Science

A tour of the sound and heat hellscape that is L.A.

Published

8 months ago

September 9, 2025

A tour of the sound and heat hellscape that is L.A.

Blanca Lucio likes to spend her mornings tending to her zucchinis, cucumbers, watermelons and traditional Mexican herbs at a small community garden near downtown Los Angeles. With its cool, damp air, the garden brims with what Lucio calls “magic.”

The only sound comes from green June bugs buzzing by her ears and children playing at the community center across the street.

“Outside of here, you’re exposed to a lot of noise and a lot of pollution,” Lucio said while giving a tour of the garden, a short distance from her home in South-Central L.A. “This space renews me and the other gardeners who grow plants here. I feel more content when I’m here.”

Noise pollution and excessive heat can seem inescapable in L.A. What would the city be without random bursts of fireworks and car sound systems thumping loud enough to shake you from your dreams? And the nearly 365-days-a-year sunshine is practically what defines L.A. sunshine, even though it means commuters often must wait under the blazing sun at bus stops that lack cover.

But just because we’ve grown used to L.A.’s jarring soundscape, shadeless streets and pockets of intense heat, it doesn’t mean they are harmless.

Noise and heat together can pose a special kind of health threat, one that the city’s most vulnerable people are least able to protect against, said Valerie Tornini, a neurobiologist at UCLA.

With climate change ushering in stronger and longer heat waves, a growing body of evidence suggests that excessive heat has become a public health crisis. An estimated 1,300 people die of extreme heat each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and that number will only grow in coming years.

Both heat and noise can harm the nervous system, interfere with metabolism and disrupt sleep patterns. They can also aggravate conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, according to a paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Tornini leads a team of brain researchers trying to figure out how the combination of these two environmental dangers affects brain health and behavior among residents of Central and South L.A.

Her team is working with the Boston-based nonprofit Prospera Institute and the South L.A. social justice nonprofit Esperanza Community Housing Corp. to collect stories from local Latino and Black Americans, like Lucio, about how they cope.

The collaboration started in 2024 after Tornini, who had been studying the effect of noise and heat on neural development in zebrafish, reached out to Joanne Suarez, who founded Prospera to promote health equity in Black, Latino and Indigenous communities.

Their partnership sprang from a recognition that brain science has lagged behind other disciplines in recognizing the need for community-centered research that treats study participants as equal partners, Tornini said.

The project revolves around two interwoven prompts, she said: “How can it do good and no harm, and how can it serve the cause of justice?”

A woman with dark hair, in a gray dress, leans down to speak with one of the women looking at documents they're holding

“Sometimes [research] is not aligned with what the community wants and needs,” Tornini said. “I want to listen: What are your concerns? What are your lived experiences? People’s stories and oral histories … can influence the kind of questions that we ask in the lab, and then that data goes back to them.”

That shift in thinking was in evidence on a Saturday morning in July at Mercado La Paloma — a South L.A. food hall that houses the Michelin-starred Mexican seafood restaurant Holbox as well as Esperanza Community Housing’s offices.

A dozen women sat in a circle with Suarez and Tornini for an intimate listening session, held in Spanish, about living with noise and heat.

Suarez invited the women to speak in response to a series of questions printed on a handout. For example: “How do environmental factors like noise and heat impact your health and daily life?” and “Have you noticed changes in your ability to focus, think clearly or even remember things when it’s extremely hot or noisy in your community?”

One woman said it’s hard to mitigate one disturbance without exacerbating the other, such as when she opens the window of her bedroom at night to let in fresh air, only to be kept awake by noise from passing planes and sirens. A mother worried about the effect of sun and heat on her kids during gym class and recess at school. One woman told the group that excessive heat worsens her hypertension headaches, while another said that when it’s hot out, she gets more irritated by noises she can’t control.

Another participant said she fears getting caught in the crossfire of warring gangs in her neighborhood and so won’t sit outside to get fresh air, no matter how hot it gets indoors.

