Science

'I don't want him to go': An autistic teen and his family face stark choices

Published

2 years ago

August 27, 2024

'I don't want him to go': An autistic teen and his family face stark choices

Christine LyBurtus was aching and fearful of what might happen when her 13-year-old son returned home.

Noah had been sent to Children’s Hospital of Orange County for a psychiatric hold lasting up to 72 hours after he punched at walls, flipped over a table, ripped out a chunk of his mother’s hair and tried to break a car window.

“There’s nothing else to call it except a psychotic episode,” LyBurtus said.

The clock was ticking on that August day in 2022. The single mother wanted help to prevent such an episode from happening again, maybe with a different medication. Hospital staff were waiting for a psychiatric bed, possibly at another hospital with a dedicated unit for patients with autism or other developmental disabilities.

But as the hours ran out on the hold, it became clear that wasn’t happening. LyBurtus brought Noah home to their Fullerton apartment.

“When he came back home, it kind of broke my heart,” said his sister, Karissa, who is two years older. “He looked like, ‘What the heck did you guys put me into?’”

Christine LyBurtus makes a snack for Noah.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The next night, Noah was back in the ER after smashing a television and attacking his mother. This time, he was transferred to a different hospital for three weeks, prescribed medications for psychosis, and then sent to a residential facility in Garden Grove.

LyBurtus said she was told it would be a stopgap measure — just for three weeks — until she could line up more help at home. But when she phoned to ask about visiting her son, LyBurtus said she was told she couldn’t see him for a month.

“He lives here now,” someone told her, she said, and the staff needed time to “break him in.”

LyBurtus felt like she was being pushed to give up her son, instead of getting the help her family needed. She insisted on bringing him home.

Autism is a developmental condition that can shape how people think, communicate, move and process sensory information. When Noah was 3, a doctor noted he was a “very cute little boy” who played alone, rocked back and forth, and sometimes bit himself. Noah’s eye contact was “fleeting.” He could speak about 20 words, but often cried or pulled his mother’s hand to communicate.

The physician summed up his behavior as “characteristic of a DSM-IV diagnosis of autistic disorder.”

When he was in elementary school, LyBurtus stopped working full time outside the home and enrolled in a state program that paid her as his caregiver. She relies on Medi-Cal for his medical care, and much of his schooling has been in Orange County-run programs for children with moderate to severe disabilities.

Noah does not speak but sometimes uses pictures, an app on a tablet, or some sign language to communicate. When a reporter visited their home last year, Noah bobbed his head and shoulders as he listened to music on his iPad. He flapped his hands as LyBurtus made him a peanut-butter-and-banana smoothie, and then dutifully followed her instructions to chuck the peel and put the almond milk away. It was a good day, LyBurtus said with relief.

But on other days, LyBurtus said her son could be rigid; his demands, unpredictable. “Some days he’s fixated on having three pairs of pants on … Some days he wants to take seven showers. The next day, I can’t get him to take showers.”

Christine LyBurtus greets son Noah as he arrives home on a bus

When frustrated, Noah might erupt, banging his head against walls and trying to jump out the windows of their apartment. He had kicked and bitten his mother when she tried to redirect him. In the worst instances, LyBurtus had resorted to hiding in the bathroom — her “safe room” — and urged Karissa to lock herself in the bedroom.

As Noah grew taller and stronger, LyBurtus stripped bare the walls of her apartment to try to make it safe, installed shatterproof windows and removed a knob from a closet door to prevent Noah from using it as a foothold to scale over the top of the closet door. She made sure to flag her address for the Fullerton Police Department so it knew her son was developmentally disabled.

“I’m just so grateful that my son never got shot,” LyBurtus said.

Each of the 911 calls was the start of a Sisyphean routine. Noah “has been challenging to place in [a] mental health facility due to behavioral care needs with severe autism,” a doctor wrote when he was back at Children’s Hospital of Orange County yet again.

Noah leaps into the air while inside his home in Fullerton

As the family tried to get through each crisis, LyBurtus was also facing a common struggle among parents of California children with disabilities: not getting the help they were supposed to receive from the state.

LyBurtus was getting assistance through a local regional center, one of the nonprofit agencies contracted by the California Department of Developmental Services. She said she’d been authorized to receive 40 hours weekly of respite care — meant to relieve families of children with disabilities for short periods — but was sometimes receiving only 12 to 16 hours.

She was also supposed to have two workers at a time, LyBurtus said, but caregivers were so scarce that she was scheduling one at a time in order to cover as many hours as she could.

In the meantime, Noah wasn’t sleeping and she was going through so much laundry detergent and quarters that her grocery budget was drained. At one point, she wanted to go to a food bank, but there would be no one to watch him.

“I could not be anymore tired and frustrated!!!!” she wrote to her regional center coordinator. “Is the only way Noah is going to get help [is] if I abandoned him and surrender him to the State!?!?”

