This week: wildfire “recovery” looks a lot like abandonment, with rural kids still living in limbo and rebuilding stuck in eternal purgatory. Meanwhile, country schools are hanging by a thread, scientists are sniffing out toxic ash, and Stanford and Cal are vying for elbow room atop the national rankings of American universities. (*Editor’s note: Go Bears!) Meanwhile, San Francisco’s little boxes may hold lessons for today’s housing crisis, and the Port of San Diego proves public art can still flex, especially when it’s bayside.

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Let’s get into it!

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FROM THE FLAMES, A NEW HOUSING CRISIS

California’s wildfire recovery isn’t a comeback story, it’s a case study in inequality, bureaucracy, and burnout. Of the 22,500 homes lost in five of the state’s worst recent fires, only 38% have been rebuilt. Suburban wine country? Mostly back. Rural Butte County? Still lots of ash. Even wealthy enclaves like Malibu remain mired in red tape and permit purgatory. Homeowners like François Piccin rebuild not because it makes sense, but because trauma demands closure. “Financially, what we’ve done doesn’t make sense,” he flatly admits. The difference between return and retreat? Insurance, flat land, and friends in city planning. Meanwhile, the rest are left waiting — for money, permits, or a reason to keep trying. The fire may have passed, but for many, the disaster never ended. The tiny mountain hamlet of Berry Creek offers a stark example. An LA Times analysis found that only about 5% of the homes that were burned have been rebuilt, the lowest percentage (by a huge margin) among major fires in the state over the last eight years. About 80% of the schoolchildren in the Berry Creek School District still reside in temporary housing amid the charred remains of their community, nearly five years after the fire tore through the town. The Times has produced a deeply reported story detailing the trials and tribulations of wildfire survivors still sketching out their future years after the catastrophes unfolded.

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🤫 Everything you should know

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🆘 🏫 💸  - THE (RURAL) KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT  — California’s rural schools are running on fumes — and Sacramento knows it. Nearly 50 state lawmakers, led by Assemblymember Heather Hadwick, recently sent a bipartisan broadside to House leaders urging them to revive the Secure Rural Schools program, which quietly expired after months of congressional shrugging. The act, first passed in 2000, was a promise to counties swallowed by federal land with declining timber revenue, tapping D.C. to help pay for schools and roads. Without it, budgets are buckling. “Rural America will not survive if this promise is broken,” the letter warns, as towns already grapple with teacher layoffs, shuttered services, and wildfire-scorched tax bases. For Tehama County, last year’s $900,000 payout is gone, and so, officials say, is the rug beneath them. — Red Bluff Daily News

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🔥 😮‍💨 🔬  - BREATH OF FRESH SCARE  — When wildfires tore through LA in January 2025, they left behind more than scorched hillsides and insurance claims — air thick with invisible, toxic nanoparticles. Enter Nicholas Spada, a nuclear scientist with a proton beam and a grudge against inhaled toxins. Using custom-built air samplers and particle-sifting tech straight out of Tony Stark’s lab, he traced the ash down to its most sinister elements: ultrafine metals like lead and arsenic, spraying forth from burning homes, not forests. His mission? Unmask what we're really inhaling, and drag public health policy, kicking and wheezing, into the molecular age. — Wired

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🐻 🏆 🌲 - DEGREES OF COMPENSATION — Stanford just reclaimed its throne as the top U.S. university in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings, proving once again that Silicon Valley's favorite finishing school knows how to mint millionaires. Cal joins the victory lap as the highest-ranked public university, a major vote of confidence even as the broader University of California system is under full-frontal assault from the (*checks notes) federal government. This ranking skips prestige pageantry and asks one question: who’s actually delivering post-grad paychecks? Spoiler: It’s the Bay Area brain trust. The Wall Street Journal ranking comes on the heels of Berkeley’s other big win, when it snagged the #1 spot in U.S. News & World Report’s “Top Public Universities” rankings last week. — Wall Street Journal

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🎙️ 💬 🎧 - ON THE POD: HENRY DOELGER AND SAN FRANCISCO’S LITTLE BOXES

Henry Doelger, the man who turned San Francisco’s dunes into stucco suburbia, mass-produced “unique” houses by the thousands — so unique they inspired “Little Boxes,” an early ‘60s suburban lament destined to become the theme song for the Showtime hit, Weeds. Dubbed the “Henry Ford of Housing,” Doelger sold dreams by the square foot, landscaped with conformity. Love it or loathe it, his legacy is undeniable, and his commitment to building ample workforce housing — fast — is something to be admired now more than ever. — Outside Lands Podcast

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🎨 ⚓ 💋  - ART ON THE PORTSIDE

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Did you know that the Port of San Diego doubles as an open-air art gallery? Check out the 25-foot-tall sailor’s kiss frozen in bronze, a million-dollar Bob Hope cracking jokes for the troops, and memorials etched with sacrifice, all framed by the USS Midway. It’s free, fun, photogenic, and proof that public art can steal the show, particularly when framed by the Pacific. — Roadside America

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🏃‍♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE

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1. 📚 Solano County librarian tapped to become new face of Reading Rainbow. KQED
2. 📽️ Trump tariffs come for Hollywood. Hollywood Reporter
3. 😓 “It’s only happening in San Francisco.” The rise of the 996 schedule. NY Times
4. ✂️ California’s ARCHES Hydrogen Hub project gets $1.2B haircut from Feds. WaPo
5. 🎨 UC Irvine completes merger, acquires OC Museum of Art. Surface

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