The UCLA initiative is as much an experiment in trust-building as data collection, said Monic Uriarte, a public health advocate and community organizer at Esperanza Community Housing who has lived and worked in L.A.’s urban core for three decades.

Wariness of scientists and healthcare professionals — born of a history of one-sided research that never benefited study volunteers or their communities; nonconsensual lab experiments; and racial discrimination among medical practitioners — is commonplace in some communities of color.

“I love higher education, but we are tired of being guinea pigs for different studies,” Uriarte said. “We need this kind of collaboration — a space for our community to share, in our own words, the experience of living in South Los Angeles.”

She’s excited about the prospect of volunteers being able to cite whatever findings result from the research when asking city officials for noise mitigation for their homes, tree plantings or more open spaces.

Living and commuting in L.A. means navigating an environment that can make you want to cover your ears and run for the shadows.

The relentless flow of vehicles and Metro light-rail trains drowned out Blanca Lucio’s voice as she gave a tour of South-Central L.A., walking past auto-body shops and restaurants at the intersection of San Pedro Street and Washington Boulevard.

Not far away in the downtown jewelry district, sidewalk vendors selling wares as varied as avocados, roasted corn, cellphone cases and brass lanterns shielded themselves from the intense midday sun with beach umbrellas, or by clustering in the shadows of high-rises.

During L.A.’s recent heat wave, when temperatures regularly surpassed 90 degrees, a woman selling rose bouquets out of buckets at Pershing Square looked beleaguered while standing in the paltry shade of a tree. A man pushing a cooler full of 50-cent bottled waters wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to cool down with a Spanish fan.

A woman sits on a bench behind a sculpture of a sphere on a square base, with high-rises as a backdrop

There was no escape from the onslaught of car horns, rumbling motors and pedestrians blasting music from speakers stuffed in backpacks.

About 10 miles south is the Harbor Freeway transit terminal, an important hub for commuters who need to catch a bus or train in South L.A.

The terminal is located on a raised platform in the middle of a concrete tangle of ramps and the elevated lanes of the 105 Freeway. The commotion and noise are unnerving; cars speed by so close you can feel whooshes as they pass.

But even if you don’t have to wait daily for transport while being inundated with the sounds of a Los Angeles freeway, you may be forced to endure some noise pollution seemingly designed to disturb the peace. On any given evening in the city, drivers and bikers amp up the soundscape by revving their engines while waiting at traffic stops, then slam on the gas when their light turns green, screeching down the street.

Nighttime also brings the piercing sound of street takeovers. Drivers draw crowds of spectators as they perform stunts such as “doughnuts” — spinning their cars in circles until their tires burn rubber marks on the pavement. The phenomenon has become such a problem countywide — with shootings and cars set on fire at some of them — that officials have vowed to crack down on the illegal gatherings.

L.A. is notoriously noisy and hot, but experiences like these are widespread across the U.S.

About 95 million Americans, nearly one-third of the U.S. population, are subjected to transportation-related noise pollution, with Latino, Black and Asian communities disproportionately exposed to it, according to data compiled by researchers at the University of Washington.

Noise is measured in decibels, with a middle range of 50-60 considered a normal level of ambient sound that doesn’t pose a risk to health. Most people experience noise at this level while doing routine things such as working at an office or walking down a street with little to no traffic. Emergency sirens, lawn mowers and music in a nightclub, by contrast, can exceed 90 decibels.

While grating noises and intolerable heat may be experienced in pockets across the city, making it hard to draw direct comparisons, some whole sections of L.A. feel conspicuously beset by these environmental disturbances. Other neighborhoods feel more insulated.

A man walks on a wide tree-lined, grassy median flanked by lines of cars

The urban core and South L.A. — where the median household income ranges from $48,000 to $62,000 a year and Latino and Black people make up the majority of the population, according to the U.S. census — is a wall of sound and a bubble of heat. But farther west in predominantly white Brentwood, where the median annual household income is more than $160,000, walls of semi-tropical foliage insulate many private homes from intrusive noises and overhanging trees form of canopies of coolness over gently curving streets.