Across the country, surging numbers of young people have landed in emergency rooms in the throes of a mental health crisis amid a shortage of needed care. Children in need of psychiatric care are routinely held in emergency departments for hours or even days. Even amid COVID, as people tried to avoid emergency rooms, mental health-related visits continued to rise among teens in 2021 and 2022.

Among those hit hardest by the crisis are autistic youth, who turn up in emergency rooms at higher rates than other kids — and are much more likely to do so for psychiatric issues. Many have overlapping conditions such as anxiety, and researchers have also found they face a higher risk of abuse and trauma.

“We’re a misunderstood, marginalized population of people” at higher risk of suicide, Lisa Morgan, founder of the Autism and Suicide Prevention Workgroup, said at a national meeting.

Yet the available assistance is “not designed for us.”

According to the National Autism Indicators Report, more than half of parents of autistic youth who were surveyed had trouble getting the mental health services their autistic kids needed, with 22% saying it was “very difficult” or “impossible.” A report commissioned by L.A. County found autistic youth were especially likely to languish in ERs amid few options for ongoing psychiatric treatment.

Karissa left, interacts with brother Noah on a couch

In decades past, many psychiatrists were unwilling to diagnose mental health disorders in autistic people, believing “it was either part of the autism or for other reasons it was undiagnosable,” said Jessica Rast, an assistant research professor affiliated with the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute. Much more is now known about both autism and mental health treatment, but experts say the two fields aren’t consistently linked in practice.

Mental health providers may focus on an autism diagnosis for a prospective patient and say, “‘Well, that’s not in our wheelhouse. We’re treating things like depression or anxiety,’” said Brenna Maddox, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Yet patients or their families “weren’t asking for autism treatment. They were asking for depression or anxiety or other mental health treatment,” Maddox said.

In the meantime, the system that serves children with developmental disabilities has faltered.

“Never have I seen that we can’t staff the needed things on so many cases,” Larry Landauer, executive director of the Regional Center of Orange County, said last year. Statewide, “there’s thousands and thousands of cases that are struggling.”

“If I’m a respite worker and I get called on to provide help to families … who am I going to select?” Landauer asked. “The [person] that watches TV and plays on his iPad and I just sit and monitor him? Or do I take someone that is significantly behaviorally challenged — that pulls my hair, that scares me all the time, that tries to run out the door? … Those are the ones getting left out.”

The fall and winter of 2022 were so trying that LyBurtus eventually took matters into her own hands. Noah bit his mother and smashed a bathroom window and tried to climb out before the Fullerton Fire Department arrived. Weeks later, LyBurtus had to dial 911 again after he bit his sister’s finger badly enough to draw blood.

Caregiver Terrence Morris, left, keeps a watchful eye on Noah

He ended up in a hold at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, which searched for another facility that might help him, but “all placement options declined patient placement,” according to his medical records.

Noah was again sent home with his mother, but the next day, he was back at Children’s Hospital of Orange County after slamming his head against a tile floor.

LyBurtus, frantic and bruised, made call after call and finally used her credit card to pay for an ambulance to take him to UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, where he was admitted.

Week by week, psychiatrists there said Noah seemed to be making some strides as they adjusted his alphabet soup of medications. But hospital staff struggled to understand what would set him off.

Once, while playing cards, Noah suddenly started knocking the cards off the table and struck another patient in the face. Another day, he appeared suddenly to be frightened after using the bathroom, and then charged at a computer plugged in nearby.

But there were also days when he danced to a Michael Jackson song, or played Giant Jenga outside on the deck. One day, a doctor wrote, “He made eye contact for a few seconds. I waved to him, and he looked at his hand, as though he was wondering what to do with it in return.”

Christine LyBurtus washes the face of son Noah

LyBurtus was straining to find more help at home so UCLA held off on discharging him, but at the end of January 2023 Noah was sent home. With no changes in medication planned, “and the strong possibility that Noah grew tired of the inpatient setting, the ward no longer was deemed therapeutic or necessary,” a doctor wrote.

Less than a month later, he was back in the emergency room at Children’s Hospital of Orange County after biting and attacking his mother.

A psychiatrist at the pediatric hospital wrote that because he had limited ability to communicate, another round of psychiatric hospitalization would do little unless it was specialized for “individuals with neurodevelopmental needs.” When the 72-hour hold at children’s hospital ran out, LyBurtus asked for an ambulance to take Noah home, fearful of driving him herself.

In May, the month Noah turned 14, LyBurtus heard the regional center had found a place for Noah: a four-bed facility in Rio Linda, a tiny town near Sacramento that she’d never heard of. He could live there for more than a year, she was told, and then hopefully return home with the right support.

Christine LyBurtus shows photographs to son Noah

But LyBurtus fretted about what she would do if something happened to him so far away. She felt, she said, like she had failed her child. Months passed as they waited for a spot there; LyBurtus said she was told they were trying to hire the needed staff.

“I don’t want him to go,” she said, “but I don’t want to continue going on the way that we’re going on.”

