Pacific Gas & Electric cuts power to 800,000 customers in California to avoid wildfires caused by winds damaging power equipment.

The utility has long warned it would such a cut, but critics are still furious. SoCal may get cuts next as Santa Ana winds roll in.

Maybe it’s time for Californians to change the way they live.

Unrelated, probably: White Claw may have outsold Budweiser this summer.

Turkish delight? Pompeo insists Trump didn’t give Turkey’s attack on the Kurds a “green light.” 

Meanwhile, Trump insists the Kurds aren’t true American allies because they didn’t fight at Normandy.

The last time the United States abandoned allies in the Middle East, we wound up in a war with Iraq. 

Outlets are jostling on the Trump-skeptical side of conservative media, admiring The New Republic of the 1980s and '90s.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says Trump didn’t blackmail him during their phone call.

Worth noting: Before he became president, Zelensky was a comedian on TV who specialized in satire.

Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke win Nobel Prizes for Literature (for 2018 and 2019).

Checking your email in an airport after you win the Nobel Prize looks like this.

A "synchotron" accelerates electrons to nearly the speed of light, so they emit light 10 billion times brighter than the sun.

Using touch-screens as a training tool is opening up a whole new world of dog-human communication.

Apple bows to China by removing an app from its app store used by Hong Kong protesters.

Average typing speeds on mobiles are now 38 words per minute compared to about 52 on a standard keyboard.

Your Thursday moment of Zen: How to make model apple trees for your trainset. 

From Bessie Smith to Etta James to The Band and Drive-by Truckers, 10 songs about trains tell a story of the South.

Stories come to light of horrific abuse endured by enslaved people working at Southern colleges before the Civil War.

Greenwich Village gentrified a long time ago. Now it's seen as a harbinger of New York City's future.

Nearly three years after Los Angeles passed Proposition HHH—$1.2 billion to fight homelessness—zero supportive housing units have opened.

The unseen victims of the "Varsity Blues" scandal are more-deserving students who lacked shortcuts.

Watch: Felipe Nunes manages to skate professionally despite a train accident when he was six that left him without feet.

Slightly absurdist illustrations by Derek Zheng.