Take a sunset walk along the gently sloped, flower-scented streets above busy Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood — you will be immersed in a stillness broken only by birds chirping in the treetops. To the south, along the historic canals of Venice, ocean breezes cool the air and the prevailing sound is of fountains trickling in homeowners’ yards.

By contrast, noises associated with law enforcement are such familiar nuisances on the relatively bare streets of South L.A. that they are treated as if they are part of the natural environment. The late artist 2Pac rapped about the menacing presence of “ghetto bird” police helicopters in 1996‘s “To Live and Die in L.A.,” and Compton-born rapper Kendrick Lamar referenced ghetto birds and samples the piercing wail of police sirens on “XXX,” released in 2017.

“Basically, the Blacker the neighborhood, the more flight hours; the more Latinx the neighborhood, the more flight hours … and the Blacker the neighborhood, the lower the helicopters are flying,” said Nick Shapiro, a multidisciplinary environmental researcher at UCLA.

Shapiro has spent years using L.A. Police Department flight data to map helicopter trajectories across the city in studies of “sonic inequality” that his team conducted jointly with residents of South L.A.

Helicopter noise is an issue citywide — even in typically serene, higher-income neighborhoods. The noise is a problem for outdoor TV and film productions too, Shapiro said.

Still, Shapiro said, “there’s pretty extreme inequality between Malibu and Watts.”

Meanwhile, it’s even worse for those in South L.A. who live in the L.A. International Airport flight path and have to contend with both helicopters and the earsplitting sonic reality of jets landing and taking off.

West Century Boulevard runs along the airport’s flight path, meaning that every couple of minutes, a low-flying jet cuts a trail of the high-frequency whines and low-frequency roars on its approach to the airport, sending decibel levels into the 90s. Because of all the broad, shadeless streets that define many of South L.A.’s neighborhoods, the hot summer sun seems to bear down more intensely on these communities of color too.

People standing on a grassy area look at a plane coming in for a landing

One sunny afternoon in August, Charles Lewis, a retired store clerk, sat in a folding chair under a solitary shade tree and watched a steady stream of cars and trucks rush past him on Century. As one plane after another shrieked across the cloudless sky, jet-shaped shadows raced across the pavement, alongside cars.

Lewis lives close by but lamented that sidewalks along residential streets closer to his home are too exposed to the sun. He’s witnessed shade gradually disappear in the 40 years he has lived in the neighborhood and believes law enforcement agencies are partly to blame.

Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Donald Graham acknowledged that his agency has asked city crews to trim publicly maintained trees to improve street lighting and deter illegal activity in specific trouble spots.

“We’re always trying to balance the beautification of the city and the need to have a tree canopy with public safety,” he said.

The cacophony of the boulevard offers little in the way of tranquility, but Lewis said the noise from jets is so bad at home that he has to turn up the volume on his TV and wait for aircraft to pass to have a conversation without yelling.

At least his perch on Century provides a refuge from the excessive heat.

“This is the only shade I have,” Lewis said.

Nearby, the late-day sun felt oppressive along a busy, tree-less stretch of Slauson Avenue near the 110 Freeway. Two women at a food stand squinted in the sunlight as they cooked whole chickens on a hot grill to serve with freshly made tortillas and beans and rice.

A yellow train near a mural of a man with a dark beard

Too busy filling orders to talk, the women laughed and said they’ve given up trying to stay cool while working on days like this.

Meanwhile, six miles north, things weren’t much better. At the junction of Olympic Boulevard and Western Avenue in Koreatown, a search for both shade and quiet was an exercise in futility. The sparse landscaping on the thoroughfares left sidewalks exposed to the bright sun, and the constant rumble of trucks and buses assaulted the eardrums.

A mile away, in the flats of Hollywood near Paramount Studios, the block letters of the district’s famous hilltop sign appeared like a vision through the smoggy air above a bustling intersection at Melrose Avenue and Vine Street — though on a recent August day, the 85-degree temperatures, blazing sunlight and din of speeding vehicles made it that much more difficult to savor the view.

