Lifting weights can keep you carrying groceries and riding bikes even as you get older. To join or not to join a gym: That is the question. If you opt out of building a home gym, you can join a club and have access to more weights and machines. Friends and classes motivate you to keep coming, and that monthly bill keeps you disciplined. On the other hand, gym memberships are steep, workouts can get hijacked by bullies, and going to the gym is an additional commute.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Bernie Sanders kicks off billionaires tax campaign with choice words for the'oligarchs' Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks Wednesday night at the Wiltern at the formal kickoff of the campaign for the California billionaires tax. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . Populist Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday formally kicked off the campaign to place a billionaires tax on the November ballot, framing the proposal as something larger than a debate about economic and tax policy as he appeared at a storied Los Angeles venue.

Nico (right) and Matteo Mucchetti pose with their homemade dark ride vehicle. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. When 12-year-old Matteo Mucchetti mapped out an amusement-style attraction that he wanted to create in his family's basement and then showed it to his older brother Nico, the high-school sophomore was immediately sold. "This is amazing," said Nico. "Let's make it!" Matteo had sketched on paper a top-down view of the multi-room space in Bear, Delaware, where they live.

This Startup Thinks It Can Make Rocket Fuel From Water. General Galactic, cofounded by a former SpaceX engineer, plans to test its water-based propellant this fall. If successful, it could help usher in a new era of space travel. There's been this hand-wave, this assumption, this at the core of our long-term space programs. If we can return astronauts to the moon, we'll find ice there.

Red and blue states alike have introduced legislation in recent weeks that would halt data center development, citing concerns from climate to high energy prices. An Amazon Web Services data center in Stone Ridge, Virginia.Photograph: Nathan Howard/Getty Images Two New York lawmakers on Friday announced that they are introducing a bill that would impose a three-year moratorium on data center development. The announcement makes New York at least the sixth state to introduce legislation putting a pause on data center development in the past few weeks--one of the latest signs of a growing and bipartisan backlash that is quickly finding traction in statehouses around the country. Data center moratoriums are "being tested as a model throughout states in this country," said state senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat, who presented the bill at a press conference Friday with its cosponsor, assembly member Anna Kelles, also a Democrat. "Democrats and Republicans are moving forward with exactly these kinds of moratoriums. New York should be in the front of the line to get this done."

Mistral's New Ultra-Fast Translation Model Gives Big AI Labs a Run for Their Money "Too many GPUs makes you lazy," says the French startup's vice president of science operations, as the company carves out a different path than the major US AI companies. Mistral AI has released a new family of AI models that it claims will clear the path to seamless conversation between people speaking different languages . On Wednesday, the Paris-based AI lab released two new speech-to-text models: Voxtral Mini Transcribe V2 and Voxtral Realtime. The former is built to transcribe audio files in large batches and the latter for nearly real-time transcription, within 200 milliseconds; both can translate between 13 languages. Voxtral Realtime is freely available under an open source license.

Reid Hoffman Wants Silicon Valley to'Stand Up' Against the Trump Administration The LinkedIn cofounder and frequent Trump target has a simple message for his peers: "Just speak up about the things that you think are true." Reid Hoffman doesn't do much in half measures. He cofounded LinkedIn, of course, and helped bankroll companies including Meta and Airbnb in their startup days. He has also fashioned himself, via books, podcasts, and other public appearances, as something of a public intellectual--a pro-capitalist philosopher who still insists that tech can be a force for good. Most recently, Hoffman has emerged as one of Silicon Valley's most prominent defenders of artificial intelligence . His newest book, 2025's, makes the case that AI won't diminish human capacity but will instead amplify it. Hoffman even relied on AI to make one of the most unconventional--and perhaps uncomfortable, depending on your view of AI-generated creativity--Christmas gifts I've heard of lately. Whatever you think of Hoffman's utopian views on AI, credit where due: He's also a very outspoken critic of President Trump--a rare trait in a tech world that's grown increasingly quiet, or cozy, when it comes to the cruelties of the US administration. Hoffman's overt political views haven't been without consequence: Trump has twice threatened to launch investigations into him, most recently calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to dig into Hoffman's ties to Jeffrey Epstein . He has subsequently called for the government to release the Epstein files in full.) Despite those threats, Hoffman isn't pulling punches: When we sat down to tape this episode in mid-December, he readily called out the administration for degrading American government, criticized his peers for keeping their heads down, and urged Silicon Valley to stop pretending that neutrality is a virtue. If only more billionaires were saying it. So glad to have you here. I'm glad to be here. We like to start these conversations with some very fast questions. What's the hardest lesson you've ever had to learn? Probably when to give up.

Race Against Rot shows how engaging with community may be a valuable resource. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. New research gathered with the help of a free-to-play video game indicates most people are happy to help their fellow neighbors, even if it costs them a bit of cash. According to the designers of Race Against Rot, their social experiment suggests that some new strategies to address longstanding issues facing both small-scale farmers and their nearby communities could be beneficial. Environmentalists and sustainable food system advocates alike have long stressed the importance of supporting small farms, but it's easier said than done.

Environment Animals Wildlife Birds A giant-footed bird showed up in a Massachusetts backyard. The purple gallinule found its way north through unusual winds. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A winter storm blew an unexpected visitor from the south into a backyard in New Bedford, Massachusetts--a purple gallinule (). These gorgeously colored birds with shockingly large feet, live in marshes from the southeastern United States through South America.