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Don’t Eat the Burger. It’s a Stool.

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Don’t Eat the Burger. It’s a Stool.

Jonny Carmack was perusing the aisles of a store in his hometown, Danbury, Conn., when he first saw it: a giant strawberry sitting on a shelf.

Mr. Carmack, 32, a content creator, was awe-struck. “I was just like, oh my gosh, it’s so cute,” he said. “It’s so whimsical.”

But this strawberry didn’t come from the vine. In fact, it was a ceramic table with the cartoonish likeness of a strawberry. He purchased the table for $59.99 for his office and redecorated the room with the faux fruit in mind, adding panels of moss to a door and turf to the floor to resemble a garden.

Mr. Carmack is one of many passionate people across the United States who scour the aisles of discount retailers like HomeGoods, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls in search of culinary-inspired stools. Food as furniture has gone viral on social media, with collectors sharing photos of their finds and trading buying tips.

“It’s a huge community,” said Mr. Carmack, who owns about 30 food stools, including a stack of doughnuts, a peppermint and a pink gummy bear. “I was feral for that,” he said of his ceramic ursine figure.

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Birdie Wood, too, developed a love of food stools by accident. She was shopping online one day in early 2021 when a stool with the likeness of a hamburger caught her eye. “I started decorating with weird and food-shaped things in 2009, so when I saw that this existed, I was like, this is huge,” she said. The burger was out of stock, but she snagged one on eBay a few weeks later.

She eventually furnished her three-bedroom, one-bathroom home on the South Shore of Long Island, N.Y., where she had recently moved, with the burger as inspiration. Throughout her home are other colorful, oversize objects, including a table shaped like a giant spool of thread, a large multicolored wristwatch and 10 other food stools, including a wedge of cheese. “I sort of based my entire life and personality around this silly burger stool,” she said.

Ms. Wood, 33, a woodworker, recently began building her own food-inspired furniture, with the goal of making objects she can’t find in stores. Her creations include a table with the likeness of a wrapped stick of butter and another resembling a can of Spam.

Ms. Wood said that for collectors like her, much of the appeal of quirky food stools is generational. “I think a lot of millennials specifically or older Gen Zs grew up with the ‘beige’ décor,” she said. “Once we hit the scene, we made it OK to decorate fun and silly.”

“I think that design just became so neutral, so minimalist, so boring for so long,” said Megan Hopp, 37, an interior designer and founder of Megan Hopp Design. She said these stools are millennials’ way of rejecting minimalist aesthetics — including the “billions of cans of gray paint everyone was using forever” — and embracing kitsch.

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But not all food stools are created equal. There are hundreds of different designs, and the resale market for stools that are no longer available in stores can be competitive. (One reseller on eBay listed a strawberry stool for $169, more than twice its price at HomeGoods.)

Finding coveted stools often requires careful strategizing, and some dedicated collectors have it down to a science.

Robbie Hornik, 28, who owns about 87 food stools, said HomeGoods stores debut new stools seasonally and usually on the West Coast first. By studying the shopping habits of other food stool collectors on social media, “I’ve kind of calculated how long it takes for them to get here,” said Mr. Hornik, who lives in Syosset, N.Y.

Of course, it also helps to know the right people. “I’ve actually made friends with a couple of the managers and they kind of tell me when they have shipments,” he said.

To cut out the middleman, Mr. Hornik has even tried to source stools directly from vendors and manufacturers, though he has been unsuccessful so far. “There were so many different stools that I wanted and I needed to try and find a faster way to find them,” he said. (In an email to The New York Times, a spokesperson for TJX, the parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods, said the company could not comment on any vendors or products in stores.)

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But the thrill of the hunt is also part of the fun for many collectors, including Mr. Carmack, who has built a large following on social media by posting videos about his stool collection and secondhand furniture finds. He has become something of a celebrity to the staff at his local HomeGoods in Danbury — for better or worse.

“The employees, they come right up to me,” he said. “I’m like, oh my gosh, I cannot come here every day. They’re going to have me arrested.”

Lifestyle

‘The Trojan Teddy Bear’: The promise and peril of childhood in the age of AI

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‘The Trojan Teddy Bear’: The promise and peril of childhood in the age of AI

In A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Monica introduces Teddy to David. The seemingly ordinary teddy bear quickly reveals himself to be an intelligent companion capable of conversation and emotional support.

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Warner Bros. Pictures

Back in 2001, Steven Spielberg released an underrated scifi movie named A.I. Artificial Intelligence (yes, the title is a bit redundant). The movie, which loosely borrows from Pinocchio, tells the story of a family who adopts a robotic boy programmed for love, and that robot’s heartbreaking quest to become a real boy.

Much of the technology in A.I. remains elusive. We’re probably not anywhere close to building androids that can convincingly pass as Haley Joel Osment — or Jude Law, for that matter. But some of the AI products imagined in the movie are starting to look surprisingly plausible. Take Teddy, an animatronic teddy bear. Teddy can walk, talk, make decisions, and respond to the needs and emotions of people around him. He’s more than just a toy. He’s an intelligent companion and protector for children.

Today, a slew of technology companies are developing AI companions that sort of resemble Teddy. The most intelligent AI chatbots still live on digital screens, but a wave of startups is giving them bodies — creating dolls, action figures, and robots that can serve as companions for kids.

