The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a Classifieds section.

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PUBLIC VAN DRIVER: Microtransit is like taking a bus, but if you had to crawl over other riders to find a seat. The city of Sioux Falls, SD, is experimenting with on-demand vans in addition to traditional bus routes to shuttle residents around.

ISO GASSISTANT: Director Barry Sonnenfeld said they had to evacuate the set of Men in Black for roughly three hours because Will Smith farted so badly. Sonnenfeld went on to say that Smith is a lovely guy, “just, he farts. Some do, some don’t.”

NON-TENNIS EXTRAS: Ben Stiller will produce and have a role in the new pickleball movie titled The Dink. Surely with this addition, the film will now have a much sexier Challengers vibe.

Personal

PROTECT AM: Despite automakers like Tesla and Ford ditching AM radios in their electric vehicles, Congress is debating a bill that would require carmakers to put them back in. Even if your dashboard looks like a massive iPad, you can still enjoy crackly sports talk.

ULTIMATE GOAT: A goat named Joshua escaped from his enclosure in Newfoundland and joined 250 runners to complete a half marathon. Joshua was awarded a medal and will head to Boston next April to tackle Heartbreak Hill.

For sale

KRABBY PATTY: Ravioli, ravioli, the secret formuoli is probably mayo-based. Wendy’s is releasing a “Spongebob Squarepants” collab to honor the TV show’s 25th anniversary. The meal includes a “Pineapple Under the Sea” frosty, but please don’t ask for pizza. It would be a whole thing.

BANKRUPTING TICKETS: Would you rather put a down payment on a new car or see “Fix You” live? Tickets for a Coldplay show in India sold out within minutes and then reappeared on resale sites for as much as $11,000 a pop.—MM

Photo of the week

Elon Musk launched a thousand memes with his jump (actually, two jumps) alongside former President Trump at a rally on Saturday. The rally was held in Butler, PA, at the same venue where a gunman tried to assassinate Trump in July.

Musk, wearing a black Make America Great Again baseball hat, told the crowd, “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.”

Dept. of Progress

Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even stop a tech bro from reading your mind.

The asteroid that killed the dinos wasn’t alone. The prehistoric species-killer had a little sibling that barely got any attention, according to new scans of a five-mile-wide crater off the coast of West Africa. Marine geologists say the crater is the lasting mark of an asteroid that smashed into Earth within an estimated 2 million years of the big hitter, which left a 100-mile-wide crater. Still, the smaller one caused thousands of miles of landslides and a more than 2,000-foot-tall tsunami, researchers said. They scanned the more recently discovered crater—which is almost 1,000 feet deep—with seismic imaging tech that reportedly provided the most detailed mapping of any marine crater (there are ~20) on the planet.

Your brain data is protected in CA. A new law aims to give Californians more agency over their own domes by protecting their cognitive data from collection by products like mental health apps and neurotech hardware. People in CA will have explicit rights to their own “neural data”—covering anything a person thinks or physically/emotionally feels—which is designed to prevent companies from gathering and selling that type of personal info. An April review of 30 neurotechnology companies’ user agreements found that 29 were allowed to share data with third parties, according to the Neurorights Foundation.

🦫 Boston’s “diva” beaver gets a wildlife exception. Staying in captivity is usually not the goal for rescued animals, but Nibi is different. Since being found on the side of the road at just a week old, the microcelebrity beaver has grown up at a Massachusetts wildlife rescue center, which argued that Nibi, a “spoiled rotten” “diva” (non-derogatory) wouldn’t survive release, despite that being required by state law for healthy wild animals. There were no other captive orphaned beavers in all of New England for Nibi to bond with when she was a baby, and later attempts also failed, so she’s only ever known people. Thanks to an emergency permit issued by the MA governor, Nibi is allowed to stay at her domestic home, where she could live another 10–17 luxurious years.—ML

Can a city really be climate-proof?

Hurricane Helene battered communities across six states last weekend, centering on Western North Carolina. The Appalachian cultural mecca, Asheville, NC, was particularly hard-hit, suffering catastrophic flooding that killed dozens of residents, swept away homes, and destroyed businesses.

The shocking damage challenged the popular perception of Asheville as a “climate haven.” The city was often listed alongside places like Duluth, MN, and Burlington, VT, as one of the safest from dangerous weather like coastal flooding and extreme heat.

Now many are wondering whether the tragic reality check might impact Asheville’s future appeal. The idea that its inland, mountain location shielded it from environmental peril (along with its vibrant arts scene, acclaimed restaurants, and picturesque alpine landscape) was a draw for scores of transplants in recent years.

But the storm calls into question whether any location can really be considered safe from catastrophic climate events.

False sense of security

Much of Asheville's identity as a climate haven was cultivated by the local real estate industry looking to attract climate risk-conscious migrants.

But anyone who viewed the city as a paradise sheltered from the extreme elements likely underestimated the risks. Though tropical storms typically pummel coastal terrain the hardest, mountainous regions like Asheville are prone to unpredictable flooding from heavy rain.