Then in August, LyBurtus was told the regional center had found a spot at a facility much closer to home: the state-run South STAR facility in Costa Mesa, about 20 miles from their apartment. Noah would occupy one of only 15 STAR beds across the state for developmentally disabled adolescents in “acute crisis.”

On a bright September morning, LyBurtus pulled up at an unassuming gray house with a “Home Sweet Home” sign by the door. The three teens living there were gone for the morning while an administrator and South STAR program director Kim Hamilton-Royse showed LyBurtus around the house.

Minutes into the tour, LyBurtus found herself crying. Hamilton-Royse stopped her explanation of the daily schedule. “I know this is super hard for you,” she said gently.

But LyBurtus brightened at the sight of the sensory room outfitted with crash pads and a mesmerizing, colorful cylinder of bubbling water. Hamilton-Royse pointed out a vibrating chair and added that they had a projector that would fill the room with illuminated stars.

LyBurtus took photos on her smartphone to show Noah. “You’re not going to be able to get him out of here,” she said.

As they rounded the rest of the house — bedrooms with dressers secured to the wall, a living room with paintings of sailboats, a fish tank — Hamilton-Royse asked if LyBurtus felt any better.

Christine LyBurtus reacts while boxing up items for son Noah

“I do,” she said. “I just hope that he can behave.”

Hamilton-Royse reassured her that South STAR had never kicked anyone out. “And we’ve had some really challenging folks,” she said.

“I promise you we’ll take very good care of him.”

As she returned to her car, LyBurtus took a deep breath. “It’s hard not to feel like I’m betraying him,” she said, her voice shaking. “But I can’t keep living like this, you know?”

Christine Lyburtus visiting a care facility

2 Christine LyBurtus in a hallway of a care facility

3 Christine LyBurtus standing at the front gate of a residential care facility

1. Christine Lyburtus tours a residential care facility in Costa Mesa, about 20 minutes from her home. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 2. At the South STAR facility, LyBurtus was told, Noah would occupy one of only 15 STAR beds across the state for developmentally disabled adolescents in “acute crisis.” (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 3. “I just hope that he can behave,” LyBurtus said of son Noah. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Three days later, Noah went back to the Children’s Hospital of Orange County on another psychiatric hold. He came home, then was back in the emergency department a week and a half later.

The October night before Noah left home, LyBurtus had brought home sushi for him, one of his favorite foods. He fell asleep around 6:30 p.m, and woke up again at 1 a.m. LyBurtus gave him his medication and as he drifted back to sleep, his mother held him, enjoying the peace.

When he woke up in the morning, she could tell he knew something was up. His clothes had been packed. She’d already shown him photos of the Costa Mesa home and told him, “This is where you’re going. I’m still your mom. I’m still going to go and see you.”

Noah, 14, embraces his mother Christine LyBurtus

When the black SUV arrived, LyBurtus offered Oreos to coax him into the unfamiliar car. She followed the SUV in her car, staying far enough behind to avoid having Noah see her when he arrived. LyBurtus had been told it would ease the transition.

Back at home, she sank into the bathtub, utterly spent. “I’m going to have to just go with trusting this process as much as I can,” she said, “because I don’t have another choice right now.”

The next day, she met with the South STAR staff to tell them more about Noah. What he likes to eat. What triggers him. His favorite things to do. The Costa Mesa home called whenever staff had physically restrained Noah, but when a weekend passed without a call, she felt some relief.

Lyburtus smiled at the photos and videos sent home: putting together an elaborate stacking toy, washing dishes. It felt like things were going well, LyBurtus said. The staff had scaled back the amount of psychiatric medication he was taking.

But more than a month later, when she first went to visit Noah, he excitedly took her to the front door, as if to say, “Let’s go,” she recalled. She gently told him she was just visiting.

Christine LyBurtus is comforted by Schahara Zad, left, and Terrence Morris, caregivers for her son Noah

He led her to the side door instead. She steered him away again. They stepped into the courtyard, and Noah immediately went to the gate to exit.

LyBurtus fell into a funk. As she worried about Noah, she was also figuring out how to make ends meet. With Noah in the Costa Mesa home, Lyburtus was no longer being paid more than $4,000 a month as his caregiver, her sole source of income for years. She tried a number of jobs but ultimately found the work that suited her: caregiving for an elderly woman and children with disabilities.

Her second and third visits with Noah were easier. She snapped photos — Mother and son nestled together on the couch. Noah touching her forehead.

The STAR program runs up to 13 months. As time passed, the regional center had started talking to her about where Noah would go next. LyBurtus was startled.

Wasn’t the plan for him to come home, she asked?

Christine Lyburtus, left, is briefed by Kim Hamilton-Royse while touring a residential care facility

That was still on the table, LyBurtus said she was told. But if he wasn’t ready, they didn’t want to wait until the last minute to find somewhere else for Noah, who turned 15 in May.

LyBurtus wanted to block out the idea of him going to another facility.

“I never want to live the way we were living again,” she said.

“But is that worse than him being hours away? I don’t know.”

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.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2026.

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.