Traditional lab-based brain research has too often discounted the health challenges that come with navigating an ecosystem as complex and inequitable as L.A.’s, said Helena Hansen, professor and interim chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine.

The noise and heat study, along with the analysis of helicopter noise, are part of a broader effort to incorporate information about social and physical conditions into research design, she said.

“We’re really trying to rethink the way science is done,” she said.

At the listening session in July, the idea of breaking down the barrier between laboratory science and real life was on full display. Nearly all the women nodded in agreement when one brought up her struggle to focus on tasks or relax because of heat and noise. It was clear that for these Angelenos, stress is the norm — peace the exception.

Lucio was among those who attended. She is participating in the UCLA study not just to help the researchers, she said, but also to make living in L.A. more comfortable and healthier for herself and her neighbors.

The surrounding neighborhood, just across a busy freeway from the University of Southern California’s campus, is one of several in Central L.A. that the budding citizen scientist has surveyed as part of her own study of the area’s spotty tree canopy.

“We need more trees,” Lucio said. “I’ve noticed people walking around searching for shade and clustering in the few spots where they can find it…. I’ve even seen dogs searching for shade in this neighborhood.”

People in a red pedicab ride along a tree-lined street with cars

It’s little slices of life and firsthand observations such as these that the UCLA scientists and Prospera facilitator want to heed as they pursue their research. The group just secured additional funding for further study and possibly to record accounts of lived experiences on video, Suarez said. For now, Tornini, the brain scientist, just wants to keep the line of communication open with participants.

“The goal is for this to be a living relationship that is shaped mutually,” Tornini said. “What the community does with this information is within their own power. And if they ask — how can we help?”

Science

5 Great Stargazing Trains

Published

6 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

Stargazing, it turns out, doesn’t have to be a stationary activity.

On railway lines around the world, from the Arctic Circle to New Zealand, a select set of evening train excursions take riders deep into dark-sky territory — some en route to remote station stops decked out with telescopes, others featuring onboard astronomers.

These five rail journeys (all of which are accessible) range from two- to three-hour desert outings to a hunt for the northern lights. One route even has a planetarium on rails. All promise a renewed appreciation of train travel — and of our pale blue dot’s improbable place in the cosmos.

Nevada

The Great Basin Star Train

Any stargazing train worth its salt requires one thing: a dark sky. The Star Train resoundingly checks that box, traveling through a part of eastern Nevada that is one of the least-populated places in the lower 48.

Run by the Nevada Northern Railway in partnership with nearby Great Basin National Park, the train departs the historic East Ely Depot, in Ely, Nev., early enough in the evening to catch the sunset over the Steptoe Valley, and then cruises through darkening skies to its destination: a remote corner of the desert appropriately called Star Flat, where a stargazing platform outfitted with telescopes awaits. There, riders disembark (equipped with red-light necklaces to help preserve their night vision) and take turns viewing the cosmos, guided by professional astronomers. (Last year’s onboard stargazing guides came from Caltech; in previous seasons, the National Park Service’s Dark Rangers, who specialize in night-sky activities, accompanied trips.)

The Star Train makes its two-and-a-half-hour round-trip journey most Friday evenings between mid-May and mid-September, and tickets ($65 for adults) can sell out almost a year in advance — though members of the Nevada Northern Railway Museum get early access. Alternatively, the railroad’s more frequent Sunset, Stars and Champagne excursions trade telescopes for desert sundowners but feature the same expert stargazers and the same Nevada night sky, which is often dark enough to see the Milky Way with the naked eye.

New Mexico

The Stargazer

While plenty of heritage railroads across the United States offer twilight rides and nighttime excursions, at the moment there’s only one other dedicated, regularly scheduled stargazing train in North America besides the Star Train: the Stargazer, operated by Sky Railway, in Santa Fe, N.M.

