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Dave Margulius

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Author: Dave Margulius

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 climate policies that can change the global trajectory. Berkeley’s been an environmental leader for decades. 

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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 Fun / 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 Art / 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 Art / 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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June 26, 2017 Art / Music

My House Concert Experiment Was a Hit

Just wanted to post a few pictures and a video from my house concert this Saturday featuring the awesome bluegrass

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May 31, 2017 Education / Quizlet

Why I Admire Khan Academy

Quizlet CEO Matt Glotzbach and I visited Khan Academy today to have lunch with their new COO Ginny Lee, who

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May 22, 2017 Art / Local / Music

A Few Local Bluegrass Jam Resources

Here’s a few resources I’ve come across (or am developing myself), that may be useful for people getting more into playing

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April 14, 2017 Business / Quizlet

Caught Secretly Doing the Right Thing

The above security camera photo shows members of the Quizlet team hustling patio furniture inside to protect it from a

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April 12, 2017 Global

My Dad’s Post-Election, Optimistic Poem

My dad wrote this poem shortly after Trump’s election. He was trying to process and think positive about a seemingly

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April 12, 2017 Business

The Power of Unlocking Alternative Solutions

I spent today working on some home-improvement projects, mostly involving locks and metal fitting of various types. At one point

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April 4, 2017 Climate / Local

Hour By Hour, See the Excess Solar Power

California already has more mid-day solar power than it knows what to do with. The above graph, published yesterday in

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April 3, 2017 Business

What I Learned From My Swim Goggles Today

What you’ve always believed is true, may not be true. This morning the strap on my swim goggles broke right

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April 2, 2017 Fun / Vintage

Mystery Bronze Fixture (With Ring)

In many years of going to the Alameda antiques market, I’ve stumbled across some unique and mysterious items, but nothing

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April 2, 2017 Business / Vintage

Cobalt Blue Sign From the Dawn of Global Banking

I bought this sign at the Alameda antiques market after noticing it a few months in a row. I’m into

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March 22, 2017 Fun / Vintage

Abbey Rents Folding Chairs

For years I’d been searching for a matched set of vintage wooden folding chairs. Recently, just as I was about

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March 21, 2017 Art / Climate / Music

Songs About Pollution, 50 Years Later

Most songs about political issues aren’t very good songs. But check out these tunes written in the 60s and 70s,

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March 14, 2017 Global

Is It Possible To Prioritize The World’s Problems?

How do you prioritize solving the world’s problems? Can this even be done? Last night, I heard a guy speak,

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March 4, 2017 Art / Climate / Music

Songs From The War on Coal

Every good fight needs some fight songs, but the climate change battle doesn’t have many. People don’t sing much about car

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February 20, 2017 Fun

Hungry, Foolish, Hitchhiking.

“The frame of mind of the young hitchhiker is one of the freest frames of mind there is,” Stewart Brand

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