By Lily Hautau, CNN

(CNN) — How’s the weather up there?

Standing at nearly 5 feet 2 inches tall, I’ve rarely been able to reach the highest shelves at the library or in my kitchen without a step stool, if at all. Standing in a crowd at a concert, I quickly learned that the standing room only section was not for me, since all I could see when I looked straight ahead were people’s backs.

I’ve always wondered how my perspective and confidence would change if I were as tall as my dad, who stands at 6 feet 4 inches. Or if I were even just a few inches taller than I am without having my feet ache wearing heels that only give me a few inches, if that.

Then came the same height party: an event built around a simple, slightly crazy idea that everyone in the room, no matter their actual height, could meet at eye level.

The idea traces back to the late German artist Hans Hemmert’s creation of “Level” in 1997.

His participatory art installation is best known for using custom platform footwear to equalize participants’ heights, turning a physical difference into something you can step in and out of.

Decades later, Lucian Novosel hosted his own same-height party in a warehouse-style artist space in Oakland with about 15 people. Novosel has a reputation among his friends for projects that may sound crazy until you see them. One project was a human-size gerbil feeder and another a life-size origami horse. With a new goal, he set out to recreate that “leveling” effect as a wearable social experiment. This is one project that I wish I got to experience myself, however, I did talk with Novosel and a few of his guests about their experiences at the party.

It wasn’t just the idea “make tall shoes” to make people taller. He wanted to see how he could get his shortest friend — around 4 feet 11 inches — standing eye to eye with the tallest — about 6 feet 5 inches. Novosel used his tallest friend, Spencer, who did not want his last name published for privacy reasons, as the anchor height: “I know the tallest guy coming, and now everyone else will have to have shoes made for them,” he said.

So he made his version using a 3D printer.

How to make everyone the same height

Novosel started months before the party because the leveling effect only worked if the math and the materials held up under practical use. He said he needed time to create prototypes first and enough time to convince himself he could build platforms people could walk on safely before he felt comfortable inviting friends.

Roughly three months out, the event started to come together. He locked down the guest list, gathered measurements and secured a venue designed for stability. “It was hard,” he said — partly because a shifting guest list can mean rebuilding shoes from scratch — so he finalized the guest list about three months ahead.

Then it was time to gather data. Guests were asked for their barefoot height, shoe size and the lift of their everyday shoes. Next came the task of building those shoes, which involved nearly four weeks of cutting, stacking and reinforcing. Novosel used 1-inch foam in large sheets to build up platforms that widened progressively toward the ground.

The pyramid shape wasn’t designed for aesthetics but instead for balance to prevent “teeter-tottering.” “Imagine an elephant walking on a very small area,” Novosel said. “It’s not going to work.”

He used custom, 3D-printed brackets and zip ties in the assembly and kept the pattern adaptable enough to cover a wide range of shoe sizes.

He recommended the “Pink Panther” brand of rigid 1-inch foam insulation for anyone trying to recreate the build, as well as a hot blade and respirators for cutting the foam.

The tallest shoes? 18 inches.

Even w

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — Winding down a major US airline is a complicated business. Doing so when the president of the United States hints it could be saved adds another layer of complexity.

Wracked with financial trouble, Spirit Airlines had filed for bankruptcy for the second time in August 2025. Months later, the conflict with Iran had driven up fuel prices and made its financial position even more untenable, putting it on the brink of closure.

For weeks, Trump administration officials were in talks with the bargain airline on the possibility of a $500 million bailout package. The proposal would effectively give the government control of the overwhelming majority of Spirit’s shares.

President Donald Trump publicly suggested that he would be on board “if we can get it at the right price.”

“They have some good aircrafts, some good assets, and when the price of oil goes down, we’d sell it for a profit,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last month.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Trump to lay out the options, according to two sources familiar with the meeting, which prompted some internal division among the president’s team.