Much like its Nevada counterpart, the Stargazer makes a two-and-a-half-hour round trip through dark-sky country, though in this case, the journey really is the destination, because it doesn’t make any stops. More of a rolling night-sky revue, the Stargazer features live music and professional astronomers who share their celestial knowledge and stories as the train rumbles into the vast Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe. Sky Railway’s colorfully painted trains feature heated, enclosed passenger cars to stave off the evening chill and flatbed cars open to the night sky.

Departing from the Santa Fe Depot downtown, the train normally runs once a month (adult tickets from $139, including a champagne welcome toast). Sky Railway also occasionally schedules excursions for special celestial events.

New Zealand

Matariki Rail Experience

With its alpine landscapes and rugged coastline, New Zealand’s South Island is practically tailor-made for scenic daytime train journeys. But when night falls, the sparsely populated island — home to the Southern Hemisphere’s largest International Dark Sky Reserve — is heaven for stargazers, too.

This year, Great Journeys New Zealand, which operates the country’s tourist-centric long-distance trains, is offering a special nighttime run of the Coastal Pacific, whose route skirts the South Island’s northeastern coast. Timed to Matariki, the Maori new year, which is heralded by the first rising of the Pleiades star cluster, the eight-hour round trip from Christchurch is a cultural and astronomical celebration.

After the first half of a four-course onboard dinner, the train arrives in Kaikoura, in dark-sky country, for a guided stargazing stop with a range of telescopes — and fire pits and a night market. (The rain plan involves a virtual stargazing session at the local museum using virtual reality headsets.) Dinner resumes back on the train as it returns to Christchurch. This is a strictly limited engagement, on the rails for one night only: July 11, for 499 New Zealand dollars, about $295, per person.

In the far northern reaches of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle, you can ride a train that chases another wonder of the night sky: the aurora borealis. Twice a week from October to March, the Northern Lights Train takes its riders into the dark polar night in pursuit of the aurora’s celestial light show.

From the remote town of Narvik, the train travels along the Ofoten Railway, the northernmost passenger rail line in Western Europe. The destination on this three-hour round-trip excursion (1,495 kroner, or about $160) is Katterat, a mountain village accessible only by rail and free of light pollution, making it an ideal place to spot the aurora. At the Katterat station, local guides and a campfire cookout await, as does a lavvu, the traditional tent used by the Sami people of northern Scandinavia, offering a respite from the cold (as well as hot drinks and an open fire for roasting sausages).

And aboard the train, the lights stay off, which means that on a clear night, you might even catch the northern lights on the way there and back.

Leave it to Japan to take the stargazing train to another level.

The High Rail 1375 train — so named because it runs along Japan’s highest-elevation railway line (the high point is 1,375 meters, or roughly 4,500 feet, above sea level) — is one of JR East’s deliberately unhurried Joyful Trains, which the railway company describes as “not only a means of transportation, but also a package of various pleasures.” This astronomy-themed train certainly packs plenty of joy into its two cars, with seat upholstery inspired by constellations, a snack bar, a souvenir shop and a planetarium car with a library of astronomy books and images of the night sky projected onto its domed ceiling.

The train makes two daytime runs along the mountainous Koumi Line, taking a little over two hours to travel between Kobuchizawa (accessible by express train from Tokyo) and Komoro. But the main event is the High Rail Hoshizora (“Starry Sky”) evening trip, which includes an extended stop at Nobeyama Station (the highest in the country) for a guided stargazing session. A one-way ride on High Rail 1375, which runs on weekends and occasional weekdays, requires a seat reservation if you’re traveling on a Japan Rail pass, or a stand-alone ticket plus seat reservation (2,440 yen, or about $15). And remember to preorder a special “Starry Sky” bento box.

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Science

A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry from the Cosmic Edge

Published

18 hours ago

May 13, 2026

Press Room

A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry from the Cosmic Edge

Much of the praise for Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s debut book in 2021, “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred,” lauded the way she used personal experiences in physics to discuss the social and political inequities that exist alongside scientific breakthroughs.