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What happens when kids grow up with AI?

AI is already a part of childhood. Recommendation algorithms curate what many kids watch and listen to. Chatbots stand ready to answer questions like, “Are monsters real?” or “Why is the sky blue?” They can help with homework, tell bedtime stories, or even feel like a friend. And companies are racing to embed AI into toys, nurseries, classrooms, and eventually robots that live alongside families.

In a new book, Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI, author Dana Suskind grapples with what the rising tide of artificial intelligence means for raising kids. On the one hand, she acknowledges that the technology offers promise as, for example, a productivity enhancer and time saver for parents, a monitoring and research tool that can give parents and scientists valuable data on child development, and an interactive tutor that might help some kids learn.

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It’s time for the night trip to the beach — the grunion are running

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It’s time for the night trip to the beach — the grunion are running

One of the most magical and underrated natural wonders of the American West is about to unfold across California beaches.

In four-day periods every year from March to August, legions of small, silver fish called grunion ride the waves ashore for mating rituals, beginning on the nights of the full and new moons.

But this isn’t just any fish spawning.

First, the females bury themselves halfway in the sand with only their heads sticking out and lay their eggs. Then, the males wriggle up and twist and wrap around them. It’s a rare and mysterious orgy unfolding in the dead of night. And it’s all out in the open for public viewing.

For some SoCal families, watching the grunion run is an annual summer tradition. There have been several runs already this year, with sightings reported from La Jolla to Ventura. Another is expected to start Tuesday night.

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When the grunions will be running

Grunion mate on Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro on June 5, 2023.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

This week’s run is predicted go from Tuesday to Friday.

The fish come up on the sand for about two hours at night, as the high tide starts to ebb, usually between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. The second hour is when the spawning picks up.

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The second and third night of the four-night runs tend to be best to see grunion, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The first night, Tuesday night, is the least predictable.

The agency publishes a schedule of what days and times to expect the ritual, based on moon cycles and the timing at San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, a known grunion hotspot.

But it all varies.

“The further south that you go, the grunion tend to show up a little bit earlier, and if you go further to the north, they tend to show up a little bit later,” said CDFW environmental scientist Malcolm Tunnell. “We don’t fully understand this. They are a cryptic species.”

Where to see them

Grunion are a native species and only live off the coast of southern California and northern Mexico. Their usual range is from Santa Barbara to Baja California, although it has been shifting north as climate change heats the oceans.

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While you can expect to see grunion in SoCal, the exact beaches where they decide to spawn is something of a mystery, depending on the tides, the sands and the conditions encountered by the scout fish grunion send out before they decide where to mate.

“We usually say, if it’s a beach where there’s surfing, they like the same surfing waves that people like,” said Karen Martin, a professor of biology at Pepperdine University and leading grunion expert. “But really, any beach that has a nice, wide area where they can come ashore is a potential beach.”

Martin runs a group where citizen scientists can report observations. She said this year the runs have not been as abundant as in the past, but “there have been some nice ones, even earlier this month.”

The CDFW recommends checking social media and calling local lifeguards to ask if grunions have been spotted. Bait and tackle shops may also be able to point you in the right direction.

What are the rules for catching grunion

Grunion face threats from development on the coast, sea level rise, changes in storm dynamics and hunting, said Martin.

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Since the 1920s, populations have shown signs of decline on-and-off. To protect grunion during their peak spawning period, CDFW prohibits fishing from April through June.

The season is open now with a limit of 30 per person; they can only be caught by hand, and anyone over 16 needs to have a fishing license.

Flashlights should be used sparingly, so as not to disrupt them.

“The ideal thing would be to just watch, but if you feel compelled to catch, maybe consider catch and release,” said Martin.

A fish that lives in such a limited geography, she said, needs our care.

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“It’s a really remarkable fish.”

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Why your favorite international artist might be reconsidering their next U.S. tour

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Why your favorite international artist might be reconsidering their next U.S. tour

Here’s something American concertgoers might not know: before a musician from another country can take the stage in the U.S., someone has to file paperwork with the federal government on their behalf. And not just any paperwork — a petition, hundreds of pages long, stacked with press clippings, award documentation, testimonial letters from other artists, venue contracts, a detailed tour itinerary, and evidence that the artist is legitimately accomplished at what they do.

And that’s just to start the clock in a process that may take over a year to complete.

This is the reality for international artists — from musicians to painters, dancers to comedians — who want to come to the U.S. to share their work. It’s a complicated, expensive process that arts advocates say has long made the country a difficult place for foreign artists to access. But now, they say it’s gotten much worse.

The time it takes to process a visa has dramatically increased. The number of available interview slots at U.S. embassies is backlogged. Application costs have surged. And there’s an added layer of uncertainty: paperwork can be perfect, fees can be paid, and yet artists still can be turned away at the border.

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For U.S. audiences, all of this means a quiet loss of global cultural exchange.

What does the artist visa process look like?

To illustrate the nonimmigrant visa process for artists, let’s take Kongero, a small, Swedish folk a cappella group that completed its second U.S. tour last fall.

First step: File a petition.

The group’s booking agent planned the tour and gathered all the necessary documentation to file a petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to demonstrate that the group qualified for a P-3 visa, the category for culturally unique artists.

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