Lutnick, one source familiar with the deliberations told CNN, “was pushing” for a deal, with a second source familiar suggesting that he argued it would be a political win for the administration. But there were reservations about the possibility of a bailout from officials including Duffy, Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, and members of the White House counsel’s office, a third source familiar with deliberations told CNN. Those included concerns about pumping money into a company with a bad financial record, two of the sources said.

The idea of a bailout for a single airline also sparked backlash from both the airline industry and among Republicans in Congress. Previous bailouts have been in support of all US airlines, not a single carrier or group of airlines. And those rescue packages were in response to a paralyzed industry, like when passengers were afraid to fly in the wake of terrorist attacks or a pandemic, not because of increased costs and losses.

Trump, meanwhile, “was like a dog on a bone trying to figure out a way to keep Spirit afloat,” Duffy told reporters Saturday, adding that he was “in the Oval many times” with the president in the days before the airline shuttered.

After that initial meeting with Duffy and Lutnick, it became clear that a bailout would be more complex than Trump’s efforts to gain government control over companies like US Steel or Intel. The possibility of invoking the Defense Production Act — a law that gives the government more control to direct industrial production during emergencies — was raised, but rejected by the Department of Defense, two of t

The post City of Ventura Launches Small Business Week With Events Supporting Local Businesses appeared first on edhat.

By Alison Main, CNN

(CNN) — Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a candidate in the state’s competitive Democratic US Senate primary, made the case for her “authenticity” while responding to criticism she’s facing after an investigation by CNN’s KFile revealed she deleted old social media posts criticizing the rural Midwest and praising California.

McMorrow told CNN’s Manu Raju on “Inside Politics Sunday” that she is “not somebody who wanted to be in office or wanted to be in Congress when I was in diapers.”

“I started my career as a car designer, and then I worked in a very different career and wasn’t thinking about it,” she said. “I tweeted normal things like a normal person, and people are desperate for authenticity, so that is what we need in November.”

The Michigan Democrat, who has said she would not back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to lead the caucus, said voters are “responding” to her call on the campaign trail for “new leadership in the Democratic Party that recognizes — not as a lifelong politician, but as an American and as Michiganders here — what’s actually at stake here.”

McMorrow pointed to Maine, where Democratic leaders’ handpicked candidate, Gov. Janet Mills, dropped out of the Senate race last week after failing to garner the momentum needed to raise money in the Democratic primary against Graham Platner, a progressive who has also come under fire for his old online posts.

“We just saw what happened in Maine. I think the bigger liability is somebody who’s been so concerned that one day they might run for office that everything about them is manufactured, and if that is what you’re looking for, there are two other opponents in this race who fit that bill,” McMorrow said.

The roughly 6,000 deleted posts resurfaced by CNN’s investigation reflect a range of McMorrow’s views, from support of the Black Lives Matter movement to comparing President Donald Trump and his supporters to Nazis.

In January 2017, when a user on X wrote, “California should have its own diplomats” to “make sure we don’t get nuked because of morons from the other side of the country,” Morrow responded, “There are days like these that make me miss California even more.”

McMorrow has since branded herself as the pragmatist in the crowded Michigan race.

On Sunday, she stood by past posts in which she implied rural Americans should learn from coastal elites, saying, “Trump has succeeded in weaponizing us against each other, convincing us that we are each other’s enemies. I’ve lived all over the country. I’ve met a lot of different people, and I stand by that.”

“Was it the most eloquent tweet I’ve ever tweeted? No, I’ve tweeted thousands of times,” she continued. “There is a level of authenticity and just grappling in the wake of the 2016 election, of how somebody like Donald Trump could have been elected.”

Rep. Haley Stevens, another candidate in the Michigan Senate race favored by some establishment Democrats, told Raju on Thursday she thinks McMorrow’s posts were “a little tacky” and “very out of touch with wh

The post Westmont Baseball Completes Sweep of Menlo and Punches Ticket to Pac West Tournament appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.