+ in yearly revenue. His efforts included managing the organization's workflow, prioritization, and oversight of regional GMs, while providing input on critical decisions including distribution strategy, customer touch points, internal and external communication, organizational structure, and personnel matters.

In 2021, Joshua shifted is focus to start up ventures, becoming Chief of Staff to the CEO of Better Place Forests and most recently joining Cognixion as Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Partnerships, helping to accelerate and support the transformative AR / BCI company.

Joshua is an avid trail runner and skier, and a steadfast supporter of conservation and the environment. Joshua lives with his wife in Santa Barbara, CA and holds an MBA from Clemson University with an emphasis on Entrepreneurship and Innovation."