“It contains the narrative of dreams deferred,” Dr. Prescod-Weinstein, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire, explained in April at a bookstore in Chicago. But its very existence, she said, also “represented a dream deferred, because that was not the dream of what my first book was going to be.”

Her second book reclaims that dream. Released on April 7, “The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie” is less pain and more play, a homage to the big questions that made Dr. Prescod-Weinstein want to become a physicist in the first place. She begins the book by asserting that it is humanity’s duty to uncover and share the story of our universe. Her latest offering toward that duty is a journey through physics that is tightly bound to her own cultural roots.

In the midst of a multicity book tour, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein spoke with The New York Times about guiding readers through the cosmos from her own point of view and about some of the art, poetry and literature she drew on to shape that journey. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why include so many references to poetry in a book about physics?

I knew poetry before I knew physics. It was part of my upbringing. I loved A.A. Milne’s “Now We Are Six” and Edward Lear’s “Nonsense Limericks.” Both of my books draw their subtitles from Langston Hughes’s “Montage of a Dream Deferred.”

Adrienne Rich’s poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” became a guiding light for how my work would move in the world. It also opened up for me that I need language. That’s true among physicists. Even an equation is a sentence; even an equation is telling a story.

As physicists, we’re always working in language to connect what we learn with what we know. Poetry is one of the first places that my brain goes to draw those links. Language, as it moves in my brain, is often in Hughes and Rich and Shakespeare. Those are the lines that flicker up for me.

What if we got away from the argument that doing cosmology and particle physics is practical or materially valuable? Then we have to accept that we’re like the poets. What we do is important culturally in the same way poetry is. A piece of this book is me saying there is value in banding with the poets, and fighting for the value of being curious and trying to articulate the world with whatever tools are available to us. Not for the purposes of selling something, but for the purpose of fulfilling our humanity.

Another theme throughout the book is the story of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and her adventures in Wonderland.

Being a science adviser on future installments in The Legendborn Cycle, a fantasy series written by Tracy Deonn, is one reason Alice is in my book. It has allowed me to be open to the playful side that physics, as a Black queer person, can take from you. I wanted the book to be whimsical, because that’s who I was when I first arrived in physics, and that’s who I want to be when I die.

Part of the call of quantum physics is to change what our sense and sensibility are. When you look at the world through this framework — like the idea that particles have spin but don’t really spin — it sounds like nonsense. Except that’s literally how the universe works. Physics is our “through the looking glass.” It’s real.

Your first chapter invites readers to reflect on the metaphors used to describe the universe, like the “fabric” of space-time or electromagnetic “fields.” Why open in this way?

A lot of books about quantum physics start with its history. I wanted as much as possible not to just do that. I had actually planned to start it with the Stern-Gerlach experiment of 1922. But then I read an essay by the poet Natasha Trethewey about abiding metaphors and started to ask myself what the abiding metaphors of my physics training were.

We don’t ever take time in our classes to ask, “What do we mean when we say ‘space’? What do we mean when we say ‘space-time’?” There are these metaphysical questions that I often told myself were for the philosophers. This book was me letting myself think of them as physics.

One metaphor you invoke is the “edge” — not only the edge of the universe and of scientists’ understanding, but also existing at the edge of certain identities.

In “Disordered Cosmos,” I talked a lot about being at the margin and looking toward the center. With “The Edge of Space-Time,” I’m choosing to make the margin the center of the story. Part of that was me fully embracing what makes me the physicist I am. I’m an L.A. Dodgers fan. I love “Alice in Wonderland.” I love “Star Trek.” There’s lots of all of that in the book.

Picking a metaphor is a culturally situated decision. I wrote a line that says black holes are the best laid edges in the universe. I did, at some point, think that only some people were going to get this. But for people who don’t understand the reference to Black hairstyles, the sentence is still legible. And for those who do, it will feel like we just had an in-group moment. Anyone who thinks about laying their edges deserves to have an in-group moment in a physics book. Because we are physics, too.

