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Dave Margulius

Things I care about.

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January 21, 2021 Fun

Tim Reid: In Praise of Walking

By William (Tim) Reid, reprinted with permission from an email. I thought this was particularly eloquent and insightful, and should

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October 15, 2020 Journalism

Lifting Paywalls: A Public Service That’s Also Great For Business

‘We’ve lifted the paywall on our coverage’ has become a common phrase lately, whether for hurricanes, fires, mass shootings, elections,

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September 9, 2020 Climate / Education

What You Can Do Right Now To Defeat Trump

(Final Update: Oct 7th, 2020) Act now: this election will be scarily close. Another four years of Donald Trump is

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May 18, 2020 Education

A Fork In The Road: The Future Of Innovation In Education

I was asked to be on a panel this week about innovation in education. Here’s some thoughts: Hi everyone –

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April 14, 2020 Fun / Music

How To Host A ‘Name That Tune’ Party On Zoom

Want to get away from the worry and stress for a couple of hours, and do something fun on Zoom

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April 4, 2020 Fun / Local / Music

Bagpipes Never Sounded So Good

Our neighbor here in Berkeley has been playing bagpipes in the evenings, in his apartment, for nearly 15 years. But

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March 19, 2020 Business / Climate

Before Bailing Corporations Out From Coronavirus, Make Them Stop Destroying The Planet

Make corporate America stop profiting off carbon emissions, and start creating sustainable jobs, as a condition of the bailout. Corporate

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March 14, 2020 Climate / Education / Global

Imagine If Climate Threat Education Was As Good (And Global) As These Coronavirus Posters?

The world’s governments are moving quickly to educate people about the Covid-19 coronavirus; specifically: 1) how to tell the symptoms;

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March 11, 2020 Art / Climate

How Great Posters And Distributed Design Made Extinction Rebellion A Global Movement

Most climate posters are one-offs. And so are most climate protests. But Extinction Rebellion broke that mold, becoming the first

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March 6, 2020 Business / Global

If You Only Try To Understand One Financial Graph, This Is The One

We’ve all gotten used to tuning out financial market noise, because it’s just too damn complex. But something really dramatic

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March 6, 2020 Journalism

Yeah, That Makes Sense… A Fun Newsy Data Distraction After Super Tuesday

Sometimes when you know a city really well, and you see some detailed data about it, it just makes sense

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January 22, 2020 Art

Amazing Cuban Poster Exhibit From the 1960s and ’70s

I recently saw an exhibit of Cuban posters that took my breath away. Pictures speak louder than words, so I’m

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December 18, 2019 Education / Local

Academic Performance Trends For Berkeley’s Middle Schools, By Student Subgroup

Update: Read Berkeleyside’s Jan. 28, 2020 deep dive on the situation at Longfellow. For those who saw my previous post

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December 15, 2019 Education / Local

Academic Performance At Longfellow Middle School Has Plummeted, While Willard and King Thrive

Update: Read Berkeleyside’s Jan. 28, 2020 deep dive on the situation at Longfellow. Dec. 15, 2019 – The latest school

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December 9, 2019 Climate / Local

Berkeley Wants To Buy Nine More Fossil-Fueled, 15-mpg Pickup Trucks… Just Say No!

There’s still time to stop this purchase. Let’s avoid buying nine new vehicles that will keep emitting carbon for decades.

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October 14, 2019 Climate / Education / Fun

Climate Escape Room: Make Your Own Fun Group CO2 Learning Game

Last week at the Getting To Zero (carbon) conference I played an excellent group game that showed how with a

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September 19, 2019 Climate / Local

(Updated With More Ideas) How Berkeley Can Lead The World In Bold, Aggressive Climate Action

Let’s act now with radical policies that can change the global trajectory. August 2020: Note that this post is already

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September 10, 2019 Education

Restorative Justice, And That Thing I Stole When I Was A Teenager

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about restorative justice… the idea that harms done can be repaired, through encounters among

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September 3, 2019 Climate / Local

Let’s Fix This: Berkeley’s Sidewalk-Cleaning Trucks Are Spewing Noxious Emissions

Update: On September 26th I received this email from the Downtown Business Association, which owns the truck: “Dave, Thanks for

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September 2, 2019 Local

Running For Berkeley City Council Is Easier Than Ever (Updated for 2020)

Thinking about getting more involved in Berkeley? It’s never been easier to run for City Council: there are four seats

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July 18, 2019 Local

How Berkeley’s Biggest Donors Helped Hillary Beat Bernie In 2016

TLDR: Wealth and political giving are extremely concentrated in Berkeley. With the 2020 primaries around the corner, I thought I’d

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July 15, 2019 Climate / Local

Why Berkeley Should Ban Natural Gas Hookups, Now

Update: On July 16, 2019, Berkeley became the first California city to ban natural gas in new buildings. I’m a businessperson.