• Helene isn’t the first storm to bring sweeping devastation to Asheville: A hurricane in 1916 caused deadly floods and decimated infrastructure in the area.
• More than 18% of homes in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, were at risk of flooding, according to climate risk modeling nonprofit First Street Foundation.

A warming planet has made the abrupt formation of intense hurricanes more likely and might also help them retain strength as they move inland, according to climate scientists. That means that the conventional wisdom about where natural disasters can occur might no longer apply. Researchers also say that the federal government’s flood risk maps vastly underestimate the chances of flooding in many areas, which might explain why few homeowners in Western North Carolina had insurance against it.

Safer, but not safe

Jesse Keenan, a climate adaptation researcher at Tulane University, claims that the term “climate haven” is a misnomer, since even places that are safer than others are not immune to climate risks. He told the New York Times that Asheville will need to adapt to climate change, though those efforts will still be cheaper than in a sinking coastal city like Miami.

Keenan doesn’t expect the flooding in Asheville to undermine its status as a “receiving city” for people moving away from more vulnerable areas. Paradoxically, he says that destructive extreme weather events like Helene can actually accelerate development, as wealthier people tend to move in to build more resilient homes in place of the ones that were destroyed. Research shows that New Orleans neighborhoods impacted by Hurricane Katrina were more likely to be gentrified in subsequent years than those that were spared by the storm.

Chasing climate havens

Climate considerations are important for those thinking about a move: A recent Redfin survey showed that 62% of people are reluctant to relocate to places with climate risks. But in most places, extreme weather events still probably aren’t top of mind, taking a backseat to factors like day-to-day weather, amenities, and cost of living.

Sunbelt counties with heightened risks of coastal flooding and wildfires, for instance, are among the fastest-growing places in the US, according to a New York Times analysis. But this could change as extreme climate events become more frequent, pushing flood and fire insurers to end coverage for homes in high-risk areas.

Still…true climate havens may be determined less by geographic location and more by the existence of resilient infrastructure to protect against extreme weather. Research shows that projects like wetlands restoration and dam improvement can reduce flooding risk. Experts say that planned communities that incorporate storm water drainage systems and fire-resilient vegetation into their designs tend to fare the best during floods and wildfires.—SK

Place to be: Where the fat bears roam

It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process.

Fat Bear Week is underway at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, which is home to an estimated 2,200 brown bears. Eight bears were entered into a bracket-style competition that had to be delayed when one bear was mauled by another bear on a live webcam on Monday, a problem that almost never affects the start of March Madness.

The backstory: What began as one park ranger’s Facebook post—written in 2014 to highlight some chonky ursids—has ballooned into a global event. Last year, a record 1.3 million votes were cast for Fat Bear Week from more than 100 countries. The winner, 128 Grazer, defeated her closest competitor, Chunk, by more than 85,000 votes.

It’s democracy in its purest form.

• The park provides photos of the bears after a summer of gorging on the more than 50 million salmon in Bristol Bay, which allows them to gain the weight that’s crucial to their winter survival.
• Then, a leering public casts votes in a single-elimination tournament that has no concerns about going up against the MLB playoffs.

The final will take place on Fat Bear Tuesday, when one lucky bear will ascend to the coveted Hall of Champions, something the bears actually don’t know exists because they are bears.

Nothing is stopping other national parks from embarking on similar stunts. Yellowstone could be doing Beefy Bison Week. Sequoia has Thickest Redwood Week right in front of it. And Saguaro could ask the public to participate in Swollest Cactus Week.—DL

Crowd work

Last Sunday we asked, “What’s the strangest way you’ve met your neighbors?” Here are some of our favorite responses:

• “While enjoying a peaceful meal outside my first-floor apartment, I was hit with an unexpected shower of human hair that rained down onto my plate. I quickly retreated indoors, convinced the culprit was my long-haired neighbor directly above. A week later, I shared the bizarre story with the third-floor neighbors I’d just met, only to find them unusually quiet. It took a full year of friendship before they finally confessed they were the ones sweeping hair off their balcony! We're still great friends to this day, but they don’t cut hair on their balcony anymore.”—Sam from Blacksburg, VA
• “We were both robbed by the same guy and we met at his preliminary court hearing.”—Sherry from Pennsylvania
• “I was working from home one day, and heard a loud thud. My across-the-street neighbor had somehow let his car roll across the street and hit our house. There’s still a dent in the bricks today.” —John from Birmingham, AL
• “My neighbors were in their yard fencing in full-on homemade soldier garb, swords, and shields…so my roommate and I asked if we could join, and they gave us outfits and weapons to fight with them.”—Cayley from South Dakota

This week’s question

OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in its latest funding round, a number most of us couldn’t even fathom. How would you blow through that cash as quickly as possible?

Matty’s answer to get the juices flowing: Everyone in the state of Illinois (where I live) is getting a wedding. It doesn’t even have to be real, I just need to spend about $1 billion on personalized koozies.

Share your response here.