Black students are often told that if you want to be a physicist, then you will make yourself as close to such-and-such mold as possible. At a young age, we have this understanding that whiteness and science are associated with each other, but we are also witnessing in ourselves that this can’t be entirely correct. There’s this narration of, “Well, sure, you can be Black in physics, but that means you have to acclimate to the ‘in physics’ part, and never that physics has to acclimate to the Black part.”

I use the example of rapper Big K.R.I.T.’s song “My Sub Pt. 3 (Big Bang),” in which someone tries to wire up subwoofers in his car but fries the wires because he doesn’t ground them properly. I don’t know if Big K.R.I.T. would think of this as a science story, but I think we should learn to read it as one. Not to contain it in science, but to say it overlaps there. This can be a rap song. It can be about the cultural significance of subwoofers and the Big Bang as a metaphor for the beat. And it can also be about cosmology and about how everybody who wires up cars or does this kind of work is a scientist, too.

How do you want readers to approach this book?

There is this feeling that you’re supposed to read a book like this and walk away an expert. That’s actually not the point of this book at all. The point is to wander through physics. Even if math terrifies you, you are entitled to spend some time with it.

And so here, I have made you a book with a bunch of tidbits on the oddities of the universe. The universe is stranger and more queer and more wonderful and more full of possibility than whatever limitations you might be experiencing right now. Physics challenges what we are told are social norms. For example, non-trinary neutrinos are fundamental to our standard model of physics.

“Non-trinary,” as in they shift between three different forms.

Non-trinary is natural. It’s such a challenge to the current anti-trans rhetoric that says people can only ever be one thing.

I don’t need my book to be the most important thing that someone reads. But I want it to be a source of hope. If it reminds you that, as my mom says, the universe is bigger than the bad things that are happening to us, then that’s all you need to remember. I’m good with that.

Science

Footage shows Central Valley dairy workers kicking young calves, pulling them with pliers

Published

1 day ago

May 13, 2026

Press Room

Footage shows Central Valley dairy workers kicking young calves, pulling them with pliers

In late February, animal rights activists flew a drone over a calf ranch in the Central Valley and watched as workers kicked and punched the animals.

For the record:

7:15 p.m. May 12, 2026This article has been updated to reflect that no calves from Agresti Calf Ranch have ever gone on to be used for Clover Sonoma milk supplies, and the calf ranch opened only in 2025. In additional comments, Clover Sonoma also said in the future, no animals from Agresti Calf Ranch will be part of its supply.

Footage reviewed by The Times shows a worker pulling a calf by the nose with pliers.

It shows two workers removing the budding horns of a calf with a hot iron. While one held the frightened animal’s head, the other — wearing a sweatshirt with an image of the Virgin Mary — applied the iron to a horn. After a puff of smoke, the calf fell to its side, appearing motionless.

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Both male and female calves produce horns. To prevent injury to the animals and their handlers, these are commonly removed. Humane guidelines require anesthesia.

The footage was collected by the group Direct Action Everywhere, known for tactics including releasing beagles from medical breeding facilities and abused calves from farms. It was shot at the Agresti Calf Ranch in Ceres, near Modesto, which is certified by the American Humane Society for its ethical treatment of animals. The workers could not be reached for comment. One was subsequently terminated, the Humane Society said.

The Agresti Calf Ranch opened in 2025 and is operated by the owners of Double D Dairy, just up the road. Double D Dairy owns more than 10,000 cows across several operations.

The owner of Double D, Dominic Assali, declined to answer questions in person. A phone number for the dairy online is disconnected. In response to an email to his personal account, Assali said, “Animal welfare and safety are incredibly important to us, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for any mistreatment.

“We’ll always take immediate, thorough action to address any operational issues, as we have in this instance,” the email said.

The American Humane Society is a 150-year-old nonprofit focused on animal welfare. Among other things, it certifies animal safety on farms as well as on movie sets. In a statement, it said only 10% of animals raised on farms in the U.S. are certified as humanely treated.

