As generative artificial intelligence continues its colonization of the digital world, from search engines to software, concerns are being raised about its energy consumption: the data centers that train and run genAI models are power hogs. A December U.S. Department of Energy report cites genAI as the main reason data centers’ share of U.S. energy consumption more than doubled from 2018 to 2023—and may more than double again by 2030.
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The Trump administration’s drive to disrupt the federal government is already having an outsized effect on Ann Arbor, from social services to climate activism. (For the impact on just one nonprofit, see Doomsday Planning.) But none matches the economic destruction threatened by a February announcement from the National Institutes of Health, which provides $800 million of the U-M’s $2 billion in annual research funding. The edict would set grantees’ “indirect cost” reimbursement at 15 percent.
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On October 7, 2023, as Jon Mallek married first-term state representative Jason Morgan in matching navy suits with teal bowties under a trellis draped with eucalyptus leaves, the thought of running for office himself was the furthest thing from his mind.
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No need to look out the window—just sign up for A2 Fix It, the app and website where residents report problems online. After a mid-January snowfall, most of the complaints were about people who hadn’t cleared their sidewalks.
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Good news for the one in five people who have difficulty processing written words: Michigan now has two strong laws governing how schools screen for dyslexia and train teachers to respond to it. And it has them largely because of Ann Arbor school board member and former special ed teacher Susan Ward Schmidt.
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“I just happened to look back at an invoice from January of 2022, and we were selling eggs for $23 a case,” says Washtenaw Dairy owner Mary Jean Raab. “Yesterday I paid $83 a case.” Another supplier was asking $147.
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Recently, a book appeared among the Nepali handicrafts in the window of Himalayan Bazaar on Main St. Beyond Everest traces the path that took the store’s co-owner from grinding poverty to the top of the world’s highest mountain. He and his wife and co-owner, Moni Mulepati, were married there, drawing international coverage.
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It’s been a long haul for the Miami-based developer: Finvarb and several Michigan partners first proposed building a hotel on Glen Ave. between Ann and Catherine streets in 2017. After a Covid delay, construction on the 188-room Vanguard Hotel finally started at the end of 2022.
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In mid-December, when Concordia University Ann Arbor issued a press release announcing the school would consolidate its operations at its North Building on Plymouth Rd. and away from its sprawling, lush campus along Geddes, few were surprised.
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Advance Publications, owners of the Ann Arbor News and seven sister MLive papers, announced in October that it will shut down the Jersey Journal at the end of January, while also eliminating print editions of its flagship Star-Ledger and two other papers in New Jersey. Following the digital transition of four Advance-owned papers in Alabama and Mississippi in 2023, this move raises the possibility that print editions of the News and the rest of the MLive group could be next.
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Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw opened Zingerman’s Delicatessen in 1982. It became the cornerstone of a Community of Businesses that today has a staff of 700 and annual sales of more than $80,000,000. Along the way, Weinzweig has published more than two dozen books on food, business, and leadership. This article is excerpted from his latest, a hand-bound chapbook that connects his early life to his work today.
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In recent years, public works has cleared only “major” streets. But in December, city council approved a contract with Saline’s KBK Landscaping for up to $500,000 worth of “supplemental plowing” whenever four or more inches of snow are predicted.
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The 2024 Michigan Football season is likely to be remembered for two things: After a tepid start, the Wolverines upset the Ohio State Buckeyes. And Bryce Underwood upended Michigan athletics.
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“Law enforcement tows” by the sheriff’s office and AAPD generated $436,500 in fees in 2023, not including extras like storage. “They make so much freaking money off towing,” says Clayton. “And we regulated how much they could charge for this and that. Enough for ’em to make money—they’re all making a ton of money—but they’re not gouging the people” whose cars are towed.
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Dorrie Dils became president and CEO of Gift of Life Michigan in 2016. At the time, she says, the Ann Arbor–based agency was “averaging about 280 organ donors a year.” The number has since more than doubled, to 578 last year.
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In 2020, Ann Arbor became one of the first cities in the country to decriminalize the sale of “magic mushrooms.” Now Hosanagar is coinvestigator on a study of psilocybin, the fungus’s psychoactive ingredient, for treatment-resistant depression.
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“I feel pretty good,” says AAPS board president Torchio Feaster of the November election results. “We elected a lot of good people in this community.”
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This month, the Rainbow Readers Book Club will hold its first meeting at the center’s new home at 560 S. Main St. The blue house across from the Union Rec restaurant is owned by Greyfort Development, Wickfield’s real estate holding company.
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Prop C, which would have eliminated partisan labels and primary elections, earned just 28 percent of the vote. Prop D, to create public funding for council and mayoral candidates, went down 30–70 percent.
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