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May 8, 2019 Journalism / Vintage

Photoessay: My Private Tour Of The New York Times’ Morgue

Today I spent a couple of hours in a basement archive belonging to the New York Times. It was a

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April 17, 2019 Journalism

The Five Questions Tech Funders Will Ask About Your Journalism Venture

Think these over before meeting with potential funders from the tech world. More and more journalist-entrepreneurs are looking to Silicon

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April 15, 2019 Business

Flashback To A Very Young Netflix, Climbing The Wall of Worry

Check out the first five Netflix annual reports (2002-2007), which for some reason I saved and have now scanned: 2002

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February 5, 2019 Education

Save Those Rejection Letters

“You don’t seem cut out for business.” That’s what some guy from Harvard Business School essentially told me when I

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February 5, 2019 Business

Notes From The Day Larry And Sergei Pitched Us On Google

This morning I found the notes from my memorable early-1999 meeting with Google’s Larry Page and Sergei Brin.  I was

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February 3, 2019 Fun

In The Recording Studio With Dad (Grandpa Harry)

Dad and I finally got into a professional recording studio last week, at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. I

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October 22, 2018 Education / Quizlet

Celebrating The Early Quizlet Team

The early Quizlet team was awesome. We bootstrapped the company for almost a decade, with a small, scrappy, team that

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October 20, 2018 Local

What Does Berkeley Get When We Spend $20 Million?

$19 million for 23 affordable housing units, and $22 million for a seismic retrofit. Update: After I published this post

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October 16, 2018 Journalism

Don’t Do Journalism For The Money… But Do It.

In January 1984, I got offered a summer reporting internship at the Virginian Pilot in Norfolk Virginia. On hearing about it,

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September 24, 2018 Journalism

What Local Journalism Needs Now

The recent Online News Association event in Austin was great – full of passionate, committed local journalist-entrepreneurs all trying to figure

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September 21, 2018 Journalism

Are Mannequins Running Pensacola’s Biggest Newsroom?

I recently spent 24 hours in Pensacola, and stumbled across a ghostly reminder of how far local journalism has fallen

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August 9, 2018 Education / Journalism

Are Teachers And Journalists On The Same Wild Ride?

They’re facing a lot of change, and the same tough questions. Google ‘what do teachers and journalists have in common’

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August 7, 2018 Journalism

Paywalls Are Killing Local Journalism. Could A Robin Hood Model Save The Day?

Paywalls have dramatically failed journalism. In an attempt to adapt to the Internet, American newspapers of all sizes have erected

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May 26, 2018 Education / Fun

For A Fun, Educational Project, Build This Cardboard Pinball Machine

What can America do with its mountains of recycled cardboard? Make educational toys, that’s what! Last week, in Burlington, Vermont,

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April 17, 2018 Business / Journalism

What’s Holding Back The New York Times?

Why does The New York Times only have two million digital subscribers, when there are two billion smartphone users on

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April 15, 2018 Art / Local

Berkeley’s Wall For Peace, Revisited 30 Years Later

How long can a symbol of hopeful activism last? A long time, in the case of Berkeley’s Wall For Peace,

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April 5, 2018 Journalism / Local

Introducing ‘Watch Berkeley Gov’

Note: due to low viewership, I’ve decided not to go forward with this experiment… its not worth the time. While

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January 21, 2018 Art

Life Advice From Letterpress Artist Amos Kennedy Jr… ‘It’s a Joy To Make Stuff’

If you’re a creative person and want to get inspired, watch this talk with Detroit letterpress artist Amos Kennedy Jr.

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January 11, 2018 Local

Why Run For Berkeley City Council?

Thinking about running for Berkeley City Council? You should! There are four seats open in this year’s election, and there’s

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January 9, 2018 Business

Deflation Is Tightening Its Grip On Us All

Why so many people are feeling squeezed. What’s the United States’ biggest export? iPhones? Airplanes? Nope – it’s deflation. For

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January 7, 2018 Music

Bruce

His book is worth reading – and his second act worth considering. A friend snapped this cell phone picture of

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January 6, 2018 Local / Music

Local Music Moments, Caught on Video

Wurlitzer Organ at Berkeley High School, Jan 13, 2018 Was walking by Berkeley High today and saw the door to

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December 26, 2017 Fun / Local

The Best Lap Swim Pools in the East Bay (Updated)

Looking to swim laps in the East Bay? We have some awesome pools here. Here’s my roundup so far, after trying

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December 21, 2017 Local

Homelessness: A Reading List

Want to learn more about homelessness in the United States? I spent a couple of days trying to find the

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December 7, 2017 Art / Local

Bay Area Artists I Like (Updated)

Here’s a list of local (Bay Area) artists I’ve discovered – and liked – for one reason or another. I’ll

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December 4, 2017 Climate

Electric Cars’ Low Operating Costs, Confirmed

Finally some research is coming out about the real cost of owning electric cars – confirming that while they cost

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December 4, 2017 Art / Local

Capitola Sea Wall Tiles Project

I was in Capitola last weekend and came across this awesome public art project, on the boardwalk downtown, from 2008. What’s

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July 17, 2017 Education

What If We’d Spent $1.7 Trillion On Education, Instead Of The Iraq War?

Fourteen years after the war in Iraq started, the New York Times is now reporting that Iran has essentially taken over

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