Assali is the grandson of the farm’s founders, Harold and Marlene Agresti. He is a board member of Western United Dairies, the largest dairy trade group in California.

The mistreatment captured on video has also created a headache for a prominent California sustainable milk brand, Clover Sonoma, based in Sonoma County.

It gets 10% to 15% of its milk from Double D, and Assali and his family are featured on Clover Sonoma’s website. No calves from Agresti Calf Ranch have ever gone on to be used in Clover Sonoma milk supplies, the company said in a statement. It’s unclear whether the abused calves were being raised for beef or dairy.

A Clover Sonoma sign hung outside the main dairy complex on a recent visit.

Clover Sonoma markets its milk, yogurt and cheese products as humanely sourced and environmentally sound. It was the first dairy company to receive a cruelty-free certification from the American Humane Society in 2000. The website also features a “Our Promise” page, which states the company demands “the humane treatment of animals.”

“We were deeply concerned by the reported mistreatment of some cows captured on video at Agresti Calf Ranch during a separate cow operation,” the company said in an email.

“The rough handling shown at Agresti Calf Ranch is contrary and inconsistent with the humane practices we have fostered for decades and which we demand of all our suppliers.”

Clover Sonoma said it suspended business with Double D as soon as it became aware of the incidents and began “a rigorous audit,” which just ended.

“Clover and the American Humane Society have concluded that the mistreatment was an isolated issue, not systemic or reflective of Agresti Calf Ranch’s personnel. Corrections have been made, including the termination of the employee in the video. As such, we are comfortable reinstating the milk from Double D Dairy.”

After this story published, Clover went further and said a condition of Double D’s reinstatement will be that no animals from Agresti Calf Ranch will be part of Clover’s dairy supply.

A statement from the Humane Society said Clover Sonoma is working with Double D to strengthen its whistleblower policy and training, and has “reiterated its commitment to ongoing independent, third-party audits,” with both announced and unannounced visits.

Clover Sonoma mainly buys and processes milk from dairies in verdant Sonoma County, as the company’s marketing suggests. Double D Dairy is one of its few suppliers in the Central Valley, which is associated more with industrial-scale agriculture.

On a recent weekday, the calf ranch and dairy farm were visible from a public road. Holstein calves, a popular dairy breed, could be seen in cages through small trees in front of the enclosures. The sound of mooing and a pressure washer could be heard. The smell of manure and dirt wafted in the humid air.

Most dairy companies remove calves from their mothers after birth, raising them separately so they don’t take the mother’s commercially valuable milk. Some dairy farms send calves out to third-party calf ranches for rearing. Others raise them on-site. Female calves are typically raised to become milk cows. Male calves are sent away to become beef or other meat-based products, such as pet food.

A 2025 State Water Board document shows the farm houses an average of 700 calves at any one time, with a maximum 1,400.

The Direct Action Everywhere activists were recently on a public road near Double D’s main farm, flying a drone over the property. Within 30 minutes of their arrival, seven Stanislaus County sheriff’s vehicles arrived and surrounded the activists.

A heavily armed officer asked to see the drone pilot’s Federal Aviation Administration license, which he provided. After confirming it was valid, a sheriff’s deputy — one of nine at the scene — told the activists they could remain on the road but could not trespass.

Asked about the heavy response, a deputy said there had been several recent violent incidents from animal rights groups at the site, and mentioned the groups had sent in “busloads” of activists.

The Times reached out to the Sheriff’s Office to get more details about those events but did not get a response.

Temple Grandin, author and professor of livestock medicine at Colorado State University, said that punching and kicking livestock is considered abusive.

An expert in livestock welfare, she said that handlers can tap, push and nudge animals. But if the level of force goes beyond what could bend the side of a cardboard box, “it’s abuse. Period.”

She said the calves’ reaction to the hot iron indicates that pain medication, such as lidocaine, was not applied before the procedure. Double D did not respond to a question about whether medication was given before the procedure.